Tiara Seduction
Millory A. Torres
Some say the best kept secrets are the ones most visible.
We’ll see.
Louisa steered her cart into our Key West driveway with wheel and brake action like she was trying to avoid an imaginary roadblock. The avocados in the back slid sideways with a thunk, but without taking casualties. We’d survived a grocery run on a Saturday morning with only minor bruising and one man asking if Louisa gave lessons in body language. (She does not. Yet.) And one couple asking me if I would bring the stream team to their porch for a “back to nature” program. I declined.
The metal porch roof shimmered with heat - and motion.
Gus was up there in board shorts and a sweat-soaked tank, one leg planted wide, bracing as he hammer-tapped new metal shake panels into place. There was a ladder on display - safety third - and his tool belt slung like a sash across his hips.
Callie was also on the roof. Topless, of course. Sitting with her back against the wall. Lab notebook on her knees and pen in hand. Watching him.
And Kona? She was halfway out the window, naked as far as I could tell, back arched like a cat waking from a nap, pointing downward with two fingers like she was directing air traffic to a landing strip made of Gus.
Louisa and I hit the porch steps, two bags each, and tried to pretend like this was normal.
“What exactly are we walking into?” I asked Sharon, who was lounging in the doorway in branded floss, a tablet in hand and a brow furrowed hard and deep like drainage ditch.
“Field study,” she said, not looking up. “Callie’s observing arousal response triggers under sustained manual labor.”
“Of course she is,” I muttered.
“And Kona’s demonstrating applied motion seduction theory. Gus is the variable.”
I blinked. “She’s certainly delivering the motions. He knows he’s the variable, right?”
Sharon scrolled on her tablet. “Not officially. But he’s surprisingly responsive. We may need a second test group.”
Louisa snorted and nudged the front screen door open with her hip.
I followed, then stopped short. “This whole thing smells like a bad idea. Like, scented candle plus fireworks kind of bad.”
That was when Sharon smiled. The ‘I’m cooking something up’ one. The one with teeth. The one that can knock a Navy ensign out cold at seven yards.
“I have an idea. I think it’s time we franchise the art of seduction.”
I waited.
She kept going.
“Workshops. One-on-one coaching. Virtual seduction guidance. We’ll script a universal framework based on personality profiles, target-response conditioning, and market data. We can license it. Teach the teachers. Create a certification path.”
I set my bags down. “I have frozens. But —just to tide me over — what are you talking about?”
Louisa carried on into the kitchen humming a beat box mix of bolero meets BTO because music is her soul’s way of finding resonance.
“Franchise operations is huge money, Millie. It’s a way we can step away from the camera. Have others do the heavy lifting. There’s more nerds in the US than sunflowers. And Callie’s data says at least 23% of them would bite on coaching for seducing a girl. We know that business.”
“And Callie is what, building the syllabus by creeping on Gus’s glutes?”
“She’s logging reaction intervals. It’s data.”
“It’s always data with her.” I sighed and looked toward the underside of porch roof, where Gus was tapping and Kona was chirping.
“I’m going to need more, once I get these put away. You know we have a stream tomorrow at 5:00?”
Sharon waved it away like a disrespected gnat. “It’s all good.”
I wasn’t reassured. I could feel the clouds building. It seemed like it was going to be a long week.
Sharon rode in my hip pocket as I transited the living room and into our communal center of creativity and regeneration, also known as the kitchen.
The sink looked like the back end of a failed chemistry experiment. It was full of something that might have once been a smoothie. A spoon stuck out at a 45-degree angle like it was trying to escape.
“Was someone planning to clean up this mess?” I asked, stepping around a rogue trail of quinoa on the floor and setting my bags on the table.
Louisa looked up from the fridge. “I think it was an experimental protein shake. Gus tried adding cinnamon and kombucha this morning. I guess it backfired while we were out.”
“Backfired?”
She held up a Tupperware lid with a crack in it. “Explosively. Must have gone off while we were at the store. Gus was probably up on the roof.”
Sharon had the look of a woman who’d found her next mountain to climb, and didn’t notice it was made of Jell-O.
“We don’t need a big launch, Mills” she said. “Just three test streams. One each from Kona, me, and you. We show different seduction methods. Play to our strengths. We can use the techniques on Weesa buns in the shows.”
Louisa nodded slowly. “I like it. And I’ve got some ideas about what to not wear.”
“Of course you do,” I said, loading three boxes of ice cream into the freezer. “Because you’re feral. You live on exposure.”
Sharon’s ice blue eyes were lit up with brand domination visions. “If we nail the streams, we can track engagement, poll the fans, and start building curriculum modules. We could soft-launch the franchise concept by the end of the quarter.”
“Didn’t we get chicken thighs?” I asked. “There’s two packs of chicken sausage here.” I held up the evidence. “What about the streams already scheduled?”
“Supposed to be three pounds of thighs,” Louisa confirmed from the pantry.
“We’ll do them first. It will take a few weeks to build the entire model and do all the planning.”
“Callie leaves on Tuesday,” I reminded her.
“Maybe we can convince her to stay. Publish another study or something. She’s weak for data.”
“And Gus. But I suppose we all are.”
“We could maybe offer some Gusification...” Sharon floated out the idea.
“I’m pretty sure you don’t have the authorization to make that offer,” I said. “And don’t you go daring him to do her either!”
“Fine.” With bare jiggles and killer cheekbones, Sharon had a pout that would pull a hard sigh from a moose.
“You get your three streams,” I said, relenting and pulling a limp bag of previously-frozen peas from the sack. “But if anything combusts—literally or emotionally—I’m pinning it to your tax ID.”
The pout evaporated like smoke in a tornado and jiggleage reached stroke-inducing levels in the audience. “Deal!”
Louisa beamed. “I want show notes on the slow-burn seduction class before we go live.”
“You’ll get nothing, and like it,” Sharon replied. “We need organic truth out there, not you with some RainGasm-induced launch like last time.”
Shifting targets, she headed up the stairs, yelling. “Kona! We’re green to stream!”
I didn’t say it out loud, but I could already hear the ominous theme music for our next disaster playing in the distance.
Louisa made a face as she turned on the water and started processing the failed science experiment in the sink.
