Mari woke up at around nine and checked her phone immediately, smiling to see that a message had arrived from Bisi.  She tapped out a response.

<Marisol Ortiz> I passed out last night! Glad you made it home alright, sounds like a real war zone in your neighborhood. I will diligently catalogue the contents of the Lost and Found— I’ll text you a summary and then when we see each other, you can review the full list. 

Mari set her phone down on the nightstand and threw her feet over the side of the bed, yawning and stretching. She heard a Ding! and picked up her phone again. Bisi had already replied.

<Bisi Egbe> Good morning! That will be scintillating reading. Finally, something to look forward to this week 😎. Don’t leave anything off. Not one hoop earring. Not one cufflink. Not one phone. Incidentally, when I woke up, I realized I was missing one small Omega, with large brown eyes, long black hair, and a bold red lip. Smells heavenly. If you find her at the museum, please set her aside in a safe place for me and I’ll come to collect her when I’m in town on Thursday. I’ll offer a generous reward, as I am very anxious to get her back.

Mari rolled her eyes, but she grinned as she typed her response.

<Marisol Ortiz> I’ll keep an eye out. 

<Bisi Egbe> Be sure that you do.

Setting her phone back down on the bed, heart racing, full of jitters, Mari got up to go take a shower. She technically didn’t have to go to work until early afternoon, but she needed to do something to make the time pass. She floated through her morning routine, trying to remember the last time her life had gotten shaken up this way, but coming up blank.  When Mari was ages twelve-and-a-half through fourteen, she’d had a terrific crush on Sylvia Campos, an Alpha girl who went to her school. Sylvia had been seventeen and extremely cool and universally admired and about to graduate, and as far as Mari knew, had not known Mari existed. This had not stopped Mari from taking every chance she could to find a way to pass her in the hallways. Once, an old graded worksheet had fallen out of Sylvia’s book bag as she walked down the hall, and Mari had snatched it up and rushed after her. In her hand, Mari had held a golden opportunity, a bona fide reason to talk to Sylvia, but when she’d gotten close enough to tap her on the shoulder and offer her the paper, Mari had lost her courage.

In the end she’d kept the paper, taking it home and smoothing the wrinkles out of it, tracing her finger over the numbers in the calculus problems that Mari had been baffled by at the time (although years later, when she took calculus herself and had received the exact same homework worksheet from her teacher, she had greeted it as an old friend). Even better than the handwritten numbers on the page (Sylvia crossed her sevens!) had been the letters in Sylvia’s name, effectively the only actual words she had written. Mari had been particularly taken with the way that Sylvia had used the downstroke of the Y in her name to create an elaborate flourish that underlined the whole. So sophisticated. Mari had experimented briefly with calling herself Mary so she could have a flourishy Y as well, but neither her parents nor her friends had been supportive of the change and she’d given it up.

The next year, Mari had gotten her first boyfriend, if texting back and forth on their flip phones for a few weeks before sending envoys of friends from each side to meet on the battlefield (the stands that surrounded the school football pitch) to negotiate a break-up could be called ‘having had a boyfriend.’ Still, he had been enough to displace Sylvia in Mari’s heart. Mari thought that calculus paper was probably still folded up and stored in a box of memorabilia from her childhood at her parents’ house. She hadn’t thought about it in years, probably because she hadn’t felt this ridiculously infatuated for years. The sense-memory of having a crush had faded until those three kisses last night had done more to disturb her peace of mind than Sylvia’s glamorous Y ever had. 

Sitting at her desk considering all of this, Mari fanned herself with her hand to cool her cheeks. The motion was not lost on the person entering her office unannouced, her friend, fellow Omega, and an event planner for the firm, Allain Hutcheson. 

“Hot flash?” Allain said giving her a wink, blue eye peeking out from beneath some luxuriously extended lashes.

“Tu madre, Allain. I’m thirty.”

Allain shrugged, unconcernedly, and straightened his dapper gray vest with its pink silk pocket squre. “I don’t know how female Omegan bodies work, we know this.”

“They have this thing called the internet.”

“Thanks, but no time. I’ve got my hands full with my husband’s body, I’m good,” he said with exaggerated smugness.

Mari stuck her tongue out at him. Show off. Newlyweds were almost as unbearable as the nearly weds they worked with. This was known. Still, Allain was looking fierce today, his wavy brown hair clipped short except for a stylish sideswept fringe in the front, his stovepipe trousers and vest flatteringly tailored, his white dress shirt starched and crisp and rolled up to his elbows. No wonder his husband was keeping him busy.

Allain stuck his tongue out in return, and then said, “I appreciate the tip, though. Now... It’s cold outside and in this building, as usual, and you’re wearing a sweater, so I assume that the fanning is due to an internal heat source rather than external one.”

Mari coughed, and tried to change the subject, “So did you hear about last night?”

“That Halston Hollis showed up? You lucky witch. That is the one Omega on the planet I would invite over for a, uh, team-building exercise. And I’m pretty sure the aforementioned husband would be down.”

“You wouldn’t invite him over if you’d met him.”

“One of those?” said Allain sympathetically. The more important the client considered themselves, the worse the event planning experience tended to be, generally speaking

“Eh. Not terrible, to be fair, just not one of those encounters where you walk away going ‘Oh, wow, he’s just like us! So gracious! So unassuming!’... And then he goes and damn near collapses in the silent auction room.”

“Shit, really!? Now that’s tea. Now I’m mad I had to work the other fundraiser instead.”

“Oh, it was a barrel of laughs, let me tell you. You should be glad you didn’t have to deal with it.”

“So what happened? How is this not the talk of the office today?”

“Because in the end it was no big deal, and I managed to keep it quiet, and I have trained my team to keep their yaps shut about drama.”

“So professional. But…I signed the same NDA you did…so you can tell me.”

Marisol wrinkled her nose. “Well, basically, I found a doctor on the guest list and she agreed to go check him out and it turned out it was just an anxiety attack and he wasn’t dying, so he left after that and either went back to his hotel like he was told to or went on to another event. I suspect it was the latter.”

“Lucky there was a doctor there.”

“A heart surgeon, even. Very lucky. She was very nice about it—”

Allain looked at her and squinted slightly. “A heart surgeon?”

“Yeah, from Johns Hopkins.”

“Ohhh…. From Johns Hopkins,” said Allain as if this explained everything. Then, more pointedly, he asked, “How old was the heart surgeon?”

“Um, maybe thirty-five or so?”

“Gender? Trait?”

“Female. Alpha.”

“Cute?”

“I guess you could say that.”

“Does ‘you could say that’ mean that she was more than cute or less than cute?”

“More, maybe.”

“Maybe or definitely?”

“Definitely,” Mari admitted.

“Married? Mated?”

“I…don’t think so. I mean, no. She’s not.”

“Marisol Ortiz, is that Alpha the reason you were fanning yourself just now? And the reason you’re acting all awkward?”

“I don’t know. Yes?”

“And was it mutual?”

“She, uh, asked me to get a drink after the event.”

“After the… What time did you finish up?”

“Like… after one.”

“She waited around for you until then? This heart surgeon?”

In a small voice, Mari said “Yes?”

Allain dragged a heavy chair around to Mari’s side of the desk and plopped into it. “Here’s the real tea. And did you accept?”

“Yes.”

“And how did it go?”

“Well, I think.”

“Did you sleep together?”

“No! We, you know, exchanged numbers and made plans for Thursday. She’s going to drive over and pick me up after work.”

“Did you do anything else together?”

“Allain, you are messy.”

“Oink oink, bitches, I’m a messy little piglet and not even slightly ashamed of it. Now tell me what else you did!”

“We kissed a few times, that’s it. It was late, she had to get home, I had to get home…”

“Tell me about her scent.”

Mari flushed beet red. “Allain!”

“If I ever meet her I’ll find out for myself anyway, so just go ahead and tell me— did you like her scent?”

“Yes. I did.”

“What does she smell like?”

The blush did not die down. “You are so nosy!”

“I am a wedding planner. That basically makes me a love scientist. I can tell you who’s calling me back for a baby shower and who’s calling me back for a wedding to someone else with like… eighty-five percent accuracy, at least.”

“A love scientist," said Mari, skeptically.

“Damn straight. Spill.”

“Ok. Well, it took me a second to place it. It’s sweet and grassy, kind of like hay, but I think it’s closest to the smell of seagrass. Like they make baskets out of?”

“Oooh. I love the basket section in a store.”

“I know, right? I thought it was just me…”

“Noooo. So, she smells like seagrass… and you smell like… well, I’m going to say this and you’re going to get mad…”

“Don’t bother… I’ve heard it all before. I smell like horchata, like arroz con dulce, like snickerdoodles, like tembleque, like muffins, like spice cake. It varies, but it’s always food.”

“Long story short, you’re yummy. So we’re looking at a basketful of cookies or muffins or whatever tembleque is, here, as your couple scent.”

“Tembleque is pudding. It is definitely not served in baskets.”

 “Regardless, I pronounce you compatible, scent-wise. I’d have to see you two in action to be sure about the rest, of course. Tell me about looks now.”

“Um, she’s tall, she’s strong, she’s got dark, glowing, perfect skin, incredible dark eyes except when they turn, which is when they’re just like… lit from within. Her hair’s shaved down which, with the shape of her head, she can pull off effortlessly, a beautiful smile…she’s…well, she’s gorgeous. More or less ideal in every way.”

“Except when they turn, eh? Her eyes turned? On the first date?”

“Just for a minute.”

“Uh-huh. And where has she been all your life? Where’d she grow up?”

“Nigeria. Abuja, specifically.”

“Not going to pretend I know much about Abuja, but we stan a lover from a foreign land. Does she speak other languages?”

“Uhh, yes, I mean—English, primarily. But also Yoruba. And some school French. And a little bit of Igbo that she’s picked up, I guess.”

“No Spanish. Hmmm. You could teach her.”

“Or we could continue speaking in English, a language we are both fluent in. Or... my school French, I guess.”

“Or that,” said Allain lightly. “You’re seeing her on Thursday? What are you doing together?”

“I don’t know yet, we haven’t decided.”

“But you like her.”

“Yes. So far, I really like her. It’s kind of early, though. Is that enough? You happy?”

“Oh, yes indeedy-do I’m happy. This is a W. Michael at the equipment rental place is not going to be happy, however. I think he was just about to pull the trigger. He’s been eyeing you for months.”

Mari coughed. “Whatever. I don’t like dating people I work with anyway. I don’t need drama along with my tents and tables. My whole career is built on squashing drama.”

“And mine is based on creating it. Sounds like you’ve found a little more drama than you can squash this time. On Thursday, you need to get me a picture. Wait. Did you say she works at Johns Hopkins? Let’s google her. Maybe there are pictures on their website!”

“I’m in the middle of work, Allain! I’m about to go over to the museum to help with the silent auction items and lost and found stuff.”

“You can go in a minute. Scoot your chair over and let me see your laptop. I need to see this Alpha who can reduce meeting Halston Hollis to a side quest.”

Mari gave in, too tempted by the prospect of finding a picture of Bisi to look at, and to show off, to put up much of a fight.