Secret Agent Chapter 088 - Roxy's Feelings (Patreon)

Zack Adder waited until he and Roxy had finished their lunch, sitting on the edge of a nearby fountain in a small plaza just off the Kingsroad, near the little girl’s burger stall.

Roxy leaned back and sighed, enjoying the cool, moist air under the warm summer sun. Coincidentally, the pose highlighted her figure for the man sitting next to her.

Coincidentally.

“Roxy,” Zack said. His tone was serious.

“Yeah?” she said, but there was still a glimmer in her eye as she turned to look at him, leaving her body on display.

“Can you be honest with me? What are you trying to do here?”

Roxy’s composure held for a few seconds, then she looked away. “I’m just enjoying lunch.”

“And?”

“...and the company.”

“Roxy, what do you want?”

Zack needed to clear this up.

On the one hand, they were coworkers at the Rose Theater.

Plus she was helping him out with this business idea at St. Bella’s orphanage.

But Roxy had gotten really upset when he made plans to meet with Cori later, and she had said something about having dibs.

Zack wasn’t dense.

And he could admit… He did look older than his age. He had looked older than his age since high school, and there were girls who had found that attractive.

He had had girls come onto him before.

He hadn’t needed to comment on it with Roxy because, until now, she had been flirting with everyone.

But claiming to have dibs? And that comment about wanting him to say he had undying love for her?

There was flirting, and there was… whatever this was.

Roxy hesitated a moment, then asked, “What do you want, Jack?”

“I want to be just friends.”

Roxy’s head whipped back to him so fast her copper hair, tied back in a pony tail, whipped around as well. “So Cori is your type?”

“Roxy, I’m not in any position to be in a relationship. I don’t have my own place, I barely have stable employment, I’ve got my own issues…” He checked with [Private Conversation], and then made a point of double checking by looking around carefully before he whispered softly, “...with the Church and the Kingdom.”

“Well, I don’t mind all that,” Roxy pouted. She stopped leaning back, and shifted her posture to a prim, straight-backed perch on the edge of the fountain, and turned so she was facing Zack more directly.

“That’s nice,” Zack replied somewhat flippantly. Then, he paused.

[Calm Down].

He felt bad about having said that.

He didn’t not like Roxy.

He had no reason to be hurtful.

Which was making the conversation harder to navigate.

Roxy’s eyes hardened slightly at his tone.

“Sorry. I mean, I understand that you don’t mind. But I do mind. My life is complicated enough right now, and adding a relationship on top of that would be too much for me.”

Roxy narrowed her eyes further. “You think I couldn’t help with all that?”

“I’m sure you could,” Zack admitted. “But I’d feel bad putting that on you.”

“You wouldn’t be putting that on me.”

“It’s simply not a good time for me.”

“Oh, but you can go on a date with Cori, now?”

“It’s not a date.”

“You’re buying her drinks tonight. How is that not a date?”

Zack narrowed his eyes at her. “Because there’s no feelings behind it. I just want information.”

Roxy’s eyes softened, but she pouted. “You can’t tell me you don’t like girls, Jack. My [Allure] wouldn’t work on you if you didn’t. And you can’t tell me Cori’s not attractive, either…”

“Roxy, you’re not listening. I’m really just not ready to have a relationship, right now.”

Roxy frowned slightly and pursed her lips. “Then when will you be ready?”

Zack looked away. “I don’t know.”

When would he be ready?

When his parents were still alive, they were so chaotic it killed any chances he had.

After that the Army training, and then his classified work, had kept him busy.

He’d had a few flings as a double agent, as part of his cover… But none of that had felt real. It had just been physical, and wrapped up in ulterior motives.

That two of the women he had hooked up with had been counter-intelligence agents, discovered only after the fact, had put a real damper on things.

If he could just fall back on his CIA training here, things would be so much easier.

He knew the things to do and say to spark and deepen those kinds of relationships.

The problem was, he did like Roxy.

He didn’t want to just use her for her body when he couldn’t open himself up and form a real relationship with her.

Even if he got a stable income, even if he got his own apartment, or he and Roxy moved in together…

There would still be the Kingdom and the Church looking for him.

The request in the Adventurer’s Guild.

The training day trap.

They hadn’t given up.

Things might die down, eventually…

But they also might not.

“Then… will you promise not to fall for any other girls until you are ready?”

“No.”

Roxy frowned, her eyebrows forming an angry V on her face. “What?”

“I can’t make any promises. That’s what I’m trying to say, everything’s too… up in the air right now.”

What if he needed to flirt with someone like the maids in the Castle again?

What if he decided he needed to lead Cori on?

What if he did that and Roxy saw or found out?

He didn’t want to hurt her like that.

“Look, just tell me honestly, Jack. If you were ready, would you pursue me?”

Pursue.

That was an interesting way to put it. Maybe a local paradigm for courtship.

Zack thought about it.

Roxy was beautiful, had a great personality—other than the ceaseless flirting with every man around, and had a good job.

And she could literally perform miracles.

She was undeniably a catch.

“...with the understanding that I don’t want to lead you on, or make you waste your time waiting for me… Yeah.”

Zack felt bad even as he said it. It felt wrong to make a promise about how he would feel in the future when he didn’t know how his feelings would change.

He immediately tried to take it back.

“Well, maybe. I don’t know how I’ll feel in the future.”

But Roxy was smiling like the cat that got the cream. “Good! Goddess, why couldn’t you just be like every other man? You’re so complicated, Jack.”

“You’re not going to keep pursuing me, are you?”

That would—

“Of course I am! But you better get your life uncomplicated fast, okay? I’m as fickle as any other woman, you know~” Roxy grinned and leaned forward.

Zack sighed heavily.

He tried to warn her.

“Roxy, there may be times when I need to flirt with other women…”

“Like Cori?” Her response was sharp and immediate.

“Yes, like Cori. I don’t want you to get mad…”

“Of course I’ll get mad!” She displayed her anger on her face, before she skillfully relaxed into a flirtatious smile. “So I’ll just [Allure] you twice as hard until you can’t look away from me.”

Zack leaned back and looked at the sky and sighed heavily. “Goddess, women…”

Roxy giggled. “It really would be simpler if you just declared your undying love for me, and stopped playing hard to get.” Her tone indicated she was back to her normal flirting.

“Yeah, yeah.” Zack was honestly fed up with it.

*ding!* The skill [Negotiation] has been acquired!

He [Stifled] any kind of outward sigh, but he wanted to groan.

He got a skill for negotiating now, after all that?

Not after visiting the alchemist or the stationary shop, or even after bargaining with the Director the night he fled the Castle… now?!

The system had to be trolling him.

So he leaned on his [Acting] skills and stood up without further reaction. Roxy jumped to her feet as well, bouncing up against him. “Let’s go. I want to take Henrietta back to the Apothecary, and then check with Ivy about the laminate.”

“Nyahahahaha,” she laughed coquettishly, and the continued clinging to him all the way back to the orphanage.

The children were playing outside when they returned, and wasted no time as soon as they saw them.

“Sister Roxy’s back!”

“Sister Roxy, did you win?”

“Mister Jack did you bring Misses Snake?”

Roxy let go of Jack, put her hands on her hips, and struck a power pose. “Mister Jack is playing hard to get! But I’m not giving up!”

“You can do it Sister Roxy!”

“Don’t give up!”

“Do your best!”

The clamor brought Sister Paula outside, followed immediately by Henrietta. She had her art supplies with her, and a stack of a dozen sheets of paper—the finished info cards and samples.

Kathy was much more professional when they arrived at her apothecary, and Zack was surprised to see actual customers inside. There was a witch and a… was warlock the term? Anyway, a young woman and a young man both wearing the wide-brimmed conical hats were discussing the box of Belladonna primitiva that was set out, and an older, plumper, and much shorter woman with silver-white hair and no hat was placing an order with Kathy directly.

“Oh, excuse me one moment, madame,” Kathy said extraordinarily politely. She waved Zack, Roxy, and Henrietta forward.

“Jack, you all can go ahead as you please. Can you show her the the drapemoss and grymhaven root? You remember them, right?”

Without waiting for a response, she turned back to the older woman. “My apologies. As I was saying, placing an order of that size is difficult at the moment…”

Zack remembered. Drapemoss was a kind of hanging moss, like Spanish moss, but obviously there was no Spain here. Grymhaven root was another of the poisons from his pilfered book, and was a gnarled, twisted thing, black as night with streaks of dark green.

Zack showed the samples on display for sale to Henrietta, and as she got set up for drawing, he turned to Roxy.

“Roxy, can you keep an eye on Henrietta here while I go to Ivy’s?”

Roxy nodded confidently. “Leave it to me, Jack!”

And so he left, Henrietta so focused she didn’t even notice him leave.

They should be fine for a little bit.

Ivy’s was only across the street, so it took no time at all to make his way there and find the shop counter unattended, with no sign of the diminutive alchemist.