Addiction

I wore Addiction to close a merger. By the third hour, the room hung on every word and every breath between them. The CFO leaned in, not to discuss numbers, but to murmur, "Whatever you're wearing, it's costing me my focus." Twelve hours later, my collar still hummed with roasted vanilla.

First, the crackle of black pepper. Then coffee so rich, I tasted it. Finally, a woody embrace that lingered through my flight to Kyoto. The businessman beside me canceled his hotel reservation. "Wherever that scent is staying," he said, "I'll follow."

Addiction survived a monsoon. I danced through Mumbai's flooded streets, raindrops sliding off skin that smelled of smoked caramel and defiance. Strangers offered umbrellas. Lovers offered vows. The city itself seemed to lean closer.

At the gallery opening, critics debated my sculpture. But their eyes kept drifting to my wrist, where Addiction pulsed like a forbidden stanza. "Is this what ambition smells like?" asked the collector who bought my piece and my number.

My ex-husband froze when I passed him at the opera. Later, his text read: "You smell like the night we stole that yacht." I didn't reply. Let him wonder which part I've kept, the memory or the musk.

I conducted the philharmonic wearing Addiction. During the crescendo, the first violinist missed her cue, too busy inhaling. Backstage, she confessed, "Your tempo was perfect. That scent? Criminal."

Bouncers at Berghain waved me through. "You smell like the afterparty," grunted the doorman. Inside, strangers asked to sniff my pulse point. Addiction outlasted sunrise, Berlin's gray dawn kneading its coffee-stained warmth into my jacket.

On the Tokyo subway, a salaryman dropped his briefcase. "Forgive me," he stammered, "but you smell like my grandfather's Kyoto espresso bar, if it were ruled by witches." I gifted him the sample vial. His bow lasted three stops.

In court, Addiction's cedarwood cut through sterile air. During recess, my opponent's lawyer slid me her card: "For personal consultations." The judge awarded me everything. Coincidence? The verdict lingered on her robe.

I spritzed Addiction before burning my corporate ladder. At the exit interview, HR gasped, "You, you smell like rebellion!" My former CEO called it "unprofessional." His trembling pupils said otherwise.

In Okinawa's storm, Addiction clung like a lover. Rescue workers pulled me from waves, then paused. "You shouldn't smell this divine," laughed one, his hands lingering. The scent? Still perfect. My dignity? Drowned.

Tinder matches materialized like moths. "Your profile lied," accused a neuroscientist. "No one this magnetic exists." I kissed him in the rain. Addiction's vanilla bloomed hotter. His thesis? Rewritten about me.