Because of Cupid

Naomi Thomas runs the Agora with her gifted, sarcastic, deeply organized right hand, Marcus Kelly. Lisa, the owner, is exhausted and wants to sell the place, even though Naomi has helped the business boom with greenhouse ingredients, small plates, and big plans for mocktails and an oven. In the middle of all that, Naomi has a charged first encounter with fantasy-romance author E.J. Cortland, while Marcus and Naomi keep circling the question of whether their easy, teasing partnership hides something deeper. When Lisa’s would-be buyers turn out to be parking-lot people with no emotional investment in the restaurant, Naomi and Marcus decide they have to save the Agora themselves. Marcus’s uncle Richard, a successful restaurateur, tells them they need something inspiring and suggests entering an annual cocktail competition that has been switched to a mocktail contest for a younger crowd. To prove they can run a business together, Naomi and Marcus sign up and start building a plan, even though Naomi prefers improvisation and Marcus prefers spreadsheets, and each worries the other is not fully on board. Their search for an edge leads them to Hal, owner of a strange tea cafe, who supplies rare ingredients and a mysterious syrup. Naomi uses it in a mocktail, and the drink suddenly makes everyone who tastes it act like they are in a Nora Ephron movie: Lisa blurts out what she feels, Richard suddenly wants romance, and Steven and Jane become absurdly, openly in love. Naomi and Marcus think they have accidentally unleashed a love potion, and the chaos forces them to investigate how to fix it before the competition and before anyone makes a life-altering decision under the influence. The pair spends the next day chasing clues through botany, chemistry, and Greek mythology. They consult Chris, Naomi’s ex and a botanist, and Marie, Naomi’s scientist friend, while comparing the potion’s ingredients to the story of Psyche and Eros. Hal eventually reveals himself as Cupid and explains that the so-called potion is tied to old magic and to honesty: it only works in the way it is supposed to when people are willing to be truthful about what they already feel. Naomi, still afraid of risking her friendship with Marcus, keeps insisting that the chemistry is artificial, while Marcus keeps confessing that his feelings have been real all along. At the final Valentine’s Day round of the Social Time mocktail competition, Naomi and Marcus win with a carefully crafted drink and garnish built from their mythic scavenger hunt. The other affected couples each face the truth of their own relationships, and Richard and Lucy decide to marry after finally admitting what they mean to each other. Then the last piece falls into place: the potion was effectively a placebo that gave Marcus the courage to act on feelings he had been hiding for years, and Naomi finally says what she has been afraid to say. Lisa chooses not to sell the Agora to outsiders, but instead to sell it to Naomi and Marcus in two years, giving them time to prove themselves and take over together.