Her blond-streaked hair is caught up in two pigtails. Her pajama shorts are fuchsia and her tank top green.
My eyes really hurt now.
“What happened to good old palmistry?”
“Passé.” She waves a hand at me dismissively and grins. “We need new methods. Vosprung durch Technik.”
“Isn’t that the ad for a car?”
“Amber.” She sighs. “Advancement through technology. That’s what it means.”
“And Turkish coffee counts as technology, I assume?” I roll my eyes at her.
“You assume correctly.” She grabs my cup before I manage to take a second sip. “But meanwhile we make do.”
“Hey!” I reach for my cup, my very filtered coffee sloshing. “I’m not done.”
“I’ll help you.” She gulps down the rest. “Our fates are intertwined anyway, what with living in this apartment together and whatnot.”
“Christ, Kay. You’ve been watching too much TV.”
“You can never watch too much TV,” she intones and studies the inside of the cup. “Ah-huh. I knew it.”
“I’ve had enough.” I get up, tugging down my blouse over my boy shorts, and turn to go.
“You love him.”
I freeze on the spot by the kitchen door. “Say again?”
“Jesse Lee. You’ve gone and fallen in love with him, despite all my warnings.”
I turn slowly toward her. “Shut up, Kay.” I sit back down, my vision blurring. Awesome. And here I thought I had no more tears to shed. “I’m not in love with him.”
“Not what the cup tells me.” If she’s noticed my tears, she doesn’t give any signs. She turns the cup in her hands slowly. “Here is the heart, and it’s a double one. Man, I really wish we had Turkish coffee, this filtered stuff is crap for reading fortunes.”
I laugh, choking on tears. “Whatever.”
“It’s fuzzy. Not easy to work with. I mean, look here.” She points with her little finger at a smudge inside the cup. “See that? I can’t be sure, but it looks like a cat.”
“A cat.” This is stupid, but it’s a good distraction. “Really.”
“Yeah. See the tail? And I think…” She gasps. “No, it’s not a cat. It’s a lion.”
My turn to gasp. That’s a funny coincidence. I think again at the pendant I wanted to give Jesse, still tucked inside my purse—the stone lion I carved.
“No idea what a lion means,” she muses, frowning, twirling one pigtail around a finger. “Anyway. I also see a conflict. A collision. See here, this explosion thingy. You will collide with something from your past. And here… I see flowers. Roses, most probably.”
“Most probably?” I arch my brows, suspicious. “What are you up to, girl?”
“Me?” She does a terrible show of innocence, fluttering her lashes, widening her eyes and pressing her hand to her chest. “How low you think of me.”
“And enough of historical series, or whatever it is you’re watching.” I finally gather myself together and stalk out of the kitchen, thinking to grab a shower and do something productive for a change. Take my mind off things.
Off him.
“The flowers are already here!” she yells after me. “They arrived earlier this morning, and I had nothing to do with them.” A pause while I turn back around. “But I did see them in the cup. Oh ye of little faith.”
***
“Who would send me roses?” I grumble as I trail after Kayla into the living room.
“Jesse Lee?”
“No. Jesse has trouble shopping.”
“Seriously? He doesn’t have to go out and buy the flowers himself, only call and give his credit card number.”
But he said he doesn’t have a bank account. He said he keeps his money in his room.
“And they’re white roses,” she says, lifting the bouquet from the sofa. “Who’d buy you white roses?”
My hands tremble as I grab the small envelope stuck on the bouquet and tear it open. I withdraw the small white card.
“Embers,” it reads in scratchy, crooked handwriting that I doubt belongs to the florist’s employee. “You’re the only girl I’d ever kiss.”
Holy crap. It’s from him. Which means he went out and shopped… Which means he wrote this note.
Which means he remembered what I told him at the wedding.
My head hurts.
“Are they from him, then?” Kayla appears behind me, and I yelp and manage not to drop the roses in the last moment. “Jesse?”
“Yes.” I hand them to her, not sure what I want to do with them. With his note. His gesture.
“Well, see? I told you. Double hearts.” She smells the roses. “I guess we should expect snow.”
“It’s summer, Kay. Frigging warm, too.”
“Yes, but Jesse Lee sent a girl roses.” She winks. “Today’s date should be engraved in stone for future generations.”
I shake my head, suddenly pissed with this charade. “He kissed a girl right in front of me. Some stupid roses won’t make me forgive him.”
“Twelve roses.” She waves the bouquet at me, as if I didn’t notice it. “White. Beautiful roses.”
Huffing, I plop onto the couch. I’m pissed, but okay, I’m also a tiny bit in awe of the roses. Never received flowers from a boy before, and I’m slightly giddy.
A pity I hate him right now. He disgusts me. He sucks.
Oh God, I’m going to start bawling again. No way. I pull my laptop toward me, log in, absently check the updates of my Chicago friends. “You were right. I should never have slept with him. I was being stupid.”
“He’s hot. Told you I would’ve slept with him in a heartbeat.” She sinks on the sofa next to me. “The trick is not to fall in love.”
Yeah. Piece of cake. I click on my inbox to check my emails. I do that every morning, a habit I picked up a year ago because of assignments.
“You’ve never fallen in love, then?” I scroll down. “Ever?”
“Of course not. Love is too much work.”
I glance at the roses, left by Kayla on the low coffee table. “Gifts are a sign of a guilty conscience, right?”
“The only signs I know are star signs. Besides, Micah gives Ev gifts all the time, and I don’t think he’s feeling guilty for leaving hickeys on her neck. I think… Hey!” She suddenly picks the laptop off my lap and stares at it. “Did you see that?”
“No, because you took my laptop away. See what, Kay?”
“Customers! You got customers!”
“What?” We wrestle for the laptop and I win. I settle it back in my lap and check out the emails.
Customers. She’s right. People who want to order my jewelry. And not just my friends from Chicago. Unknown people. People whose names I’ve never heard of before.
Whoa. Unbelievable.
The bracelets seem to be a success. The earrings, too.
Holy crap. I stare at the emails, Kayla squealing beside me like a piglet, and all I can see in my mind’s eye is the pendant I wanted to give Jesse.
Why not? No matter what, despite my anger and misery, I want him to be okay, and if that pendant helps him fight his demons…
Damn. If I make money from my jewelry, and maybe return to college and study art, then I’ll have achieved my goal. This is what I came here for, to make it work, make my dreams come true and to stand on my own two feet.
Talking of dreams… A hot flush travels up my neck. No, I won’t think of dreams of Jesse right now, or the half-formed dreams I had of being with him.
I’m here. The older me would have turned and run. Run back to Chicago and my parents, the new-found safety, the cocoon they built around me.
Don’t get me wrong. I honestly believe they saved my life by moving away. My thoughts were very dark back then, and I wouldn’t trust myself not to harm myself. There had been moments life had held no meaning. Wasn’t worth living.
But they pulled me out of it—took me far from the bullies, found me a good therapist, kept watch over me. Kept me sane, kept me alive.
And if falling for Jesse was like tumbling down the rapids with no life vest on, and if hitting the rocks hurt, that only means I’ve let go of the life line, and I’m paddling now on my own. Life can hurt. But unless you let go, you can’t really live it.