Chapter 6

CHAPTER SIX

LAKE

231 bobas left until we both die …

The Chevy Tahoe is packed, the rear seats removed so that we can lay out an air mattress. Sleeping bags, pillows, our duffel bags. I have about forty outfit changes stuffed into this car, courtesy of my friends and cousins. Looking one’s best in the hopes of attracting one’s Match is pretty par for the course. We do this for every matched family member: donate clothes, pool money to buy new clothes, help with a makeover of sorts.

I’m going over a checklist with my aunts and cousins, making sure we have everything we’re going to need for the twenty-hour drive ahead and the months that follow. Joules and I will trail Tam’s Boyfriend Experience Tour (innuendo intended, I’m sure) from New York all the way back to Los Angeles.

I’m coming home for my grandmother’s birthday, so that I can celebrate with the rest of the family. If this is my last year on this Earth, I’m not missing that woman’s seventy-third birthday celebration for anything, not even a date from Tam himself.

Tam, who doesn’t know I exist. Tam, who’s happily dating K-pop sweetheart Kaycee Quinn. Tam, who has one-hundred-and-fifteen million followers on Spotify.

I exhale and fiddle with my hoodie, smoothing it out for pictures. Mom is going to want to take pictures. On a different day, Joules and I might be complaining about that, Joe tucked between us. We’d roll our eyes, drag our feet.

Fuck, I miss him.

I went in the backyard yesterday morning before the sun came up. Sat in the dirt in front of Joe’s tree and watched in silence as the dawn broke through the clouds and highlighted the naked branches. We had a little chat, and I felt both better and worse for it. Better that I got to talk to him. Worse that he didn’t talk back.

“Mom,” Joules is saying gently, his hands on her shoulders. She’s crying. I’m just now seeing that. “I will bring Lake back to see you. This isn’t a forever goodbye.” He rubs her arms, releasing her only once my dad steps up by her side.

It’s early, early enough that the neighborhood is quiet, birds chirping. Gold sunlight slants across the garage behind my parents.

“I’m still not sure about us staying here,” my mom says as I lean my back against the SUV, waiting out-of-sight for just a second. I want to hear what they’re going to say when they don’t think I’m listening. “I’d rather be with you both.”

“Picking up extra hours at work is what we need. Mom, the money we’re going to spend chasing this guy, it’s … a lot. Let me at least try it my way, okay? If we’re not seeing results in a few months, we’ll try something else.”

“Be honest with me while you’re out there,” my dad says, swiping his hand down his face. He already looks tired. “If … you don’t think this is going to happen. If we need to sell the house. Whatever it is, do you understand?”

“I understand,” Joules says, voice dark as I step around the SUV. He shifts his blue eyes to me, but the severe expression on his face doesn’t change. He’s frowning hard, full mouth twisted down at the edges, hands clenched at his sides. “This isn’t going to be easy, but you know that, don’t you?”

I nod.

Without the meet-cutes provided by the curse, it wouldn’t happen at all. Then again, it’s the curse’s fault that this is happening in the first place. Ugh.

“Are we sure we don’t know what our ancestor did on July fourth, 1776?” I ask, naming the date when the Declaration of Independence was signed. Same date my stupid great-great-whatever-grandfather got cursed by … something.

Relatives throughout the years have gone all-out on these deep dives trying to solve the mystery, looking for supernatural or religious or scientific evidence. Nobody has ever found any, and I don’t intend to try.

Instead, I’m going to chase Tam Eyre around.

“Probably slept with someone’s wife,” Dad murmurs, and my mom elbows him in the side.

“That’s just … no.” I roll my eyes at him as my Aunt Lisa moves up to stand beside us. She has a picture of Joe in her hands, passing it over to me when we meet up on the driveway.

“It’s hokey, I know, but … just take him with you, please.” She averts her eyes, their depths already glossy from crying. My poor Aunt Lisa has suffered the most because of the curse. Her first marriage to Joe’s dad—a man she was deeply in love with—ended because of it.

So, she lost her high school sweetheart and husband first. Then her son. And now, here I am, her favorite niece, her pseudo-daughter, the girl she taught to ride a bike … I throw my arms around her, and we stay there until the mail truck comes, slipping several items into the metal box and then trundling further down the road.

“Okay,” Aunt Lisa says, looking me over. It’s just the five of us—my parents, my aunt, me and Joules—out here. Everyone else said their farewells last night. “Stop frequently, eat lots of snacks, and if you’re tired, sleep.” She gives Joules a harsh look. “And please let your sister drive once in a while.”

Joules tosses the keys up in the air as he regards my aunt with a cool and indifferent look.

“Sure.”

He won’t, but that’s okay. It’s a twenty-hour drive, and we got good sleep last night. It isn’t going to be fun, but we can knock this out without needing to stop much.

Joules and Lisa hug one another while I fall into my parents’ arms, and then Joules and I are climbing into the SUV, slamming our doors, and yelling more I love you’s from the windows.

We both slump back into our seats and look at one another before rolling slowly out of the driveway and down the street. All of our neighbors—and us—have these Twenty is Plenty signs in the front yard. Joules is trying to be respectful. As soon as he gets on the highway though? All bets are off. He’ll gladly take a few speeding tickets to get us to New York more quickly.

“I’m sorry about your job,” I whisper suddenly. “And your apartment.”

“Shut up, Lake,” Joules tells me, one hand on the wheel, the other diving into his front pocket to pull out a granola bar covered in chocolate. “I’d rather have my little sister than either of those things.”

Except that he’s been waiting to get a place of his own for years, saving up, working his ass off for the family business.

“Thank you,” I tell him anyway, reaching out to snatch the now unwrapped bar from his hand. He pretends to be annoyed with me, but the edge of his lip quirks in a little smile. I take a bite only to realize that this is peanut butter and chocolate chip, my favorite. He probably packed it specifically for me. What a … sweetheart.

He reaches out to flick me in the nose, and I shy away with a growl. I take back what I said.

“Stop apologizing to me. When it’s my turn to be matched one day, you’ll be there with me, won’t you? You’ll already be married to Tam when that happens, so you either have to leave your superstar boyfriend on the road to come help me or else he has to come, too.”

“Deal.” I chuckle at the idea of it, me and Tam Eyre married and working on breaking Joules’ curse together. Hah. Some of my extended family members haven’t even told their Matches about the curse. And of the ones who did, many have spouses who don’t believe them.

That little flower inside of me that wants to tell the truth shrinks away from the reality.

Telling Tam is a really, really bad idea. Joules is right.

I may very well do it anyway.

“When I was seven, we moved to Seoul, Korea so that I could attend a performing arts academy,” Tam tells the interviewer on the YouTube short I’m watching. He smiles and adjusts himself in the seat, like he’s perfectly comfortable in a stuffy living room setting where I am absolutely certain that nobody lives.

“Is that where you started learning to speak the language?” she asks him, and he nods, reaching up to push strawberry hair back from his handsome face. And that smile, he never once lets it slip.

“As an artist, it’s important for me to connect as closely as I can with as many of my fans as I can. If that means learning new languages, I’m up for the challenge.”

The interviewer—some influencer-of-the-week type—giggles and leans in flirtatiously toward Tam.

“What languages can you speak now? French?” Her eyes glimmer with lust, and I try not to feel ill toward either her or Tam.

“English, of course. Korean, Japanese. I just got started on Spanish.” Tam winks at the camera, and the video ends. I hit like and move on to the next.

My brother reaches out and snaps my flip phone shut, practically crushing my fingers.

“What did I say?” he gripes at me. He’s been driving for an hour, and he’s caught me watching Tam videos four times.

“I don’t find it cute when you boss me around,” I warn him, shifting as awkwardly in my seat as Tam shifted comfortably in his. Long legs casually thrown out, one kicked over the other. With his ankles locked, he’d slumped back into the seat, one elbow parked on the armrest, head in his hand. The position caused his shirt to ride up just a bit in the front, flashing a dancer’s belly, all smooth planes and sexy dips. “Do your girlfriends enjoy that?”

“They love it,” he tells me, and I lean over to pinch his cheek hard. He swerves the car a little trying to slap my arm, so I draw back.

“Well, I don’t. So stop it. And also, please focus on the road.” I scroll to the concert tickets on my phone. The show is tomorrow night. We’ll be there with plenty of time to spare, but not so early that we’ll need more than one hotel room. New York is expensive, and we’re on a very strict budget here. “If we have time, can we take the Staten Island Ferry—it’s free—and look at the Statue of Liberty?”

“Why the hell not?” Joules grumbles back at me, reaching out to steal my phone. “I’ll just borrow that for a while. Get some sleep.”

“I think it’s important to research the guy before I try to woo him, don’t you?”

“I think that someone as famous as this doesn’t put anything real online. You’re better off going in blind, Lakelynn.”

With a sigh, I take off my seatbelt, climb into the back, and nestle into the sleeping bags and quilts that my mother packed for us.

230 bobas left until we both die …

We arrive in New York at a god-awful hour the next morning, finding ourselves at cousin Margaret’s bagel shop down the street from the stadium. People are already lining up.

“Joules, it’s four in the morning,” I whisper as he glances over his shoulder and out the window. The stadium is so well lit that it’s easy to see the massive crowd that’s already formed.

“They must have tickets for the pit,” he tells me, turning back to his food. I’m sitting there fidgeting with nerves and anxiety, blushing a little, wild at the idea that I’m in New York City for a second time. The New York City. It’s big and loud and tall, and my little suburban heart doesn’t know what to do with any of it.

I’m also freaked-out by the size of that crowd. The doors open at six p.m., and the concert starts at seven. How are there this many people here?

A group of girls slips in out of the cold, bundled up in jackets and scarves, rubbing their hands together and gossiping wildly.

“Officially, he’s staying at the Four Seasons, but I heard from a girl I know on Instagram that he’s moving all his stuff to the Plaza Hotel. If we camp the elevators and the staircase, each of us holding our post, there’s no way he could get past us, right?”

“Are you guys talking about the Tam concert?” the girl behind the counter gushes back at them. Margaret shouts at her to stop gossiping, but she’s not subdued. She waits for my cousin to disappear into the back, and then rejoins the conversation.

I pick at my bagel and cream cheese, heart pounding. Is this a tip that Joules and I can follow? Should I skip the concert and wait at the hotel or something? But which hotel? There’s no way these girls are really going to see Tam, right?

I look up to see that Joules is watching them. He’s eaten two bagels in the time that it’s taken me to commit to taking my first bite. The nerves are really starting to kick in. My brother turns back to me as the girls finalize their plans for the stakeout.

“If the information is that readily available, there’s no way that it’s true,” he tells me, and I know he’s right. I do. It’s just … there are so many things we need to try that I don’t know where to begin. “It’s best if we go to the concert and hope the curse puts you in his path.”

I sigh and exhale. Joules is right. This basic idea is written into nearly every one of my ancestor’s books. Don’t worry so much about how you might end up having a conversation with your Match; the curse will bring you together if you get close to them.

I can do this.

We finish our food and then head to the stadium, snagging a prime parking spot, and then getting in line with the rest of the crazy people. Tam might be at a hotel somewhere nearby, but where is it that he has to go?

The stadium.

This is the best place for me to be.

So, with folding chairs and hot cocoa, my brother and I join the Tambourines, and we wait.

“Joules,” I whisper when the show begins, the concert’s opener jogging across the stage to a boisterous wave of excitement. The girl is the size of a boba. And not the size of a cup, but like, the actual size of one of the small tapioca pearls inside the drink. I pinch her very distant form between my fingers as I squint from my seat in the back of the stadium. The literal back. There is only a wall behind me and Joules, that’s it.

I can feel the metaphorical nosebleed, can imagine red streaming down my nose and mixing with tears of frustration. Stupid Tam Eyre. Stupid curse. Stupid seven-hundred dollar tickets.

The crowd stands up for some reason, even though they have seats. I guess that’s just how it works at these big concerts. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been to one.

“Yeah?” Joules shouts back, leaning in and putting his ear near my mouth, so that he can hear.

“How am I going to make somebody who’s the size of a boba fall in love with me?” I shout, but my brother just shakes his head, unamused.

I stand up, too, just to see what my view is like. There’s no point even trying to see the stage. The opener and her dance crew are specks. I turn instead to the screens, wondering why anyone would want to pay money to come to a concert when you have to watch a screen anyway.

Oh well.

Tam is here. I’m here. The cursed meet-cutes are a real thing.

I just have to wait it out.

With that thought, I relax back into my seat through one opening act and then another.

The fireworks display that follows is awe-inspiring, bigger than the citywide fireworks back home on the Fourth of July.

Shit.

I stand up again, the energy in the crowd shifting and rippling around me. I feel like I’ve just stumbled into a spellcasting, one where everyone knows the words except for me.

The music begins, the lights dim, and out walks Tam Eyre into the middle of the stage.

He’s in shadow at first, pausing in the center of a large group of dancers. He’s the only one wearing black; everyone else is dressed in white.

Lights crisscross over the stage, slipping past Tam and revealing his face briefly on one of the massive screens. He looks up suddenly, and a spotlight comes on. He lifts a gloved hand slowly to his lips and pushes his mic a little closer to his mouth.

I stare mesmerized at the screen as pornographic lips part on a sound, something private meant just for lovers. Yep. Here we go. Tam whistles the song into being before he begins to dance, moving in time with his crew until they spin to face the back of the stage. He strides forward and opens his arms wide.

“Hello, New York City!” he shouts, and the crowd pulses like a living thing. I’m swept away in this strange, collective sense of energy, like I’m not even a person anymore, just a part of a whole.

Never in my life have I felt so small, so nameless, and so utterly hopeless.

Tam starts to sing—clearly, he’s singing live—while he performs a dance that I would never be able to do, not even if I practiced for a century. This is worse than the “Sweet Honey” dance (which I was already thoroughly impressed by).

His green eyes swing up to the screen, and he looks right through it and directly into me.

My knees go weak, and I collapse on the chair behind me, my view blocked by the bouncing crowd and their signs.

“I love you, Tam!” a fangirl screams from somewhere in front of me.

“Marry me, Tam! Marry me!”

“You’re so beautiful!”

“It’s my birthday! Tell me happy birthday!”

My eyes are open so wide it feels like my actual eyeballs are drying out.

I am so fucked.

Joules stays standing, a rock in a wild ocean. He has his arms crossed, his gaze level on the screen, as the other seventy-thousand people around us jump and sing in time with a song whose name I don’t even know.

Yep.

I will never be able to compete with Tam’s most devoted fans. My only hope here is to surprise him by being myself. That’s it. That’s all I can do.

You know, if ever meet the guy.

I force myself to stand up, staring my supposed soulmate’s image down on the screen. And oh, he is handsome. He is. He’s the most beautiful human being I have ever seen in my life, and yet, that only makes things worse. Theoretically, yes, getting with this guy would probably be a dream. He’s talented and beautiful, and that dancer’s body pressed up against mine would be … but it’s a dream I now share with millions of others.

It only gets worse when the song ends, and a piano is rolled onto the stage. Without skipping a beat, Tam drops into the seat and starts to play. His voice, as it croons through the speakers, gives me chills. People pull out their phones, turn on their flashlights, and wave them back and forth in time with the soft music.

“You were sent to me across the stars, a streak of light bathing the planes of my eager face. The day I tilted my head back and whispered to the heavens, it was you that I found.”

Kaycee Quinn, the girl with the long black braids, the one who wears pretty pink lipstick to highlight her rosebud mouth, sways out onto the stage in a long-sleeved dress covered in jewels, the skirt short enough to show off her perfect thighs.

With a microphone in hand, she wanders up to the piano and puts her elbows on it, leaning in to sing back to Tam.

“If I’m the answer to your prayers, then you’re the warmth sent by the earth, a pulse of heat at the core of the world. You are the biology of my heartbeat, the shape of my smile, and the first person I call when my car breaks down.”

She leans into him, brown eyes sparkling. He gazes back at her, raising his voice alongside hers as they harmonize the chorus. The pair of them singing in tandem like that undoes me. It may be the most beautiful sound I have ever heard in my life.

The song ends, and the pair of them start another one, this time moving into the center of the stage to dance a tango. They’re practically having sex on stage.

“Don’t worry about Kaycee Quinn,” Joules tells me again, leaning down to put his mouth near my ear. I’m somehow sitting again, and I’m not even sure how I got there. “I told you: I’ll take care of her.”

But even if it weren’t for Kaycee, I’m not getting close to Tam unless he wants me to get close.

Or … unless the curse steps in for me.