Chapter Ten

Julia

The ride is tense. Every muscle, tense , every breath, tense .

I've never worked this hard to keep the side of my thigh from brushing against another person's body, ever . I've never tried to ignore the scent of someone's perfume, shampoo, or skin harder . And none of my efforts are actually working.

Not because I can't control my attention. I am a master of self-restraint. I could teach lessons on compartmentalization, especially in stressful work scenarios where getting thrown for a loop simply can't happen.

It's not my self-control that's in question.

It's the driver's ability to navigate a rocky road without sudden, sharp corrections. The bus takes a turn down a new, lonely road, and in the distance I see the glow of the Glamp-Out. But only for a second, because his overcorrection of the wheel jostles me in Kit's direction. My hand drops to the seat between us as I try to maintain my balance, but the jostling goes both ways. Her hip rolls over the leather seat and right on top of my hand.

"Sorry," she gasps. We go over a bump and my hand slips farther beneath her.

"Sorry," I say, yanking it fast, forming and unforming a fist. She clutches the beaded bag she's holding until her knuckles go white.

"You could have sat literally anywhere else," she hisses through tight lips.

"In the fray of bridesmaids and bachelorette mayhem?" I reply, looking down the length of the bus to where two of them—Natalie and one of the twin influencers Millie invited for the kickoff of her marital bliss events, Lisa—twirl around the pole giving the bride-to-be a show. They somehow manage to stay upright and on beat to Rihanna's "Diamonds" despite the haphazard driving pattern of this journey.

Kit's eyes follow my gaze, fighting back a smile. She wants to agree. And I want to play along. The camaraderie we once shared as best friends flares between us like a freshly lit wick.

"You don't want to sit next to Piper?" The tenor of her voice raises a tad at the end of Piper's name. The sign of a person trying for casual and failing.

She's already figured out that there is some kind of connection between Piper and me. Somehow. And no, not because she's psychic. Kit Larson has exceptional people reading skills. Always has. A gift to her, a curse to everyone else.

And, anyway, I don't believe in psychics.

I look away from her, ignoring the draw I feel to rekindle our connection. It's just muscle memory, nothing else. It can't be more, not with how things ended between us that summer.

Kit texted me a goodbye before she left for college. It had only been a week since we were making plans to go on a date. It had only been a week since I told her I loved her after we hooked up. It had only been a week since she stood me up.

She said she was sorry. She said she hoped I would be happy at NYU.

She said she would miss me.

It shouldn't be this easy to talk to her now. I shouldn't want to know everything that's happened since she walked away from us. I shouldn't care about her at all.

But somehow, I still do.

Millie rises, calling all of us to attention as Rihanna belts out the final "shine bright like a diamond" through the speakers and the engine shuts off. The pink, purple, and blue neon lights beam over the backdrop of Millie's white dress and fair skin, turning her into the bi flag.

"Before we get swept up in the magic, I wanted to make sure to thank each one of you for being here." Her eyes drift over the bodies of her bridesmaids and friends, even dropping briefly to land on me and Kit. I feel weird about being here, trespassing on her meaningful moment with the women she calls her friends, just because I want to keep Piper and Kit away from each other. A feat I still do not know how I'll actually manage since Kit will be giving tarot readings to every member of the bachelorette party, and Piper is a panther on the prowl, impossible to trap.

"Marriage is a wild adventure, and you all know Sean is expecting me to take the wheel and steer us on the road," she says, chuckling. Her friends snort and hoot, and Heather, the full-figured fandom model, makes a swift reference to Captain America's ass, which seems to be some kind of inside joke I don't even want to understand.

Sean may be the consummate bro, but where his frat boy exterior and lucrative job should make him a chauvinistic dick, he never fails to pivot in surprising directions. In our first meeting, as Millie passionately laid out her vision for the wedding of her dreams, Sean quietly dipped her tea bag in hot water and nodded in agreement with every word she said. "Millie knows best" feels like more than a platitude. It's a mantra he happily lives by.

"It's just fate we're all here together," Millie says, blinking back tears.

Goose bumps rise on my skin at the sound of the f-word. My eyes reflexively slide to glance at Kit.

And I mentally kick myself for it.

?"The sky is trippy," Coco says, her massive brown eyes searching the expanse above her.

The sun set while we were driving over, turning everything outside an inky black. The stars blanket the sky as far as we can see. Vast, tiny, twinkling diamonds, just like that Rihanna song. Somehow, the black isn't solid, but infused with a wash of deep purple and indigo, glowing silver around the full moon.

The Glamp-Out is designed for parties of ten to twenty guests max. There's the ceremonial yurt at the center, the focal point which everything else is designed around. The smaller sleeping tents spiral out from it, so that from above it looks like a shell in the sandy desert. They light the paths with electric lanterns that look like old-fashioned gas lamps, but that aren't a fire hazard to the groves of Joshua trees surrounding the area. A little way off from the main campground is a firepit area that sits low in the earth and is surrounded by a basin of water for safety.

I trail behind the bachelorette group and Kit as we make our way toward the center yurt. The canvas tents are all prepared with name plaques for each guest who is spending the night on the grounds. Neither Kit nor I have a spot, so at the end of the festivities we will have to take the bus back together.

Alone.

A reality I did not consider when I made this fairly rash decision to crash Millie's party. I shove the thought away and focus my attention toward the main event. I don't have to deal with that problem yet. I won't let it derail me.

The yurt is a circular, tent-walled building with a painted-wood front door. In the center of the door is a window where some golden light seeps out from inside. Moonlight hits the side of the tent, cutting sharp lines against the desert backdrop.

Piper hangs back to walk near me.

"I'm glad you came," she says, her voice low. She smiles. "I mean, I know you have ulterior motives." She pointedly looks in Kit's direction. I keep a neutral face even though my heart rate just skyrocketed and my pulse is loud in my ears. "I don't mind, if it also means I get to spend extra time with you."

My cheeks heat, but not because she's trying to flatter me. Holding her attention was never an issue. When we were together, she had a way of making me forget everything else in my life while also feeling like the only thing that mattered in hers. My standards were replaced with hers, my goals were compared and then weighed against her own. What I needed was easy to lay down when she convinced me she had a better way.

I promise. You'll like it , she always used to say. And I did, always, until one day I looked at myself in the mirror and Julia had disappeared. I was at her parents' vacation home on Cape Cod for the Fourth of July, hiding in the bathroom in a hideous seersucker ensemble she convinced me to wear, while I played pretend "friend and roommate" in the fictional story of her life.

"I like what you've done with your hair," she tries again. "I always wanted you to grow it out."

"I didn't do it for you," I say. When we were dating, I had a much more "butch" haircut. Her dad's words. He was suspicious that I was queer; he liked to poke me to see if I'd snap and reveal the truth.

"I know, but I was right," she says. "It suits you."

Thankfully we've caught up with the rest of the party, so I can't respond to her assertion with any more venom than my clenched jaw. Somehow, I find myself standing between Kit and Piper like some sick joke of that f-word Millie mentioned earlier.

The door to the yurt swings open, nearly pummeling a couple of the other women, who scramble out of the way and into each other. One of the twins—Jenni—collides with Coco, hands to breasts, face contorting in rage. She shoves her away in the same motion, but Coco's smirk is a challenge, and Jenni doesn't seem to want to back down.

A woman with salt-and-pepper hair, dressed in multiple layers of draping fabric in muted colors that resemble desert sands, steps into the golden light of the overhead lamp. I recognize her as the owner, Freya Dan, former supermodel turned spiritual influencer, author, and healer . She founded the Glamp-Out to create a safe space for spiritual exploration and celebration.

Or so her website copy claims.

Millie booked the Glamp-Out all by herself, planning every element, but I still had Zoe put together an information dossier so that if anything went awry, we wouldn't be in the dark. She followed up with Millie to make sure she got all the necessary paperwork that protected her deposits and laid out the details of the evening and what the location was required to provide. You'd be surprised how often these places don't deliver what they promise.

And how few clients are prepared to take action when it happens.

Freya Dan lives on-site in a yurt that sits near the main campground where she upsells exclusive packages promising all sorts of healing that not even medical professionals can provide.

I know I sound like a skeptic about all this stuff.

Because I am.

When my mom died, I went through your basic existential crisis…at nine years old. Looking at her body in the open-casket ceremony, she didn't seem much like the lady who had once held me when I cried, or like, made me pancakes for breakfast on my birthday. But I didn't understand why , so I decided to do some research on afterlife beliefs.

Nail down some facts.

But there weren't any—at least not any that seemed universally accepted to be true. And nine-year-old Julia wouldn't settle for less than that. And ever since that brush with the universal unknown, spiritual practices of any kind became synonymous in my mind with people trying to make sense of a thing that no one can make sense of—that maybe we aren't supposed to make sense of at all. And it stuck.

Despite what happened in that psychic's tent on Halloween or how—for a few brief years—it actually made me believe there was more to the universe than matter and energy.

"I recognize your aura immediately," Freya Dan says, eyes pinned to Millie. More likely she recognizes her from Instagram. I know both the Glamp-Out and Freya Dan Official accounts follow Millie's. Call me a petty bitch, but I looked it up one night while scrolling my phone in bed in the dark.

"Welcome, welcome, welcome." Freya Dan presses her hands to heart center and bows.

Most of the partygoers are into it. Kit bows in return, and the other women follow her lead. I fumble to keep up, not wanting to stand out, and even worse, not wanting to mirror Piper, who remains a pillar in the sand. I let out an involuntary huff of annoyance and Kit shoots me a big-eyed glare.

"Stop that," she whisper-scolds.

I make sure to roll my eyes dramatically enough that she can see them beneath the shadow of my hair. Her nose scrunches, creating tiny, wavy lines of skin and faint freckles. Such a familiar expression to see on her face that it makes my stomach twist.

We rise in unison, or competition, I can't be sure. She's smirking like it could be the latter, and I have to fight back my own smile so I don't let on that I might be enjoying it.

"Inside this yurt is a safe space to realign with your heart center," Freya Dan continues. "Healer Suni has already arrived."

"Do you think she's friends with Healer Arynne?" I lean over to whisper in Kit's ear. My lips almost brush the loose hair that lifts in the light breeze, kicking up the smell of her shampoo. Earthy and sharp, with the faintest hint of something floral. It could almost be the smell of the desert itself, if it weren't for the fact that I just noticed it for the first time right now .

She covers a chuckle with a cough, and then pats her chest. "Excuse me." She cringes. "Inhaled some sand."

Freya Dan's face remains serene. "Blessed," is what she says in response.

She turns her attention away from us to give further instructions to the group, and Kit leans over to elbow me in the ribs. "Do not get me in trouble," she warns.

"This isn't high school," I reply, not thinking. Her face glitches at the words, the soft green color of her eyes sharpening with a shock of pain. Her features pinch, closing, and she turns her attention back to Freya Dan.

But I can't tear mine away from her face.