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Chapter Seven

Kit

We both shoot out into the late afternoon heat, going our separate ways. Was it this warm earlier? I'm suddenly sweating, and I'm not deluded enough to think the damp film over my skin has anything to do with the desert heat. That credit goes to the sudden reappearance of Julia Kelley in the narrative of my life.

Not exactly a meet-cute, Universe. Since, despite my goal to be the ingenue of my own life, this is not a romantic comedy.

This is not on the Ideal Rom-Com Life Path.

I have to focus on something that isn't the way she's grown out her hair, or how her ass looked in those fitted high-waist jeans, or the fact that she still wears that single gold chain with the tiny red heart around her neck that dips into her clavicle just like it did when we were eighteen.

I decide to fix my attention on the tiny printed instructions typed out on the back of this piece of seed paper.

Take the path toward the sculpture of the moon

I flick my eyes up, searching. This sidewalk leads back toward the main building, which I am guessing is normally the starting point for these directions. So I wind over that way until I see a fork in the path. One path leads toward an arm of the main property, while the other trails away. I decide the latter is probably a better bet since an Airstream trailer wouldn't be located right up against the main facility.

Sure enough, as I pass a crop of giant organ pipe cacti, their spiky, slim bodies stretching up toward the sun, I see it. A cement moon, set in a sandy bed, like it's in space.

Veer west

Left. Thank you, nearly setting sun. I follow that path until I reach a courtyard that acts like a walking roundabout.

Take the path toward the fences

I guess that means I go in the direction of the hills, since upon arrival I noticed the perimeter of the property faced the crop of hills on the right. I know I'm correct when I see a collection of trailers spaced out with little adobe fences separating them.

Mine is number 555, and damn, Millie Morgan really leaves no detail to chance. Or this could be the Universe signaling to me that I am on the brink of a massive shift.

Julia's sharp aqua eyes flash in my mind like a siren.

Nope, this message is part of Millie's mission to make my digs as Instagram-worthy as possible. That's it.

The gate to my Airstream trailer is made of copper, great for keeping energy clear and channeling connection to the spiritual world. Also, downright photogenic. I film my opening of the gate, my light-pink-painted toenails peeking from my sandals as I walk the gravel path toward the trailer. Pan up, up, and capture the whole shiny silver bullet against the hills. Joshua trees create visual interest, their craggy, crooked arms twisting toward the sky. Desert sands, shaded by cloud cover slowly edging across the azure sky, roll out in front of me for miles.

I'll prep videos for social media and a vlog for YouTube, all to publish after I'm far away from Celestial Sands. These videos always get oodles of hits, and often get me offers of free weekend getaways from similar properties in exchange for a few posts.

I drop my phone to my side, surveying the space, focusing on the details and not my building internal dilemma over she who won't be named .

The Airstream trailer is small and round, set at the far right corner of this rectangular fenced-off space. Outside is a soaking tub positioned close against the metal fencing that makes up the back perimeter and offers privacy from the other units. I walk over to see it's got a shelf fixed with some spa amenities, plus this gorgeous industrial-designed copper faucet to fill the tub. It's not for bathing but for stargazing.

Good thing I brought a bikini.

There's also an outdoor shower with a rain head, an outdoor bed set on an elevated platform, and lounge chairs facing the hills for optimal sunset views.

I step inside the Airstream and glance in either direction. It has been fully refurbished in a deliberate vintage boho style. Creams, dusty pinks, soft grays, and muted purples. On one end are the bedroom and bath tucked together like a puzzle, on the other a tiny living/dining nook with a bench sofa and a bar. The kitchen is a galley that runs down either side of the trailer's center, with pastel pink cabinets, rich green glass tile backsplash, and soft maple butcher block counters. There's even a cute teal fridge tucked up beneath the countertop at the end of the kitchen.

There are hanging air plants strung up in crochet, bouquets of dried flowers and herbs, mismatched wineglasses set out on an exposed beam above the sink, leading me to think there is a bottle of something chilling inside that fridge.

I crouch, yanking the handle to reveal a bottle of rosé from a winery in Temecula, plus some simple snacks and bottles of water. I consider going straight for the wine—maybe it would help calm my nerves. I opt for water instead.

I drop to the couch, curling my legs underneath me.

Julia is here . The reality crashes over me.

Our lips crushed together, our swimsuits there and then gone. Fumbled questions of consent, muffled giggles as we explored each other's bodies.

It hits me in waves. The desire, the yearning, the prickle of fear mixed with that giddy, almost drunk, heady feeling of want.

I had never had sex with a girl, but I was pretty sure that our fingers counted as all the way . She seemed to think so, too, because later on—as we sat on the couch together watching When Harry Met Sally for the thousandth time, her fingers tracing symbols over the skin on my thigh—she told me. I was her first, and she loved me.

I said it back—it didn't even occur to me not to.

I remember watching the movie and thinking how silly it was that after they hooked up, Harry bolted. Ghosted on his soulmate— what a tool . And sure, he eventually gets her back, but what would have happened if she had moved on? Why risk losing the love of your life, just because you're scared?

My eyes prick with tears. "So silly." I breathe in and out, fast, through my nose.

What a tool I was, too.

What I understand now—which was impossible to comprehend when I first saw those cards spread out on Madame Moira's table—is that the reading she gave us told a very specific kind of love story. One that would start way too early, one that was reciprocated, one that may always be out of sync.

It's why the Wheel of Fortune holds so much meaning.

And why, even though I have tried hard to forget her, Julia showing back up in my life smacks like a slap from destiny. Sharp and sure, with painful inevitability. Just like the turn of that goddamn wheel.

I huff and shake my body loose. I gotta get my head in the game and out of the past. She's here, and so am I, but we're both professionals. We can handle this. I won't play the Universe's little game, no matter how tempting it tries to make it.

I pull my phone out to FaceTime Nina. It rings a few times before connecting. I can tell immediately that Nina is working at one of her temporary gigs she takes in between acting jobs. She's been a dog walker, a plant waterer, a brow specialist at a pop-up makeup kiosk in The Grove mall, and currently, a candle au pair at the Farmers Market for her friend Cara's witchy brand.

"You're working," I say. "I can call you back."

"There's a lull," she replies, flopping onto the stool behind her. The purple fabric of the tent mixed with the sunlight makes her glow aubergine. Her eyes travel to look past me in the camera. "You've arrived at…an Airstream trailer?" She both looks and sounds confused.

"Celestial Sands has a wide selection of lodging options outside the main facility," I say, spinning the phone around to show her the digs. "I think they even have a dome."

"Like for viewing stars and/or aliens?"

"Max Evans is not here, but I'll keep my eyes peeled," I snort. Nina and I discovered the original WB masterpiece Roswell at the last remaining DVD rental store in downtown Berkeley. We binged it the weekend after midterms sophomore year, solidifying it as one of our comfort shows for the rest of our college careers.

"You know good and well that there isn't a single alien on that show I would kick outta my bed," she says. The casual mention of Nina's queerness sets my own secrecy in stark contrast. She's been out since she was in high school, and I know it wasn't always easy—especially when she was still living in North Carolina. A Black queer teen was scandalous to say the least. "Well, except for that teensy blond bitch who tried to split Liz and Max apart. You can't separate soulmates."

Soulmates. The word sends a shiver down my spine.

As far as fated love types go, Twin Flames and soulmates aren't exactly the same thing. One is complicated in a way that feels combustible. The other is what they make movies and write sonnets about. It's not a sure thing that Twin Flames ever get on the same page long enough for a Happily Ever After.

It's not that I really believe in the concept, anyway. Just because a psychic used those words to describe the relationship between Julia and me doesn't make it true. It also doesn't make it romantic. There are plenty of Twin Flames—and even soulmates—who don't fall in love romantically.

I take a swig of water and let out a groan.

"Whoa, that was guttural," she says. "More mom shenanigans?"

"She's not taking my unsubtle hints that I need space from her in particular, but no, that's not what the exasperation is about."

I should tell her about Julia. The whole story, even the parts I'm scared to look right at.

Oh, by the way, I'm into guys and girls, and a girl I once gave my heart and soul—and almost everything else to—is at this wedding looking like a snack.

Nina wouldn't blink. No matter how surprising the information was, she'd roll with it, offer support, encourage, send thirst traps, whatever I needed to get used to the truth being out there.

"Do you remember that friend I told you about—the one I had a falling-out with the summer before college?"

I'm a coward who can't even come out to her best friend. Can't even come clean about what happened and how I was the one to blame.

"How could I forget? You made me work extra hard at friendship thanks to that chick."

An unearned fear. Such a tool.

"I had a lot of walls up," I say. Tool, tool, tool.

Nina gives me an exaggerated raise of her eyebrows. "You were totally bricked in."

"She's here."

Her eyes widen and she stands up on instinct. Fight or flight, I can't be sure.

" Here as in, at the wedding venue?" she asks, and I nod. Now it's her turn to take a hefty gulp from her rainbow-colored reusable water bottle. "What's the fucking chance?"

Pretty high considering I pulled the same tarot cards as we pulled on a fateful Halloween night back when we were twelve, right after we shared a churro and went through the hall of mirrors holding hands, the same cards that the psychic told us meant we were Twin Flames, cards that almost always accompany the start of a fated romance.

"She's the wedding planner," is the detail I decide to share instead.

"Name," Nina says, clicking away from the FaceTime screen.

"Do not google her."

"I most certainly am," she says. The screen is paused because she's typing. "It was Julia something…?" My jaw clenches. "You can tell me or I can look at Millie Morgan's Instagram and find the info through sleuthing. Your choice."

She's a bulldog when it comes to getting what she wants. I'm in a losing standoff.

"Julia Kelley," I say through tight lips.

Seconds skip past while she googles and I rethink my decision not to open the bottle of wine in the fridge.

Her face rematerializes on my screen. "She's a stone-cold hottie in a very all of my shirts are dry-clean only, I need to be fucked into oblivion sort of way." Her eyes flick off to somewhere that isn't my face in her phone and she grins, toothy and broad. "No, ma'am, you are not the one who needs to be fucked into oblivion." Ah, a customer. "Have a magical day." I snort. Nina looks back at the camera. "I don't know what a beige banana like that was even doing in the Heathen Hearth booth, anyway."

"Maybe she's corporate in the streets, pagan in the sheets." I try to sound lighthearted, but it comes off more as swallowed a bug .

"You're totally freaking out," she replies.

"It's been over ten years since I saw her." Gulp. Water. Wish it was wine.

"You never looked her up or anything? Not once, not even when you were drunk or PMSing?" She sounds skeptical, but she's wrong. The pain of our falling-out plus the yearning for her closeness was an equation for inaction. I never gave in to the urge, even when it did fleetingly flutter through my brain. I was petrified of what I might find—or feel—if I did.

I shake my head.

"Wow, look at the universe," she says.

"My karma can't possibly be this bad."

"Doesn't sound bad to me, babe," she replies, her voice thoughtful. "These sorts of fractures need repairing. Ya know, maybe this is all for your healing."

"Julia was a lot of things, but capable of healing me isn't one of them."

"Your life is in chaos. Your mom and dad are splitting up, with Momma coming out and proud, Daddy-o unraveling at the teddy bear seams. You broke up with a hottie who was definitely marriage material without so much as a tear shed. Then this gig dropped into your lap like fate ." She says the word like it's a gift, but I feel it like a gut punch instead.

The Wheel of Fortune card is most intrinsically, most authentically, linked to the hands of fate. That turn of the wheel can't be stopped, but where it does finally land is most certainly right where it should.

"You're Mystic Maven," she continues. "What does your intuition say?"

"I think my compass is broken." The words are almost a whisper.

Broken. Or used to being forced to trek toward a false true north.

I could let it spin out, caught in the force of this seemingly fated magnetic field. I could see where it lands when it finally does. I could follow fate rather than the Ideal Rom-Com Life Path.

I could just try it, just for a second, just to see.

"You got any candles for getting rid of an ex?" A stranger's voice through my phone speakers jolts me back to reality. Nina gets two mischievous lines like the number eleven between her brows. "By violent or nonviolent means?" I can't see the customer, but I can imagine the horror on their face. Nina grins back at me. "Gotta jet, but—" She pulls the phone close to her face. "Take the dare, babe. What's the worst that could happen?"

Twin Flames always find their way back to each other.

This journey with Julia started because of a dare from a twelve-year-old girl who had just gotten her period. I could end it with a dare from an ageless universe determined to fuck with my status quo.

Nina ends the call, leaving me alone to survive in the storm of my thoughts. I exhale sharply, glare at the water that isn't cutting it, and decide rather than get tipsy t-minus two hours before the bachelorette party events—of which I am an important spiritual attraction—that a walk to clear my head and work out some of these jitters is just what I need.

When I see another text from Mom, I nearly throw my phone across the Airstream trailer.

It's just three question marks in a row followed by a photo of her holding up my graduation gown from Berkeley, and standing in the background, right at the edge of the frame, wearing a cherry red Alo Yoga matching set, is her girlfriend, Willa.

Keep or toss, Kitten?

I glare at the phone, zooming in tight with the spread of my fingers to try to get a better look at Willa. I have so many questions bouncing around in my head for my mom.

When did she know she was bi? Why did she keep it from me?

How does it feel to be out now, after being married to a man for so long?

How does it feel to be out when everything she ever showed me about love made it seem like the only way to have it for real was to have it with a man?

But I have this willful resolve to keep her dangling and in the dark—to give her a taste of how confused I feel right now—so I don't ask them.

Do not get rid of any of my stuff , I text back, before putting my phone on Do Not Disturb and shoving it in the back pocket of my jean shorts and heading outside in a flurry. I follow the paths around toward the main building and purposefully avoid the one that leads to Homebase. Fate or whatever the hell is happening can just be patient—we've waited ten years, what's a few more hours?

I round the corner, right into a pillar of soft human flesh smelling intensely of expensive perfume.

"Shit, sorry," I sputter, jumping back. She's taller than me by at least a head. Pilates body, lithe and lean, hair bouncy red waves.

"Let me guess." Her eyes trail up and down. Sharp green with shimmery apricot powder swept across the lid. "Sound healer?"

I'm immediately aware of how my flowy camisole under a bohemian-printed gauzy jacket probably looks to someone like her. This chick is dressed in head-to-toe Chanel, her earrings are Prada, and her heels are undoubtedly Louboutins, but I can't see the red sole from where I'm standing. My gem jewelry and messy blond hair tipped in fading pink couldn't possibly be a more opposite vibe.

"Unqualified," I reply. "Tarot mystic." I try to come off as cool and detached, but with a Pisces Sun and Moon, and the most chaotic air sign as my Rising, I never quite nail that.

Her microbladed copper eyebrow hooks up. "Millie didn't used to be into all this stuff." This stuff , meaning me. Like I am just a walking tarot deck or something.

Which…okay, sort of fair. But I don't care for her tone.

"When was the last time you saw her? She's made this stuff her brand for a while now." Millie doesn't read her own cards, as far as I know, but she's created a presence for herself right at the intersection of spiritual enlightenment and lifestyle aspiration.

And it's totally working for her.

"Infrequently," she says, her peachy cheeks darkening. "I was her sorority president, she's a couple years younger than me. I split my time between New York and LA, for work." She doesn't offer up information about her work, but my guess is that it's something high paying with a boys' club. She feels like a woman who would smoke a cigar and drink a Scotch while shooting the shit in a room with a lot of dark wood paneling.

Her eyes trail over my head in the direction of the main building.

"Sorry, you were on your way somewhere," I say, stepping out of her path. Clearly, I'm boring her. She blinks rapidly a couple of times.

"No—well, yes. I'm trying to decide if I should go back to the main lobby and wait for the bride and groom, or wait until Millie settles in and meet her in her room."

She has an aesthetic of smart, tall, immaculate tycoon, which doesn't track with the indecision I hear in her voice. She's calculating her moves like there's more at stake here than just how she occupies her time for the next half hour.

"I don't have my cards with me to help discern the right path for you," I say, smiling, which she nearly returns before skepticism scrunches her nose. Okay, not a believer. Noted. I press on. "But, when I was checking in, I overheard that the bride and groom had arrived." My information doesn't seem to assuage any of her concerns. "If it helps, the wedding planner went over to meet them, so I think you wouldn't be out of line to show up, too."

"The wedding planner," she says with a flare of her nostrils. "Perfect." The word has sting.

"She's a challenge." I try to read her body language, but she's closed off.

"To say the least," she replies, still with that sharp edge to her tone. I shake out the knot forming in my stomach this gives me. Her eyes lock on me. "Shall we go face the scorpion's stinger together?"

Electricity zips up my spine in a warning.

Julia is a Virgo Sun and Aquarius Rising—perfectionism and individuality personified—with her Moon in Scorpio. I always look up people's birth chart when I first meet them, but this woman doesn't seem like the type to do that. And Julia isn't the type to offer that information up—she may not even know it herself.

The words scorpion's stinger could be a coincidence. It could be a dig and nothing more.

But as my eyes trail after her walking up the path that leads toward Julia Kelley, the spinning compass needle in my soul halts in that same direction.

I know I'm supposed to follow.

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