Chapter 31
I sleep in fits and starts.
In my dreams, Carter’s coffin is covered in honeysuckle that crawls inside and out of it in a tangle. I yank and pull and rip them off, but they grow back faster and faster as Max pulls me away.
Downstairs, coffee is already brewed in the pot. Carter always made me coffee. Always brought it to me in bed, smiling and telling me he made it special. Just for me. I pour myself a mug and head out to the back porch to enjoy the quiet.
But sitting on a lounge chair, a little sweaty and scrolling through his phone, is Max.
“Oh,” I say, a little startled. “I didn’t know you were awake.”
He nods once. “Went for a run.”
“You run?”
“Slowly and not far. But it helps with my anxiety.”
I look down to the mug in his hand and see the tea there.
“I stopped drinking coffee my freshman year,” he says, answering my silent question.
I sit next to him on a patio chair. “Where’s Carter?”
“Carter?” He looks confused. “Asleep, probably. He wakes up late.”
“Ah.” Now it’s my turn to look confused. “I just thought because of the coffee.”
“I made that.”
He made the coffee. I look down at it.
He takes a sip of tea and adds, “You know, for everyone. Carter can’t work the machine, and Benji makes it too strong. I always make the coffee.”
Not always, I want to say. Carter used to make it for me. But I don’t say that. Instead, I smile and say, “Thanks.”
We sit in silence, scrolling on our phones and sipping our drinks. And it’s silly, but I wiggle my bare toes against the horizon in front of us and think about how it looks like I could almost touch the end of the world.
When I look up, Max is watching me, a small smile at the corner of his mouth, and it makes my heartbeat ricochet in my chest.
As the sun rises, so do the guests in the house. Ava comes out and sits next to Max, talking to him about an art exhibit here she really wants to check out later and hinting that he should go with her.
When Carter wakes up, I’m in the kitchen grabbing a banana.
“Ah, there’s coffee.”
He pours two cups. “Thanks for making this.” He winks at me before heading back into the bedroom, and my heart constricts, remembering how he used to wink at me. How he would bring me coffee.
I want Carter to be happy. I want him to be alive. But I’m having a hard time remembering what it felt like to be loved by him.
Open your eyes, Nieve.
I decide to take a walk down to the water. Past the pool and a beautiful patio is a long fence with a gate that separates this house from that of the neighbors. A large green bush grows against it, leafy and thick with small white bursts of flowers.
But I don’t have to get much closer before I smell it. The same honeysuckle from last night. Here. At Carter’s uncle’s house.
Was the flower special to Carter and that’s why it was at his funeral? I wish I had asked. I pluck off a few of the buds and hold them to my nose. They smell like grief and loss.
Eventually, I make my way back to the house and sit in a lounge chair on the covered patio. Linden comes outside and sits in the chair with me. Our legs overlap each other as we share the space and she takes a sip of her coffee.
“I almost left last night,” Linden tells me in a quiet voice. She looks at the shock on my face and adds, “I wouldn’t have left without you. Unlike some people.” She gives me a wry look. “Don’t worry. I just … wanted to go.”
“What? Why, though?”
“Because … I can’t really read Carter.” Her thumb runs against a groove in the ceramic cup. “It’s like he couldn’t care less that I’m here or that I breathe air. But then this morning, he got up before me and made us coffee.”
The sick feeling is back.
“Carter said he made you coffee?”
She nods and takes a sip of her gift.
“He poured coffee; he didn’t make it.”
“Ah.” Linden shrugs. “He still brought it to me.”
“Did he say he made it?” I’m pressing her, pushing on this bruise of mine, even though I might give her one.
“He did.” She frowns. “It’s fine.”
But my anger is already getting the best of me. “But he lied. He didn’t make you coffee. Max made it.”
Max made the coffee. Did Max make the coffee all the other times? Did Carter ever make me coffee?
“Nieve.” She leans back to look at my face. “What’s your deal? Why are you so worked up about this?”
“He’s a liar.” At that exact moment, Carter comes out to the porch, and I turn my anger on him. “You’re a liar.”
“What?”
I push Linden off me and stand. “You don’t make the coffee. Max does. Tell her.”
He laughs nervously. “Max made the coffee, Linden.”
“So why did you tell her you did?”
“I didn’t think it mattered.”
“It does matter. It matters.”
Carter looks at Linden. “What is she talking about?”
Linden stands up and puts herself between Carter and me. “She’s talking about the coffee.” Then she turns to me. “Let’s go upstairs.”
She’s managing me because I’ve become unmanageable.
I let Linden pull me away from the group, but I look over my shoulder at Carter and tell him one final time, “You lie.” It’s forceful as I point my finger at him.
Upstairs in my room, Linden looks at me, confused. “What just happened?” she asks me.
But I don’t even know.
“You just turned into Eleven from Stranger Things.”
She’s trying to make a joke, but I’m so angry I want to scream. “He lied.” And I’m crying. Not sad, broken tears but the kind that are hot and angry.
Because Carter …
Did Carter ever love me? And if he didn’t, what does that mean for me? What does that mean for the sacrifices I’ve made?
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. And I mean it. I want Carter to be happy, and I want her to be happy.
She sighs and sits on the bed next to me. “It’s fine. I know you have some weird thing about Carter … and … He was being a dick. And I don’t like anyone as much as I like you. So even if you were wrong, I would still help you kill him and roll his body up into a carpet.”
I smile and take her hand. “I don’t want Carter to die.”
“No,” she says, a bit too dramatic to be serious. “Of course not. None of us want Carter dead. That’s insane.”
It is insane. Almost as insane as me telling her all about the freshman year that I’ve already lived.
I decide to go back to bed and pull the covers over my head. Linden grabs them and tries to yank them off. “Absolutely not.”
“Go away,” I tell her.
“You will have fifteen minutes. And then you will get up and we will go be productive college kids on spring break in Florida and start day drinking.”
The door shuts behind her, but instead of falling asleep, I stare at the ceiling and wonder where all this went wrong. What else don’t I know when it comes to Carter? Did I always not know? Was it always like this and I just don’t remember?
The black blades of the fan are shaped like the leaves of a palm tree, and they rotate slowly in a languid circle that feels mesmerizing in the most mundane, soothing way.
Then there’s a knock at the door.
Max pushes it open but doesn’t enter. “Wanna come to the store?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be at the art gallery with Ava?” I sound like a child pouting.
He lets out a sigh and shoves his hands into his pockets. “Is that a no?”
I want to tell him it’s a no and that I don’t want to go anywhere with him, but instead, I stand. I could use chocolate and maybe something salty. “Fine. But only because I think crocodiles might try to eat you if you go alone.”
“Alligators,” he corrects as I shove my shoes on.
“Same thing.” I throw my hair into a bun.
“Not really.”
We take Carter’s car down the island to a small grocery store, the name of which is written on a kitschy surfboard.
But next to it are rows of black tents, as if there’s some kind of dark farmers market waiting there.
A sign carved into driftwood sits at the front and reads MONTHLY FULL MOON MARKET. In black is the outline of a woman with a witch hat on a broom.
“Is that … a witch market?” I never take my eyes off the entrance, as if it will disappear.
Max laughs, but his face turns serious. “Oh. I don’t know. Looks like it?”
I turn to him, my eyes wide. “Let’s go.”
Old Max is back, and he looks annoyed for a moment. “We’re just buying chips.”
But I’m already out of the car, taking off through the parking lot. “And crystals, maybe!”
I don’t wait to see if Max is following me. Of course he is.
There’s a giant arch covered in dried flowers and plants at the entry, which makes it feel even more like a magical portal. Like we are entering a new world.
The first stall has sapphire velvet–covered tables loaded with crystals of all shapes and sizes.
They shine in the light as the woman tells us about the different things you would use them for.
“This one is for focus. And this helps cleanse your energy.” She looks around my head and frowns. “You have a lot of anxious energy.”
When the woman walks away to help another customer, Max leans over to me and whispers, “You don’t really believe in this stuff, do you?”
Max picks up a piece of obsidian and runs a finger over the smooth polish. The purple yarn is still on his wrist. Of course it is, because we are all skeptics, until we’re not.
I buy a necklace that has a pendant that’s supposed to help with creative blocks.
The next booth has small burlap bags with different elements in them.
The woman calls them spells and tells us they offer protection or friendship or goodwill.
She looks at Max and points to the ones with little pink hearts drawn on the tags. “These are for love.”
Max turns red as he stammers out, “Oh, that’s okay. We aren’t, we—”
The woman cuts him off. “I know. That’s why I offered.”
There are booths that sell dried herbs, ritual candles, salts, artwork, and funny cross-stitching with sayings like YOU’RE SUCH A WITCH and PROPER LADIES DON’T CURSE, THEY HEX. But the booth that sells tarot cards catches my eye.
When we step in front of it, the woman gestures to several decks, smiles, and says, “Any of these connect with you?”
I reach out for a deck where all the humans have antlers, and when I do, the woman meets my arm and touches the yarn tied there.
“Pretty.”
My hand instinctively goes to cover up my wrist. Historically, people aren’t kind about my grandmother’s eccentricity.
“Do you know what they mean?” she asks.
I do, but how would she? I shake my head.
“Binding spells. Effective. People don’t use them as much anymore. Now it’s kids who watched some nineties movie and want to keep someone from doing something or to keep someone away. But before, it was all about binding your choices to your life.”
I nod.
“Do you want a reading?” She looks between Max and me. “I can do one for both of you.”
“Oh, that’s okay—” I start, but I’m interrupted by Max.
“Yeah. That’ll be fun.”
I shoot Max a death glare. It’s not fun. It’s terrifying letting someone else into your reading to see the parts of yourself you’re trying to keep hidden away. But Max is already paying her and smiling.
She starts to lay out the cards in a pattern I’ve never seen before and must notice the look of question on my face because she says, “This is how I do it for couples.”
This time, Max doesn’t jump to correct her, and neither do I. Instead, we move closer to each other as we peer down at the cards.
With each card, her smile grows wider. She’s gifted. I can tell from just the way she talks about binding spells. There’s a gravity to it. But still, I know she’s going to tell me something about a crossroads or two choices. Something I already know. Something basic.
She surprises me by taking my hand and looking me in the eye. “You’re very brave.”
My head tilts to the side, curious. I don’t feel brave. I feel like a coward who just this morning yelled at the ex-boyfriend who can’t remember her.
“You’re making a hard choice, not an easy one. That’s brave. But it’s not the last choice you’ll have to make.”
She points to a card that is a red circle. “This stands for repetition. And in your case, repeating. The same thing. Over and over.” Her hand moves over to a bird in flight and to a woman standing in water. “This is you, choosing to break that pattern. And this one is new beginnings.”
Water. Patterns repeating.
She turns over another card. A warrior with a sword and a shield. “Bravery. And a fight.” She points at Max. “You will have to go to war to enjoy its spoils.”
Max frowns, probably because to him, this woman is talking like we’re at a Renaissance fair. He reaches across the table and turns over the last card. Two people looking at each other. But their faces are covered by flowers.
“What’s that one?” Max asks.
She lifts an eyebrow at him and—
Rain falls from the sky. It pours down on us in heavy, relentless drops.
My hands go to my head as if it will block the rain.
I look at Max and see the shock on his face.
With a smile, he takes my hand and pulls me over to an open tent.
I’m already soaked, but Max shakes the water from his dark hair and tells me, “Wait here.”
Before I can argue, he’s running out of the market.
Water beats down on the canvas in a deafening cacophony. Across the walkway, the stall Max and I were just at has a black tarp over the table, and the woman is gone. I take a deep breath, and suddenly coming through the archway is a dark blue umbrella.
And a memory finds me.
Caught in the rain. Soggy shoes. The water soaking into my portfolio. Tears mixing with the rain at my ruined art. Seeing an umbrella coming to rescue me. Carter.
But when it reaches me, it’s Max holding the handle.
“Hey,” he says on a breath. “Ready to go?”
“Hey.” Max holds out the umbrella over me, eyes filled with concern.
“Yeah.”
His hand slips into mine and we walk together under the umbrella to the car.
After a few steps, Max drops his hold and I flex my hand, trying to get rid of the nervous energy there. And then over the sound of the rain, we hear it.
“Max?”
A girl holding a pink umbrella stands in front of us.
With a bouquet of flowers in her arms.
Alex.