17
T eller isn’t in our hostel room.
We’d planned to watch a movie tonight after being on the go since the beginning of the trip. After my vision on our double date, I’ve been desperate for some quality friend time, just us. But when I return from a walk with Caleb, box of cannoli in hand, our room is dark and the bottom bunk (his bunk) is empty, bed made tight.
He’s never been flaky with plans—ever. I turn my bedside lamp on and scroll through my phone for a few minutes to kill time.
After twenty long minutes and two cannoli, I break and throw him a text.
Lo: hey! back at the room.
Lo: when do you think you’ll be back?
Lo: that sounded like I’m rushing you.
Lo: i’m not. Promise .
Lo: just curious if you still want to watch a movie?
While I wait for a response, I pace around the room. Maybe he got lost?
Teller: Shit. I’m so sorry. I lost track of time. Rain check? Don’t wait up.
I stare at my phone. Does he mean don’t wait up out of politeness? Or don’t wait up as in I’m getting laid and I’ll be out until all hours of the morning ? Not that he owes me any details.
Despite teasing him about hooking up with Riley all week, there’s a part of me that didn’t think he actually would.
Desperate to calm my nerves, I slip into bed and try to fall asleep. Whenever I close my eyes, my mind runs amuck, replaying my night with Caleb and then picturing Teller with Riley. I need a distraction, stat. So I try calling my aunts.
It’s almost midnight, which means it’s evening back home.
“Lo, I was just thinking about you,” Mei says, whir of the treadmill in the background. A steeply inclined walk, followed by yoga and a peruse of the latest grocery store–sale flyers is her post-dinner routine. According to her, quiet evenings are when she feels most connected to the spirit world, so she likes to take advantage.
“It’s like you’re psychic or something,” I tease. It happens often enough—that she’s thinking about me right before I call her.
“I read a woman’s palm yesterday at an estate sale.” That’s the norm. She likes doing readings for people at random. Sometimes people recoil, assuming she’s a very well-dressed crazy person. Or they won’t let her leave, convinced she can talk to the dead (she cannot). Apparently, Mei determined there was something amiss with this lady’s health. She slipped her her business card, and the woman contacted her later that night. Turns out, she had appendicitis and ended up in the hospital.
“That’s wild. Is she going to be okay?”
“I think so. I’m going to visit her in the hospital after work to do a full reading. Anyway.” She pauses, shutting her eyes for a brief moment. “Things are going well with Caleb.” She says it like a statement, not a question, because she just knows . She may not be able to read my mind, but the woman is intuitive as hell. An “intuitive empath.” That’s what she and Ellen call it—the ability to connect with a living person’s energy and emotions.
I confirm, recounting my dates and conversations with Caleb in vivid detail, how we’re both basically dogs masquerading as humans, how I want to travel the world with him, and how much fun we have together, all while the treadmill whirs in the background. The more I say out loud, the giddier I feel.
“He sounds like the blueprint for your perfect guy,” she says, not even a tad out of breath.
“Honestly, I think he is. Everything just feels right and easy. Almost too good to be true. Is that how it’s supposed to feel?”
“When Layla and I reconnected again, it felt more than easy. It was like coming home after a long, harrowing journey. A wild sense of belonging I’ve never felt before. Suddenly, it was like every dull, empty bit of me was full, alive. Not that I didn’t have to put in effort, but when it’s your soulmate, it doesn’t feel like work, you know?”
Mei already knew Layla from summer camp when she had The Vision. She saw an anonymous figure standing at the edge of a dock at sunset. Despite reconnecting with Layla as camp counselors the following summer, she didn’t put two and two together. Not even after a secret footsie under a blanket by the crackling campfire, followed by a starlit rendezvous on the dock. See, Mei hadn’t realized that her soulmate may be a woman, that she might like both men and women.
After a few years of self-discovery, Mei finally reconnected with Layla. They happened to be reaching for the same pair of leopard-print loafers in the bowels of a thrift shop. Layla let Mei have the shoes, and Mei let Layla have her heart.
Finally, I understood what my family members had told me all these years. That feeling of total harmony deep within your soul. It’s like I’ve always known Caleb.
“Have you told him yet?” Aunt Ellen asks. She’s just joined the call.
“Told Caleb he’s my soulmate? No. Isn’t it a little too soon?” I ask.
“No—” Ellen starts.
“Way too soon!” Mei cuts in.
There have been many little moments where I wanted to tell him. But it’s only been two weeks since we’ve met. Tomorrow also happens to be our last day in Florence, and our last day as a big group. We’ll be parting ways for our own adventures. Jenny and Riley are headed to Cinque Terre, Lionel is going home, and Caleb is coming with Teller and me to Tuscany and then Amalfi for the last leg of the trip.
“I told Uncle Hank I’d had a vision about him ten minutes after we first met,” Ellen says smugly.
“Yes, and scared the bejesus out of him in the process. He avoided eye contact with you for weeks,” Mei reminds her.
Ellen lets out a witchy cackle. “He was convinced I could read his mind and hypnotize him or something. To this day, he still doesn’t know for sure. Sometimes I still say things to mess with him. The poor sucker.”
“This is exactly why I’m scared to tell Caleb,” I say. Based on our conversations, I know he believes in spirituality, karma, energy, and the like. But you never know how people are going to react to the whole psychic thing. Knowing psychics exist in theory is one thing, but being told, Hey, by the way, I’m your one true love is a different story.
“I say wait until things get more serious,” Mei suggests, leaning so close to the camera, I can see straight up her nostrils.
“How much more serious can things get in two more weeks? I feel like I have to tell him before I come home,” I point out. It’s wild how fast the days are flying by. We’re at the halfway point of the trip. It feels like yesterday Teller and I took that first water taxi into Venice.
Mei disagrees. “If he’s really your soulmate, you have your whole life to tell him.”
I close my eyes for what feels like a few minutes before the sound of the door wakes me up. Teller. He’s back.
“How was your night?” I ask, peering down from the top bunk and flicking the light on.
Teller squints, eyes adjusting to the light. He paces around the room in search of something to clean or arrange. “It was good. Listen, I’m really sorry. I completely forgot we were supposed to watch a movie. I got my days mixed up. I thought it was tomorrow, but then when you texted, I realized tomorrow is the cruise. It’s my bad—”
“No worries at all. I’d rather you be hooking up with Riley,” I say, even though I’m not sure that’s entirely true.
“We didn’t hook up,” he says, almost offended. “After we toured Palazzo degli Uffizi, we walked around and got some gelato and talked.” They didn’t hook up. I’m not sure why that’s so relieving. “How about your night?”
I casually lift a shoulder. “It was chill. We got cannoli. Feel free to have some. They’re on the bedside table. Oh, and I talked to my aunts for a while.”
“Oh yeah? How are they?”
“Same old. They think I should wait to tell Caleb about the soulmate thing.”
He studies me for a beat before climbing the ladder to sit next to me. “Do you want to wait?”
“No. You know me and my big mouth. I feel like I need to tell him before we go home. Preferably earlier, so we can figure out what we’re doing ... you know, relationship wise. It’s killing me to keep it in. And it feels dishonest, like I’m lying to him, even though I’m not,” I ramble, adding, “I’m scared it’ll freak him out.”
“Telling him you’re a psychic? Nah,” he teases, dangling his long legs over the edge.
“A terrible psychic at that,” I add reflexively, despite Mei’s excitement over my second vision. There is a bright side, she said. Based on the vivid detail, she hypothesized that I might have stronger powers than I thought.
“Just because you only had one vision doesn’t mean you’re terrible,” he says. Heat flushes my neck. I’m tempted to tell him what I foresaw on our double date, but I stop myself. What good would it do? If anything, it would speed up the inevitable. “Maybe you really do have your family’s abilities and you just don’t know it.”
“Maybe.”
“Do a palm reading on me,” Teller says. “Just for fun,” he adds when he sees the mortified look on my face.
“Okay, but I’m going to be crap at it,” I warn.
“Well, I’m going to be judging. Harshly. Comparing you to the hundreds of other palm readings I’ve gotten,” he says sarcastically.
I examine his palm, running my finger over it, trying to summon all the bits of knowledge I’ve gathered over the years from my aunts.
“All right, so your life line is unnaturally shallow,” I say, watching Teller’s brows pinch as he scrutinizes his hand. For the record, I’m just messing with him.
“What does that mean?”
“It tends to indicate you may get sick more easily, probably because you use an excess of disinfectant—”
He gives me a soft slap on the wrist. “Okay, seriously, though. Am I going to die young? Will it be painful?”
I shake my head. “No. You actually have a really long and deep life line. It doesn’t necessarily represent a long life, but it means you’re healthy.”
“I’ll take that.”
I move my finger upward to the wisdom line, which extends from the edge of his thumb and index finger. “Your wisdom and life lines kind of overlap, which means you’re introverted and detail-oriented. I remember my aunts used to say that too much overlap means you’re a worrywart.”
He smirks. “All true. Go on.”
I run my finger over the line right under his pinkie, extending across the palm and ending right below the middle finger. “Your love line kind of curves down, which tells me you’re stubborn but willing to sacrifice for love.”
He nods. “True again.”
“There are some circular creases around your health line, which also indicate nose and throat problems.”
“I do have horrible allergies, so that checks.”
“Sure does.”
“See? You’re more talented than you think.”
I shake my head. “No. It’s the same as when I was a kid. I can memorize all the rules, but I don’t have that ... natural intuition my aunts use in tandem. They use the palm reading as added proof of what they already know.”
“Still, you were pretty accurate with me. If I could leave you a five-star Google review, I would.”
“Because I know everything about you already,” I say. “Bias.”
“Don’t stress, Lo. If he’s truly your soulmate, he’ll be thrilled.” He stretches out on the bed, yawning.
“Oh, come on, it’s too early to sleep.” It’s really not, but after missing out on our movie night, I feel a bit cheated out of time with him.
He quirks his brow. “What do you propose we do instead?”
I shrug. “Let’s do something fun, like ... get tattoos!” I’ve always wanted a tattoo, though I have no idea of what.
“Absolutely not.”
“Come on. We could get friendship tattoos.”
“I will never get a tattoo. Do you know how easily you can contract hep C from unsterilized needles?”
“Oh, Teller. Highly unlikely.”
His eyes shift, like he’s searching for an excuse. “Besides, there’s nothing I like enough to put on my body permanently.”
“Excuse you. Is my friendship not important enough to commemorate?”
“I didn’t say that—”
“We could each get one half of a smiley face on our baby toes so it only looks like a full face when we put them together.” I swing my feet up, brandishing my toes in his direction. He’s naturally revolted and bats them away.
“You know I hate bare feet.”
“My feet are gorgeous. I bet they’d be in high demand on those foot-fetish sites,” I shoot back.
He giggles and it’s adorable. “Maybe that’s your calling. Selling your worn socks and stuff.”
I snort. “Look, I’m not above it. And okay, back to the issue at hand. Can I interest you in a tattoo of a duck in sunglasses? Chinese characters? A barbed-wire armband? Or a tramp stamp of an eagle?”
He bites back a laugh, not bothering to dignify me with a response.