The Fate Factor

Prologue

Noel

I come from a family of dreamers. My father left my mother and me when I was eleven months old to go on tour with his band Northern Boots.

They played an eclectic mix of rock-country, and the way Mom tells it, he was destined for stardom.

We haven’t heard from or of him since, so it’s likely it didn’t pan out.

Mom couldn’t bring herself to fault him, though, despite leaving her to raise me alone at twenty years old. She loved him too much. And her dream was that someday, someone or something would love her that way too. She chased it with everything she had. We chased it.

When I was ten, I missed a week of fourth grade so we could go to North Carolina to visit an airman Mom met at a bar while he was on leave.

She had to quit her job to take the time, but the possibility of this man being her destiny was worth the financial risk.

Of course it was; she was a dream chaser, a free spirit unconfined by things like practicality, responsibility.

And when the airman turned out to be less of a catch in the light of day, Mom pretended it had been a girls’ trip from the beginning.

Something for me and her. She hid her disappointment behind sunglasses and beach selfies, and I smiled from the back seat with the map, and a stomach ache that started when I was eight and hadn’t quit.

I watched her pretend she was happy and free, instead of disappointed and tired, and it was like looking at an abstract painting and watching it shift.

That’s the moment I knew: Dreams and nightmares are made of the exact same stuff.

The only thing that separates them is how much of yourself you’re willing to lose in the chase.

Needless to say, I didn’t inherit the dreaming gene.

Every reckless adventurer needs a foil, a sidekick, a supporting character who keeps their ambitions from overtaking common sense, or their habit of dream-chasing from getting the lights turned off or the car repossessed.

Someone had to keep their feet on the ground between the two of us, and it was me.

The thing about the roles we slot into as kids, though, is that they tend to follow you into adulthood.

Which is why, even though I’m enjoying the late-summer party currently going on around me, I can’t help but scan the crowd intermittently, keeping an eye out for someone who might need to swap their beer for water or find a safe ride home.

I’m on the roof of a brick multi-unit in downtown Portland, Maine, just across the bridge from the sleepy neighborhood of Willard Beach where my Nana lives, and where I spent my summers as a kid.

I still do, actually, but only for a week or two rather than June through August. Instead of dream-chasing like Mom, Nana reads books and paints.

She’s a devout Catholic, except when she’s a little bit pagan.

When I was a kid, she would read my tea leaves and tarot cards at night.

Telling my future like a fairytale bedtime story I didn’t really believe, but found charming nonetheless.

Her house was quiet and predictable, if not a little silly with all of the talk of magic, and it’s still my favorite place in the world.

Tonight, I left Nana on the couch with a book and a cup of tea and let my best friend Kate coax me here.

We’re lounging on faded, second-hand patio furniture that belongs to one of Kate’s coworkers.

White string lights sway above us in a salty breeze, and no doubt someone somewhere is shaking their fist at the volume of the music.

“You’re not doing it right!” Kate slaps her hand on my thigh, offended that I would get the details of the game we’re playing wrong. “It won’t work with beer.”

I throw my head back and groan. “You have no way of knowing that. The last time we did this we weren’t old enough to drink.”

Kate grew up down the street from Nana. When I met her, she was wild with golden red hair and boobs before her time, and I was careful.

Perpetually nervous. The only thing we had in common was that we were two pre-teen girls in close proximity, but sometimes the place and time you meet someone makes all the difference.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “It has to be the same way Nana does it.”

Kate’s dating a new guy this summer, and he chuckles into his beer. Colin’s a med student on track for emergency medicine, and so far I’ve deduced that he’s quietly brilliant. Which is why I’m mortified that she has insisted I introduce him to my grandmother’s witchcraft tonight.

Clearly she’s never heard of saving your weird family shit until you get to know someone a little. Kate’s in her final year at Maine Law, though, so for the most part I avoid arguing with her.

I lift the knockoff Yankee Candle, simply labeled “Beach Dreams” (not exactly the fancy white pillar candles Nana keeps in her velvet lockbox, but Kate apparently doesn’t mind that concession)and borrow a lighter from a guy smoking a joint behind me to light the wick.

“Alcohol might make the wax float weird or something,” Kate explains to Colin who remains skeptical. He should be because we’re totally playing him right now. Like the tarot cards and the gemstones Nana wears to influence her energy, this whole thing is a silly game.

Granted, she did once predict that my high school boyfriend would break up with me and start dating his Spanish study partner.

Shocking all of us, Nana nailed it almost down to the day.

Though, to be fair, it was the day after the homecoming dance I couldn’t go to because I needed my shift at the restaurant I waitressed at to deal with the car repo thing.

I dump the beer from my cup into a nearby potted plant and make a gimme motion. “Colin. Your Poland Spring.”

“Fine,” he says, handing me the bottle by his feet. “But in case it’s important, you should know it’s just tap. I refilled the bottle.”

“What the fuck, babe.” Kate smacks his bicep playfully. “Noel, tell him that causes cancer!”

“She would know,” I say. “She’s been off phthalates since middle school.”

She points a finger at me. “Because I was ahead of my time. You would not believe the lawsuits that have come out of that shit.”

“Says the girl huffing candles.” Colin pinches her side.

“It’s soy!” Kate shrieks, dodging his attack.

I laugh alongside them, my abs aching from it, and when I turn to brush a strand of windblown hair off of my face, my eyes catch on a man’s. And it’s as if they just get... stuck there.

He’s seated precariously on the perimeter wall of this roof, three stories up, which is dangerous enough to notice, but he also has the kind of face that I might want to remember for later when I pick up my pencil and sketchbook before bed.

That heavy brow and incredibly straight, almost sharp nose, full lips that rest in a lazy smile—they’re practically begging to be drawn.

My gaze falls lower to his biceps where black tattooed leaves poke out of his short sleeves, and something incredibly unfamiliar flares inside me. A quick pulse of unbridled want. I have to swallow it down like a lump in my throat.

He raises an eyebrow from beneath a backwards baseball cap as if to say having a good time over there?

And because I’ve been drinking and apparently possessed by the spirit of someone much braver than me, I respond with a prissy little pursed-lip smile and shrug that says wouldn’t you like to know?

Then I check the rest of him out because Beer Bravery is a very real thing.

He’s taller than average, long legs dangling carelessly from his reckless wall seat, and his right forearm is covered in more ink.

Not a full sleeve, but a flock of birds spread over the soft skin on the inside, silhouette style.

Branches twist between them, thick and thorny.

Everything about this man screams wild, unsteady, not for me. And yet, there’s also something striking about him. Something I can’t look away from.

It’s his eyes, I decide as mine slide back to his face. They’re deep-set and the color of whiskey. Moody, if I’m being poetic about it, which I’m just buzzed enough to do. It’s his eyes and the way they don’t fit the rest of his vibe—cool, confident, comfortable here. Basically everything I’m not.

As if conjured by that thought, a tall blonde in cut-off jean shorts appears at his side, draping an arm over his shoulder. I jerk my gaze away, motioning for Kate to scoot down so I can slide in front of Colin.

“Okay, pay attention,” I say, with a flick of my head to shake that off. I pour Colin’s water into the cup, swirling it like a spooky sommelier. “You have to get your mind right.”

“We’re doomed then. My mind hasn’t been right since I started clinicals.”

Kate pouts. “Aw, babe. In, like, ten years you’ll be a hot-shot ER doctor with a mountain of debt. Think positive.”

“We don’t know that yet. Let’s see what Noel’s prediction is. Maybe I quit school and play guitar for tips in Monument Square.”

I snort, tipping the candle over the cup and letting the wax drip—One. Two. Three—just like Nana does it. It spreads into the shape of a blob that vaguely resembles a dog with a few extra lumps, before hardening on the surface of the water.

Colin sniffs. “Looks like the last scan I read. Fingers crossed it’s benign.”

“Shhh. I’m working.” I press my fingertips to my temples, biting hard on my lip to keep a straight face for this performance. The nostalgia Kate and I have for Nana’s weirdness demands I give it my all.

After a moment of humming and rubbing my temples, I push out my bottom lip in an exaggerated Sad Face.

“Looks like med school’s a bust. Luckily your musical talent is discovered, and you live a long life playing Ed Sheeran covers at weddings and proms. Oh, and you lose your hair really early. ” I wince. “Sorry.”

Colin laughs like the good sport he is. “I was just starting to like you, Noel.”