Chapter 6
“Oh, do me,” Mike says to my Mom. “I’ve never had my fortune read.”
Mom squeals. “I love an eager volunteer.”
"Ma, I can't find them!" Adam calls.
"Check the corner pockets of the pool table." She disappears into the house.
I round on Mike. “I do not need saving from my mom’s tarot reading.”
“Really?” Mike gracefully swims past me and climbs out of the pool. He grabs a striped towel from the stack and wraps it around his shoulders before offering me a hand.
I swat it away and climb out of the pool without help.
“Why don’t you take your smug smile and obnoxiously”—I stop myself before I say good looks—“bleached hair and just leave before you ruin anything else, and I get blamed for it.”
“Hold on.” Mike hands me a clean towel, and when I don’t take it, he unfolds it and wraps it around my shoulders. “You’re blaming me for you falling into the pool?”
“Yes.”
“How? You bolted from the kitchen straight into the water.”
“I wouldn’t have had a reason to bolt if it weren’t for you.”
“I was trying to help.” Mike says, taking a seat opposite my mother’s rattan peacock chair.
“By putting your arms all over me.”
“You catapulted into my arms when you slipped.”
“Yeah, well. You…” Never called me. I flinch. I’m saved by my mom reappearing with her tarot cards.
“Here we are.” Mom spreads the cards out on the table and shuffles them by swirling them around in a messy pile.
“Can I help?” Mike asks.
“Please. It will activate the cards that much faster.” Mom doesn’t look up from her cards. “Have you ever had a reading before?”
“Never.”
“The first step is to pick a significator. Since this is your first time, we’ll do this together.” Mom takes Mike’s hand and hovers it over the cards. “There. Do you feel it?”
“What?” Mike asks.
“Energy. Almost like a cosmic tug…” She flips over the Queen of Swords. “Interesting. This is usually Bea’s significator. A good stand-in for a sharp-witted, feminine intellectual.”
Mike winks at me, and I want to die.
“Let’s pick another card.”
“Absolutely,” Mike says. “May I?” He runs his hands over the cards and pauses on one before flipping it over.
“The Knight of Wands,” Mom says, pursing her lips. “Very interesting.”
“Oh?”
“The card suggests a person who is charismatic, charming, full of life and energy, independent. It can also mean a new adventure is unfolding.”
“Excellent.” Mike pushes the card toward Mom. “I choose him.”
Mom places Mike’s card to the side and shuffles the rest into a neat stack. “Now, the cards do not dictate the future. They present suggestions. We are all of us in control of our own destinies.”
“I understand.”
I snort.
Mom flips over five cards in a cross formation next to Mike’s Knight of Wands card.
“The Ace of Cups, Four of Wands, Two of Cups, the Star, and…” Mom hesitates before she flips over the last card.
“Bea, would you mind going and putting Eaton’s wet moose and blankie in the wash?
I’d hate for the chlorine to permanently damage them. ”
“Sure.”
“Now, please?”
“Fine.”
“Be sure to rinse them both first before throwing them in on the delicate cycle.”
I don’t need to hear Mike’s reading. My mom will do what she always does. The cards she flips over will just happen to still say things like get a haircut, change your major, take up yoga, settle down and have kids.
I’m wringing the moose out from his second cold-water rinse when Mike finds me, a bottle of mineral water in his hand.
“Why are you still here?”
“I wanted to say goodbye.”
Unlike last time. “Bye.”
“And tell you about my reading.”
I roll my eyes. “I can’t believe you sank to her level. Come on. You don’t actually believe any of that is real. What did she say?”
“The CliffsNotes version? I should be very careful who I kiss. It could have permanent consequences.”
I snort. Then I cackle. “Are you serious?”
“Her words.”
“Mike.” I put my hands mockingly on his shoulders. “Do we need to talk about where babies come from?”
Mike’s eyes go wide. He looks panicked. “Do babies come from…kissing?” The panic on his face melts away in an instant. “Next, you’re going to tell me that kisses don’t mean anything.” He twists the cap off his bottle of Pellegrino.
“Well, they don’t.”
“Says you.”
“What, one kiss and you’re smitten? Instalove?”
“Sounds like someone has never had a good kiss.”
“And you have?”
“All my kisses are good kisses,” he says smugly before taking a pull of his water.
“All of them toe-curling?”
“I wasn’t going to say it, but…” He shrugs, and I momentarily have to remind myself that the muscles that bunch at his shoulders, however corded and yummy they may look through the sliver of skin I see at his undone collar, are not worth my attention because they belong to an obtuse idiot.
“I don’t believe you,” I say.
Mike takes a lazy sip of his drink. “Why? No Yelp reviews to comb through?”
“You’d be tied down. Off the market.”
His teeth flash. “And you don’t think women have tried?”
I consider, wringing the blanket and slapping it against the sink in concentrated thought. “All one of them?”
He scoffs. “Much more than one.”
“How many? Are we counting animals? I bet you’re really popular with Chihuahuas.” I wish I had a dog. Or a man-size teddy bear to snuggle. “I’m serious. How many?”
Mike straightens. “Do we count work?”
“What?”
“I kiss people at work sometimes.”
“I thought there were laws in San Diego about that.”
“Not like that! I’m an actor.”
“Acting. Is that what you’re calling the escort scene now?”
His smile becomes rakish. “You had to know I do more than staff your brother’s escape room.”
“Let me guess. Children’s birthday parties?”
“I’m in a campus production of Macbeth next month.”
“And you’re playing one of the witches?”
“Malcolm, actually.”
My eyes narrow. “Right, the most boring character in the whole play. Typecasting at its finest. Tell me, did they cut all your monologues? Is your job just to stand there—”
“And look pretty? You should come watch me and find out. If you sit in the front left, I’ll wave. It’s the only spot the lights don’t glare.”
Tempting, but I know for a fact that Mike isn’t the type to wave. “Not a chance.”
“Not a fan of Shakespeare?”
“Oh, I’m a fan, but not of cringe-worthy student productions.”
He laughs. “You’re cute when you’re stereotyping.”
“And you’re one kiss away from a potential lawsuit, being a daddy, or falling in love.” I suck my teeth. “I hope it isn’t all three.”
Mike’s eyes narrow. “So do I.”
“I’m not kissing you.”
“I’m not offering!”
“Fine.” I slam the door of the washing machine closed.
“Fine!” Mike leaves the laundry room before rushing back in. “This is the weirdest birthday party I’ve ever been to. I wasn’t even going to come, but—”
“But you did. And you humiliated me. And insulted me. And ruined everything for me. I’d say your work here is done.”
“Bea—”
“Bye, Mike. Let’s never do this again.”