Chapter 11 Ellis #3
My hand brushed against the laminated Route 66 binder, and I dragged it out, flipping to today’s page. I spotted the black line drawn through Meramec Caverns with disappointment. I’d be going there on the way home, for sure.
Liv had refused it when we were planning, said it was her friend’s choice, not hers. And since bestie wasn’t on the trip anymore, it had to go.
“Claustrophobia exists in the afterlife, Ellis,” she had hissed at me.
So that had been that.
I flipped to tomorrow.
Springfield, Missouri, the self-proclaimed birthplace of Route 66.
Our morning would start with the Route 66 Car Museum, then the History Museum on the Square.
We’d try one of the historic cafés for breakfast. When we headed for Tulsa, we’d stop off at Red Oak II, a town modeled after the artist Lowell Davis’s hometown.
“God, I’m starving,” Dove groaned as she emerged from the bathroom in an oversized black T-shirt and a pair of worn-looking pants. Her hair, like mine, was wrapped in a towel.
She immediately unwrapped her sandwich, took the lid off her soup, then took an eager bite and glanced over at the binder.
“So,” she said around a mouthful of grilled cheese and a smirk, “what’s on the agenda for tomorrow, Captain Itinerary?”
“Ha,” I said with an eye roll, closing it. “You’ll find out tomorrow.”
She took another bite and nodded toward the book. “You know what? I thought you were neurotic when I first saw that binder, but really, imagine if our phones died on the road? You’ve got a real-life map in there and everything.”
“The horror,” I said mockingly. “Well, binders can get damaged and lost just like phones. There’s still time for it to go up in flames, you know.”
Her smile widened as she dunked her sandwich into the soup. “Well, it always does eventually.”
Liv’s voice suddenly echoed in the room, and she appeared in a chair beside the bed. “You should always expect mild chaos when traveling with emotionally repressed queers and a ghost who’s still trying to make sense of whatever post-death tourism is.”
“Liv, I swear to God,” I muttered.
Dove snorted into her food, and I sighed, leaning back against the headboard and letting out a yawn as a quiet buzz of exhaustion settled into my bones and coursed through my veins. I was tired—that was a fact—but not nearly as tightly wound as usual. And this was me after a flat tire.
The drama didn’t feel quite so heavy... so choking.
I watched as Dove binned her trash and tossed a wrapped cookie in my direction before pulling out her iPad and climbing into the bed on the other side. She opened the device, and the image of the tarot card she’d been working on appeared. She picked it back up seamlessly.
A comfortable silence settled between us, and I grabbed my phone, deciding to start editing the content I’d filmed earlier. I could put together a small post.
“What’s your birth date?” Dove asked suddenly, her eyes never leaving her sketch.
It seemed like it should’ve been a casual question.
It felt like it should be.
Yet... it wasn’t.
“Why?” I asked suspiciously.
“I’m going to do your birth chart,” Dove murmured with a yawn.
“My birth chart?” I asked warily, biting my lip. “What is that?”
“Can you trust me?” Dove asked with a grin. “Or have you given up too much control today? Was it the tire? Is that what did it for you?”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Whatever. October 1st, 2004.”
“Time?” she asked.
I paused. “Why do you need that?”
Dove raised an unimpressed brow at me. “Because I’m not going to half-ass your chart with some vague-as-shit sun sign reading from Pinterest, Ellis.
I want to sort out your planets, houses—the works.
Also, like a proper lesbian, I want to check our compatibility and spiral for six hours until you do something to piss me off. ”
I blanched at her, my insides twisting at her words, and the time of my birth fell from my lips without warning.
“Six forty-two in the morning.”
“Great,” Dove said with a wink.
I bit into my cookie, barely tasting it.
“Wait. If you get to know my birth chart, then I should know yours,” I said, not entirely sure what the point of that was.
“Mine?” Dove laughed. “Pure chaos, Ellis. Aries sun, Leo moon, and Sagittarius rising. I’m basically unstoppable, and sometimes a little reckless.”
Silence stretched between us for a moment, and I found myself trying to glance at her screen, which was now more shielded than before. After fifteen minutes of failure, I gave up.
“Is it done yet?” I asked.
“Thought you didn’t believe in my work, Ellis,” Dove taunted in a singsong voice. “Isn’t that what you said in the shop that day?”
God, it felt like weeks ago. How had it only been four days?
“I don’t,” I said coolly, returning to my phone.
“All right, it’s done,” Dove said with a dramatic sigh. “Ellis, I hate to break it to you, but it says you’re a control freak with trust issues.” She clicked her tongue. “I could’ve told you that without the astrology, though.”
“Haha,” I said dryly. “What’s it really say?”
Dove shrugged. “No idea. I’m still drawing. I’ll work on it in my own time.”
I blinked at her incredulously, then realized I was acting far too eager for someone who supposedly didn’t believe in that crap.
I collected myself, cleared my throat, and uttered a quiet “Fine” before going back to editing a video for TikTok, trying very hard to ignore the slight smile on Dove’s face.
And I couldn’t tell if I wanted to laugh or scream at the smugness radiating off her.
Maybe both, but between Dove’s quiet competence and Liv’s relentless commentary and meddling, I realized I could still feel that part of me bracing for impact—my foot still resting on an imaginary brake no one else could see.