Chapter 16 Dove
DOVE
While I wasn’t the fastest person at the table when it came to throwing out answers, Ellis was certainly the one who answered the quickest and with the most confidence.
Most of our suggestions were spoken with an air of question in our voices, and though Liv wasn’t visible to our table, she didn’t hesitate to throw out her own wild answers.
Ellis took it seriously, and she was obviously competitive. Fiercely so.
When I had first offered to help fill in the answers, she had snatched the pen from me with an intense I’ve got this that had me biting back a smile and yet another wave of attraction.
Maybe four days ago, I would have found that reaction annoying; maybe I would have scoffed at it.
But now… fuck, now it was just endearing.
She spent most of the time with her head tilted over the sheet, brows knitted tightly together, lips pursed as she muttered to herself like she was solving a riddle only she could see.
She was oblivious to the way Jules eyed her, and I couldn’t place a word for that tightening in my stomach and the burning in my cheeks other than jealousy, followed by the relief that Ellis just didn’t notice she was being flirted with or was simply completely unaware. The latter made more sense to me.
The girls we had joined at the table were nice, if not a little drunk, and it was blatantly obvious that Siena had set her sights on me.
I tried to keep it as friendly as possible, but there was no way I would be going home with anyone other than Ellis tonight.
The feeling that spread through my body at the thought had been something else entirely.
We were reaching the end of the quiz when Jules got up and asked Ellis if she wanted to help her get another round of drinks from the bar.
A simple question, but if Jules knew Ellis, she would have known that leaving the trivia sheet would have been a no-go.
I hadn’t expected the rough scraping of the stool beside me, Ellis’s face looking something akin to panic-stricken before she shoved the trivia sheet away from her, mumbled something about the bathroom, and disappeared.
Her sudden absence hit me, and I frowned, blinking in confusion.
“I’d check on that if I were you,” Liv told me, nodding her head in the direction of the bathrooms.
She hadn’t needed to say it, though, I was already halfway off my stool, heart already tilting, pulling me after Ellis and her flash of red hair. That pull was so deeply felt in my bones, pulsing like a faint ache under my ribs, that I already knew what this was for me now.
I pushed back from the table.
“Back in a second,” I told both Siena and Jules, who were having some sort of conversation with their eyes.
Weaving my way through the tables and bodies of people, I found the hallway leading to the bathrooms, following the bright neon signage, heart pounding slightly, and I was unsure why.
Finding the room marked Ladies, positioned between the men’s room and a gender-neutral bathroom, I stepped inside, the door creaking loudly as I pushed it open before slipping through the secondary door.
Ellis was standing by the basins, staring at herself in the mirror, her face grim, as if she had just finished giving herself a pep talk she hadn’t wanted to hear.
God, she looked good tonight. Her black sweater fit just right, the collar resting soft against her delicate collarbones, her jeans hugging her long legs almost sinfully.
Her copper-red hair fell loosely, a little messy since the start of the night, but still cute.
She looked flushed, alive, radiant and wrecked all at the same time.
Her eyes met mine through the mirror.
“Hey,” I said, stepping inside. “You okay?”
The closer I got, the more I noticed her eyes were glassy. A red flush began to spread up her neck.
“Hey, sorry, I just—I just needed the toilet.”
I nodded once and leaned against the countertop as she began to wash her hands.
“You sure? Having a good night?” I asked.
Her laugh was quick, light, and a little breathless. “Um, yeah. I mean, I think so… I don’t have a whole lot to compare it to. The noise takes a little getting used to.”
She switched off the taps and pulled out some paper towels, drying her hands roughly before bunching them into a ball and tossing it in the bin. “You’re good at this.”
I frowned. “At?”
“People, mostly,” she said, her expression thoughtful. “I mean, you can walk up to a table of strangers and just make them like you. It’s some sort of magic trick. Like, you don’t even have to try.”
I blinked, a little caught off guard. “Ellis, what—”
“I just don’t get it,” she rushed on, her voice rising slightly. “I mean, you’re just so easy with anyone. You can talk to anybody about anything, even the most inane shit. And… and I can sit next to you and just feel like I’m ten steps behind. I feel like I’m on the outside looking in…”
Her breath hitched, and she cut herself off, eyes darting away as her cheeks flushed a deeper shade of pink.
“Not that it’s your problem,” she went on, shaking her head. “I mean, this is clearly a me problem. I’m just socially challenged. I haven’t had enough practice.”
Her fingers were clenched, her shoulders curled inward, and she looked so… so small. So guarded. So tired.
“Ellis,” I began softly, “I work with people on a daily basis. I mean, I was raised around communicating with strangers. It’s second nature to me.
I’m not a good person to measure social skills against. I’d beat even the most average person.
Besides, not everyone likes talking to strangers, and there’s no problem with that.
There’s no issue with who you choose to interact with. That’s your choice.”
“Yeah, well, you’re likable as well,” she bit out.
“So are you,” I told her confidently, and she shot me a look. “You know, like, once someone gets to know you.”
She sighed.
“Jules likes you,” I found myself saying, a sour tone in my voice that I hurriedly tried to mask halfway through.
Ellis wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “No.”
And it wasn’t a no, she doesn’t kind of voice but more of a flat no, that isn’t happening.
My heart rose.
Then something shifted, right as I took a shoulder-loosening, body-calming breath. It felt like a bone-deep pulse, beating within me, and it was as if, while I looked into her watery green eyes, I could feel what I could only describe as her.
It was as if the energy around her shimmered, cracked, and glowed, and I could only liken it to the effect of stained glass holding back the brightness of the sun.
I could feel a fire in her, and a longing so sharp it cut, and a hunger—a hunger so raw it felt like a reaching for something, someone, anything.
But it also felt as if she were pulling it back and stuffing it down.
I could feel it as if it were a pulse against my own ribs.
I could feel a heavy weight over her chest, and it didn’t feel like her heart had just been transplanted.
It felt as if it were buried under layers, just beating alone, jagged threads of guilt wrapped around it and tangling through her thoughts, carrying the echoes of old things, old thoughts, old losses.
Then there was an ache, the wanting, the soft yearning of not wanting to be left behind but not knowing how to step forward.
My throat felt tight as I experienced the war Ellis was fighting inside herself on a daily basis. My fingers twitched at my sides, every part of me wanting to pull her close, to help her, to take these feelings on as my own.
But I couldn’t.
She needed to beat them.
The Lovers card flashed in my mind’s eye—not upright but reversed.
Tension.
Doubt.
Fear of choosing.
Then a thread, what felt like a pulsing glow between us, and the peace of alignment, that if we moved through this moment together, everything would change.
“Everything would just be,” I found myself uttering, eyes locked onto Ellis, whose face now looked pinched and confused.
“The energy between people, Dovey,” Margaret had once uttered as she did my cards, eyes half-lidded. “That’s where the true magic sits.”
I knew what this was. I knew what I was experiencing right now, and I could feel pure elation course through me. Second sight, Margaret had always said gently after a reading. The gift I thought I didn’t receive, but she was adamant I had.
“You’re just blocked up, Dovey,” she would tell me. “You have it. I know it’s there.”
My chest tightened.
It wasn’t the shop or the candles or the cards or crystals or the incense-scented air. It was all me, standing alone in a bar bathroom, staring into the eyes of one of the most broken people I had ever met, finally feeling all the things Margaret had assured me I had the ability to possess.
“You okay?” Ellis asked, her voice a little nervous as she looked at me.
I blinked, and the simmering energy snapped, like an elastic band let go, and I felt like me again. Just Dove.
“Dove?” Ellis tried again, poking me lightly on the shoulder.
“I’m good,” I told her, pasting a smile on my face as I tried to come down from that experience without telling her I’d just had the most personal insight into her.
I doubted she would appreciate it.
“We probably lost trivia,” Ellis muttered. “Can we go now, then? I think I met the going-out quota.”
I snorted and shook my head at her. “Uh-uh, Ellis,” I teased. “We still have to dance.”
She blanched and shook her head. “Uh, no.”
“One dance,” I said, raising a brow, “then we can go back to the motel.”
Her lips pinched together, and she sighed, letting out a useless shrug as she brushed past me.
“All right.”
As she made to exit and I followed after her, a startling thought hit me square between the eyes.
I wasn’t here just to help Ellis and Liv get their closure or to scatter Margaret’s ashes. No. Ellis had come into my shop for a reason that day, and I knew enough now to know Margaret would have sent her, or made Liv send her, without Liv even knowing.