36. Gemma
Chapter 36
Gemma
“ I ’m so proud of you. Really, just congrats. I can’t wait to see what amazing things you have waiting for you in your career. The publishing industry doesn't know what’s coming.”
I blush slightly as my gaze drops to my hands. My professor’s praise is certainly nothing new, but on this day, the last day, it has a new kind of weight to it. “Thanks. I…I’m really excited.”
She laughs softly, knowing me too well at this point to let my little lie slip past. “That’s your excited face, huh? It looks more like you’re off to fire your favorite employee.”
I cringe and drag my gaze back up to meet hers. “It’s that obvious, huh?”
Her smile is warm. “You’ve been worrying about this all year, Gem. And putting it off. Well, that ends now. There’s no more time to procrastinate.”
I nod, unable to form a response.
“Everything’s going to be fine, you know,” she says in that way older people do. Ones who’ve lived through enough to know it’s generally the case.
And I believe her. It is going to be fine.
Or, they are at least.
And that’s what’s important.
Alone in my room, I take a break from packing to flop onto the soft, blue rug, sage my cards, and shuffle them through my fingers. I think of a handful of questions I could ask, each sounding stupider and more self-pitying than the last.I’m about to give up and just throw the deck in my suitcase with everything else when a thought occurs to me. Dragging myself off the floor, I cross the hallway and tap lightly on the ornately carved wooden door of the master suite.
Marisol answers in a cloud of incense smoke. “Oh, dear,” she says, taking one look at me and pulling me inside her dimly lit room.
She brushes off the offer of my deck. “I think we’ll bring out the big guns for this one, don’t you agree?”
After cleansing and shuffling her own cards in silence, Marisol leans forward, elbows on her knees in her green velvet wingback chair and looks deep into my eyes. “What shall we ask?”
That’s what I’ve been pondering this whole day, this whole month, this whole year. What can I ask the deck, the universe, that will get it to tell me I’m on the right path? That I’m not making the biggest mistake of my life? How can I get the confirmation I need to keep going forward when all I want to do is run back?
“Am I making the right decision?” I finally say, my voice weak and unsteady.
“Would you like to be more specific?”
This woman has trained me over the years that specificity in the question can lead to better insights from the cards. Now, however, I can’t bear to elaborate.
I shake my head. “The cards will understand.”
Marisol nods and turns her attention to the deck. “Three cards. First, what you need for your current mindset. Second, what you’ll need for your mindset moving forward on this path. Third, what you’ll need to find the happiness you desire on this path.”
I can’t help but cringe at the way she correctly calls me out with the spread, holding nothing back like she would with a regular client. But in the end, I nod.
The first card comes before I’m ready, Marisol fearlessly flipping it onto the low table between us with a well-practiced snap.
The Chariot.
We blow out an audible breath in unison as we consider the strong figure on the card. He’s dressed regally, like a prince or a royal knight. He wears a crown of laurel leaves and starlight, looking straight ahead, into the eyes of the reader. In front of his chariot are two resting sphinxes, one dark and one light, unharnessed and also looking straight ahead, as if filled with mysterious stories they can choose to tell—or not. It’s the card of battling your own personality and life decisions with the mystical powers of the unknown and supernatural. It’s the card that tells us to go ahead and be clear about our desires and intentions and then settle in for the ride—because the path will offer bumps, stops, and detours not even the wise sphinxes can predict at the onset.
“Forward motion, progress, and triumph?” I ask sheepishly, already knowing Marisol is unlikely to take such a simple, positive view of this card in this placement.
“The path is the goal?” she offers back.
I nod, resigned. “Yeah, okay. What does it mean for me, though?”
“What do you see?”
I lean forward and take a closer look at the card in front of me. “I see a man with epic hair standing in a throne-like carriage. He’s got a wand in one hand, so there’s magic. There’s magic everywhere, actually. His robe has crescent moons for shoulders, his crown is a star, the chariot is draped in blue star fabric. He’s got the city behind him, and the sphinxes in front. They all look straight ahead, not behind. It’s interesting that they aren’t harnessed to the chariot. I’ve read in so many books that they don’t actually pull the chariot, even though they’re in a position to do just that.”
“They run in front of the chariot,” Marisol encourages.
“So what makes the chariot move forward?”
“The driver’s will?” she offers.
“Well, right now they’re not going anywhere,” I say, tossing the card back down on the table and looking up. “They’re just sitting there.”
“Is that how you feel?”
I let out a sigh. I walked right into that one. “In a lot of ways, yes. I’ve never felt so stuck. I’m getting on a plane this afternoon. I’m moving forward. I’m following my path.”
“So why does it feel like you’re standing still?”
I look back down at the guy on the card, dressed to the nines, ready for a journey it seems uncertain he’ll ever get to take. “I don’t want to go alone.”
She nods. “So you’re waiting. You’re getting on the plane, off to do the thing you think you want to do, but it’s not real because you don’t have your partners on the journey with you.”
“I’m leaving them behind.”
“So you say.”
“Next card, please. ”
Marisol raises her eyebrows, and for a moment I think she’ll protest. But in the end, she looks back to the deck. “Second placement, what you need for your mindset moving forward on this path.”
She flips it without hesitation, as aware as I am that moving on in this reading is in no way letting me off the hook.
The Page of Cups.
“Well, fuck.”
Marisol laughs.
“Unconscious wishes?” I ask hopefully.
“Fearless, unconditional love?” she answers unhelpfully.
“Next card, please.”
Another soft laugh from Marisol and another card. “Third placement, what you’ll need for happiness on this path.”
Seven of Pentacles.
We both stare at the card in silence.
Finally, I can’t take it anymore. “Failure?”
I look up to find Marisol watching me curiously. It only makes me more frustrated.
“How can failure be how I find happiness?” I start to stand, feeling my emotions rise uncontrollably. “This is the last thing I needed right now.”
“Sit. We’re talking through the cards.”
“The terrible cards of failure.”
“You know there are no bad cards.”
“How can failure possibly be a good thing in my situation?”
“My dear, you are a positively wonderful failure. It’s why I love you so much. You fail at being a racist and bigot on the daily. I’d say you’ve spent your whole life failing to be a murderer and a bank robber. You’re quite happily failing to live up to the patriarchal standards of wifehood with your two handsome lovers. ”
I flop back into my chair. “Positive failing. I should have known you could pull it off.”
“What determines failure or success in any given situation is the value system being used as judgment. If you want something and don’t get it, you will have failed in your own eyes. If you don’t want something and don’t get it, well, what a success you are.”
“So, I’ll need to fail at something on my current path in order to find happiness? What if it’s my internship?”
“What if, indeed. I’m sure you’re looking at this dualistically, so play the choices out for me.”
I take a deep breath and consider. “Okay, if I fail at my interview and fail to get the internship, I get to keep living in Seattle with Taylor and Ainsley. But, if I fail at my relationship with Taylor and Ainsley, which will happen if I get the internship and move to New York, then I find success in my career.”
She nods, but I’ve hardly convinced her. “That is two of the ten billion ways things could go. But you’re forgetting a few important elements of this reading.”
“Enlighten me,” I humor her, praying she offers me the answers I desperately need.
“The sphinxes.”
“Which mean…” I lead her when she fails to go on.
“Which represent the very real idea that you have no fucking clue what’s going to happen.”
I let out a breathy laugh in surprise. “Noted. What else?”
She lifts the Page of Cups and tosses it over the other two cards. “Like I said before. Fearless, unconditional love.”
I blink down at the card, with its smiling, well-dressed man, seemingly in friendly conversation with the fish leaping out of his wine glass.I’ve pulled this card for myself and others enough times to know that people generally think it’s a positive omen. Everyone wants love in their life. Even when I tell them that love likely means they’ll need to reach down deep inside and be honest and direct about what they really, truly want, they readily agree.
Only me, on the verge of giving up the truest, purest love I’ve ever known, would see the prospect of having all your wishes come true as a bad thing.I do want this internship. I want the future I see it offering me. I recognize that I would be better prepared for the trip to New York and the interview and all of it if I’d been honest in the first place and therefore able to talk things out with the men who know and love me. But that wasn’t the choice I made. I’ve been keeping secrets out of fear that my ambition would ruin everything.
And I may have just ruined everything anyway.
But only for myself.
Over the last few months, I’ve watched Taylor and Ainsley grow together. Blossom in each other’s presence. I always knew Taylor had it in him to open up like that, but he’s never fully done it for me alone.
And Ainsley. My beautiful fool. Who will still tell me that he’s unsure what’s coming next for him, even as he powers through each day with determination and purpose. Taylor let it slip to me a few weeks ago that his hours are done, yet he keeps showing up at the kitchen, working his shifts and making everyone smile.
They both seem so…content. So settled.
It’s impossible to risk destroying all the peace and happiness they’ve found with my own selfish desires. As much as I’ve told myself Taylor would choose the house over me, I don’t honestly know if that’s true. And it only makes me more sure of my decision. He’s been clear as day that his goal is to save the house and someday make it his. If I force his hand, make him choose to leave it behind just so he doesn’t have to lose me…what kind of person would that make me ?
I look back down at the card and shake my head.
Fearless, unconditional love.
Well, maybe that’s what I’m doing. I’m making the choice out of love for my guys. Saving them the pain of sacrificing their own dreams and lives for me.
“You look like you’ve made a decision,” Marisol says softly, shaking me out of my rumination.
I nod. “Yeah, I think I have.”