chapter four Succumbing to the Powers of the Curse #3
the building. Out on the curb, she releases me and we take a tentative step away from each other.
“Thanks,” I say, wishing that simple word could properly encompass the entirety of my gratitude for her quick thinking. “You
didn’t have to do that.”
Lex shoulders her bag and tucks her hands into her pockets. “I know.”
“I should probably call an Uber,” I mumble to myself as I retrieve my phone from my purse.
“I’ll wait with you.”
“You really don’t need to.” Standing around making small talk is exactly the cherry I’d expect on top of this disastrous outing.
She points at me. “Just waiting on my jacket.”
I look down at myself. “Oh. Right.”
Lex hugs herself against the breeze, crisp with the threat of early-June rain, and scuffs the toe of her clunky boot on the
sidewalk.
“Five minutes.” I show her my phone. “You can wait inside if you’re cold. Or, you know, if you have someone waiting for you
in there.”
“I wasn’t waiting for anyone.”
My eyes narrow. “You were sitting in there all by yourself reading fairy smut?”
Once more, those piercing eyes of hers pin me in place. “When you’re recently divorced and it’s his weekend with the kid and
you’d rather be out doing anything, instead of being stuck at home because you haven’t been alone like that in almost ten
years, then, yeah, going to a pub to read fairy smut becomes a logical choice.”
“Oh.” My face warms, and I’m embarrassed I offended her. I have no idea how to reply. “Sorry to hear about that. The divorce
and the kid thing. Sounds awful.”
Lex just stares at me.
For someone who’s never smoked a day in her life, I sure am craving a cigarette right now—anything to take the edge off this
conversation. “Olsen wasn’t home?” As soon as I ask the question, I regret it.
“He’s at the hospital.”
“Oh no! Because of his . . .” I cringe and point at my groin.
“No.” Lex narrows her eyes. “For work.”
“Phew, I was worried. Wait, is he a doctor or something?”
Lex’s head tilts. “Yeah, he is. You didn’t know that before you agreed to a date with him?”
“It was less of a date and more of a hookup,” I say dryly.
“Ew.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“Not ew as in casual sex is gross, but ew as in I don’t want to hear about my brother doing it,” Lex clarifies.
“If it makes you feel any better, I have nothing to report on that front. I’d only just met him.”
“Isn’t ‘what do you do for a living’ one of the first questions you ask a person after you learn their name and whether they’re
single?” She doesn’t sound judgmental, just curious.
“For most people, yes,” I say. “But not for me.”
A group of people walk past, boisterous and happy on their Friday night. The suspense of my comment draws Lex in, and she
takes a step closer.
“For me,” I continue, “there’s no point in getting to know someone. Because of the curse.”
I watch in real time as Lex’s eyes glaze over. She takes one step back, and then another. “Right. The ‘curse.’” She raises
her fingers in mock quotations.
“You saw what happened back there,” I say, gesturing over my shoulder with my thumb toward the restaurant. “That was the curse,
in action, right before your eyes.”
“That’s not what I saw.” My mouth pops open, but before I can retort Lex interrupts. “I saw a water glass get knocked over—”
“Club soda.”
“Club soda, fine. It happens all the time and could have happened to anyone.”
I pull the sleeves of her jacket aside and flash her my purple panties through my translucent white pants. “This happens all the time, and to anyone?”
Lex reaches forward and pulls my hands back together, glancing right and left to make sure nobody saw.
“Trust me,” I say, “this happens to me all the time. And usually it’s worse—hospitalization worse, which you also witnessed.”
“Bad luck,” is all she says.
“Bad luck? Bad luck! Bad luck is missing your bus because you couldn’t find your shoes. Bad luck is your favourite deli place
running out of turkey and you have to eat ham even though you hate ham. Bad luck is the Canucks losing a game because Quinn Hughes ate some bad sushi and spent the game hugging the toilet.
What I have is a curse.”
“Sorry, but science is on my side with this one.” Lex crosses her arms. “And no matter how much you want to blame your circumstances
on some sort of external force rather than taking responsibility for your own actions, that doesn’t make it true.”
My mouth drops open, but I have no words. Her verbal slap in the face stings worse than if she’d physically struck me.
A white sedan parks beside me and the window rolls down. “Uber for Aubrey?”
“You know what?” I say, fumbling blindly for the handle while trying to maintain eye contact with Lex. “It doesn’t matter
what you think. You can choose to deny what you see happening right in front of your face all you want. I’m the one who has
to live with the damn thing, not you.” I climb into the car and shut the door harder than necessary. “Just go,” I tell the
driver. I can’t get away from that offensively skeptical woman and her piercing blue eyes fast enough.
As bad as the curse is, at least I’ll never have to see her again.