Chapter Twenty-Two Nora
Chapter Twenty-Two
Nora
Love bleeds life on all it touches. Revenge is a poison that withers the weeds and spares not the flowers.
—Rules for Witches
Sam had left quickly after the play the night before, and Nora felt weird about the whole night.
She wished she hadn’t taken the picture.
That she hadn’t used him to be petty. It wasn’t fair to him.
She just hadn’t been . . . She’d been thinking about the way Soraya’s husband had gotten some comeuppance.
The way that Daisy would be able to pop up in Jonathan’s face one of these days bragging about how she was banging Zach, and Nora felt like she had nothing.
But she had a weird feeling that she’d hurt Sam, and she really didn’t like that.
“What’s wrong?” Soraya asked when they were midway through their shift, Nora hanging out over the counter of the coffee nook, Madison and Soraya working diligently in their little space.
“I’m a bad friend,” Nora wailed.
“No, you aren’t.” Soraya was gentle but firm.
How far they’d come.
“Why?” Madison asked.
“It’s a long story. Actually, it’s a really short story. My husband is in Chile, and he’s cheating on me.”
“Ouch.” Madison winced.
“He doesn’t know that I know, because I’m waiting to confront him in person. If I do it on the phone, he can just block my number. Or hang up on me. I don’t want him to be able to get away with that. But . . . I have a friend, who is a man . . .”
“Oh,” said Soraya, clearly picking up on where Nora was going.
“I took a picture with him last night and sent it to my husband, because I knew it would get under his skin. Because he has a little bit of an issue with Sam.”
“Why?” Madison asked.
“Because he’s a man and I’m a woman.”
“Yeah,” she said.
“I mean, that’s how I feel, Madison,” said Nora. “He and I have been platonic friends since we were kids.”
The words felt dishonest on her tongue, and she couldn’t say why. Maybe because when she had touched his hand last night, she had felt something more. Something different. Maybe because the fact she knew she could use him the way she had to get at Ben spoke to something she wasn’t ready to admit.
“Your husband sounds like a throwback. In a bad way.”
“Agreed.”
“Did Sam say he was mad at you?” Soraya asked.
“No. But I feel like garbage.”
“Don’t worry about it!” Daisy shouted from across the room.
“Eavesdropping,” Nora shot back.
“You talk loud. Anyway, I’m sure he understands. You’re in a weird place.”
“Yes. But that isn’t an excuse to be petty at the expense of my best friend.”
“I’d let you do it with me.” Daisy’s offer was both sincere and unhelpful.
“Thank you, Daisy. Somehow, I don’t think that would have the same effect on him.”
“I don’t really understand these men. Why not ask for an open relationship?” Madison sounded sincerely dumbfounded.
“Because I don’t think they want polyamory. I think they want to inflate their egos.”
“Ethical nonmonogamy seems like the better choice to me,” Madison said.
Of course it did. Because she was in her twenties and had lived the sort of privileged life where she was only just now beginning to see the complications that existed in being human.
“I don’t think that would be for me.” Soraya took muffins out of a tin she had brought down from her apartment and put them into the display case.
“How do you know if you don’t try it?” Madison asked.
“Well, you can’t just . . . you can’t just try something like that?”
She shrugged. “Why not? How do you know what you like if you don’t try it? If you don’t like it, then it’s just a mistake.”
“Just a mistake?” Soraya laughed. “There is no such thing as just a mistake.”
“Oh no, there definitely is.” Madison tapped her fingers on a mug just before she put it up on the shelf. “I can list mine if you want, but it’s long. And I don’t know all their names.”
Of course, Soraya wouldn’t feel that way. Because for her, it was all heaven or hell.
Nora would’ve said she saw things in a totally different way.
But it hit her right then that she didn’t.
Everything felt like high stakes to her because when she’d been a child, doing the wrong thing could get her thrown out of her mother’s house.
Out of any of the houses she’d lived in.
It could cost her safety and survival. She had internalized that.
Doing the wrong thing could have very real consequences, and nothing about the current situation made her feel differently.
Sam was another person she could never make a mistake with, and she was very worried that last night she had.
They closed the store for the night, and Daisy had to leave quickly to get her kids, while Soraya seemed antsy to get up to her apartment. Nora said goodbye to Madison, which left only herself and Aggie, who had been in and out all day seeing to various errands.
“Can I trouble you with some help getting these herb bundles down, Nora?”
Nora looked up at all the herbs hanging above the counter, drying so they could be made into teas and tinctures and spells. “Of course.”
She hoisted herself up onto the counter.
“I do have a ladder,” Aggie said.
“Oh, I don’t need that.”
Aggie’s laughter was deep and loud. “Oh, Nora, you like to take the difficult path.”
Nora made a scoffing sound as she reached up and freed a bundle of rosemary. “Or the difficult path likes to choose me.” She tucked the bundle under her arm as she moved to the next.
“When there is a ladder and you choose to climb onto the counter, I think it can be argued you chose the difficulty, my dear.”
“Metaphorically, though.” Nora snagged a bundle of lavender.
“Yes,” Aggie said, without elaborating.
Nora frowned as she moved on to the wormwood.
“Do you know what wormwood is used for?” Aggie asked.
“I wouldn’t even know what it was if you hadn’t told me the day you put it up.”
“It’s for breaking hexes and banishing evil.
There are certain challenges that come to us, and we have no control over them.
There are certain painful events visited on us that we can only try to ward off.
One thing I love about herbal magic is it’s active.
You have to touch the herbs, choose them, smell them.
You have to touch your magic. You have to claim it. ”
Nora took the rest of the herbs down and refused to admit that squatting back down on the counter to try to lower herself to the floor with full hands was in fact the harder path.
She spread the bundles out in front of Aggie, who smiled at her and picked up a small satchel.
“What was that love spell of yours, Nora? ‘I have the love I deserve’?” She picked some leaves from one of the bundles.
“Mint. For cleansing. Cinnamon for luck and prosperity.” She added a stick of cinnamon to the bag.
“Basil, which many use for wealth, but what is love but the most precious thing beyond price?” She pulled petals off a dried pink rose.
“Roses for romance.” She reached into a bin beneath the counter and took out a small pink-and-gray stone.
“Rhodochrosite. It’s for self-love. Because all great loves start from within.
” She pushed the bag to Nora. “You have to choose each ingredient. Just like you have to choose to have anything you seek.”
There was a lump in Nora’s throat she couldn’t explain.
One of the side effects of not having her mom, her grandma, in her life was she’d never been able to benefit from the wisdom of women who were older than her.
Who cared about her and wanted her to succeed.
Even though she was being lectured and Nora hated to be told what to do, she hadn’t realized how much she might want to be told what to do like this.
This was the kind of vulnerability she usually wanted to run from.
Instead, she took the bag and put it in her purse. “Thank you.”
“You don’t have to take the hardest road.” Aggie reached out and squeezed Nora’s hand. “Good night, my dear.”
Nora sucked in a sharp breath. “Good night.”
She turned away, the spell in her purse, and paused when her phone buzzed.
Do you want to come to my place and watch the Thursday night game, and eat chicken wings?
Sam.
The relief she felt that he wasn’t angry. That he wanted to see her.
Yes.
They didn’t usually hang out at his house; they normally chose neutral ground somewhere.
She wanted to see Sam because she wanted to feel connected to somebody. She had just been thinking about how high stakes every single relationship in her life felt. And it felt . . . affirming but also frightening to go and be with him now.
She was going anyway. When she pulled up to the house, she viciously banished any reservations that she had, because it was Sam who she had known her entire life.
But the scary thing was, she had become a version of herself she didn’t know at all. But that was a problem for another time. She just needed her friend. Her stability. Her comfort.
“That was quick.” He grinned at her. “You must be hungry.”
A heavy weight shifted in her chest, like a well was uncovered inside her.
He was so familiar, and yet in that moment, he also felt like something new. Or maybe it was that she was looking at him in a way she had never truly let herself do before.
Every time she had started down that path, she had put a stop to it. Because certain traumas were survivable. Like losing her mom, losing her grandma, even losing Ben felt surmountable. But life didn’t feel particularly possible without Sam.
Sam was her prized possession. Once she had realized how much he mattered, she had put him in a glass case, trying to preserve their feelings for each other in that exact same place.
That safe spot. So they would never wear out or get tired.
So that they would never become something unmanageable. So that they would never change.
He was a collectible. She wanted him, their relationship, to stay in this mint condition forever.
But the longing inside her didn’t allow for that.