Chapter 41 Ivy
The tea steams with a sweet fragrance of lavender and rose, but there's a deeper note beneath it—one that calls to mind midnight gardens and old lessons on magic. Leave it to Grams to brew a blend that smells like bottled childhood.
I wrap my hands around the mug, letting its heat seep into my palms. My tears have dried, but the tight hollowness lingers as the whole story spills out of me—the wedding, the kiss, last night, this morning.
Every painful detail laid bare under the soft afternoon light filtering through her lace curtains.
Growing up with Grams meant conversations other kids definitely weren't having with their grandmothers.
Like when she explained the difference between "making love" and "fucking" when I was twelve, or when she rated my high school boyfriends based on their "sexual energy.
" Most people think she's too much—and she absolutely is—but when you're the weird kid who sees auras and talks to plants, having someone in your corner who's even weirder is everything
"Sometimes the universe gives us a little creative assistance. It might not be what we expect, but it's always what we need." She considers me carefully. "But there's more to this than his harsh words, isn't there?"
"He made it into a joke. Everything I believe in, everything I am."
"Hmm." She stirs her tea three times counterclockwise. "And how often have you let him treat your magic like it's just some quirky personality trait? Something to be tolerated instead of celebrated?"
"I didn't—"
"Oh please." She sets her cup down with a decisive clink.
"I've watched you water yourself down for years.
Making your spells sound like 'wellness routines' so every new guy wouldn't get uncomfortable.
Calling your rituals 'meditation' because heaven forbid someone think you're too," her fingers sketch air quotes, "weird. "
"I was trying to make things easier."
"For who?" Her brown eyes pin me in place. "Because from where I'm sitting, you've been dimming your own light so long, I'm surprised your aura hasn't gone completely beige."
"Beige isn't an aura color," I mutter into my tea.
"Exactly." She reaches for her herb basket, pulling out sprigs of rosemary. "You didn't just sleep with him. You collapsed into him, hoping he'd finally catch you. But boys like Caleb Miller? They're so busy running from their own shadows, they don't have hands free to hold anyone else up."
Something hot and painful lodges in my throat. "So what am I supposed to do? Just stop loving him?"
"Oh, Pixie." Her laugh is soft but knowing. "This isn't about halting a feeling. It's about beginning again, with yourself at the center. You've spent so long trying to love him into growing up that you forgot something crucial."
"What's that?"
"True magic isn't always about staying. Sometimes it's found in the strength to leave until someone's capable of meeting you where you truly stand.
" She reaches across the coffee table, wrapping her fingers around mine.
"And there are moments when the universe shatters what we've been clinging to.
Not out of cruelty, but to release us from the burden of mending something that was never meant to be whole. "
"I thought," my voice cracks. "If I loved him enough, if I was patient—"
"He'd magically wake up and choose you?" Grams snorts. "Ivy, that's not how it works. All it gets you is really good at pretending 'fine' doesn't taste like broken promises."
"But the signs—"
"Were telling you to wake up, not wait around." She points out. "Your cards have been screaming 'boundaries' for years."
"I thought if I never asked for more, he'd never leave."
"And how's that working out for you?"
"About as well as your crystal-infused kombucha business plan."
"Hey, that plan was genius. George just has no vision." She squeezes my hand. "But you know what the difference is between me and you right now?"
"Your questionable business ventures aren't emotionally devastating?"
"I know when to let go of something that isn't serving me anymore. You're not heartbroken. You're heart-exhausted."
"What's the difference?"
"Heartbreak is what happens when love ends. Heart exhaustion? That's what happens when you've been loving someone harder than they're willing to love themselves."
The words settle between us like truth often does. Heavy, but somehow lifting something else away. I part my lips to reply, but the sound of the squeaky door hinges stops me.
"Eliza?" George's voice carries from the entryway. "I brought those herbs you wanted, though I still maintain that dandelion belongs in yards, not tea." He stops short at the sight of us, his kind eyes taking in my tear-stained face. "Ah. Emergency counsel in session, I see."
My throat tightens at his presence. George has been like a grandfather since he and Grams found each other, always ready with quiet wisdom and hugs that make the world a little less fragile.
"Just in time, my love." Grams' whole energy shifts at his presence. "We're untangling matters of the heart."
I watch through blurry eyes as George carefully unwraps his botanical offering on her counter. The afternoon light catches his silver hair while he arranges the herbs with the same care he probably uses with his beloved first edition books.
"I see you're arranging crystals again," he notes, catching my eye with a wink. "Though perhaps what's needed isn't rose quartz and celestial timing, but something simpler."
"Simpler?" Grams scoffs. "With Saturn squaring her Venus? The universe is practically orchestrating a cosmic renovation of her heart."
I curl deeper into the chair. "Can we not talk about my heart as if I'm not even here?"
George crosses the room and folds me into a hug. He smells of old books and garden soil, and suddenly I'm crying all over his vest.
"There, there," he murmurs, patting my back. "Sometimes tears are the best medicine."
"You sound like one of your poets," Grams accuses.
"And you sound like that astrology podcast you pretend not to listen to at midnight."
"I'm researching!"
"Of course you are." He settles into what's become his chair over the years, despite having his own apartment down the hall. "Though I wonder if what Ivy needs right now isn't astronomical calculations or healing grids, but permission to simply feel."
"I've been feeling plenty," I mutter.
"Have you?" His green eyes find mine over his reading glasses. "Or have you been trying to make sense of something that isn't ready to make sense yet?"
"That's what I've been saying," Grams interjects. "Which is why with Venus entering—"
"Eliza." His voice carries years of loving exasperation. "Not everything needs immediate action. Sometimes the bravest thing we can do is sit with our uncertainty."
"Says the man who took two years to ask me to dinner."
"I was building anticipation."
"You were building an ulcer." But she's grinning, and the way they look at each other, like they're sharing some private joke that's still funny after all this time, makes my throat tight.
He leans forward, his voice softening. "You know, when I first met your grandmother, she terrified me."
"I did not!" Grams protests.
"The point is," he continues, eyes crinkling with amusement, "I spent so long trying to make sense of how someone like her could fit into my carefully ordered world that I almost missed the most important lesson."
"Which was?"
"That love doesn't have to make sense to be right." He reaches for Grams' hand, their fingers intertwining. "Sometimes the very things that seem impossible on paper are exactly what our hearts need."
"Even if those things make us question everything we thought we knew?"
"Especially then." His smile is gentle. "Though before you make any life-altering choices, perhaps you'd like to hear how your grandmother hijacked our literature hour last week to argue that Heathcliff's real tragedy was Mercury retrograde?"
"It was!" Grams insists. "That man had more blocked chakras than common sense."
And somehow, watching them bicker about cosmic influence on classic literature, the knot in my chest begins to loosen.