Chapter 4 The Grumpy Men’s Club #2
“That you’re grounding her. Your presence—whatever it is about you—stabilizes her magic. It’s not romantic, necessarily. It might not be romantic at all. But it’s significant.”
Marcus looked at me. I looked at him.
“So I’m… what? A magical anxiety medication?”
“Think of it more like an anchor,” Margaret said. “Her magic is a storm. You’re the thing that keeps her from being swept away.”
“I didn’t sign up to be anyone’s anchor.”
“Neither did I,” Liam said from the kitchen doorway. “And yet here I am, renovating a magical house and making tea for supernatural emergencies.”
“Does it get easier?” Marcus asked.
“No. But the tea helps.”
Marcus turned to me, something shifting in his expression. Less angry now. More… resigned. Maybe even curious.
“So what happens now?”
“Now,” Margaret said, “you both figure out what this connection actually is. Whether it’s friendship, or something else, or simply magical necessity. The magic brought you together. What you do with that is up to you.”
Told you he had nice eyes, Tequila observed from his perch on my phone.
“Shut up,” I muttered.
“I didn’t say anything,” Marcus said.
“Not you. The cat.”
He looked at Tequila. Tequila looked back, unblinking.
“The orange one?”
“He has opinions.”
“About what?”
“Everything. He thinks you have nice eyes.”
Marcus blinked. Then, unexpectedly, laughed—a short, surprised sound, like he’d forgotten laughing was something he did.
“Tell him thanks. I grew them myself.”
I like him, Tequila said. He’s weird but he’s funny.
“High praise,” I told Marcus. “He doesn’t like anyone.”
That’s not true. I like the expensive wet food you keep forgetting to buy. I like the sunny spot on your bed. I like when you forget to close the bathroom door so I can judge your shower routine.
“He’s listing things he likes,” I reported. “None of them are people.”
“Sensible cat.”
SEE? He gets it.
Later, after Margaret had left with promises to research the anchor connection further, and Liam and Marcus had exchanged phone numbers like two men forming a trauma bond over tea, Cassie found me in the kitchen washing mugs that didn’t need washing.
“You’re stress-cleaning,” she observed.
“I’m productively tidying.”
“Same thing.” She leaned against the counter next to me. “So. Marcus.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m not saying anything.”
“You’re saying ‘Marcus’ in a tone that implies many things.”
“I’m saying ‘Marcus’ in a tone that implies I noticed how you looked at him when he laughed.”
I scrubbed a mug that was already clean. “He laughed at something Tequila said. It wasn’t a moment.”
“It was a little bit of a moment.”
“There are no moments. He’s grieving his dead wife and I’m drowning in magical romantic chaos. That’s not a foundation for moments.”
“And yet.” Cassie’s voice was gentle. “The magic chose him.”
“The magic is an idiot.”
“The magic is responding to something. Something you won’t admit to yourself.”
I set down the mug. Turned to face her.
“Cass. I can’t do this. I can’t start catching feelings for a man who explicitly, repeatedly, loudly does not want feelings. And even if I could—he doesn’t want this. He said so. Multiple times. In several different creative phrasings.”
“People say a lot of things.”
“He said he was done with love. He said he had his chance and it’s over. He said—”
“He also came here. When he could have ignored the notification. He stayed. When he could have left.” Cassie touched my arm. “Di. I’m not saying you have to fall in love with him. I’m saying maybe don’t close that door before you see what’s on the other side.”
My phone buzzed from the living room.
I went to check it, grateful for the interruption.
1,847 matches now. The number had been climbing steadily since Marcus left. But only one new notification made my stomach drop.
Todd Martinez.
Present-day photo. Not the nineteen-year-old version the app had pulled up before—the actual, current Todd. Fifty-one years old. Greyer than I remembered. Looking directly into the camera with an expression I recognized from five years of marriage.
The look he got when he’d decided something and was going to make it happen.
His message read: “Di. I know we ended badly. But I’ve been dreaming about you. Something’s pulling me back. Can we talk?”
“Oh no,” I whispered.
Cassie appeared at my shoulder. Read the message. Her expression went carefully neutral in a way that meant she was holding back approximately seventeen opinions.
“You don’t have to respond.”
“I know.”
“You don’t owe him anything.”
“I know.”
“He was terrible to you and the divorce was the best thing that ever happened and you’ve spent five years healing from his particular brand of emotional damage.”
“I know all of that.”
“And yet you’re still staring at the message.”
I was. I couldn’t stop.
Because part of me—a stupid, broken, still-not-healed part—remembered when Todd had looked at me like I was the answer to everything.
Before I’d learned that “everything” came with conditions.
Before “I love you” became “I love the you I thought you were” which became “you’re just not the woman I married anymore. ”
He’d been my big choice. The one time I’d stopped spinning and committed.
And it had been so catastrophically wrong that I’d spent five years making sure I’d never risk being that wrong again.
My phone buzzed again. Another message from Todd:
“I mean it, Di. Something’s changed. I can feel it. Whatever’s happening with you right now—I want to be part of it.”
He could feel it. The magic. Whatever signal I was broadcasting that pulled in every romantic possibility—Todd had felt it three states away.
Because of course he had. Because the universe had decided that my magical romantic crisis wasn’t complicated enough without adding my ex-husband to the mix.
“You should block him,” Cassie said quietly.
“Yeah.”
“Are you going to?”
I stared at the message. At all the complicated feelings it dragged up. At the part of me that still wondered if I’d given up too soon, tried hard enough, been enough.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I really don’t know.”
Marcus texted me at 11 PM.
I was lying in bed, phone in hand, having just deleted my fourth unsent reply to Todd. Tequila was curled against my hip, purring in a way that felt judgmental.
The radio’s stopped, Marcus’s message read. First time since this morning. It just… stopped.
I didn’t know what to say to that. So I typed the truth:
Maybe it’s tired.
Radios don’t get tired.
Magical radios might.
A pause. Then:
Fair point. Magical radios have their own rules, apparently.
I smiled at my phone, which was something I hadn’t done in response to a text in longer than I wanted to admit.
Thanks for coming today, I typed. I know it wasn’t what you wanted.
It wasn’t. But it helped. Understanding what’s happening, even if I hate it.
Do you still hate it?
Another pause. Longer this time.
I don’t know. Ask me tomorrow.
Same time?
If your magic requires my presence to stabilize, I suppose I should make myself available. For purely practical reasons.
Purely practical.
Entirely.
I was grinning now. Tequila opened one eye to judge me.
You’re texting the nice-eyes human.
“Go to sleep.”
You’re smiling at your phone like a teenager.
“I am not.”
You are. I can see you. I’m right here. My eyes work.
I locked my phone and shoved it under my pillow.
That doesn’t hide the smile, Tequila observed.
“Shut up and purr.”
He did. But the judgment remained.
And when I finally fell asleep, I dreamed about an antique shop full of humming objects, and a man with sad eyes who’d made me laugh, and the terrifying possibility that maybe—maybe—I wasn’t as done with hoping as I’d thought.