9. Chapter 9
nine
Noel
I drive to Kate’s twelve hours after leaving Fortune, half for an excuse to leave the cottage, and half because I need to talk this out.
I’m filled with anxious regret. Did I really agree to be friends with Jamie Bishop, the man who causes my brain to short circuit whenever he enters my personal bubble?
I suppose, looking back, the word burst from my mouth as a sort of shield. Friends. A line. A boundary in this seemingly boundless thing.
I have to admit he was also making a bit of sense at the time. I can’t control it, obviously, and I’m left with a lot of huge questions that I can’t really answer without him, but I still feel like I’ve unbuckled my seatbelt at the top of a rollercoaster.
Kate opens the door in yoga pants and fuzzy slippers, eyeing me with giddy suspicion the way I used to when she’d show up at Nana’s for breakfast in the same clothes I left her in downtown the night before.
“This is not a good thing.” I shove past her, waving to Colin over my head as I flop down on her couch. “I wasn’t even playing with the candle!”
“What did you see?” The only details I’ve provided so far was an all-caps text that said: “IT HAPPENED AGAIN.”
“It was me and him.” I lower my voice to confess this next part. “We were like, full on making out on Nana’s porch.”
Blood rushes my cheeks, and Kate barks a laugh. “You two are so horny in these things.”
“Will you please be serious?”
“I am being serious.” She sits across from me. “How many times does the universe have to tell you you’re destined to bang him before you just do it?”
“I don’t even know him!”
She shrugs. “Sure you do. He’s the guy you banged in a psychic vision.”
I shiver. “Oh my God.”
Colin comes shuffling in from the kitchen in a tee and flannel pajama pants, his blond hair flopped over his forehead. I’m hit with a brief flash of surprise at how domestic this is, like I blinked and missed their relationship shifting into permanence.
Kate’s still thinking out loud. “What if Jamie’s your soulmate? This could be your epic love story.”
“Wow. Straight from a vivid dream and some pretty dimples to soulmate?” I laugh but it comes out like I’m being held hostage.
My brilliant “dream” excuse has burst into flames, and now the visions have happened twice.
This thing is obviously real, but falling into bed with someone and falling in love with them are two different things.
“What Jamie wants has nothing to do with soulmates or epic love stories,” I tell Kate. Unfortunately he’s after something a little more complicated than making out with me.
“What’s that mean?”
“Apparently, he has a whole new business problem and I’ve shown up just in time to give him another psychic tip.”
Kate’s eyebrows arch upward, and I know what she’s thinking: Timing. Fate. All the magical things. Just like Nana would.
What I’m thinking is: Lunacy. Instability. How unhinged a person would have to be to make decisions this way. I’ve had enough of that kind of caution-to-the-wind approach to life. It has never suited me.
But then I remember how vivid the vision was last night. How the feeling I’ve been searching for reached all the way through the time-space continuum just to hit me in a place that’s been so empty for so long.
And it was terrifying.
I drop my chin to my chest and breathe through a swelling panic.
This is too much. I was willing to try this whole sabbatical idea to find some inspiration, to get unblocked, even if it meant putting myself back at Nana’s house.
But now I’ve been shoved hard by something Kate wants to call fate and I’m tumbling.
“This isn’t the baby step I was hoping to take, Kate. ”
Colin, who up until now has been silently taking this in while nursing his coffee, turns to me. “Why not?”
“Why not what?”
He pushes his glasses up his nose bridge. “Why isn’t this a baby step? I mean, if it’s… magic, it seems like a pretty safe bet.”
“In what world is playing with the supernatural the ‘safe’ choice, Colin?”
“Come on, anyone who’s seen a movie with a time loop or a magic fountain knows these things always have a lesson. And if this guy is really your destiny, or whatever, then that means you’re his too. Why would it want to hurt either of you?”
I scrunch my nose. “You’re comparing my actual life to a movie starring Jason Bateman?”
He grins. “Couldn’t find a Scientific Journal article on this one.” When I don’t laugh, he leans forward and squeezes my knee. “What I’m saying is, if you decide to take a leap for once, Noel, all signs point to the universe catching you.”
I let that settle in—this theory, or gamble, really, and the fact that it’s coming from Colin. What might that look like? Magic intervening to teach me something.
Magic I learned from Nana.
I rub at my chest where it suddenly feels tight. “You think this is for my own good?”
“Just… maybe don’t assume it’s not.”
I tip my head to the painted tin ceiling in Kate’s apartment until the tears I feel coming dry. “Are doctors even allowed to believe in magic?”
“All science was magic until we understood it.”
God, I can’t decide which part is more outlandish: that I’m actually seeing the future or that these visions are trying to help me.
I lean back into the couch cushions, blowing out a gust of air. “I feel like it should take more than a five second hallucination to go down this whole soulmate road.”
“Two,” Colin says around his coffee mug.
I raise an eyebrow.
“Two five-second hallucinations.”
Kate grins evilly. “Both horny.”
By the time I leave Kate’s, I need to walk. Think. Downtown is just stretching its arms to the morning. Late-season tourists exit their hotels with sunglasses and maps, shop owners are putting out their folding signs. I take a left on a whim, heading away from my car and down toward the waterfront.
Kate has always been as true a friend as anyone could wish for, but she’s made of fire and brimstone, and she doesn’t know any other kind of love than tough.
She’s been bulldozing my safety walls for two decades, and I’ve built up a sort of tolerance to it.
But Colin is gentle and rational with the exceedingly calm bedside manner of someone used to dealing with traumatic wounds, and he chose a language that spoke directly to my nervous heart.
The potential built-in guarantee of it all.
It’s like what Jamie said about the universe not pointing him in the wrong direction with his business. It kind of felt like I couldn’t lose.
So maybe I can apply some of that logic to my own situation. Maybe the universe is giving me an assist here. Or maybe I am losing my goddamn mind. I suppose I owe it to myself to decipher which one it is.
I’ve been round and round this in my head with no great breakthrough, and I’ve also tapped my advice from the gallery. There’s one other person who has a vested interest in figuring this out. The only one who can actually help me sort through any of it.
We’ll figure it out together . That’s what he said.
I pull out my phone and stare at the number Jamie gave me last night. Then I bite my lip and type. Here goes nothing .
Noel: Do you have plans today?