33. Chapter 33
thirty-three
Noel
T he breakdown comes in the car on the way home. Tears that seem like they’re being pumped from a never-ending well. I bat at them intermittently as I replay the moment when the surest thing in my life spiraled out of control.
As I cross the bridge out of town, I file back through every reading Nana ever gave me or Kate for a sign that I’ve missed a vital step in being able to interpret them.
But there’s no rhyme or reason. Some came true, sure, but they were never as concrete and life changing as Jamie.
Nothing that was enough to make a believer out of me.
Not until him. So why throw this wrench in now?
Why did this thing put on such a spectacular show just to convince me to follow it, only to pull the rug out after I got attached?
I huff a watery laugh at my windshield. Attached sounds so trite. So shallow. Attached was the crush I allowed myself to have on Jamie in the beginning, before I tumbled into this deep, cavernous love. Now I’m attached to him in the way my limbs are attached to my body.
This wasn’t the deal. Sure, I ignored some things, but I followed the signs I understood.
I did what I thought I was supposed to do, and now the entire thing has been reframed.
The visions may or may not be fatally flawed, and I may have altered more than one future on the advice of a hallucination.
My heart trotted after this idea that he was somehow promised to me, chasing after fate like a puppy into traffic.
But the heart, big dumb muscle that it is, doesn’t have eyes or ears or any other faculties to allow it to sense danger.
The heart just wants to feel and feel, until it’s finally felt the cut that stops it.
This feels like that cut. I took a man who believed in magic and love, who taught me to believe, and proved him wrong.
The sun set at the beach around five, but even in the dark, Kate finds me easily.
I guess Jamie’s little mischief spot wasn’t as desolate as I thought that night.
It’s a good thing because when I drove here—maybe hoping to lick my wounds, maybe secretly hoping to find him here doing the same—I didn’t think about how I was going to get home.
Given the amount of wine I’ve already drank, it won’t be in my car.
Kate pulls her coat tight around her as she hurries across the sand toward me. Beyond her, I see Colin in the parking lot, standing in a long coat and scarf, leaning on his car.
“I feel like maybe you downplayed the emergency of this situation,” she says, taking in the vignette of heartache I’ve made on this sand. “What are you doing?”
“I’m drinking wine on the beach,” I say.
I reach for my phone, which is playing Patsy Cline’s “Walking After Midnight” at an unreasonable volume, and hold it up as if Kate wasn’t already made aware of that part when she pulled up.
Luckily, it’s freezing out here, so there’s no one to be disturbed by the soundtrack to my patheticness.
Kate steps to the edge of the blanket I brought. She’s looking at me like I’m a wounded animal she’s stumbled upon. It’s not that far off.
“I think Jamie and I broke up.”
“ What ? No. No. No,” she says, plopping down in the sand beside me. “What happened?”
“We had a fight. I think it was a big one.”
“About what?”
I tell her about what Becca said, how it threw everything into a tailspin.
“He asked me to try it again, to read him. How can he ask me for that? How can he trust any of it anymore? I almost did it before I smartened up, Kate! God, it’s like I just follow him anywhere he leads.
I get stupid around him. Since that very first night. ”
“Welcome to love, babe.” When I don’t laugh, she sighs and leans back on her hands. “It’s not stupid to trust him, Noel. He obviously trusts you.”
“Well, that’s a mistake. Look what I’ve done so far.
I told him lies about his girlfriend and charted his whole life on a different course.
” And then I took him for myself. A fist squeezes my heart.
I thought he was mine and I swan dived into him, thinking he was destined to catch me.
Instead I took him down with me. And Becca.
“It wasn’t a lie,” Kate says. “And it led him to you. I’d say that’s a pretty good course.”
“But I stole him.”
“No way, Noel. I mean, you didn’t see or speak to him for two years! I practically had to force you to go on your first date with him.”
“It wasn’t a date.” I sniffle.
“See? You wouldn’t even go on a date with him.” She grabs my hand. “I know this feels like a huge deal, babe, and I totally don’t blame you for needing to talk it out but think about it. Jamie’s a good guy, right? Sweet, successful, handsome. A catch, some might say?”
I nod, lip between my teeth.
“So Becca screwed up. She’s mad at herself, and she took it out on you. It’s human nature, Noel. We want to blame other people for our biggest mistakes. If Jamie wanted to give her another chance, he had plenty of time.”
Which is half the problem. He wasted that time believing in magic.
Just like me, he thought he knew the ending.
He thought he was making the right choice because I told him he was.
But it turns out it was a roulette game from the start.
Maybe the visions come true, maybe they don’t.
Maybe he’s mine, maybe he isn’t. What’s the damn point in any of it?
“He said it didn’t matter—the differences—and I know I told myself the same weeks ago, but that was when it was small stuff. This is huge. Saying it doesn’t matter is crazy.”
“Maybe it doesn’t matter to him.” She shifts onto her knees and pushes my hair off of my face. “Jamie’s not a pawn in your vision, Noel. Have you considered that maybe he’s seen enough, even without the supernatural assistance, and he knows what he wants?”
Oh, I’ve considered it. That’s always been the difference between me and Jamie.
He jumps with his eyes closed and his fingers crossed.
But I’m not like him. I’ve never been like him, and isn’t the way it’s all blowing up now proof that living like that only gets you hurt?
This morning, he looked at me like I crushed his heart in my fist because that’s what love does.
It always leaves you worse than you found it.
I thought I had a way around it, I thought this magic wouldn’t hurt us, but I was so wrong.
“Maybe all this wanting is the craziest of all of it,” I say miserably.
I fall flat on my back and at the same moment, the music stops.
Turning my head with some effort, I see the battery in my phone is dead.
Tragic. “You didn’t see his face, Kate. I’m not sure he knows what he wants anymore anyway.
Somewhere along the way, I changed our destiny, or I misunderstood it, because this hurts too much to be the plan all along. ”
Kate scoots backward to avoid the splash of the creeping tide, closing in on my blanket. “Well… if you think you changed it, Noel. Change it back.”
Another piece of my heart wilts at her advice. If there’s one thing that’s proven true so far, it’s that I can’t control this. That’s what makes it so dangerous.
Colin drives me home because he’s as good of a soul as they come.
Head pressed against the glass of the back seat window, my thoughts narrow from the infinite implications of the universe toying with me to the persistent ache inside of my chest that’s been building since this morning.
I miss Jamie so much. My favorite person.
My best friend. All of the colors that have filled in over the last few months are gray again.
Part of me wants to ask Colin to bring me to Fortune, but I’m a mess, and a little drunk, and I think maybe seeing me would just confuse him tonight when he needs to focus on work. I should probably take Wes’s advice and stay far away from any of his business endeavors from now on.
The car swings into the gravel driveway, and the headlights splash on a vehicle parked in the driveway. For one hopeful beat, my droopy heart sits up inside my chest, thinking it could be Jamie, even though I know he’d be cutting it too close coming here before the launch.
It’s not a little gray sports car or a truck with Fortune’s logo painted on the side, anyway. It’s a car I don’t recognize with Pennsylvania plates, which means it’s either a rental or a complete stranger.
Kate turns over her shoulder with her eyebrows raised, and I shake my head.
Colin wordlessly cuts the engine. All three of us pile out of his car just as the front door to the cottage opens, and there, standing on my doorstep, is the most timely reminder of how strong the force of chaos is in this world. My mother’s here.
Mom steps out onto the porch holding a squirming Pixie in one arm, waving wildly with the other. I’d forgotten she had a key, not that I expected her back today anyway. I wonder if she went to Connecticut first. If she saw the For Sale sign.
Oh, God. It’s not just Jamie. There’s an army of consequences lining up for me to face. More chickens coming home to roost. I’d made that decision knowing full well Mom would show up eventually asking for her room back. And she’d be out of luck because I wouldn’t be able to bail her out.
Well, here she is. And here I am, without any of the assurance I pictured myself having when I broke the news to her: Your steadfast daughter has been wildly reckless, Mom .
“Elena.” Kate pastes on a smile to greet my mother, but her hand clutches the back of my coat protectively. I manage to wipe at my eyes and attempt to huff enough salt air to get rid of my leftover sniffles before Mom comes trotting down the steps to throw her free arm around me.
“Surprise!” she says, rocking me back and forth on the gravel driveway.
I free Pixie from her arms, snuggling her to my chest, and poke my head around Mom’s shoulder.
“Is Dennis with you?” I ask, trying to sound completely at ease with the idea of a strange man following my mother here to be my new roommate too.
Kate and Colin exchange a look that I read as we’re not leaving if he is .
“Oh,” Mom says. “Well, no. That didn’t work out.” She waves a hand at her hair and I realize with a start that it’s about ten shades lighter than when she left. “Break up blonde,” she explains, and I notice a wobble in her chin.
“Are you okay?”
“No, honey.” She touches my cheek in one of those quick maternal gestures that slips in every once in a while. “But you always know how to fix me up.”
“Well, let’s go inside,” I say, slipping my hand into hers. “It’s cold.” And just like the tide overtaking the patch of sand I was trying to wallow on, my mother’s problems wash over mine.