Chapter 2 Hazel
HAZEL
No one move!” I say, holding my arms out.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to remember where Wendy placed the first card. It’s too hard to know now that there are six cards on the table.
“It was that one, right?” I ask Wendy. “I remember Doc picking that one and you flipping it over there. Or was it Marty?” I lean closer to the birds. “Do you remember what fortunes you picked?”
“Fortunes?” Tie-Dye Guy asks, looking over at Wendy’s booth sign. “Tell me I did not just mess up your future.”
“There’s a very good chance you did.” I hate how panicked my voice sounds. I’m not freaking out over a fortune-telling reading, am I? It all becomes too overwhelming. I feel myself detach a little.
“Let’s look for little beak marks,” Tie-Dye Guy proposes.
The three of us scan along the sides of the cards, looking for evidence of having been freshly plucked.
According to Dad, bad things happen in fours. In Chinese culture, the number itself is considered unlucky. It sounds too much like “death.”
I think the same logic applies to mistakes.
Mistake #1 was not making myself indispensable at work.
I spent practically the entirety of my twenties at that place.
I was loyal. That’s rare these days. Was I the muscle behind their best reports?
Yes. Did I have the most historical context, having been at the company for nearly eight years?
Also, yes. But clearly, I was not essential enough to keep when my company merged with a bigger one.
Now I no longer have a job. The same job that not just supported me but also Dad and my brother. Plus, I liked being a data analyst. It suited me. And I worked hard for it.
It took my manager no more than a minute to sledgehammer the foundation of my life. It isn’t personal, he had said at the end of a full day of work. And he’s right. It isn’t. Because that would mean I’m more than just a cog in a machine, a line item on a spreadsheet.
Mistake #2 was coming to a fortune teller. How, exactly, was this supposed to make me feel better?
Which brings me to Mistake #3: running into Tie-Dye Guy. Or no. Him running into me.
“Again, I’m really sorry. Toffee wasn’t trying to hurt the birds,” he says once we find that, unfortunately, there are small indents on every card. “Toffee just—he has this stuffed toy that he loves… it’s a bird.” He grimaces. “I can see where this all went wrong.”
Wendy looks unamused by this.
The cards are a mess. A physical representation of my life, it seems. Money, a job, love, my future. It was all too much to hope for, clearly.
“Can we get the birds back out here? Do they have muscle memory or something?” I ask Wendy.
“The fortunes have been selected,” she says definitively.
I shake my head. “They picked two very specific cards for me before this guy and Coffee even got here.” I try very hard to suppress the fact that a black cat has crossed my path. I do not need any more bad luck today.
“His name is Toffee, and technically, he isn’t my cat,” Tie-Dye Guy says, like this might absolve him.
Toffee sniffs the air and lies down like this entire ordeal has exhausted him. Now that the damage has been done, he couldn’t care less about the birds.
I stretch my neck up to look at Tie-Dye Guy. It’s hard not to notice his height. He’s got to be at least a foot taller than my five foot three.
“You’re the one walking him,” I press, the edge in my voice sharper than necessary. I rub my temples. “That makes you responsible for this.”
“Well, yes,” he says guiltily. “Toffee’s muscle strength usually isn’t that… forceful. Or sudden. He requires his daily walk or else he gets grouchy and tired. He’ll keep Mrs. Walker up all night, so I need to maintain his routine.” He tilts his head. “Though the rain didn’t help.”
“You,” Wendy says, pointing from Tie-Dye Guy to the empty seat next to mine. “There.”
I turn to face him. “No there. No sitting.”
Tie-Dye Guy freezes in place, now half squatting over the chair.
“But she told me to,” he says.
My mouth drops open in silent protest until I can find the words. “But what if you get good fortunes and they were actually supposed to be mine?” I ask.
The man seems to consider this. “Or they could’ve been bad and I’m sparing you from an unlucky life.”
“Too late for that,” I mumble.
“What’s your name?” Wendy asks him.
“Logan,” he responds. “Logan Wells.”
Wendy nods curtly. “Good. Let’s finish this reading. Just ten dollars more for the extra three cards.”
Logan glances at the sign and pats himself down as he remains in his bent position. “I don’t carry cash.”
“What about the cat?” I ask dryly.
“I’m sure he’d be more than happy to share his catnip,” he says, opening his wallet. “Would you accept a MetroCard? Now that they’ve been phased out, one day they might be valuable.”
Wendy shakes her head. “Cash only.”
Logan looks at me for permission to sit. “I like to think that I could do this all night, but I helped a friend move earlier this week. Five-story walk-up. I don’t think I have much longer.”
“My birds did draw these cards for a reason,” Wendy says, putting the pressure on.
I steal a glance down at The Reason sitting contentedly next to Logan’s leg, which is where I look next. Even soaked, his jeans look soft and well worn, like they might be his favorite pair. They’re plastered against his thighs, accentuating his well-defined—and probably now burning—quad muscles.
I ignore the explosion of heat in my chest and nod to the chair. “Please. Stay a while. And you know what? My treat,” I say with forced pep. Paying it forward is supposed to help, right? Maybe this good deed will stop anything else bad that’s coming my way.
Or maybe I’m desperate to see what each of those cards says. But really, maybe it’s because today I want to be right about something: that my fortune isn’t so good. Not before, not now, and not in the future.
“But are you really prepared to know what your future holds?” I ask Logan.
He lets out a sigh of relief as he sits and smiles at me. A double parentheses brackets his mouth on both sides. It’s like his smile has caused a ripple effect across his cheeks. Every physical part of him screams man, but this? This feature of his is boyishly charming.
“It’s not how I saw this walk going, but why not?” Logan says. He even sounds… excited? “I’m open to seeing what happens.” Our eyes linger on each other’s for a beat too long. God, he really does have pretty eyes. “Only if it’s alright with you, though. Would you be okay doing this together?”
Together. This all started because of my bad decision. Now I’m in it with a perfect stranger.
I slide my last ten-dollar bill out of my wallet and reluctantly hand it over to Wendy. First candy and dim sum. Now fortune-telling. My budget is going to hate me.
“That’s really nice of you,” Logan says. “Thank you. I owe you.”
Wendy slips the bill into a soft pouch and points to the three cards. “Just like in life, we’ll have to work with what we’ve got. Those fell closest to you, Hazel. Let’s call them yours.” She gestures to me. “Please state your name and birthday, and ask your question again to Doc and Marty.”
“Like Back to the Future Doc and Marty?” Logan asks. “That’s clever.”
Wendy smiles, waving toward her setup. “How could I not?”
Is Logan… befriending the fortune teller? He’s definitely getting the good fortunes now.
I turn away from him. “I’m Hazel Yen,” I whisper to the birds.
Behind me, Logan laughs.
I give him a look over my shoulder, and his laughter subsides, a residual smile on his face.
He just sits there with his well-worn jeans and his bracketed mouth and looks at me.
Really looks at me. It’s not a face-off, but I treat it like one, and for the next couple of seconds, we’re just regarding each other.
And then I remember the situation we’re in.
Who cares if Logan’s hot, even in that eyesore of a tie-dye shirt? The man ruined—and then joined—my desperate attempt for answers. It does feel slightly reassuring, though, to know that I’m not the only one making mistakes today.
“What? You don’t want me to know your name and birthday?” Logan asks.
I furrow my eyebrows and glance away. “Of course I don’t. I don’t know you.”
My colleagues at work don’t—didn’t—even know my birthday.
Logan dips his head to meet my eyes. When he does this, it’s like he’s trying to show me that I’m all he’s focusing on. There’s nothing, and no one, else.
“Fine.” He runs his hands down his thighs, his forearms flexing. “But then you don’t get to know mine.”
There’s a charge in the air surrounding me and Logan.
I feel my body spin in his direction. “And here I was hoping to get you something nice,” I say.
A bigger smile stretches across Logan’s face. “Well, you missed my last thirty-one birthdays, so I wasn’t expecting much.”
Wendy clears her throat, and I startle. The last thing I want is a connection with another good-looking guy.
I’ve got the proof in the folder in my bag to see how that would end.
“As I was saying… ” I angle back toward the birds, lean in, and whisper, “I was born on October 13, 1996. What does my future look like?”
I sit back against the seat, my cheeks heating. I have no reason to be embarrassed. Knowing more about the future is the entire point of this. Still, I feel too exposed. Too impulsive.
An impulsive fortune-telling. An impulsive marriage. Why do I do this to myself when it all leads to nothing good?
“Great question,” Logan says, rubbing his hands together. Veins run like little streams along the back of them, trickling out toward his long fingers. His hands look strong, like he could carry heavy things all day long and not even be tired at the end of it. “I’m going to ask the same.”
I try to focus on what’s important here: the cards. My fortune. My future.
Wendy unfolds the first card and smooths it over the table. “We’ll begin with your past, then analyze your present and future,” she says.