Chapter 16 Nostradamus was a Pharmacist
NOSTRADAMUS WAS A PHARMACIST
An entire day had passed since the bench ceremony. But Sasha was still shocked by her behavior. How could she kiss Wes like that, in front of his mother, sister, and Sweet Willy Watson? She’d written and deleted about fifteen texts to Wes. She called him once but chickened out before he answered.
It killed her that Wes thought she was pitying him. She wasn’t. She didn’t kiss him because she felt sorry for him. She did it because she felt an allegiance with him. And, in that moment, when he was being so maligned, she wanted him to feel it.
It was deeper than that, though. Sasha was just drawn to him. But she had no idea how to explain a feeling she couldn’t name.
It was late, but she didn’t want another day to pass before she explained all this to him. And she wanted to do it in person. This was a bold proposition—but no bolder than kissing him in the middle of his dead dad’s celebration.
But before she could call him, he called her.
“Wes! Hi!”
“Hey. I have something important to tell you. But I can’t do it over the phone. Can we meet for coffee in the morning?”
“Why wait? Want to come over?”
“To your place?” Silence. “You mean, right now?”
Maybe it wasn’t a great idea. Had she overstepped? After the call and that kiss, she couldn’t trust her instincts when it came to Wes.
“Well . . . I mean, I’m wired, I’m not going to sleep anytime soon. Might as well.”
The answer was a fervent yes. Sasha told him her address. And then, slowly, she lowered the phone to her side. Stunned. Because that’s when it hit her. She’d never had a man, alone, in this apartment.
Shortly after her stalker incident, Sasha moved apartments and never looked back.
The only other person who’d visited her new apartment was Destiny.
No men. And this was intentional. Home is the place you should feel the safest. Protected from the world, shielded.
When your safe place has been invaded—and with such ease—the natural response was to barricade yourself.
Make your home truly impenetrable. It started by moving to the seventeenth floor of a doorman building.
It ended in not inviting anyone into your home.
Sasha forgot what it was like to have anyone else in her home.
She stood in place, staring at the mirror above her couch.
She was wearing baggy sweat shorts, a men’s tank top, and her hair swept back in a white bandana.
She looked like a backup dancer for Aaliyah.
Her first impulse was to rip off the bandana, flat-iron the creases in her bob, and change into something less Y2K.
But why? This was her home. This was what Sasha was wearing in her home.
By the same token, there was sawdust, loose wires, and power tools strewn about her kitchen—but that’s because she’d been rewiring her lights for the past three weeks.
Was she supposed to hurriedly tidy that up, too?
She was tired of putting on a front to please everyone.
It was exhausting, trying to control the way people saw her.
I’m glamorous, I’m smart, I’m pulled together.
To what end? Her whole life, she’d been polished like a gem—as if a flawless image translated into a well-edited, well-lived, precious existence protected from the evils of the world.
It didn’t guarantee anything but great selfies.
Sasha didn’t feel like putting on a presentable outfit or sprucing up her kitchen. So she didn’t. And the relief was exhilarating. It was a breakthrough moment in a season full of them. Slowly, Sasha’s chains were loosening.
A year ago, she only left her home for a few work lunches a month.
This week, she’d left the confines of her apartment almost every day.
Even if for a moment—even if just to grab a cupcake.
And tonight, an actual flesh-and-blood man was coming over, but it was okay.
He wasn’t the stalker. He was Wes, who saved her.
Wes, who she trusted. It was fine. She was fine.
Sasha opened her eyes. She breathed in, held it for thirty seconds, and breathed out. Gingerly, she walked over to her couch and sat down. She placed her hands on her lap and waited.
About thirty minutes later, the buzzer jolted her out of her seat.
She hopped up and pressed the buzzer by her door.
Before she knew it, she heard the knock.
Quickly, she checked her reflection in the mirror again.
She stood up a little taller, patted her bandana, and stepped back, opening her door.
And there he stood. Wes . . . the thirty-two-year-old college student? Why was he wearing so much NYU merch? Didn’t he go to Hampton?
“I would’ve met you on campus, you know,” she joked.
“It’s a disguise. Long story.” He leaned against her doorframe and swiveled his cap to the back. NYU LAW was embroidered above the snap. “I can pull off sleep-deprived postgraduate student, though, right?”
“You do. It’s kind of disturbing.”
Wes cocked his chin in her direction, a teasing glint in his eye. “How was your visit to 106 Sasha perched, somewhat stiffly, on a side chair—she struggled to wrap her brain around this fact.
It felt like he’d been all over her home.
While on the phone, Sasha had spoken to him from her bed, the bathtub, the kitchen island.
But now, he was here in the flesh, peering around her space with barely masked wonder—like he was peeking into one of those dioramas from fifth-grade science class.
Seat F was the reason Wes was back in her life. Seat F should’ve been top of mind when she saw Wes. But, oh, he wasn’t. Not when Wes showed up at 11:00 p.m., looking like someone’s too-fine boyfriend they should never allow out of the house.
Right now, he was studying a few books he’d brought over from her bookcase. Caribemotion: Living the Dominican Republic, Being La Dominicana: Race and Identity in the Visual Culture of Santo Domingo.
“This cover is beautiful,” he said, lightly running his fingers along the vibrant typography of The Classics Collection: Santo Domingo.
“I love that coffee-table book. It’s one of my favorites.”
“Why not display it?”
“I don’t know, it feels performative. I’m not from DR. And my Spanish is so embarrassing. I don’t want anyone to think I’m claiming a culture I haven’t experienced.” She laughed a little. “Not that anyone ever comes here.”
“I get it. Though, as someone who is here,” he said, raising his brows pointedly, “I don’t think you look performative. You’re proud of your heritage. It adds another layer to you.”
“Thank you,” she said shyly. Which was odd. She never felt shy in Wes’s presence.
“Sounds like you need to book a trip, soon.”
“Maybe,” she said, taking the book back from him.
“Your apartment is so perfect.” His eyes scanned her living room, in obvious awe. “It looks like a movie set.”
“I’m a bit of a perfectionist. In my first rental, I bought coasters to be fancy. I was eating dinner on a cardboard box, but my glass had a coaster.”
Subtly, Sasha inhaled the scent of the Coastal Cypress candle burning on the coffee table.
She couldn’t allow herself to forget why she reconnected with Wes in the first place.
He was here to find her fated flight boyfriend.
The man who was also, simultaneously, searching for her, too.
But her exchange with Seat F was starting to feel like a dream.
Hazy and sweet, but slipping away, just out of reach.
Sasha needed to see him. She needed to touch him, to ensure that he was real.
If Wes didn’t find Seat F soon, she couldn’t be held responsible for her actions.
“Your friend messaged me,” he was telling her, while munching on a pretzel stick. Neither of them had a real appetite that late, so Sasha had grabbed a bag of pretzels and two cans of Pellegrino from the pantry.
“What friend?” It popped out of her mouth before she remembered that she only had one. “Destiny?”
“Destiny, yeah. She wants to add me to her dating database.” He chuckled a little at this, shaking his head. “I never considered a matchmaker, but maybe I need one.”
“I’m so mad at that girl. I’m sorry, I told her not to do that.”
“Why? Don’t gatekeep her services.”
“I just don’t think you need a matchmaker. You don’t strike me as someone struggling to find a woman.”
“Well . . .” He paused, thinking it over. “No, I can’t say that I’ve struggled. But I’ve never met the right woman. The one.”
“But you’re also not looking. Didn’t you tell me you’re not into relationships right now?” Sasha asked this in the most nonchalant way possible, as if she hadn’t committed his statement to memory.
“I’m not aggressively looking. But the door is cracked.
” Wes chose his words carefully. “I mean, isn’t everyone?
I don’t want to spend Sunday nights alone.
I want to have a best friend who I’m desperate to fuck and feed and take care of and travel with and spend the rest of my life learning. I’d be lucky to find it.”