Meri pressed her fingers to her mouth, whispering, “Oh my god, I want her to adopt me.”
“Serious question,” I said as Aunt Luisa jumped into the couple’s rising signs, “do you think she’d study my star chart?”
“Keep the gin flowing and she’ll be your fairy godmother.”
“Too mainstream. I’m guessing sambuca or—” My gaze settled on the best man as he turned his back, a fist pressed to his lips as his shoulders heaved. “Please tell me he’s not going to vomit.”
“As if we needed more proof that grooms shouldn’t give flasks of whiskey as gifts to their guys,” Meri said under her breath. “Let’s pray he excuses himself instead of interrupting this precious woman’s astrological analysis. I need to hear this. Or climb into her pocket and stay there forever, either one.”
He steadied himself on the shoulder of the groomsman beside him and returned his attention to Aunt Luisa. He pulled a sober expression and clasped his hands in front of him like nothing had happened.
“As a slow and sensual Taurus, Mason always knows what he wants,” Aunt Luisa continued. “Where we see Florrie’s sun sextiling his Venus, it’s clear she shares his desires. They have a deep, luscious well of sexual compatibility that will hydrate them for years to come.”
“Did you hear that?” Meri asked, leaning into my shoulder. “The well is deep andluscious.”
“It doesn’t matter how deep it is if it isn’t luscious,” I murmured. “And hydrating.”
“Florrie’s Pisces energy brings dreamy magic and passionate emotion to this union,” Aunt Luisa went on. “There will be fireworks, especially where her Venus trines his Chiron, but the key is to express your love without inhibition. Be unafraid tostand before each other, stripped of material goods and mindset blocks, and speak the honest words of love.”
The best man snorted. I was certain it was a snort because I was guilty of making the exact sound in the most inappropriate moments and I knew it couldn’t be explained away as a cough or a hiccup or anything less offensive than a laugh birthed from my nose.
“What’s going on with that one?” Meri asked.
“I don’t think,” I started, blinking in disbelief as he violently rolled his eyes when Aunt Luisa moved on to Florrie’s sun opposing Mason’s Uranus, “he’s a believer.”
He clapped a hand over his mouth and pounded a fist against his chest like he had a tickle in his throat, but I knew better. The other six hundred people here knew it too.
“Sorry.” He pointed at the ponderosas when Luisa glanced in his direction. “Allergies. So sorry. Please continue.”
“This might be a first,” Meri said.
I hummed in agreement and turned my attention back to Aunt Luisa, but the second she said the words “a quincunx of Florrie’s Mars and Mason’s Neptune,” my eyes were on the best man. He had an arm banded around his torso and a hand over his mouth like that level of physical restraint was necessary to keep him from dissolving into a fit of giggles.
“When I finished reviewing Florrie and Mason’s charts, I decided to pull three tarot cards for them.” She held up one card, saying, “The first card that presented itself to me was The Five of Pentacles.” She wagged it at the happy couple. “Pay attention to each other. Don’t let things slip through the cracks. Next, The Ten of Coins. This tells me you’re going in the right direction, but the path won’t be a straight one. Focus on this day and the road ahead of you. Don’t fixate on the end.”
Aunt Luisa shuffled through her pages and cards for a moment and I found myself swinging a glance between her andthe best man. He swayed from side to side, though it was slight. I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been observing him closely—and if all the other guys weren’t standing ramrod like this was some kind of military presentation.
“The cards have a way of sneaking up and surprising me, and this final card did exactly that,” Aunt Luisa said. “I had to sit with this card for a long time to understand what it was saying to me.”
Despite the best man’s efforts at containing himself, a loud, infectious laugh barked out of him and a low rumble of amusement worked its way through the guests. The groomsman beside him dropped both hands to his mountain range shoulders and gave him a hard shake. It was the kind of bro-ish gesture that looked friendly enough and probably hurt like hell.
To her credit, Aunt Luisa didn’t seem to give a fuck. Ilovedher. “The Five of Swords usually speaks of conflict and defeat. It speaks of loss, failure, walking away. But I don’t think that’s what it’s saying to Mason and Florrie. I think it’s telling them to surrender their need for control on this altar and embrace the wild, unpredictable path ahead. Don’t get lost in the maps you’ve drawn for yourselves. Don’t cling so hard to your idea of the path that you wring the life out of it—and each other.”
“Well,” Meri said, “that took a spicy turn.”
“There are many ways to read the stars and cards. But the way I see it,” Aunt Luisa said, “there will be obstacles and challenges aplenty, but their bond is strong and their passion burns white-hot. Florrie and Mason are uniquely aligned for a union of love and good fortune.”
I rolled my eyes at the last part.
I adored weddings. I wanted to soak in all the weird, wonderful bits of tradition and custom that came along with them until my fingers were pruned and pale. But there was always a moment when the soapy, iridescent glee of it all burst, and reality—the ugly truth of it all—wedged itself betweenmy ribs until I couldn’t breathe without acknowledging that love wasn’t real. Not the stars-aligned, now-and-forever, soul-recognition kind of love that we tried to glimpse at weddings.
Even if romantic love did exist, it didn’t last. No one could convince me otherwise.
I tucked my hair over my ear and forced a neutral expression as I returned my gaze to the altar only to find the best man staring at me.
Of course he wasn’t looking atme. There were literally hundreds of people here. He was probably looking at any of the fifty people in my general vicinity. Since I enjoyed being right and liked to prove my own points, I hooked a glance over my shoulder as subtly as I could manage. The gentleman behind me was holding his phone sideways and watching something on the screen. Two other men nearby leaned forward to join the viewing party. Beside me, Meri was busy studying the program. In front of us, a string of twentysomething women passed a small bottle of Fireball down the row while picking apart the bridesmaids’ dresses. Over my other shoulder, a woman with a hat that seemed to feature a bird’s nest was conked out and snoring softly while the man with her yanked at his bow tie.
I glanced back to the best man and shook my head because no, there was no way that look had anything to do with me. He’d been focused on any one of these curious cases. Not me.
