“Start with Tori,” he said as Meri backed away. “She loves ridiculously difficult things.” She winked and shot him a finger gun that was definitely a product of the shots. “Are we going to have to get her home tonight?”
“No, she’ll order a car and become the driver’s biggest cheerleader within eight minutes. She actually really enjoys it.”
“Well, hello there! Who’s next? Oh, you two look like a lot of fun.”
We glanced over to find the tarot reader coming around the wicker screen, a deck of well-loved cards in hand. She wore a silvery shawl over dark jeans and a dark shirt and had her pale lavender hair twisted up into a magnificent beehive. She had a dozen piercings in each ear, all filled with silver pieces, and if I had to guess, I’d say she wasn’t a day over thirty.
“Oh, no, we’re just?—”
She stepped forward as I tried to decline, but the toe of her boot snagged on a taped-down extension cord and she tripped,pitching toward one of the pinball machines. She broke her fall on the machine and righted herself quickly as Henry rushed forward to help.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She held up a finger as she stared down at the floor. She’d dropped her cards somewhere along the way and a few of them fanned out between us, faceup. “Well, that’s interesting,” she drawled. “I would’ve guessed some of these though probably not all.”
“As long as you’re all right,” I said, “we should get back to?—”
“Seeing The Lovers crossed with The Ace of Cups always makes me happy,” she said, her gaze on the floor. “It’s a king tide of overflowing emotion and new beginnings. It’s like the universe is saying, ‘This is happening to you right now and it’s time to ride this wave.’ But it’s also saying you need to make a choice. This isn’t a small decision. Emotions are messy. Beginnings are scary. And the only answer is the one in your heart.”
There was a time when I explained to people that the heart beating behind your sternum was not the organ involved in thoughts and feelings. I stopped doing that when Meri told me it was the medical equivalent of correcting someone’s grammar in conversation and that I wouldn’t make many friends or be invited out often if I kept it up.
So, I pinched my lips together and forced a tight smile. Beside me, Henry seemed to do the same.
“And then we have The World,” she went on, “alongside The Fool. How fun is that? The universe is saying you’re in for a transformation. Even more new beginnings! One of the things I love about these cards in combination is that they’re telling us that you’ve found harmony, found balance. That you’ve reached the end of a cycle, you’re at a point of equilibrium, and you’re ready to trust the universe to send you on a wild new journey.”
Henry and I glanced at each other. He had his hands at his waist, a finger tapping against his belt. Did he remember the cards falling out of Aunt Luisa’s deck in the elevator last summer? Did he realize that these were nearly the same cards? I couldn’t read his expression, but I also didn’t know if this mattered. How could it? These were just some cards that meant something to certain people. Coincidences aside, they didn’t have to mean anything to me.
Even if they landed a little too close to home.
“Good stuff. Thanks.” Henry motioned over his shoulder. “We should get back to our group. Watch out for that cord there.”
As we made our way through the arcade, I asked, “Was that?—”
“Really fucking weird? Yes,” he said.
At least I wasn’t the only one thinking it.
“We’re not mentioning this to Lulu,” he added. “It’ll go right to her head.”
The group was gathered in a circular booth with Meri and Cami on the inside and Jenelle, Reza, and Tori flanking them. Henry and I settled on opposite sides of the table and did a respectable job of folding into the ongoing conversations as if we weren’t coming down from multiple intense experiences and counting the minutes until we could leave.
This worked well enough until Cami shuffled out for the bathroom, forcing one side of the booth to shuffle with her. I ended up between Tori and Reza for a bit until Tori decided to visit the bar and Jenelle followed, sending everyone out of the booth and then back in. Later, Henry and his team exited for their version of “TiK ToK,” which was astounding primarily because Reza assumed the role of lead singer and wasexceptionalat it.
It went on like this, the whole group migrating in and out until Henry and I ended up in the back of the booth, his knee pressed to my thigh under the table. He talked to Reza about the idiosyncrasies of the public transit system in Boston and then to Meri about the pediatrics rotation. She assured him that first-year residents wouldn’t be going anywhere near her NICU. When he leaned forward to grab some nachos off a plate in the middle of the table, he dropped his hand on my knee and kept it there.
I could’ve stayed here, just like this, for hours. Longer, even. I never wanted this to stop.
Then, fracturing all my daydreams and bliss, Meri appeared with a tray full of drinks and jabbed a finger at me once she set it down. “You,” she said, “you’re coming with me.”
“But not for long, right?” Henry asked under his breath. He gave my leg a meaningful squeeze.
“Probably not. We’ll see.”
Meri dragged me toward the karaoke stage and started flipping the pages of the songbook while someone chewed their way through a Britney Spears tune.
“You don’t have to do this thing with me anymore,” she said. “I never should’ve forced you to keep that single-girl pact going for so long. It was never meant to last forever. At first, it was a life preserver. But then it evolved into my whole personality.”
I tried to find threads of hurt in her voice, some indication that she was struggling with this decision. I couldn’t find any, which only made me more suspicious. I couldn’t imagine her washing her hands of the most defining piece of herself. And maybe that wasn’t what she was saying at all. Maybe she was simply cutting me out of it. “That seems like a slight exaggeration.”
