Okay, maybecome to a headwas putting it mildly, considering she’d set a small fire in a multimillion-dollar renovation on Chatham Square.
On purpose.
It was asmallfire.
She’d just fucked up installing a set of gorgeous oak cabinets—and by fucked up, she meant dropped a corner piece after refusing help from her assistant Molly, shattering the lovely wood all over the floor—and she was frustrated, to say the least. Apparently, according to witnesses, she found a box of matches in her toolbox, struck a handful to life, and dropped it on the pile of wood while yelling something akin toFuck, fuck, fuckity fuck youat the top of her lungs.
The spark barely caught. One couldn’t just start a raging fire out of professionally finished cabinets, wood or not, but it was the spirit of the act that sealed Jordan’s fate. Bri Dalloway, matriarch and Jordan’s highly accommodating boss, had had enough, as had her two daughters, Hattie and Vivian.
Freshly fired—no pun intended—and without anything to fill her hours, she spent the next two weeks on her couch with Catra, her tuxedo cat, ignoring her phone and eating Lean Cuisines while binge-watching every romantic comedy she could find on Netflix. This continued—and she would’ve kept on in this state very happily, thank you very much—until Simon showed up on the doorstep of the tiny ranch house in Ardsley Park she’d shared with Meredith, all the way from where he’d been living in Portland, with his phone pressedto his ear and Jordan’s most favorite person in the world on the other end of the line.
Their grandmother.
Who could convince Jordan to do just about anything, including moving across the country to help with renovating the Everwood, the inn that had been in their family for over a century. All Pru had to do was say, “Come home, honey,” in her soft, sweet voice, and suddenly Jordan was twelve years old at Everwood in the summer, the only place Jordan had ever felt truly at ease. No sick mother to worry about. No kids at her school in the small Northern California town where she grew up looking at her sideways for coming out as queer when she was eleven. Nothing but the creaky stairs and secret passageways of the inn, wild roses and Oregon’s soft overcast skies, and the sweet scent of rosewater lotion when her grandmother gathered her in a hug.
So now here she was, three thousand miles from the home she’d shared with the love of her life, crying on the side of a country road with absolutely no coffee and the memory of an extremely irate woman’s screeching echoing in her ears.
Yes, excellent plan, Simon.
God, what a disaster. She couldn’t even execute a simple coffee run. Pru only drank tea, and her tiny cottage kitchen didn’t have a coffee maker. Hence the coffee run, hence the disaster. She should’ve just bought a damn Keurig when she’d arrived in town last week, or at least made Simon get one. God knew he could afford it with his book money. But no, in all his preciousness, he said nothing beats Wake Up coffee first thing in the morning, and goddamn if he wasn’t right. It was the absolute best coffee she’d ever tasted.
Unfortunately, Simon’s nectar of the gods—and the third cup she’d bought for this designer they were meeting about Everwood Inn renovations, along withInnside America’s host and crew (though hell if she was going to buy coffee for everyone)—was currently soaking into the lush cotton or linen or whatever the fuck of Little Miss Bitch’s dress.
She heaved a hiccupping breath. She didn’t like calling other people bitch, not when she meant it in a negative sense. She usually only used the word around her girlfriends. Not that she had those anymore. Her friend group back in Savannah had been her and Meredith’s friend group, and she simply didn’t know how to interact with them without her partner, nor they with her.
Apparently, she didn’t know how to interact with anyone.
And, of course, the woman she’d barreled into like a bull chasing red just had to be pretty. No, not pretty. She was goddamn gorgeous. Soft curves and shaggy hair, thick brows—perfectly shaped, of course—and just enough shadows under her dark brown eyes to make her interesting. She was stunning, and for the first time in over a year, Jordan had found herself momentarily dazed, a feathery feeling swooping through her belly.
Until the woman opened her mouth and all those delicate feathers had turn to stone.
“Fuck,” Jordan said out loud, curling her fingers around Adora’s steering wheel as a wave of fresh tears spilled over. She was literally crying over a run-in with a mean girl, like she was that queer kid with the weird hair back in high school all over again. She felt suddenly ancient. She was barely thirty-one. She’d already met, courted, married, and lost the love of her life. She was too young to feel this goddamn old.
She sniffed and wiped under her eyes, shaking her head to clear it. Then she grabbed her leather messenger bag, the one Meredith always called the bottomless pit, and dug around until she found the silk pouch that held her Tarot. She tugged on the drawstring and spilled the cards into her hands. She loved this set. The cards were colorful and modern, and best of all, they were feminist and queer as hell. Each card, even the Kings in each suit, featured either a woman or nonbinary person. Jordan had gotten them shortly after finding herself all alone and without Meredith, a comfort purchase, andshe’d used them every day since. They were the one healthy habit she maintained, each card grounding her to herself, keeping her from floating away.
Except lately, they were pissing her the hell off.
“Come on,” she whispered as she shuffled the glossy cards in her hands. “Come on, come on, come on.” She knew one was supposed to ask deep and profound questions while shuffling the Tarot, things likeWhat do I need to know today to live my best life?But that hadn’t been working out for her so well lately.
In fact, in the past month, these cards had right and truly betrayed her.
She stopped shuffling and divided the cards into three stacks on her lap, then quickly piled them back into one. Shoving her bag against the passenger door, she fanned the cards out along the bench seat. She eyed the bright blue pattern on the backs of the cards, ran her hand above them and waited for one to catch her eye.
One did. She didn’t hesitate. She just went through the motions as she always did, operating on instinct, and pulled the card. She held it to her chest for a second and breathed. There were seventy-eight damn cards in the Tarot, twenty-two in the Major Arcana and fifty-six in the Minor. What were the chances of her pulling the same card again?
Very slim.
And yet—
She flipped the card over.
The Two of Cups stared back at her, just as it had most mornings for the past month. The cheeky little bastard was in on some sort of prank against her. Every now and then she’d pull something different, a random Wand or Pentacle or a good old Fool or Hierophant or Moon.
She’d even take the disastrous Tower right now. At least it would fit with the state of her life. Anything instead of this little asshole,this bright card with two women standing on a beach, each holding a large goblet. They were facing each other, smiling, happy, full of hope and possibility. The Two of Cups whispered of romance and love, of new relationships.
A perfect pairing.
Matched souls.
