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She immediately closes her eyes and curls into a tighter ball.

Unbelievable.

I glance back down at the message box. Maybe I should sound cooler.

More mysterious and less desperate.

People probably send elegant messages to online witches all the time.

Not things like Hello, magical stranger. I’m thirty-four and I’ve somehow become everyone’s favorite almost-girlfriend. Every woman I’ve seriously liked over the last six years has eventually decided I’d make an excellent friend or emotional support clown. Different women, different jobs. Different cities, even. Same fucking ending. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve convinced myself this one feels different, only to end up being told I’m thoughtful, funny, and such a great friend.

I sigh dramatically enough that the cat lifts her head again and looks annoyed.

“You don’t get it, Aurora,” I tell her. “I have a pattern.”

A statistically significant pattern that should be unbelievable if it were anyone else but, alas, here we are.

She blinks slowly, then hops off the chair and scurries to my home office, which is, coincidentally, the farthest possible she can be from me at this time.

“I know this probably sounds ridiculous, but I think I might actually be cursed. Every single person I like either disappears, moves to another state, gets back together with her ex, or tells me they’re not ready for a relationship right before hard launching someone else on social media two weeks later.”

Too revealing?

I stop typing and delete the mention of a hard launch. For all I know, this online witch has no idea what I’m talking about.

But then I rewrite it because if I’m paying almost five hundred dollars with shipping for a spell and a natural gemstone bracelet, I should probably be honest.

Rain taps softly against the windows. Somewhere outside, a car alarm starts going off. My house smells like the heavily industrial vanilla scent from the candle still burning on the kitchen countertop and the dumplings I picked up on the walk home from the bar, because sadness and sesame oil are deeply connected in my brain.

I reread the message.

It feels embarrassingly sincere. Maybe if I tack on a lolz at the end, she won’t think I’m such a lost cause.

When we first started talking about hiring a witch at happy hour, we’d gone from making fun of Veronica’s cousin’s girlfriend to reading customer reviews between appetizers. Most of them sounded suspiciously reasonable. Less I summoned my soulmate under a blood moon and more this gave me the confidence to ask someone out. We laughed the whole time.

This was my intention: to be funny and detached, a woman lightly joking about purchasing mystical intervention after a few drinks.

Instead, I sound exactly like the millennial eldest daughter with severe people-pleasing tendencies that I am.

I type faster before I can stop myself.

“I don’t think I’m asking for my soulmate exactly. I’d settle for a person who texts me back consistently and doesn’t act weird after I tell them I like them. Maybe go on a few dates, have fun, you know?”

I stare at that sentence.

Then add haha, just to get that humor across.

God, it’s devastatingly sad. I groan and drop my head back against the couch cushions.

“This,” I tell the universe, “is exactly why I should not have access to the internet after ten p.m.”

My phone buzzes.

VERONICA

did you order the witch yet

DANI