“Okay, one more,” she says.
I look to her for a cue and she grabs my face with her hands. She kisses me full on the lips, slipping her tongue into my mouth. Without even trying, I lose myself in the kiss, so sweet and soft and lovely.
I pull away sharply and glance over my shoulder at Eden. She’s still sitting in Rick’s lap, keeping up her part of the charade.
“Let’s see if I got my shot,” Aimee says, scrolling through her phone. That’s her signal that she’s done with me.
“I’m heading back in,” I say. I stand and take my untouched prop wine, resentful of the surge of power Aimee exerted over me. The power to make me forget the cruel side of her. Power I want to take back.
“Oh no, you have to see this.” She grabs my hand and pulls me back into her orbit. “It’s perfect.”
Aimee holds out her phone, and my eyes are drawn to our picture. She wasn’t exaggerating, using the term perfect. The light is stunning. Our silhouettes are black against the brilliant sun. A single ray shines through the outline of Aimee’s plump lips, subtly sensual but still G-rated. Her hand cupping my face is the jewel in the crown of intimacy.
“Let the love shine through,” she says. “That’s the caption.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” I agree.
My medium is the written word, but Aimee tells visual stories. And this one portrays nothing short of a fairy tale. She looks up at me and the ice between us cracks. I smile with pride.
What can I say? When she’s good, she’s good.
If this was us—the way it used to be us—I would have never fallen in love with Eden. But I can’t trust Aimee. This photograph. This moment. It’s nothing more than a setup snapshot.
RINI
Part of me seethes at Aimee’s implication during her reading that she could make things happen that are entirely outside her control. That she can defy her own fate… by what? Ignoring it? Sticking her fingers in her ears and singing “La la la la”? But the truth is, I’m more angry she might be onto something. She must be a good social media influencer, because I’m desperate to follow her lead. Could I have altered my fate before I called the psychic six months ago? Is it too late now that my death date has been issued?
Aimee would say it’s never too late. I set aside my pride and protectiveness and call Eric on the phone. He answers and I don’t hesitate.
“Please come over,” I say. “It’s not about floor joists.”
“I’m actually finishing a job down the road,” he says simply. “I’ll be there soon.”
This time, I want to tell him everything. If anyone can change my fate, it’s my soulmate.
The moment I first laid eyes on Eric, time stopped. I spotted his laughing face from ten feet away on a Sunday afternoon at the local outdoor concert series on the wharf. I don’t know if he sensed me or not, but he looked at me from his spot at the table. He was with a bunch of his guy friends while I stood in the entrance with a wine vendor I’d met to discuss discounts. Eric and I locked eyes. You don’t have to know anything about astrology to know that soulmates are all in the eyes. I saw it and I felt it. There was a connection between us that transcended that day, this life, these bodies.
When the wine vendor left, I sat at the bar alone collecting my thoughts. Eric had volunteered to get the next round for his buddies and parked himself at the stool next to me. We chatted and laughed until the sun sank into the Peconic Bay, and then our conversation got deeper and the large outdoor deck felt as small as a table for two. After the band packed up, his friends wanted to go to a dive bar, but I was ready to go home. I wasn’t much of a drinker or partier, and the night out had been Andi’s idea. I wasn’t even twenty-one yet—I’d used her ID to get in—but our plans for the house and the business were struggling, and Andi thought it would be good for me to meet people around town who could help us renovate and grow.
“I have something to tell you, but I don’t want you to get mad,” Eric had said.
“Whether I get mad or not has nothing to do with what you tell me. It has to do with what you’ve done.”
“So maybe I shouldn’t tell you.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have done it.”
“Too late. How do you know it’s bad?”
“The guilty look on your face gives you away.”
“I have a girlfriend.”
He was right—I was furious. But instead of venting, I said, “You did nothing wrong. You didn’t touch me; you didn’t ask to see me again. It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t okay. Not at all.
He leaned in for a hug, but I practically ran away. My disappointment grew to anger as the days moved on. I ranted to Andi that there were no good men, that they were all scum. But she wouldn’t tolerate that kind of talk from me. Andi had long ago decided that her fate was to attract all the wrong men, but she got mad at me for suggesting it might be mine too. She wanted more for me.
Meanwhile, I wanted to pursue Eric. I wanted to dive into the feeling I had around him. I wouldn’t reduce it to lust, though I couldn’t call it love yet. Even without a definition, I’d never felt that way before. I knew from my mom and Andi, and even my own teenage interactions, that what Eric and I had experienced wasn’t easy to come by. And so if we were supposed to be together, then it seemed clear he was with the wrong woman. But that was his choice and I wanted to respect it, even though it took everything I had not to creep. Stalk him on Instagram. To stop myself from dropping by Claudio’s every Sunday for the chance to see him and to call it fate.
As my urges grew and my moral compass went haywire, I wondered if infidelity was genetic. My dad had cheated and left my family devastated. Andi had hooked up with a married man and it ruined her. And now I wanted to pursue Eric despite his good boundaries. I thought it was in our DNA to ruin lives.
Nineteen days later, Eric showed up at the house where Andi and I were camped out in sleeping bags and futon mattresses on the floor. I slammed the door in his face, less out of commitment to my stance and more because I didn’t trust myself face-to-face with him. In the five seconds it took me to register he was at my door, a karmic pull made me want to kiss him.
He rang the bell again.
“I broke up with her,” he shouted.
I flung open the door and he leaned down to kiss me, his shoulders rounding with the promise that he would hold me and protect me. It was a dream I didn’t know I had, come true.
Six years after that first meeting, and six months after we broke up, Eric is at my door again. This time my doorbell camera picks him up, first at the main gate, then as he approaches my cottage. After walking slowly from his pickup truck to my door, he pauses outside. He’s dressed in khaki shorts and a navy blue shirt, my favorite color because it matches his eyes.
Those eyes. The ones that see through to the core of me. The ones that transport me to a place where I feel safe and loved. Even the thought of looking into his eyes in this very moment sends me into a panic. What am I doing? Why did I ask him here? What’s the plan? Should I really tell him about the psychic prediction? Or is that selfish?
Eric finally works up the nerve to knock on my door. I open it even though I’m not ready.
“Hey,” he says, sexy without even trying. What is it about a slyly spoken “Hey” that can turn your insides into goo? From that moment, my plans fly out the window. I pull Eric into my cottage, and with hungry kisses we tumble into the comfort of each other’s body. We don’t talk—we just know.
