“Come have some iced tea with me,” Loraine says.
Most women in the South take great pride in their iced tea and pass their recipes down from generation to generation. But Loraine is not most women. She mixes her tea with powder from a box. To my mom, powdered iced tea is almost as bad as the possibility of being left behind in the wake of the rapture.
“You want some lemons?” she asks.
“Yeah, that’d be great.” I squeeze two lemons before taking a sip. Delicious. Like frozen lasagna. Wherever my mom is she’s just fainted.
Loraine sits down in front of me with a glass for herself. She’s one of those people who could be twenty-five or forty-five and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. “What’s your sign, Willowdean?”
“Pardon?”
“Your star sign? Astrology?”
“I—well, I don’t know.” According to my mom, astrology is two steps away from demonic possession. “I never really paid attention before.”
She shakes her head and tsks. “I’ll never understand how it is people navigate their whole lives without knowing their signs. What’s your birthday?”
“August twenty-first.”
“Ah,” she says. “A Leo, but barely.”
I lean in. “What’s that mean?” I’m learning a whole new language for the first time.
“You, my dear, are a lion.” She says it with such great dramatics, but it’s lost on me. She sighs. “You’re the king of the jungle, baby. Walking confidence.”
Yup, this is total bullshit.
She waves a finger at me. “Don’t write me off so soon. There’s more. You’re a fire sign. You love big, but you hurt big, too. But you don’t always let the hurt show, because it’s a vulnerability. You’re the sun. Always there. Even when we can’t see you.”
She believes this so wholly that it’s pretty difficult for me not to buy into it, too. And I like the idea that somehow I am the way I am because it was meant to be.
“But”—here it is, the other shoe is about to drop—“you need approval, too. And that flaw is big enough to stop you. What’s important to remember though is that despite our signs, we still make our destiny.”
It’s hard not to notice how true her words feel. “How do you know all this stuff?”
“Everyone’s got their own religion, right?” She shrugs. “Even if their religion is no religion.”
“What are you?”
She grins. “A Sagittarius, but what’s really interesting is Bo’s sign in relation to yours.”
I am hooked. She’s got me. And she knows it.
“Bo is an Aquarius. Just like his dad. Detached and brooding, but with a good heart.”
It takes me a second to realize I’m nodding.
“According to the stars, you two are quite the pair.” She sips her tea and winks at me.
I know that pair could mean anything. Friends, cohorts, partners. But that doesn’t stop my cheeks from feeling as warm as a sunburn.
She reaches for my knee. “Oh, sweetheart, are you okay?”
I nod a little too fast. “Do you—where’s the restroom?” My face is on fire.
Her brow wrinkles with concern. “Two doors past Bo’s on the left.”
I get up, and turn back to her as I stand on the threshold between the kitchen and the dining room. “I liked talking to you,” I tell her.
I hear the garage door open.
“You’re always welcome to come by for a chat.”
In the bathroom, I splash my face a few times. I want to wake up every day, like that old movie, Groundhog Day, and relive this day over and over again.
Here, though, by myself, it’s hard not to wonder if he ever brought Bekah home. Or if Amber got along with his stepmom as much as I feel like we did.
Bo is waiting in his room. He’s changed his shirt and has moved our books and notes to his bed. TO. HIS. BED.
But the door’s open, and I’m slightly grateful for it, too. Because how do people even function like this? Like, how is it that people can even pump gas or pay bills or tie their shoes when they’re in love? Or might be in love. Or are in love. Or are in between the two.