Thursday dawns with the kind of aggressive sunshine only California in late August can muster.  I open one eye, then the other, fully appreciating how much like shit I feel, from my scuzzy mouth to my roiling stomach to my pounding headache.

Yep, I sure showed Raven last night.  I drank half a bottle of scotch and sang Ben Folds Five’s “Song for the Dumped” at the top of my lungs for about two hours straight, and then I think I went swimming with my clothes on, guessing from the strong smell of chlorine around me and my still-damp clothes.

So what’s on the docket today, Your Honor?

Devi.  We have a scene today.  

I stumble into the bathroom, where I drink approximately seven glasses of water and swallow a handful of Advil without bothering to count out how many.

Well, Cass.  I think it’s about time you returned a certain favor for me.

I can’t wait.  Can I come over now?

I glance up at the mirror, wincing at my reflection.  I look like Deadpool without his mask.

Sure thing, gorgeous.  I partied a little too hard last night, so I’m going to hop in the shower and scrub the top layer of skin off my body, but go ahead and let yourself in.  I’ve got a key under the potted succulent plant by the door.

The three telltale dots appear on my screen while she types and I use the lull in our conversation to brush my teeth and find a clean towel.

Then my phone pings.  I can’t believe you didn’t make a joke about the word succulent.

I groan.  She’s right.  I’m off my game.

I think I killed a few brain cells last night.  They must have been the funny ones.

Jesus.  What—or who—did you do last night?

It involves Ben Folds and mid-level scotch.  It doesn’t matter.  Drive here so I can give you orgasms.

Okay, Cyrano.  I’m on my way.

I brush my teeth several more times in the shower and scour my body with soap and a washcloth until the drunk-last-night feeling starts to wash away.  “I’m never drinking again,” I promise myself in a mumble.  And I actually kind of believe it.  The truth is that I was never a heavy drinker—I preferred being buzzed to being drunk—but after Raven left, I had no emotional tools to cope with it.  No tools except for liquor, that is.

But I feel released from Raven now, released from my complicated emotions about her.  I meant what I said yesterday.  I’m not in love with her anymore.  And I’ve moved on.  In fact, on the other side of things, it’s incredible to believe that I was so devastated.   Yesterday proved just how different we are, and how I ever thought what we had was actually sustainable happiness is astounding.

Finally clean and awake, I turn off the shower and pad into my room, settling for my usual uniform of a T-shirt and jeans.  I scrub at my hair with the towel, don’t bother brushing it, and then walk out to my living room, where I find the patio door open and Devi Dare out by my pool.  Hopping into my pool, actually.

And she’s completely naked.

I walk over to call out to her, to tell her that I’m finished getting ready, but then I pause as she breaks the surface of the water, slicks her hair back, and starts backstroking easily across the pool.  She has no idea I’m standing here, has no idea that anyone is watching, and she’s so unself-conscious right now, so natural.  So fucking sexy.

I lick my lips as I watch her, water droplets shimmering on the soft curves of her breasts, on the taut lines of her stomach.  A small pool of water has gathered in her navel, highlighting the dip it makes in her trim but still feminine stomach.  Her skin is a dark bronze in the bluish-clear water, and her hair is like a coffee-colored cloud around her head.

Her eyes are shut, her nipples are hard, and God-fucking-damn if I’m not more turned on than I’ve ever been.  My cock is already pushing against my jeans, my pulse speeding up, and never have I wanted to fuck someone so badly that it’s like I want to crawl inside of them, like I want to fuse my soul to theirs.  

But that’s how I feel now.

Quietly, like a sailor trying not to disturb a mermaid, I move closer to the door and pull out my phone.  I start filming her.

It’s mesmerizing, the way she effortlessly cuts through the water.  The grace, the supple lines of her body, the sharp contrasts in color coupled with the occasional tantalizing glance of her pussy—

It’s not porn, I know that, otherwise I’d be running for my actual camera.  But it’s undeniably, powerfully, painfully erotic; it’s that slow burn of desire that reminds you with subtle but insistent nudges that you are a sexual being.  It’s the kind of image that lodges in your mind before it nudges your dick, and makes it that much harder to shake, that much more consuming.  My theater teacher in high school liked to talk about the unities, where time and place and action all converged into one point.  Well, Devi is my unity right now.  Drawing my body and my mind and my heart into a single, crystalline point, fusing all the disparate Logans into one bewitched, infatuated man.

I was wrong earlier—I’m not falling for her.

I’ve already fallen.

I don’t know how, given that I can count the number of times we’ve hung out on one hand, and I don’t know why necessarily, given that she’s so vastly different than the other career porn stars I’ve dated.

But it’s true, nonetheless.  

I tap my phone screen and end my private video, my throat tight for no reason other than the display of beauty in front of me.  I want to jump in there, I want to fish her out of that damn pool and make love to her right here in the sun, but I don’t, because I’m a coward.  Because I still remember how it felt to be abandoned, rejected by someone I loved.

Instead, I clear my throat.  She drops her feet to the bottom of the pool with a sheepish smile.  “Sorry,” she grins.  “I couldn’t resist.”

“I can’t resist you,” I rejoin, but the joke is half-hearted because she’s climbing out of the pool, and I’m having trouble breathing.  Water streams off her firm, curvy body as she walks towards me.  She seems so casual, so open about being naked, and then I wonder if it’s because she is always like that or if it’s because she trusts me and feels comfortable with me.

The thought gives me a little puff of pride, with a simultaneous jolt of affection, and I’m determined to keep her comfortable around me, no matter what the cost.  Even if it means keeping my inner Romeo caged up for the time being.  I’m sure she has guys claiming to be in love with her all the time.  The last thing she needs is her co-worker doing it.

“Do you want a towel?” I ask.

“Yes, please.”

I go fetch her one, but—I can’t help myself—I don’t hand it to her.  I towel her off myself instead, drying her limbs before I stand up and dab gently at her face.

She’s smiling.  “Full service pool.  I like it.”

“It’s not the only thing that’s full service.  Come on inside.”

Without bothering to scoop up her clothes, she follows me, and while I talk, I try to drown out the voice in my mind that’s screaming she’s almost naked she’s almost naked, under that towel she’s naked.  I’m around naked women every day; it shouldn’t be something that affects me.  But it’s Devi, and so it does.  Not only because her body is delicious and perfect, but because this marks the first time I’ve seen her completely naked in person since Real Playdates all those years ago.

Somehow, I manage to keep it together—at least on the surface.  “So, I have a little something special planned for our oral scene tonight.  Do you have any plans late tonight or early tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?” she asks, and her cheeks darken.  “Um, no.  I’m pretty much completely free until morning.”

“Excellent,” I say, walking backward into my room.  I re-emerge with a bag stuffed full of shit—film equipment but also clothes and toiletries and a giant-ass sleeping bag hanging off the side.  “Our scene might be filmed late at night.  Is that okay?”

She swallows.  And nods.  “More than okay,” she gets out.

God, I want to fuck her right now.  Watch that delicate throat move as I take a nipple into my mouth.  Watch that mouth part when I finally push inside of her.

Patience, patience, I coax myself.  All good things come in time.

---

“I don’t think you can handle it,” I say doubtfully an hour later.  After Devi dressed and I packed the car, I decided that I needed hangover food—stat—so I took her to a bar on the edge of the suburbs.  Ungentrified, unglamorous, without even the cozy, warm feeling of a dive hangout.  Nope, this place is as cheap as it is soulless, and that’s why I like it.  No lawyer bros on lunch break, no hipsters basking in a “genuine vibe.”  Russell’s caters to one clientele and one clientele only—people willing to put up with surly service and scuffed drywall for cold beer and the best wings in the city.

Right now, Devi Dare, in her naive innocence, thinks she can handle a dozen wings on her own.  

“Why don’t you start with a half dozen?” I suggest diplomatically.

She looks up from the laminated menu.  “This is not my first wings rodeo, son.”

“Devi, I only like to tell women what to do in bed.  But I’m telling you, a dozen is too many.”

She smirks at me.  “Want to put money on it?”

“I can think of things more interesting than money.”

“Like what?” Her eyes are sparkling.

“Okay, if you can’t eat all the wings, then I get to take you to the most arthouse, painfully subtitled movie playing right now.”

“And if I can eat them all?”

I shrug.  “I don’t know.  What’s something that would be totally new to me?”

She thinks for a moment, looking at the ceiling and slowly tapping her mouth with one, slender finger...

….And that is how I end up on Venice Beach two hours later walking towards a small psychic’s shop.

---

Devi leads the way down the boardwalk, her fingers laced loosely through mine as she half pulls me forward.  “I can’t believe you doubted my ability to eat wings,” she huffs, the breath catching in her throat the precise same way I’d like it to when I’m fucking her.

Even her scoffing is sexy.  Jesus, I have it bad.

“You just seem so healthy,” I argue.  “Like the kind of girl who only eats chia seeds and that kind of shit.”

She giggles as a gust of wind blows her hair around her face, and fuck, she’s so young.  I know eight years isn’t the biggest difference in the grand scheme of things, but it feels big right now.  It feels important.

Worse, it feels exciting.

“I eat pretty healthy most of the time,” she admits.  “Mostly because my parents are always dropping stuff by.  A fresh batch of kombucha or leftover kale from their co-op or whatever.  But at least once or twice a week, I eat something terrible and amazing.  Like a triple cheeseburger.  Or a dozen wings.  After all, this ass won’t stay thick on its own.”

She gives her ass a playful smack.  I almost perish on the spot.

“Anyway,” she continues, “I think balance is important, right?  A little bad sprinkled into good makes everything so much more interesting.”

“You have to stop talking like this or I’m not going to be fit to meet the psychic.”

She laughs again, and then we’re at the bead-covered door of Madam Psuka’s, Psychic Extraordinaire.  Neon moons and stars vainly attempt to compete with the bright beach sunlight.

“We’re really lucky,” Devi says in a hushed voice.  “She spends half the year in Michigan.  Whenever she comes back to L.A., she’s usually too swamped with her repeat customers to see anyone.”

A ray of hope blossoms inside me.  “So maybe she won’t be able to see us today?” I ask, trying not to sound too relieved.

Devi just points to the sign hanging in the window.  Walk-Ins Welcome Today.

“Shit,” I mutter.

Devi swats at my arm.  “You lost fair and square.  Be a good sport.”

“You can’t really believe all this stuff, right?  It’s so silly.  And you’re so...science-y.”

She pushes me inside, into the thick, dark air within.  While my eyes adjust, I hear Devi digging into her big slouchy shoulder bag, and when I can finally see again, I realize she has my camera.  I gave it to her just in case we wanted to capture any moments for Star-Crossed.

She turns it on.  “I think this is worth filming.  It’s like we’re on a fake date again!  Wings and now psychics.”

“You know, when I gave you that, I was really just imagining us finding a place to make out or something.”

She tuts at me and flaps her hand, indicating that I should sit in one of the chairs packed into the tiny waiting area where we are now.  “It smells like pot,” I observe, taking a few more experimental sniffs.  “A lot of pot.”

Devi grins.  “It’s sage.  People burn it to purify a space of negative energy.”

“This is considered purified?  I think that is an excellent way to cover up smoking pot.  ‘Oh no, officer, I wasn’t smoking marijuana, I was just purifying my car of negative energy.’”

Devi giggles, and then I hear an older woman say, “Boombalee!”

It’s not precisely English—or any other language I know—and I wonder if it’s psychic-speak for something important, or if maybe this woman is speaking in tongues or having a stroke, but then she pushes past the beads separating the inner space from the waiting room and scurries toward Devi, arms outstretched.

“Oh, shit,” Devi mutters, looking at me with something akin to panic.  “I’m so sorry about this.”

“Sorry about what?”

But she can’t talk now because the woman has pulled her up from her chair and wrapped her in a massive hug.  She’s in her late forties, with thick gray-blond hair tied back in a utilitarian braid, and a petite but willowy build.  She’s wearing a long skirt and blouse that have an unmistakable “Sedona, Arizona” vibe.  For a minute, I think she’s the psychic but then she pulls back and I say aloud, “Holy shit.”

They both turn to look at me beamingly, and it’s so apparent now that I feel retroactively stupid for not having seen it before.  The woman looks exactly like Devi, but without the Persian coloring.  The same high cheekbones and pointed chin, the same heart-shaped faces with identical, beautiful smiles.

It’s Devi’s mom.

I stick out my hand.  “Logan O’Toole.  Nice to meet you.”

“Sue Jones-Daryani.  What brings you to Madam Psuka’s today?  And how come I haven’t seen you in over a week, Boombalee?  I miss you.”

“Mom,” Devi says, a little embarrassed.  “I’ve been busy.  And don’t call me that in public!”

“Boombalee?  Devi, I labored for twenty-seven hours with no medication to bring you into this world, and when you came out, you tore my—”

“Mom!” Devi looks seriously alarmed now.  “Can you not in front of my colleague?”

“My point is, I’ll call you whatever I want.”  Her gray eyes fall back to me and she softens.  “It’s nice to meet you, Logan.  Are you making pornography with my daughter?”

I can’t help but laugh.  “Yes, ma’am.  I am.”

“I’m glad to hear it.  You have very virile energy, you know.  I can feel the pulsing of your sacral chakra from here.”

“Uh...is that something I should get checked out by a doctor?”

Sue tuts at me in just the same way that Devi tutted at me earlier and reaches behind me, pressing her palm against the very top part of my ass.  Beside me, Devi makes the kind of groan someone would make if they were willing themselves to die, and when I look over, she’s got her face buried in her hands in mortification.  

I, however, am having a great time.

“Ms. Jones-Dayrani, you’re trying to seduce me, aren’t you?” I tease as she gives my chakra a few extra pats for good measure.

“Young man, I’ve never had to seduce a single sexual partner in my life, and I’m certain that you’ve never needed to either.”

I give a modest half-shrug.

“Mom, can you please get your hand off Logan’s ass now?”

Sue sighs, as if her daughter is the biggest prude in the world.  “Devi, your sacral chakra, on the other hand, is completely blocked.  And something’s going on with your heart chakra.”  She frowns.  “We need to do some Reiki, or maybe you should see Dr. Tammaro for acupuncture.  But in the meantime, I recommend some meditation and maybe some vigorous sex to unblock that chakra.”

“I’d be happy to help your daughter with that, ma’am,” I chime in with a wide grin.

Devi’s hands are still on her face.  “Isn’t there like a midwifery conference or something that you need to be at?”

“Actually, your father and I have hot yoga class, so I should be off.  But you need to come over this week for dinner sometime.  We just got a whole box of manioc roots from our co-op and we’ll need help eating them all.”

“Okay,” Devi says with the exact level of excitement you’d expect from someone agreeing to eat manioc root.  “I’ll call you.”

Sue gives her a big hug, and then leans in to kiss my cheek.  “Honor her,” is the firm intonation she delivers in my ear, but the sternness is softened by the affectionate caress she gives my sacral chakra.  And then she opens the door and leaves the shop.

“I am so sorry,” Devi groans as she throws herself into a nearby chair.  “I knew about this place because my mother comes here, but I had no idea she would be in today, and I am so, so embarrassed right now.”

“Why?”  I don’t sit.  I stand in front of her and nudge her knees with my own.  “I thought she was great.  More than great; she’s awesome.  Just like you.”

Devi lifts her eyes to mine.  “Really?  You don’t hate me now that you’ve met my wack-a-doo mom?”

“The exact opposite.  The more I learn about you, the more I want to know.”   The more I fall in love with you.

I don’t say that, obviously.

She bites her lip to keep from smiling too wide, and my pulse speeds up.  I’m suddenly and painfully aware of how her bare knees rub against my jeans, of the way the thin cotton bodice of her mini dress pulls away from her skin, revealing to an explicit degree how very much she is not wearing anything underneath.

I lean down.  The camera’s still dangling in her hand, the standby light blinking, but I ignore it and use my thumb and forefinger to guide her face up to mine.

She blinks those long, dark eyelashes once, twice, and then I bring my lips to hers.  She is all soft warmth, sunshine and cinnamon, and I breathe her in even as I kiss her, even as I dizzily wonder if this is how it happens for other people.  Do they eat wings and see psychics and have awkward run-ins with parents?  Do they spend days on random adventures, treasuring every single second spent in each other’s company?

This isn’t a fake date at all… I realize. This is a real date now.

“This is not a kissing parlor,” a brusque voice informs us.

We straighten up, and I turn around to see a woman with scratchy-looking blond hair and more beaded necklaces than I would have thought possible.  

“Madam Psuka?” Devi asks, standing up from the chair and straightening her clothes.  “Hi.  I’m Sue’s daughter.”

“Yes, I know who you are,” the medium says impatiently.  Her accent is of indiscriminate origin—definitely former Soviet Bloc—and when she waves her hand, I smell Aqua-Net and the kind of perfume that you buy from a grocery store.  

“We’re actually here for my friend Logan,” Devi explains.  “I wanted him to come get a reading.”

“What kind of reading?”

They’re both looking at me.  “I, uh, don’t know?”

Madam narrows her eyes at me.  “No palm reading today, I think.  No horoscope or rune stones.  You need tarot.  One card.”

Devi practically jumps up and down.  “Tarot’s my favorite!”

“This will be quick,” Madam says in a way I find weirdly ominous, and then she vanishes into her inner chamber and returns with a wicker basket filled with velvet bags.  “Pick deck,” she orders in that clipped accent of hers.

I pick a velvet bag at random, right there in the foyer, and then Madam nods, as if that’s the deck she expected me to pick all along.  There’s a glass counter in the corner with an ancient register on top and flyers for psychic fairs and New Age conferences pinned up on the walls all around, and she walks over there now, setting the bag down on top.

She pulls the cards out and indicates that I should come stand by her.

“Knock once, then shuffle with the question in your heart.  After that, hand the deck to me.”  She hands me the cards, and I glance over at Devi, who nods in encouragement, and I think, why the hell not?  I’m on this sort of accidentally real date with a girl I’m in love with, why not see where this takes me?

So I rap on the deck with my knuckles and then I pick the cards up to shuffle them.  They are larger than playing cards, but my hands are big enough to make it work.  (That’s what she said.)

As I shuffle, I get glimpses of the art on the cards, which seems to be comprised of lots and lots of naked people.  Fitting, I guess, but maybe a little too fitting, judging from Madam’s smirk as she notices me noticing the cards.

Just a coincidence.  I don’t believe in this shit, and Devi doesn’t either.  Right?

“Think of it as focused meditation,” she says, as if she knows what I’m thinking.  “It will give you a new frame of reference for your question.”

Oh, shit.  The question.  I cast around for anything I want to ask, but actually my life is really solid right now.  Good money, steady work I enjoy.  Closure over Raven (if not over my dog.)  Really the only thing up in the air is Devi, and she’s not so much a question as a…

A what?  A hope?  A possibility?

I don’t know what to ask, so instead I just think of Devi.  I think of Devi and I think of Star-Crossed and I think of all the times I’ve felt that big, magic feeling with her.  And I hope the tarot deck can make sense of all that.

I finish shuffling and hand the deck to Madam Psuka, who briskly cuts the deck into three stacks.  “Point to pile.”

“Um…”

“She means that you need to pick a pile to go on top,” Devi whisper-explains.

I point to the center stack, and again Madam gives that nod, as if that’s what she expected all along.  She gathers up the deck, with the stack I picked on top, and then she slides the card off the top and with great flourish lays it on the counter.  

“The Hanged Man,” she announces dramatically, as if I’m supposed to know what that means.  I look over at Devi, but her face reveals nothing.

I don’t know much (or anything) about tarot cards, but a card called The Hanged Man doesn’t really imbue me with confidence.  I’d rather get a card called The Frequently Fellated Man or maybe The Incredibly Wealthy and Amazingly Endowed Man.  But I guess there’s no helping that now.  With a resigned sigh, I lean over to examine it.

It’s a beautiful but disturbing illustration of a naked man hanging upside down from a tree, ropes wrapped shibari-style around his body.  He hangs primarily by one leg, the other leg fastened in a bent position so that his left ankle is behind his right knee.  His arms are lashed behind his back, and rope crisscrosses his body in banded patterns, cutting into the firm muscles of his stomach and legs.

Most striking of all is his face.  If I were to be hanged upside down from a tree, I think I’d be considerably upset, but he seems to be enduring his fate quietly.  Pensively, even.  He stares straight ahead with a clear, almost curious, expression, and the corners of his mouth are tilted in what appears to be a small, knowing smirk, as if he knows something I don’t.

“He is at peace because he hung himself from the tree,” Madam Psuka tells me, her voice startling me upright.  “He chose this path.  Like Odin or Dionysus, he has sacrificed himself for greater cause.”

“I don’t have any great causes in my life,” I point out. “Certainly not any that would require me to hang from a tree.”

Madam Psuka briefly shuts her eyes, as if my ignorance pains her.  “Is metaphor,” she says, a little defensively, her accent thickening.  “Is not literal.”

“So I have to metaphorically hang myself from a tree?”

She taps the card.  “This card means that you are coming to time of great choice.  You will be asked to sacrifice something intensely personal and important.”

Hmm.  I don’t like the way that sounds at all.  “Do I at least get something awesome in return?”

Madam Psuka gives me a shrug that is so very, very European.  “Who can say?  Is not job of The Hanged Man to know.  He knows only that he must have faith.  But he also knows that he may perish instead, without having gained anything at all.”

All this talk of perishing and sacrifice and death is a bit of a boner-killer.  I turn to glare at Devi.  “You told me this would be fun!”

“I said no such thing!” she exclaims.  “I only said it was my favorite.”

“Getting creepy cards is your favorite?”

“They’re not all creepy,” she says, jutting her lower lip out in a way that makes me want to bite it.  “They just reflect different stages of a journey. That’s all.”

“She is right,” Madam affirms.  “This card is not meant to frighten.  If you are disturbed, it’s only because you sense—deep down—is truth.  Here,” she says abruptly, pushing the card across the counter.  “You must take this with you.  It belongs in your care now.”

The pain and sacrifice card?  No thanks.  “That’s kind, Madam, but I—”

Devi elbows me, and I realize that I should shut up.  “How much do we owe you for the reading?” she asks sweetly.

Madam looks me over.  “Nothing,” she pronounces, her g sounding like a k.  “Is favor for Sue.”

“Thank you,” Devi says, giving Madam Psuka a hug.  “Come on, Logan.”

Madam Psuka picks up the card and holds it out to me.  There’s no way to refuse it without looking rude, so I grudgingly take it from her fingers.

“Sacrifice is just another word for change,” she tells me, her thick brows drawn together.  “Change that requires letting go.”

I give her a nod and then I let Devi tug me back into the blinding sunlight outside.