All day Sunday I expected him to get in touch, but he didn’t. I worked that morning, and every time the door opened, I thought it might be him, but it never was. We stayed so busy, I was able to get through the day without breaking down, but the moment I got home, I ran up to my room and crashed onto my bed, sobs wrenching from my throat.
Had I been wrong last night to turn him away? Was I just being stubborn? Refusing to give him a chance to prove he could change because I was scared of being hurt? Had I made him feel like he’d never be enough? Maybe it was my fault and this would be just another almost, another missed opportunity to be happy. Maybe I was too stuck on what I thought my life would look like. But how could I know for sure?
Needing to clear my head, I went to the gym.
I felt a little better after my swim, but my stomach was growling. I thought maybe I’d pick up some takeout from O’Malley’s, so I parked and walked down the block, the summer breeze ruffling my damp hair. I passed the bar where just over a month ago, my sisters and I had gotten drunk on vodka martinis and gotten the reading from Madam Psuka. Instinctively, I looked up at her window and saw the same sign.
I stopped in my tracks.
Had she been right after all?
Let’s see.
Life upended? Check.
Handsome man? Check.
Stranger? Maybe…
Granted, I hadn’t known his real first name was Edward, but maybe more significant was that he was trying to change, to be a different kind of man. Was he capable of it? Maybe I didn’t know him as well as I thought.
On impulse, I pushed open the door to Madam Psuka’s building and walked up the stairs. “Ew,” I said, holding my nose. It had smelled bad the first time, but now that I was pregnant, bad smells were even more offensive. And I was only like five weeks along! What the hell would happen at ten weeks or twenty or thirty?
Oh, God. Pregnancy was so long.
Heaving a sigh, I reached the top of the steps and knocked. The door opened a moment later, and the acrid, herbal smell wafted out. It was pungent, but better than the cat pee scent in the hall. Madam Psuka appeared, looking much the same as she had last month, only wearing soft, flowing black pants and a loose-fitting top slipping off one shoulder.
“You are back.” She nodded, her eyes narrowing. “I knew you would be.”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. “May I come in?”
“Yes. Please.” She stepped back, and I entered the colorful room, which was, again, lit only by candles. “Sit down.”
I lowered myself onto the rug, and she sat opposite me, legs criss crossed, feet bare. “So,” I began.
“You are vith child.”
I blinked at her, then touched my stomach. “Is it that obvious?”
She shrugged and gave me a smug little smile. “Maybe only to me.”
“Wow.”
“The handsome stranger?”
I swallowed hard. “Yeah.”
“Interesting. You vant reading?”
“Uh, yes. I’ll pay you this time. How much?”
“For you, twenty dollar.”
“OK. Should I pay you now?”
She flipped her wrist. “You can pay after. Give me your hands.”
I held them both out, and she took them in hers, closing her eyes. Again I felt the hum of energy between us, as unbelievable as it sounds. My hands and forearms grew warm with it.
“Things are uncertain,” she said.
“Yes, that’s why I’m here,” I said, a bit peevishly. “I need to know what to do.”
She opened her eyes. “I cannot tell you what to do. I can only tell what I see.”
“OK, fine. What do you see?”
“You have important decision to make.”
I clenched my teeth. Twenty dollars for this? “And?”
“And the stranger is involved.”
“But…he’s not really a stranger. I know him. I’ve always known him.”
She cracked one eye open. “You don’t know everything.”
I huffed out a breath. “OK, fine, I don’t know everything, but I know enough. He’s totally immature. He’s never even had a girlfriend. He doesn’t understand commitment.”
She shrugged. “Maybe. Is possible.”
Frustrated, I shook my hands. “What else is there?”
“Love.”
“What love?”
“Love between you and the stranger. Love between you and the baby. Love between the baby and the stranger.”
“That’s crazy,” I said, but my heart was beating hard.
“Tell me. Have you had any odd dreams lately?”
“Have I? No, not really.” Then I remembered something. “But Miles…the stranger, the baby’s father…Miles did, a while back.”
“Tell me.”
I thought hard about the details. “Um, he was in my coffee shop eating a bagel.”
She nodded. “The bagel was something missing from his life. Key element. He vas not complete and whole. Also…” She opened one eye again and gave me a sly look. “It can mean sexual urges.”
My face burned. “Uh.”
She closed her eyes again. “Go on.”
“OK, um…he was eating a bagel and I was taking his picture. No! I was looking for my camera, and I couldn’t find it.”
She nodded. “He wanted you to focus on him, see a big picture. Possibly a memory.”
“And then I turned into a bear.”
She opened her eyes. “A bear?”
“Yes. What does that mean?”
“A bear is a symbol in the cycle of life. Perhaps it was his cosmic energy recognizing he would create new life with you.” She glanced down at my stomach. “Or perhaps he just vanted to see you bare. There is that.”
I grimaced. “There was that.”
One eyebrow peaked. “Obviously.”
“Look, I need to know what to do. Is there some sort of sign there? Something to indicate what direction to take? This is serious!”
“As I say, I cannot tell you what to do. I can only intuit. But.” She closed her eyes and concentrated hard, breathing deeply. “You must be willing to bend. You must be willing to change.”
“But it’s not me that has to change!”
“Yes. You must be willing to see things not as they have been or as they are, but as they could be.” She leveled me with her gaze. “All that is real is not visible. And all that is visible is not real.”
I sighed. I was getting nowhere, and frustration was making me sweat. Taking my hands from hers, I pulled a twenty from my purse and gave it to her.
She walked me to the door, and I thanked her for her time. As I was leaving, she put a hand on my shoulder. “You have come a long vay since last you were here. I sense it. I see it.”
I nodded as tears filled my eyes. “I just don’t know where to go next.”
She tilted her head. “You will figure it out. Be strong, be brave, be open to all possibilities. Everything you vant is there for you to find.”
Everything I vant.
Right.
• • •
On my way home, I picked up the phone and called Jillian. Skylar was too happy in love to appreciate my misery. I needed someone who would abet it. Someone who would agree with me that love was hopeless and no one knew what they were doing. Someone to tell me men were clueless apes who didn’t understand anything. Someone who would commiserate with me on my desolate future and let me wallow.
“Natalie?”
“Hi.”
“Everything OK?”
“No. Everything is terrible.”
“Are you home? I’m coming over.”
“I’ll meet you there in fifteen.”
Half an hour later, she walked in and found me curled up on the couch. “Hey. How are you feeling?”
“Shitty.” I sat up and put both hands on my stomach. “But I decided to have the baby.”
“You did?” She sat down and threw her arms around me. “That’s so exciting! To keep?”
“I don’t know.” I sighed. “Probably. Once I start a project, I don’t like to give up on it.”
She laughed ruefully. “True.”
“I just went and had a psychic reading from Madam Psuka.”
“Shut up. Did you really? Why?”
I threw my hands up. “Because I’m confused! My life is a wreck! It’s turning out to be nothing like what I thought it would be, and I’m totally lost. I was hoping she’d tell me what I’m supposed to do!”
“And did she?”
“No,” I said angrily. “She just gave me a bunch of nonsense about being more flexible and brave and seeing things that aren’t there.”
Jillian sighed. “Sorry, kiddo. I wish I could help. Hey, are you hungry?”
“I was before. But then I wasn’t.”
She stood up. “You need nourishment. Let me get you something to eat.”
“I just said I wasn’t hungry.”
“Doesn’t matter. Your body needs sustenance.” She gave me the look. “Now come in the kitchen and talk to me.”
I followed her into the kitchen, and while she rummaged in the fridge and fiddled with the microwave I sat at the table and ranted about men and apes and cluelessness and misery. She let me go on for about ten minutes, nodding and clucking her tongue in sympathy.
“I hear you.” She set a bowl of chicken noodle soup down in front of me, along with an orange and a glass of milk. “So I take it Miles was a jerk about the baby?”
“No, not a jerk exactly.” I picked up the spoon and poked at some noodles. “Not a jerk at all, I guess.”
She sat down and looked at me, perplexed. “What did he say?”
Taking a deep breath, I filled her in on what had transpired yesterday.
“Wait a minute.” She sat back and held up her hands. “He drove here right away and told you that he loves you?”
“Yes, but—”
“That he wants to be with you? And raise this child?”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“That he’s willing to change his life for you? Move here? Get married?”
“Not in those exact words, maybe, but yeah. I guess that’s what he meant.”
“And this is the guy who tied you up in his closet and talked dirty and did amazing things with his tongue?”
“Um…yes.”
Jillian sat back. “So where’s the ape, Nat? Where’s the cluelessness? Where’s the misery?”
“I don’t know, OK?” I stabbed the noodle into bits. “It just wasn’t right.”
“Forgive me, little sister, I know you’re going through some shit, but maybe you’re being a little too picky here. I think Madam Psuka might have been right.”
I looked up at her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, this wasn’t exactly planned. You guys haven’t been together for a decade. Miles didn’t have ten years to come up with the perfect proposal. So maybe it wasn’t the perfect pitch, but guess what? You’re pregnant. With his child. And you guys are going to have to sort of feel your way from here. I know that’s hard for you, but life threw you a big fat curveball and you took a big hard swing.”
It was big and hard all right. “Yeah. We did.”
“So maybe you need to be a little flexible. Cut Miles some slack. Let your life take this new direction—it’s not what you planned, but maybe it’s meant to be.”
I bit my lip. “You think so?”
“Yes.” She reached across the table and put her hand over mine. “And you guys love each other. You’ve been friends for twenty years. Maybe it’s not the perfect love story, but it’s yours.”
Tears filled my eyes. “God, Jilly. I’m so fucking tired of crying.”
“It’s the hormones,” she said, coming around to hug me. “It will get better.”
“When?” I sobbed into her stomach.
“I don’t know. Eighteen years?”
I choked out a laugh. “Jesus. Eighteen years.”
“You won’t be alone, honey. You’ll have Mom and Dad, me, Sky and Sebastian. And you’ll have Miles, too, Nat. I feel it. I see it in the way he looks at you. How he’s always looked at you. He loves you—you just have to let him do it his way.”
• • •
I lay awake most of the night wondering if Jillian and Skylar and even Madam Psuka were right. Was everything I wanted right there in front of me and I just didn’t recognize it? Was I too stuck on the idea of what I thought the fairy tale would look like? After twenty years of being just friends, had a few days of crazy bound Miles and me for life?
Was this our story?
How did it end?
I sort of felt like the prince had come to rescue me, and I’d turned him away from the castle. But you know what? I didn’t want to be rescued by the right thing.
I wanted to be swept away.
I went to work the next morning, tired and emotional and still uncertain what would happen next.
We got busy fast, and again I looked up every time the door opened, hoping to see Miles walk in. Around ten, I was surprised to see Skylar come in, a big grin on her face.
“Hey,” I said, pouring coffee for someone from behind the counter. “What are you doing here? Not working today?”
“I’m going in late. Can you take a break? I have to show you something.” Her eyes twinkled, and I wondered what she was up to.
“OK. Sure, come in the back.”
She came around the counter and followed me through the kitchen into my little office. “Have your phone?”
“It’s right here.” I reached into my purse, which was sitting on the desk. “What’s going on?”
“Did you see Miles’s post today?”
At the mention of his name, my heart quickened. “No. Why?”
“Look at it.”
“Why?” I asked again, but I was already searching for it.
“Just look.”
I searched his name with trembling fingers and fidgeted impatiently while the results loaded. Scanning the top hits, I clicked on the right one and gasped when I saw the title.
It Happened. I’m in Love.
I know what you’re thinking.
It’s impossible. The only thing that guy loves more than his dick is…well, nothing.
And a couple months ago, you’d have been right.
But there’s this girl, see? Remember Cinnamon Buns? It’s her.
Her name is Natalie. I don’t remember not knowing her. We’ve been friends forever. But I’ve always wanted to be more.
I’m glad I had to wait, though. I needed to wait.
I don’t think I would have appreciated her enough five years ago, or one year ago, or even six months ago.
But now…
Now I can’t breathe when I see her.
Now I can’t sleep without her next to me.
Now I can’t be happy without her in my life.
Now I can’t believe I ever thought she wasn’t the one.
I once told her I wasn’t capable of loving someone completely and forever, but I was wrong.
I was so wrong.
Now I want to spend the rest of my life proving it to her.
I just hope she’ll let me.