Chapter 17: Rory - Entities to Lovers

“You’re…not going to like this,” Ezra cautions as we approach the parking space behind his building.

“Oh, that’s promising.”

As if I need something else to stress over…

I’m not sure how I feel about journeying to a different state with Ezra. We’re getting along better, and dare I say enjoying each other’s company, but traveling together is even more intimate.

There are also a thousand things that could go wrong on a three-hour road trip…especially while cursed. I’m a bad traveler in the first place. I don’t like living out of a suitcase or duffel bag, I like being in my own space, and I am not “go with the flow” when it comes to these things.

But at least no applicable planets are in retrograde at the moment.

Maybe we’ll be okay.

Ezra texted Micah and asked him if he could borrow the car for the day and now we’re here to pick up the keys. The plan is to drive up, find and talk to Lettie, and return this evening.

“Okay, Micah and I have this thing,” Ezra explains, leaning against the trunk of a Corolla donning a bumper sticker that reads I Brake for Side Quests. “When one of us wants to have someone over, or we’ll be away…like, otherwise indisposed, we send each other the creepy moon emoji. It’s like a Bat-Signal. But for sex.”

I didn’t need to know that. I don’t need to think about how many times Ezra’s sent it to his brother, or what other women have passed through his bedroom. What is his dating life like? He’ll occasionally get numbers passed his way after tours, slipped between dollar bills, but I don’t know if he ever acts on them. Are there other professors he’s interested in?

All I know is this jealousy is so unsettling. It’s bad enough I’ve been attracted to him from the start, but I was able to ignore it because I didn’t like him…Now I have no idea how I feel.

“What creepy moon emoji?”

“You know the one. It’s, like, got the weird face with the side eye?” he explains. “Anyway, I sent him that a few nights ago so he wouldn’t be worried when I didn’t come home.”

“So, basically he thinks you’ve been on a sex bender this whole time,” I say, crossing my arms in front of my chest. He’s right. I don’t love this. I don’t love it because it implies activities we are not doing, but it’s also putting the idea in my head: What if we did go on a sex bender?

It’s not my kind of thing. I’ve fumbled around with the occasional one-night stand or short-term relationship. They were often awkward, and I was forcing myself into a space I didn’t want to be in. I’d convince myself maybe one day the sparks would come and I’d start wanting these things I thought I was supposed to want.

The danger with Ezra is, he’s been a live wire for me since we met.

“I mean, it could be a tasteful sex bender,” he attempts to recover. “Like it’s not all we were doing.”

“Why did you tell him you were off getting laid? You couldn’t have come up with something else?”

“I’m realizing the error of my ways now. I’m sorry. I didn’t think we’d be cursed. I didn’t think I’d have to show up with you. It’d just be Schrödinger’s Sex Bender. He’d never have to know who it was with.”

“Riiiight,” I groan. “Because it’d be humiliating to admit you were sleeping with the weird psychic girl. I’ve heard that one before.”

“No,” he insists, backing away from the car. His tone shifts to frustration. “That wasn’t what I meant.”

“Then what does it mean?”

“He knows we didn’t like each other. Showing up with you here is a surprise, no doubt.”

“Didn’t?” I giggle. “Past tense implies I like you now.”

“Do you?” He raises an eyebrow.

I twist the sun and moon ring around my middle finger.

“No,” I lie. Truthfully, this morning’s put me in a tailspin. From Ezra comforting me as I broke down in his arms, to him enjoying the tea blend I made for my mom…I’m more charmed than I should be. He’s showing me all the ways he might fit into my life, when I’ve been trying so hard to force him—and anyone—out. “You told your brother we were having a raucous sex fest. I absolutely do not like you right now.”

This, however, gets a bemused smile out of him. A few seconds later, the back door to the apartment building opens and Micah walks into the rain to meet us.

“I thought I’d never see you again!” Micah cheers, but he stops short when he sees me. His mouth opens, then closes in surprise. “Uh, hi.”

Micah’s only slightly taller than Ezra, maybe five-ten, and the two boys look simultaneously so different and so similar. Where Ezra’s all sharp edges and angles, Micah’s a little softer. A gentler face, a thicker layer of stubble on his cheeks, a gold hoop nose ring, and a touch more muscular where Ezra’s lean. Ezra’s wardrobe is a lot of button-downs, sweaters, vests, and some eclectic ties he wears to work, but Micah’s clad in jeans and a T-shirt reading Beware the Smiling Dungeon Master under his jacket. They have the same dark, dark hair and big brown eyes, though Micah’s hair is curly all the way through.

“Micah,” Ezra says, rubbing the back of his neck. “This is Rory.”

“Ah, Rory,” he says. “I’ve heard plenty about you.”

Oh, good. He’s heard about me. Historically, that never bodes well.

“Oh, uh…cool!”

“I’m Micah. Nice to meet you.”

“Charmed,” I offer.

“Where are you going?” Micah asks him.

“We’re going up the coast a little bit,” Ezra chokes out.

“Together?”

“Yes,” he awkwardly confirms. Now that the cat’s out of the bag with my mom, I do wonder if Ezra might be inclined to tell someone like Micah what’s really going on. Granted, telling a twenty-something nerd we screwed up so badly we’re plagued by bad luck would be easier than telling my mom, but it’s still another person who knows I fucked up.

I try to hold on to my mom’s words. I should have known she’d respond calmly and know what to do.

She always does.

When I was little, I’d ask her how she knew everything and she promised I’d figure it all out as I got older, too, but now I’m twenty-six, a fully grown adult, and half the time, I have no idea what I’m doing. When is everything going to fall into place for me? When am I going to know what the right path is?

“Look, we’ll be back by tonight, and—”

“You do realize this is weird, right?” Micah says. “I don’t see you for days and now you need to come take the car and leave the city?”

“I recognize this is weird, yes,” Ezra replies. “Don’t worry about it. It’ll be fine.”

Ezra’s voice goes terse and stern, like he’s trying to convince not just Micah but himself this will all go according to plan. Micah looks to him, and then to me, and then back at Ezra.

“Right. Okay, um…make good choices?”

“We will,” I assure him, but with the knowledge that proximity is not always our savior, who can guarantee that?

“We’re going to uh…go,” Ezra stammers.

“All right, see you later. Pleasure to meet you, Rory.”

“You too,” I say, giving an awkward wave.

Micah tosses the car keys to Ezra and he catches them flawlessly, the steel clinking against his rings. I slip into the passenger seat and rest my purse on my lap. The interior smells like old fabric and the dying whiffs of the pine air freshener hanging from the mirror. Ezra slides into his side and notches the seat forward a few grooves. Suddenly, it all feels stifling. When we share my apartment, we have more space. I can hang out in the kitchen while he’s in the living room. Here? The only place to go is to jump out of a moving car.

“You ready?” he asks.

“As I’ll ever be.”

—

* * *

We plunge into a sea of orange, red, and brown leaves as we drive north. Between admiring the signature New England foliage, I do some arranging for the Out There shoot for next week. My mom has stepped out of the conversation and left me and Brendon, their intern, to handle the details. I’ve worked my way through getting them all of our tech specs, and arranged to upgrade our Wi-Fi. We do need it anyway.

Each email makes my hands shake, like I’m going to royally blow something or this is too good to be true. Deep down, I’m worried a break this big has another shoe yet to drop, but I need to fight through the fear. At least, as much as I can. I set my phone down and focus on the road. I whip out my tarot cards and shuffle.

“So,” Ezra finally says. “What do you think we’re going to find up there?”

He’s been quiet for most of the drive so far. He let me pick the music, which ended up being a calming indie playlist I call “lil bog girl vibes,” full of easy listening and crooning acoustics. There have, of course, been brief breaks in silence for him to tell me what each of the historical sites off the freeway were as they appeared on signs.

“I don’t know,” I tell him. “I’ve never been to a place like this. The paranormal folks from the city are different. I imagine it’ll be low-key. General stores, no-frills houses…it may smell a bit of weed. You know, really chill all around.”

“That’s a vibe.” Ezra snaps his fingers in a eureka moment. “Maybe we can ask the cards and it’ll tell us what we need to know.”

This time, it sounds like a genuine suggestion, or at least something to make me feel better. “You think I haven’t already done like ten tarot readings about this?”

“Silly me.”

“Tarot also doesn’t really work like that. Some readings can be a yes-no question and often the cards will give you a good hint.”

“Okay,” he announces. “Let’s ask the cards if we’re going to break this damn curse today! That, or we could play the license plate game.”

“Do you want a reading?”

I’ve personally been desperate to read Ezra’s cards these past few days. I did my best to determine his birth chart when he first started working for us, seeking some clarity on why he particularly got under my skin. So much made sense when I discovered he was a Scorpio rising. That magnetic personality, the aura, and why I am so drawn to him. A birth chart can tell you a lot about a person, but I like the game of reading their cards, and seeing what said reading does to them.

“I…guess?” he says. “It’s not, like…going to completely roast me, right?”

“It may. I regularly get roasted by the cards, but it’s only a roast because it knows what you need to hear.”

“And you don’t tamper with them at all?”

“Nope. I trust the cards. I don’t need to interfere.”

I sometimes find with more reserved clients, they aren’t ready to fess up to some of their hurdles. I can usually coax it out of them and apply that new info to give them a more accurate and guidance-filled reading. It also sometimes ensures certain pesky cards make total sense. I convince them to trust the cards the way I do, and the cards won’t tell them anything doom and gloom.

“Fine. Hit me. What do we do?”

“Well, I usually like to start with a calming meditation. Sometimes people who’ve never had this done get a little nervous, so, we center ourselves. But…”

“But what?”

“I won’t have you do that because you are driving a moving vehicle.”

“…Right.”

Ezra…frowns? Like he actually wanted to do my meditation.

I give the cards a final shuffle. Ezra glances over at me, keeping one eye on the road and the other on my hands.

“All right, I’ll cut the deck and spread them out. Can you pick three cards for me? We’ll read for your past, present, and future energies.”

I spread the cards onto my lap. This is one of my favorite decks. It’s a vintage Rider-Waite deck embossed with gold foil flowers on the back side of the cards. I found it at an estate sale my mom and I went to. It reached out to me, whispering like spirits do. I’m a firm believer that the cards choose their owner. I’ve had them so long the cards are worn on the corners, even a little torn in parts, but they never lead me astray. I know they won’t lead Ezra off course either.

Ezra takes one hand off the wheel as we slow at a light and studies the spread. His ringed fingers hover over them, like he’s taking a multiple-choice test. Finally, he selects one. He does it two more times, but he doesn’t race to pull his hands away from my leg right away. We lock eyes for a split second that snatches my breath away—and then when the light turns green, the Masshole driver behind us honks.

I take his cards and scoop the others out of the way. I flip them all over.

“Everything’s upright,” I inform him.

“Is that good or bad?”

“Neither.”

“A lot of gray area in this business, I see,” he laments, huffing dramatically.

“It’s all a matter of perspective. A card reversed just means it has a sort of opposite meaning. So, your first card is the Page of Swords. This card is really youthful to me, full of curiosity and ambition. There’s a lot of potential and passion here. If this is your past energies, this tells me you were really driven in the past, maybe had some lofty goals.”

Ezra’s grip on the wheel tightens. “I suppose I wanted to…do a lot as a kid. I wanted to go to the best schools. I wanted to join all the clubs. I wanted to know everything.”

“That’s so hard to imagine,” I joke.

Ezra hits me with a warm smile. “Yeah…what next?”

“For your next card, you pulled the Five of Pentacles.”

Ezra glances over at it. “Oh no. I don’t think I like this one. Why are they sad? Why are they in the snow?”

I giggle. “Don’t panic.”

“I totally want to hear that from my tarot reader!”

“So,” I begin, “the Five of Pentacles is one of the more dismal cards in the deck. It symbolizes adversity and loss—a lot of the time it has to do with unemployment or financial hardship.”

“Seems like all that ambition in the first card didn’t really go anywhere…”

“Do you think that?” I inquire.

Ezra glances across the car at me. His jaw twitches like he has something to say, right on the tip of his tongue, but he can’t spit it out. I turn down the music, offering him some hint that whatever it is, I want to listen. He didn’t have to sit with me and calm me down earlier, but he chose to. And now, I want to choose to get to know him better and understand a side of him I’ve ignored for a year.

“I don’t know,” he sighs. “I don’t have a ton to show for it, despite the good grades, the education.”

“You’re teaching, though. And you like that…I think.”

“I do,” he says. “I just hoped it’d be…different. I hoped I’d finally find a place—or a person—I felt good enough for. Like I really mattered.”

The brutal honesty makes my ribs hurt. Do I dare tell him I’m terrified there’s no one in the world for me either? That every time I let myself be brave or happy, I’m terrified an evil spirit is going to remind me I’m not worth loving?

“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I feel the same way a lot of the time.”

“I wish you didn’t have to.” His lips turn up into a quiet smile. Happy, again, when he’s talking about me. “I’ve always thought you were this fearless and capable woman who knew exactly where she belonged and what she was great at.”

“If only,” I huff.

“Me, though? I sometimes feel I’m not good at anything I try to do.”

“Except working at the store,” I correct. “You know you’re good at that.”

His nod is slow and pensive. “Except working at the store…Working for your mom is the first time I’ve felt like I was on the right track in a very long time.”

The impression I’ve always had of Ezra was one of ultimate confidence. He knows so much, shows it all off, and has to be the standout in the room. He rakes in tips and rave reviews, and my mom adores him. Never for a second did I think Ezra was self-conscious about anything. Not the way I am. I always hated that Ezra never seemed to battle that. It was infuriating for someone to be so confident and authentic.

“If it’s any comfort, I have never let you off the hook for anything. The reason I loathed you so much for so long was because of how good at your job you were.”

Ezra looks at me. I’m still wielding the card, tracing the design with my fingertips. His eyes are soft and yearning, like I’ve said something that matters a lot to him. I really wasn’t sure I had it in me to make Ezra feel something. He’s always seemed so unaffected, I figured I’d never break down those walls of his. But it turns out, behind all of it is just a man who wants someone to see him as enough.

Fuck, I hate it when my mom is right.

Ezra and I really aren’t different at all.

“Really?”

“Yes,” I confirm. “I was the best tour guide at Ye Olde Spirit Tours until you showed up. You never wavered in confidence like I do and weren’t scared of anything. And I hated that.”

I break off into a laugh and he joins, too.

“Man, I really get under your skin, don’t I?”

In so many ways, I want to tell him.

“You really do. For the record, now I think I admire you.”

I can’t believe I’m saying it, but there’s a certain weight off my shoulders when I do. All this anger and animosity I’ve felt toward him this past year feels lighter because I’m no longer morphing it into something it’s not.

“You’re wrong about one thing,” he says.

“What’s that?”

“I’m terrified of you.”

His gaze lingers on mine. My skin is hot and I hope the anxiety doesn’t show on my face. I’m so terrified of him, too. I’m terrified of this sensation in my chest that makes me think I can be brave enough to let him know me.

“Do you want to know your final card?” I ask, clearing my throat.

“Please,” he says. “Tell me it’s a good one.”

“Your future card is the Knight of Wands,” I announce, showing it to him. It’s triumphant, mighty, and full of propulsive action.

“Well.” He smiles. “That looks promising.”