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HEIDI

I don’t think about Emmett Gardner for a couple of days.

Scratch that, I’m an unreliable narrator, apparently. The big guy consumes my every god damn thought. When I’m editing photos, when I’m dealing with a difficult client, or when I’m struggling to open my fucking car door and it won’t budge, sending me into a fit of rage.

I’m no stranger to rejection. I’m well accustomed to it. Rejection and me? Best friends. But being rejected because I’m not creative enough, or because I refuse to use sepia on wedding photos, or because Eddy from second grade told me I had no soul because of my hair color is a lot different than having my friendship rejected by someone I spilled my guts to on a beach on a random Tuesday during our vacation.

That, somehow, feels more personal, and I can feel the sting with my whole being.

Because it’s not just one part of me that’s being rejected, it’s me as a person who happens to belong to a friend group that he likes. This is a person I’m going to have to see frequently. A person with a daughter I’ve watched before along with Briar’s daughter.

How the fuck am I supposed to look him in the eye when he’s clearly so disgusted with me that he’s literally run away from me at a bar? The man looked like he was being hunted, for fuck’s sake.

I shouldn’t have come on too strong. Shouldn’t have asked him why he was acting strange. I should have let it all be.

I should have done a lot of things differently in my life, but here we are.

“Hey, do you want to get takeout tonight?” Mila asks as she barges into my room without even a knock.

I glance at her before returning my face to my fluffy white pillow I’ve been screaming into for the past five minutes. “No,” I mumble.

I hear her pause. “What do you mean no?”

I shrug. “I mean I don’t feel like eating,” I tell her, my voice completely muffled.

“Sweetie, you have to eat something. What’s going on?”

With a groan, I turn onto my side, propping my head against my fist. “I feel really weird about what happened with Emmett,” I admit.

Mila wrinkles her nose. “Still?”

I stay silent.

“Okay, we need to get whatever this is to stop. You have some,” she looks around the room, “bad energy in here. Isn’t that something you would say? Some bad vibes. What do we need to do to cleanse the room?”

“We can burn some sage?” I sit up, immediately interested. If there’s one thing Mila knows, it’s how to cheer me up.

“Alright let’s go!” she smiles before handing me her phone. “But first, order something. We’re getting food in you.”

“How do I know that the vibes are officially clear?” Mila asks, looking around. “And are you sure the smoke alarm isn’t going to go off?”

Biting my lip, I look around my room. It’s small, but it’s cute and it’s mine, with a gorgeous cherry oak queen bedframe I found on the side of the road around Johns Hopkins when we were helping one of Amara’s friends move out of their school apartment.

While I loved everything about my room, for whatever reason the bedframe has always been my favorite.

“I think we’re good.” Our incense officially burned out and the lavender scent is almost thick enough to choke on.

“Well,” she places what’s left of the stick on my dresser, “I hope you feel a little better.”

Instead of telling her “I’ll be better when my room airs out a little,” I nudge her into the family room where a romcom is waiting for us on our large TV. “I’m ready for some cake,” I tell her.

“Don’t touch my lemon cake or so help me—” she starts before snatching it out of my hands.

Grabbing a fork, she immediately digs in.

“Lemon is all you Mil. You know carrot cake is the way to my heart.”

“I love you so much but I’m not sure I can eat another slice of carrot cake. Ever,” Mila says quietly through a mouthful of baked goods.

Letting out a sharp laugh, I raise my eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”

“Cake Sundays are a lot when you’re eating the same exact kinds over and over, Heidi.” She points her fork at me accusatorially.

Okay well, she’s got a point. Unless you love a cake flavor as much as I love carrot cake, it’s reasonable to not want to eat it every single day.

The rest of the night includes chilled glasses of white wine I don’t know the name of, cake, and cuddling on the couch under three different blankets watching a movie. My version of a perfect night.

And it’s not until I hear Mila snoring on my shoulder that I realize how tired I am.

With a sigh, I crawl out from under the blankets, careful not to disturb Mila in the process. Grabbing our plates and glasses, I bring them into the kitchen and place them in the dishwasher before grabbing a water.

The place is quiet, with just the low hum of electricity to settle my soul, but I turn on my fan the second I get to my room anyways, needing something else to keep my mind from drifting too far into the deep end.

“Okay,” I whisper to myself, my hands on my hips as I look around.

I’m tired, but there’s a bizarre amount of thoughts dancing around my head that I desperately need to get out.

Grabbing my journal from the top drawer of my bedside table, I get on my hands and knees to grab the pen that had rolled under my bed after I knocked it off the table in the middle of the night.

Finally getting settled in my bed, I open it to the next clean page, and I start writing.

And I unload everything.

When I’m done, I still feel like I’m missing something. I’ve always been someone who hates the unknown. I hate not knowing how something is going to turn out. What’s going to happen next. I want to be prepared, which is half the reason I spend every single shower rehearsing every single conversation I even think I’ll ever have over and over in my head.

And there’s one thing that I know usually calms my nervous system.

Reaching into my top drawer again, I grab the beautiful deck of matte-black tarot cards, holding them between both hands in my lap. Closing my eyes, I think about everything I’ve been stressing about. Everything that I want to come true. Everything I want to let go of.

I just need a little bit of hope.

Biting my lip, I shuffle the deck for about thirty minutes.

What do I need to prepare for? I keep asking. More rejection?

Separating the deck into three, I stack each part on top of each other, combining them once more before pulling a couple cards.

And I stop in my tracks, my heartrate picking up just slightly.

Because staring back at me is The Tower.

“Fuck,” I mutter before putting all the cards back into the deck, shuffling again, and repeating the process.

The problem is, the Tower shows up again.

Rolling my eyes, I fling myself back into my pillows.

What the hell did I do to deserve this?

Annoyance pricks up my spine as I think about what this could mean. Generally you only get the Tower if there’s going to be major changes in your life. It represents the crumbling of your foundation, whether for better or worse.

I usually like to look at all the cards, no matter what they are, in a positive light. In reality, the cards are a tool, and I love using them to reflect on life every day. But The Tower is a whole different beast, and the last time I pulled it was when I quit my job with the abusive boss.

The Tower doesn’t just randomly show up when it doesn’t mean business.

There’s only one person I think that could guide me a little bit, and when I realize it’s only ten at night, I hit “call.”

“You okay?” the voice asks the second they pick up, her voice tired.

“Yeah, did I wake you?” I ask, suddenly kicking myself for not sending a text first.

“No, it’s just been a long day. What do you need, sweetie?” my mom asks.

“I just pulled the tower again,” I tell her quickly. There’s a pause. “Twice.”

“Have you been stressed lately?”

“I mean, yeah. It’s been a little bit of a rough patch in life, but I’m doing okay.” I take a deep breath, squaring my shoulders. “I’m going to be okay.”

“You’re always going to be okay, lovebug. Of course you are. But if you’re going through a rough patch, maybe this is a good thing. Just keep an eye out for anything that may be a new start for you. Sometimes it’s good to start over.”

I don’t answer right away. Instead, I listen to her breathing from the other end of the phone, wishing I could go see her. She recently moved to Colorado to get away from the east coast. She needed a new start, and although I have all of my friends here, I do wish I would have gone with her sometimes.

“You okay?” she asks after a few minutes.

“Yeah. I think I’m just tired,” I tell her honestly. I’ve been wiped, I’ve had a long week, and I’ve had too many thoughts in this brain of mine.

It’s time for bed.

“I am too, lovebug. Get some sleep. I love you.”

“Love you too, mom. Get some rest.”