Page 61 of The Fate Factor

It’s Friday night, and we’re sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, eating junk food and wearing the onesie pajamas that we bought each other for Christmas last year. As one does when your fate takes a hard left.

I point listlessly to the pink bottle, and she unscrews it, pouring me a cup. “So, you do know sleepover rules apply at any age, right? If something happened with Mr. Destiny, you’re required to tell me the whole truth.”

My eyes slip closed, and Jamie’s mouth at my neck flashes behind my eyelids. A memory this time, the past instead of the future, but it brings the same unsteady feeling.

“You’re not actually sleeping over.” I gulp my wine and top it off.

She shrugs. “I’m too old to sleep on the floor.”

“You don’t want to sleep without Colin.

“Whatever. The sleeping part doesn’t matter. We have the rest.” She hands me an elastic and brush so I can get to work putting a fishtail braid in her hair. She already did mine. Space buns. I hate her.

“Turn around,” I tell her, gathering her hair.

She shuffles to the side, and I settle behind her, working out my words while Pixie climbs my back, trying to eat the bunny ears on the hood of my pajamas. I scoop her up and redeposit her on the couch. The truth is, I didn’t need to be reminded that I’m bound by code to spill my guts. Extreme circumstances call for extreme opinions, and that’s Kate’s specialty.

“I don’t think we should call him that anymore,” I say, running the brush through the ponytail I’m making.

“What?”

“Mr. Destiny.”

“You never thought we should call him that, and you called the guy I was dating freshman year Trench Coat, so you don’t get a say.”

“He wore a trench coat!”

“Exactly, these nicknames don’t come out of nowhere. This one stays.”

I heave a sigh. “I have to tell you something.”

Kate’s head whips around, ruining the braid. “What?”

I know what she’s expecting, and I can’t bear to look at her face when I disappoint her, so I turn her shoulders away and start again on her hair. “Do you remember I told you that night about the tattoo on Jamie’s back?” A crack threatens my voice, and I pause to repeat what I’ve been telling myself for the last threedays:I shouldn’t feel this way. I shouldn’t be so…devastated. I barely know him.

Kate nods. “The quote you couldn’t read.”

“Yes, that one.” The words bunch like cotton inside my mouth. I don’t want to speak it, give it more credence. But I also can’t keep it trapped inside my brain, rattling around with the memories, turning them sour. “Well, I saw it again, in person, and it’s… different.”

“What do you mean it’s different?” she asks around her cup of wine.

“I mean it’s not the same. Like at all. Not even close. The words I saw are just gone and instead it’s a drawing of a wave.”

She looks at me over her shoulder, her forehead creased. “Maybe he had the other one removed.”

“Doubtful, but even if he did, why wouldn’t I have seen the new one? Wherever the vision took place, I haven’t been there yet.” I picture the fireplace, the snowy mountains I saw. “It wasn’t here at the cottage and it wasn’t at his place. If it hasn’t happened yet, I should have seen the one he has now. And there’s another thing—a scar on his right hand.” Faced with this new development, I realize I didn’t give that little clue due diligence. “It wasn’t there when I…” I wave a hand near my head. “He said he got it after we met but also after he opened the brewery that he claims he only has because of me. Day of, actually. How can that be? If it all worked out like I said, then I should have seen it.”

Kate shrugs like I haven’t just debunked this whole thing. “I mean, it can’t be an exact science.”

“Can it not?” Kate knows even less about this than I do, and I only know that Nana believed in it, and everyone thought she’d lost her mental faculties well before she actually had. “What’s the point if it can be wrong? Why not just use your horoscope ora fortune cookie to see the future? You’ll have an equal chance of being correct and it won’t come with a heaping side of terror.”

“Okay, well maybe it was right back then but it changed. Maybeyouchanged it by running away that night. Like the Butterfly Effect or whatever.”

“I didn’t run away. I went home because I had to.”

“And you didn’t come back for two years.” She waves a hand in front of her like a game show host revealing a prize. “So it’s a little different. It could be that making a conscious decision to ignore a huge gift from the universe had an effect on when and how the vision came true. I mean, what if you hadn’t left that night and you two had been in love this whole time? Maybe if you had been here, he would have picked the other tattoo.” Her eyes go wide, and she breathes out a little, “Woah. This shit is seriously wild.”

I deflate with a gust of air. The way she’s casually explaining the possible rules of this with a straight face is another layer on the crazy cake. If we can change the future, then how can someone see the future in a vision? And how are we ever supposed to make a decision again knowing the outcome could affect literally everything else? I have a hard enough time making myself click the alternate route on my GPS because I’m terrified there’s a Mac truck barreling my way if I choose to veer off course. Then of course there’s the opposite scenario, where I was supposed to take the shortcut and doom myself because I stay.

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