Page 65 of Sort of Seeing Someone

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Chapter Nineteen

I’m prepping a giant batch of Love Potion in the bathroom of the coach house, which is eerily reminiscent of my college “jungle juice” days. As all of the ingredients marinate in the tub, I take time to do something I’ve been meaning to do for a while now.

I flip to some blank pages in the back of my mom’s spell book, where I begin to transfer the FIELD NOTES from the app on my phone to the paper. The more I dabble with my gift (and dance around it), the more important it is to keep track of things. Something feels right getting the notes off my phone and into this book. Like it’s where they belong.

As I date my most recent entry in the journal, Nora announces her presence in the coach house. She doesn’t come over often, but today she arrives bearing a fresh linen restock.

“What in god’s name…” she asks, plopping a pile of folded towels on top of the bathroom vanity. Her eyes dart to the seemingly stained bath tub.

“It’ll wash out,” I say of the reddish standing water, even though I am highly unsure that it will.

“You’re lucky I’m dealing with another crisis right now,” she says. “Check out this text from Liv.”

Nora hands me her phone and I read the message.

Be honest. Do you actually think I’m ever going to get pregnant? This feels like it’s way harder than it should be.

“That’s intense. What are you going to say back?” I ask, noticing there has yet to be a reply in the text convo.

“Hell if I know. We’ve got to help her,Moonie.”

“I agree. Should we DoorDash her some Mucinex?”

“Excuse me?”

I shrug my shoulders and give my bathwater a stir. Clearly TikTok hasn’t been serving Nora all the#TTC (trying to conceive)content it has been for me since we’ve all been discussing fertility so much as of late. Maybe Gerda was on to something with these cell phones after all…

“Give me the spell book, will you?”

I hand it to my sister and she thumbs through the pages, landing on exactly the one she was looking for, before handing it back to me.

“A fertility ritual? You can’t be serious.”

“It’s better than Mucinex!” she fires back.

“Is it though?”

“Moonie, Liv is not having success with IUI. Which means, next stop is IVF. Unless…”

She directs her eyes to the book and nods my way. I read the first few sentences before stating the obvious: “This is insane.”

“Clearly I won’t touch this kind of thing—and neither would she—but…youcan. Do it for Liv, will you?”

Nora and I are at a standoff staring at each other, through each other. I’m already elbow-deep in a tub full of potion while simultaneously trying to dodge palm reading abilities, and now my sister wants me to go full woo-woo and cast a spell on my other sister behind her back so she can get pregnant. I swear I used to be normal.

I scan some more of my mom’s handwriting and preview the steps. Honestly, it doesn’t seem that hard.

“Get me three candles, three sheets of paper, a pen, and a crystal off my nightstand,” I order.

Nora runs off in her lululemon to fetch what we need for the ceremony. It’s the most actual exercise she’s done in those leggings. Meanwhile, my phone pings with an incoming text from Ollie. It’s a selfie of him readingThe Phantom of the Opera.The text says:Name a better book that’s stood the test of time, I’ll wait.

Shockingly I’m not tempted to send him back a photo of my mother’s spell book, even though it’s a worthy contender.

Nora returns, out of breath but with everything I asked for.

“Before we get started, you have to promise me something.”

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