Page 28 of The Lovers
A reality I did not consider when I made this fairly rash decision to crash Millie’s party. I shove the thought away and focus my attention toward the main event. I don’t have to deal with that problem yet. I won’t let it derail me.
The yurt is a circular, tent-walled building with a painted-wood front door. In the center of the door is a window where some golden light seeps out from inside. Moonlight hits the side of the tent, cutting sharp lines against the desert backdrop.
Piper hangs back to walk near me.
“I’m glad you came,” she says, her voice low. She smiles. “I mean, I know you have ulterior motives.” She pointedly looks in Kit’s direction. I keep a neutral face even though my heart rate just skyrocketed and my pulse is loud in my ears. “I don’t mind, if it also means I get to spend extra time with you.”
My cheeks heat, but not because she’s trying to flatter me. Holding her attention was never an issue. When we were together, she had a way of making me forget everything else in my life while also feeling like the only thing that mattered in hers. My standards were replaced with hers, my goals were compared and then weighed against her own. What I needed was easy to lay down when she convinced me she had a better way.
I promise. You’ll like it, she always used to say. And I did, always, until one day I looked at myself in the mirror and Julia had disappeared. I was at her parents’ vacation home on Cape Cod for theFourth of July, hiding in the bathroom in a hideous seersucker ensemble she convinced me to wear, while I played pretend “friend and roommate” in the fictional story of her life.
“I like what you’ve done with your hair,” she tries again. “I always wanted you to grow it out.”
“I didn’t do it for you,” I say. When we were dating, I had a much more “butch” haircut. Her dad’s words. He was suspicious that I was queer; he liked to poke me to see if I’d snap and reveal the truth.
“I know, but I was right,” she says. “It suits you.”
Thankfully we’ve caught up with the rest of the party, so I can’t respond to her assertion with any more venom than my clenched jaw. Somehow, I find myself standing between Kit and Piper like some sick joke of that f-word Millie mentioned earlier.
The door to the yurt swings open, nearly pummeling a couple of the other women, who scramble out of the way and into each other. One of the twins—Jenni—collides with Coco, hands to breasts, face contorting in rage. She shoves her away in the same motion, but Coco’s smirk is a challenge, and Jenni doesn’t seem to want to back down.
A woman with salt-and-pepper hair, dressed in multiple layers of draping fabric in muted colors that resemble desert sands, steps into the golden light of the overhead lamp. I recognize her as the owner, Freya Dan, former supermodel turned spiritual influencer, author, andhealer. She founded the Glamp-Out to create a safe space for spiritual exploration and celebration.
Or so her website copy claims.
Millie booked the Glamp-Out all by herself, planning every element, but I still had Zoe put together an information dossier so that if anything went awry, we wouldn’t be in the dark. Shefollowed up with Millie to make sure she got all the necessary paperwork that protected her deposits and laid out the details of the evening and what the location was required to provide. You’d be surprised how often these places don’t deliver what they promise.
And how few clients are prepared to take action when it happens.
Freya Dan lives on-site in a yurt that sits near the main campground where she upsells exclusive packages promising all sorts of healing that not even medical professionals can provide.
I know I sound like a skeptic about all this stuff.
Because I am.
When my mom died, I went through your basic existential crisis…at nine years old. Looking at her body in the open-casket ceremony, she didn’t seem much like the lady who had once held me when I cried, or like, made me pancakes for breakfast on my birthday. But I didn’t understandwhy, so I decided to do some research on afterlife beliefs.
Nail down some facts.
But there weren’t any—at least not any that seemed universally accepted to be true. And nine-year-old Julia wouldn’t settle for less than that. And ever since that brush with the universal unknown, spiritual practices of any kind became synonymous in my mind with people trying to make sense of a thing that no one can make sense of—that maybe we aren’t supposed to make sense of at all. And it stuck.
Despitewhat happened in that psychic’s tent on Halloween or how—for a few brief years—it actually made me believe there was more to the universe than matter and energy.
“I recognize your aura immediately,” Freya Dan says, eyes pinned to Millie. More likely she recognizes her from Instagram.I know both the Glamp-Out and Freya Dan Official accounts follow Millie’s. Call me a petty bitch, but I looked it up one night while scrolling my phone in bed in the dark.
“Welcome, welcome, welcome.” Freya Dan presses her hands to heart center and bows.
Most of the partygoers are into it. Kit bows in return, and the other women follow her lead. I fumble to keep up, not wanting to stand out, and even worse, not wanting to mirror Piper, who remains a pillar in the sand. I let out an involuntary huff of annoyance and Kit shoots me a big-eyed glare.
“Stop that,” she whisper-scolds.
I make sure to roll my eyes dramatically enough that she can see them beneath the shadow of my hair. Her nose scrunches, creating tiny, wavy lines of skin and faint freckles. Such a familiar expression to see on her face that it makes my stomach twist.
We rise in unison, or competition, I can’t be sure. She’s smirking like it could be the latter, and I have to fight back my own smile so I don’t let on that I might be enjoying it.
“Inside this yurt is a safe space to realign with your heart center,” Freya Dan continues. “Healer Suni has already arrived.”
“Do you think she’s friends with Healer Arynne?” I lean over to whisper in Kit’s ear. My lips almost brush the loose hair that lifts in the light breeze, kicking up the smell of her shampoo. Earthy and sharp, with the faintest hint of something floral. It could almost be the smell of the desert itself, if it weren’t for the fact that I just noticed it for the first timeright now.
