Page 36 of The Lovers
“Love,” Piper interrupts. “Tell me about my love life.”
“Oooooh,” Coco chimes. Giggles erupt in pockets around the group. Noticeably, Julia is stoic as a statue.
“This should be interesting,” Lisa pipes up. Piper doesn’t care about the audience. Her focus is laser.
“Three-card love spreads are pretty classic,” I say, holding the cards still midshuffle. “For that kind of query.” Her nostrils flare, she considers, and then she gives a swift nod.
One more shuffle and I hold out the deck for her to break. She does it once, pausing, considering. She’s taking this a lot more seriously than I expected. In my experience, the Pipers of the world look down their noses at spiritual practices like this. She might not be a skeptic at her core after all.
“You can break it again,” I say, watching her closely for a reaction.
“But I don’t have to,” she replies, eyes up to mine.
“No, you don’t have to.”
She crosses her arms, resting them on the table. I put the deck back together with her choice on top before drawing the first card toward her.
Three of Swords, upright. Iconic, recognizable with its three swords piercing a heart shape. In this deck, the heart is entwined in vines, the handles of the swords are embossed with a gold leaf foil. They catch the moonlight, making it bounce.
I brush the edges of the card with my fingertips. In larger spreads, the message of the Three of Swords can be tempered by the cards around it, influenced to have a less harsh inference or to be representative of something besides heartache if the position allows. But this is a three-card love spread—this heartache can only mean one thing.
“I can assume this long pause is you trying to find a spin so I don’t feel embarrassed,” Piper says. Generous assumption, but not totally off base. “It’s fine. I had a breakup last year.”
I find Millie standing nearby and try to get a gauge on how much she knows about this situation. Her clear and present surprise tells me the answer: Not a goddamn thing.
When I met her earlier, Piper did indicate that she and Millie hadn’t seen each other in a minute, and she isn’t really the type to offer up personal details without laborious excavation.
“This card represents a sharp and sudden pain or loss. It’s not a nonchalant experience. Placed so early on the road of the Fool’s Journey through the swords, it also signals the kind of foundationally disruptive pain that leads to transformation.” I let the concept rest in the air between us.
Piper blinks. “It was a bad breakup.” She deliberates, her copper brows tensing. “Yes.”
I flip the second card toward her.
Death, upright.
Murmurs sweep through the yurt. Someone—my money is on Coco—whisper-screams “shitballs.” Julia moves for the first time since I started my readings. She stands, yanking her jacket back on, moving through the group toward the table of refreshments. Piper’s eyes trail up, following her, and then back to me. Their color is a saturated hazel brown, deep and warm, and the energy emanating from them carries unfettered intensity.
Julia pours a glass of cucumber water so fast that some splashes out over the rim of the cup; she gulps it down with just as much haste.
Something about this reading has her on the run.
Piper’s eyes sheen. “Assuming this has a less literal translation.”
“Death is one of the most misunderstood cards in the deck,” I say.
Stay the course.
My compass keeps pointing me this way, and as much as I want to run the opposite direction, I can’t. I can try to ignore Julia moving in the room, try to ignore the feeling of her eyes shifting to me, settling, roaming my face. I can compartmentalize knowing this query of Piper’s is linked to her.
Every feeling just has to be shoveddown down down.
“Sitting next to the Three of Swords, Death compels me to believe you’ve taken the lesson from your breakup and used it to begin a transformation.”
In love, Death sometimes talks about a change in the kinds of people you are attracted to, or even your whole idea about what it means to love or be loved. I take in her guarded expression. She and Julia are serving upsomebody that I used to knowenergy, and I don’t think it’s merely a friendship that went sour. If Piper wasn’t out when they were together—or even isn’t out now—that could have led to their relationship falling apart, and it could be what this card is referring to now.
Julia wouldn’t be with someone who couldn’t be with her all the way.
That’s what she wanted for us. All those nights holding each other close, dancing at the cliff’s edge until finally we toppled over. I told her I was ready, and I knew what she thought that meant.
