Page 29 of The Sun and the Moon
“I am tonight.” I sigh deeply. His brows cinch.
“Because of the psychic?” he asks.
“Have you ever talked to a psychic?”
“No, not my thing. Though I think my mom got a saju reading for me when I was a kid.” When my face makes it clear that I don’t know what he means, he elaborates, “It’s a Korean form of reading your fortune.” I nod. Makes sense and sounds interesting.
“Did it say anything about soulmates?” As soon as the question leaves my lips, my head feels light and weird. Questioning everything also means questioning my belief inthat.
“God, probably, but I don’t really believe in soulmate messaging,” he says, spooning servings of pasta into bowls. He gives himself a heftier portion. “Even if I did, like from a purely romantic, daydream, pie-in-the-sky sort of place, it wouldn’t change the way I live my life.”
I tuck in to the bowl for a bite. “Why wouldn’t it?” I ask around my chewing. Joe takes a bite, chewing slowly. Buying time to get his words just right. The Scorpio comes alive at night. He’s at his most philosophical, most intense, most thoughtful.
“Because love is still a lot of work, whether it’s with someone the universe fated for you, or whether it’s just someone you choose and keep on choosing.”
He’s always known deep down that he wants to get married, have kids, settle into a little bungalow, and barbecue on the weekends. He doesn’t have a gender requirement for his happily ever after, but he knows that he wants it. Me? The only thing I know for sure is I’m terrified to love a person so much that my life becomes partially theirs.
“Sometimes I forget how poetic you get after the witching hour,” I say, deflecting the uncomfortable feelings rising to the surface of my skin.
“And I forget how emo you get,” he says with a snort.
I shovel a few bites, one after the other, into my mouth. Trying to push the image of Cadence out of my brain again.
It’s illogical, almost intrusive, but somehow I feel myself letting her get under my skin when I should be guarding my peace with an arsenal of fire. All of this stuff has me questioning more than I want to. The only way to shake the feeling is to say it out loud.
“If I tell you something wild, you have to promise not to be weird.”
“You know who you’re talking to, right?” he replies.
“Exactly.” I wait. He rolls his eyes.
“All right, I promise,” he says, raising his left hand and placing his right one on his heart.
“When Cadence—”
“The park ranger daughter of the woman you want to send to the other side of the galaxy?” he interjects. I nod.
I decide to deliver the information as succinctly and swiftly as possible.
“Cadence believes that when she and I met at her mother’s shop, we fulfilled a soulmate prediction Moira gave her as a teenager, and it’s freaking me out in the context of everything else.”
Joe blinks at me. His lips drop open. His dark eyes narrow.
“In the context of everything else,” he says, putting dramatic air quotes around the phrase. “You think she’s hot.”
“No—well, yes, but that’s not the point at all.”
“It sounds very much like the point.”
“I just told you her psychic mom predicted the exact scenario we met under, and this is the part you choose to fixate on?”
Joe screeches, tossing his head theatrically. When he brings it back upright, he smiles. Genuine and open. “Sweetie, you don’t even believe in long-term relationships.”
I want to defend myself. I want to argue.
“And what if this whole time I’ve been wrong?” I set my bowl down on the countertop, dropping my fork back inside with a clink. Joe sets his bowl down and comes around the island to swivel my chair so I’m facing him. He places one hand on each shoulder, dropping down to look me right in the eyes.
“Then you change your mind,” he says tenderly. “And you invite in whatever new truth you want to embrace.”
