Page 95 of The Sun and the Moon
Chapter Forty-Three
Cadence
I reach into my pocket and realize I don’t have my phone.
It’s strange, the feeling that washes over me. It’s like someone is calling me and I feel the buzz of the vibration.
You are a wild, untamed thing.
I heave a deep breath.
I don’t want to be wild and untamed. I want to be normal. Have a normal life where you go to work, you pay your bills, you fall in love with a stranger, and you never think about things like destiny or fate or psychic predictions or soulmates or romances. I tried so hard to shove myself into a life like that. The only part that was true was that I love being out in the wild.
That choice still feels like mine.
Running as far away as possible might have been a reaction to her, but finding myself in the forest wasn’t. I don’t know how to go back to that solitude now, but it would be so much easier if I could. Sydney has a life here; I have a life there. We can make it on our own.
But we’re better together.
I look up at the sky and ignore my inner musings. The sun is on its way west, edging closer to the horizon for the early-evening sunset. It’s probably somewhere between two and three p.m. I wonder if the invites have been delivered yet. I hope that whatever is going on, they remember to get Chicken.
Even in the midst of this breakdown, I’m still worrying about Sydney’s elderly dog.
I don’t have a clue where I’m going, but I need to get as far away from the hotel as possible. I barrel forward through the throngs of people. Tonight’s events for the festival and the fact that it’s a Saturday have brought out hordes—some even dressed in Norwegian garb and milkmaid gear.
I duck down a side street that looks a little less crowded and notice a small bookstore located in a cute blue-and-white building with a pleasant brick facade. The store is sleepy, not hosting any events today by the looks of it.
I drift around the stacks, calmed by the smell of paper. As a rule, I read electronically—saving precious natural resources. But I’ve always loved the feel of a book in my hand, the way they look on the shelves, tidily set all in a row.
“I saw that they had the deck.” I hear a familiar voice behind me and duck around to hide. I immediately feel stupid. Kit isn’t some weird Moira groupie. I don’t need to hide from her.
“Let’s get a pic fast, though. You saw that invitation thing.” Julia comes up behind her. “It’s a wedding, right?” Kit stops her motion to look at her. “They’re doing, like, a whole surprise wedding.” She sounds annoyed.
“Are you upset they didn’t ask you to help plan a surprise wedding?” Kit asks, playfully.
Julia rolls her eyes. “I mean, she knows I’m a wedding planner.”
“I can’t imagine your personalities would gel,” Kit replies, turning back around to search the bookshelf of tarot decks. Julia nods, and her eyes trip down to land on Kit’s ass. She smiles.
“We could ditch.” She presses her hips into Kit’s. Her nose nuzzles into her hair. Kit stops searching the shelf, dedicating all her attention now to this covert PDA.
“We can do that”—she spins, hands snaking around Julia’s waist—“andgo to the surprise wedding.” She presses her lips to Julia’s, lingering, letting her whole body meld into her fiancée.
“You get me,” Julia says. “I suppose we should go. She did bring us together.”
“She did a little, we did the rest,” Kit corrects.
I turn away from the scene, making a beeline for the door as her words conjure up the memory of our reading in the bar. I burst through the front door into the warm light of the early-fall sun.
Catalysts don’t decide a lifetime loving each other.
My mom and her invitation—my mom and her prediction—might have been the catalyst for this story. That moment that signaled the start, but it’s not what decided how the story would play out. Just like pulling a card isn’t a guarantee of that fate coming to pass. That’s the whole thing about a tarot reading: The potential is in the cards, the energy of the catalyst, but you are the fool taking the leap.
Your steps decide how the journey plays out.
I understand why Sydney didn’t tell me about the reading my mom gave her. I had made such a show of not wanting to be controlled by my mother, pinky promise or not, that I was a flight risk when it came to the mention of soulmates. She wanted a chance, and so did I. How can I fault her for doing what was necessary to make sure we got that chance?
Chapter Forty-Four
