Page 17 of The One That Ran Away
“Oh, well… ah…”
Shannon sat back, crossing her arms. She had yet to touch her green drink. “Are you usually this reserved with your other clients? I can’t believe it. Not you. Aren’t you the one always in a hurry to tutor a girl onlove?”
Jess didn’t know if that meant what she thought it did. How much was the dark side of Shannon Parker toying with her?
“You’re naturally seductive and passionate. About everything. Mostly romantic relationships.”
Shannon snorted, as if that answer satisfied her. “How long have you been keeping that one in your head?”
Jess shrugged. “Since you first asked me to give you a reading.”
“That stuff about being allergic to failure… that’s rooted in how much passion I have?”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“I see. So, what’s so wrong about being passionate and seductive?”
“Huh?”
“I’m assuming there’s some shadow to that in one’s relationships. If I were nothing but perfect at love, then I would be married to my high school sweetheart by now. I’m not. So what’s that mean?”
Do you not have a boyfriend after all?That didn’t make much sense based on what she said about moving here with a man a few months ago. “You want to know the downside to how you are in love?”
“Doesn’t everyone? We can’t improve who we are unless we know our faults.”
That was a very… Aquarius sun Taurus rising thing to say. Someone always striving to be more successful at every facet of life. “All right. You’re intimidating as fuck.”
Shannon sucked her drink through a bright purple straw. “Go on.”
“No matter how much someone loves you, the moment you throw open the door and approach them, you’re like an overbearing monster come to fuck them up.” Jess continued before Shannon could question this assessment. “It’s because you don’t know how to express yourself. Your perfectionism, your need to succeed, and your inability to curate a lasting relationship with your parents means you’re always in your own head and searching for examples of healthy love. When you’re single, you’re flailing like a fish out of water. You want to be in relationships, but as soon as youarein one, you inadvertently sabotage it with your nature. You’re too cold, too distant, and intimidating to the point your partner is never sure if their love is reciprocated. So they leave you before you can leave them.”
“That…” Shannon went from enjoying her beverage to choking on the last drop. “Isn’t how it always works out.”
“When youarethe one doing the dumping, it’s because the other person threatens to destroy the order you’ve established for yourself.Youare the seducer.Youare the one who struts around with your aura on fire, enticing everyone within a ten-mile radius to come into your gravitational field and have their lives changed. They’re the ones who change for you. The moment you realize you might be changing for someone else, you panic. That’s assuming your relationship lasts that long.”
Shannon stirred her straw around in her drink. Both she and Jess glanced up to see the male biology student look away. He was definitely eavesdropping on their conversation. “Perhaps you’re not wrong. Although…” she put her cup down. “I’d love to know whatyourissues with love are.”
“Huh?” Jess shook her head. “You wanted to know about you, so I told you. If you want to improve your relationships, you need to learn to accept change gracefully. It can’t always be about you bringing change.”
“No, no, I get that. But I want to know aboutyourissues.”
“Why?”
“Because you spent ten minutes getting your anger with me off your chest. Now I want to know how you share the burden for why we never worked out.”
Jess slowly sat up, nostrils flared and cheeks so red that she began to sweat. “You’re the one who dumped me,” she muttered.
“You said that the reason I dump someone first is because they threatened my order. Well? Did you?”
“Only you could tell me that.”
Shannon cocked her head. Soft hair obscured half her face. Just as well, because Jess was not in the mood to indulge this woman’s beauty any longer.It’s so true. She seduces everyone around her.Like Jess, who was instantly seduced – and ruined – with one glance on a sunny autumn morning.
I remember. I spent the whole morning thinking about you.The way Shannon’s hair bounced when she walked. The way she smiled, even when no one else was around. Flowers may have sprouted where she stepped, but they were not the kind of flowers that lived for long. That was the kind of destruction left in her wake.
A destruction made of fragile beauty and the hopes of an upcoming spring.
“I was young and scared,” Shannon said. “I had no idea what to make of you and how you disrupted my carefully crafted plan.”
“Howdid I disrupt that?”
Shannon stood. She left two macarons behind, but took her drink with her out the door. “I wasn’t supposed to fall for a girl,” she said, before shutting the teashop door behind her.
Jess dropped her pen. The biology student bent down and picked it up.
She… fell for me?Jess spent the rest of her evening staring at her own natal chart, suddenly unable to make sense of it for the first time in ten years. Because if there was one thing she had learned in her short life, it was that her heart was often the one left broken – not the other way around.
So how had she noticed the Aquarius necklace she gave Shannon all those years ago? And why was shewearingit?
