Page 77 of A Dead Girl's Guide to Living
Dove snorted into her food, and I sighed, leaning back against the headboard and letting out a yawn as a quiet buzz of exhaustion settled into my bones and coursed through my veins. I was tired—that was a fact—but not nearly as tightly wound as usual. And this wasmeafter a flat tire.
The drama didn’t feel quite so heavy... so choking.
I watched as Dove binned her trash and tossed a wrapped cookie in my direction before pulling out her iPad and climbing into the bed on the other side. She opened the device, and the image of the tarot card she’d been working on appeared. She picked it back up seamlessly.
A comfortable silence settled between us, and I grabbed my phone, deciding to start editing the content I’d filmed earlier. I could put together a small post.
“What’s your birth date?” Dove asked suddenly, her eyes never leaving her sketch.
It seemed like it should’ve been a casual question.
It felt like it should be.
Yet... it wasn’t.
“Why?” I asked suspiciously.
“I’m going to do your birth chart,” Dove murmured with a yawn.
“My birth chart?” I asked warily, biting my lip. “What is that?”
“Can you trust me?” Dove asked with a grin. “Or have you given up too much control today? Was it the tire? Is that what did it for you?”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Whatever. October 1st, 2004.”
“Time?” she asked.
I paused. “Why do you need that?”
Dove raised an unimpressed brow at me. “Because I’m not going to half-ass your chart with some vague-as-shit sun sign reading from Pinterest, Ellis. I want to sort out your planets, houses—the works. Also, like a proper lesbian, I want to checkourcompatibility and spiral for six hours until you do something to piss me off.”
I blanched at her, my insides twisting at her words, and the time of my birth fell from my lips without warning.
“Six forty-two in the morning.”
“Great,” Dove said with a wink.
I bit into my cookie, barely tasting it.
“Wait. If you get to know my birth chart, then I should know yours,” I said, not entirely sure what the point of that was.
“Mine?” Dove laughed. “Pure chaos, Ellis. Aries sun, Leo moon, and Sagittarius rising. I’m basically unstoppable, and sometimes a little reckless.”
Silence stretched between us for a moment, and I found myself trying to glance at her screen, which was now more shielded than before. After fifteen minutes of failure, I gave up.
“Is it done yet?” I asked.
“Thought you didn’t believe inmywork, Ellis,” Dove taunted in a singsong voice. “Isn’t that what you said in the shop that day?”
God, it felt like weeks ago. How had it only been four days?
“I don’t,” I said coolly, returning to my phone.
“All right, it’s done,” Dove said with a dramatic sigh. “Ellis, I hate to break it to you, but it says you’re a control freak with trust issues.” She clicked her tongue. “I could’ve told you that without the astrology, though.”
“Haha,” I said dryly. “What’s it really say?”
Dove shrugged. “No idea. I’m still drawing. I’ll work on it in my own time.”
