This is love, my mind whispered, the mental wall I’d put up long gone. I didn’t want to hide anything from Reed anymore. I wanted to share everything with him—my heart, my soul, my life.
“This is love,” I whispered into his ear, and he responded by wrapping his arms tightly around my body and clutching me close to his chest.
In that instant, I knew, with his soap and essence flooding my nostrils, there wasn’t anything better.
We belonged to one another.
I hopped off the trolley—while it was stopped, I’m not Reed Luca, for shit’s sake—and started the short walk toward Judy’s School of Palmistry. As outside of the box as it was, I’d been determined to be able to read palms—or have a certificate that said I could—ever since one gloomy afternoon when Reed had audaciously proclaimed that I couldn’t.
If you’d talk to my instructor Judy about the art of palmistry, she’d probably prattle on about how hands are a detailed map of who we are, and the lines within them are a result of brain-directed activity which tells us how we respond to life emotionally, mentally, and physically…and blah blah blah.
That all sounded fantastic.
But my motives were more of the self-serving type than a comprehensive step toward being self-aware. In laymen’s terms: I just wanted the diploma so that Reed would believe any line of bullshit I told him about his palms. Basically, I wanted him to do what I told him, when I told him, and Reed wasn’t the kind of guy who just went along with whatever anyone said.
I want Reed to quit smoking? Easy peasy. I’ll just tell him his palm says it is an urgent matter that he stops.
I want us to take a vacation to the Maldives? Wish granted. Reed’s palm says we need to.
If that wasn’t brilliance in manipulation form, I didn’t know what was.
Before I reached the doors to Judy’s, my phone started vibrating against my hip. I pulled it out of my pocket to see who it was.
Incoming Call: The Devil
I paused outside the entrance and took the call. As annoying as these calls usually were, this was a horse of a different color. I’d been trying to get ahold of Joe for the past twenty-four hours, and the bastard had been avoiding my calls.
“Hey, Joe.”
“I’ve got five voice mails from you, and not one of them makes a bit of sense,” he said, forgoing a greeting completely. “What’s this urgent matter you’re rambling on about?”
“Well, Joe, I’ve got an idea that’s worth gold, but I don’t have a lot of time to chat right now. I’ve got a palmistry class in ten minutes.”
“Ministry?” he fired back in confusion. “You’re becoming a nun? I didn’t even know you were Catholic.”
“Palm-istry, Joe,” I corrected. “You know, as in the art of reading palms.”
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “Why do I even bother asking for clarification? Pretty sure the nun gig would’ve made more sense than you paying someone to give you a bunch of hullabaloo in the form of reading lines on your hands.”
“Hullabaloo?”
“Yeah. Hullabaloo,” he retorted. “Otherwise known as a load of bullshit. Hands are hands, Lola. Not some goddamn portal into predicting the future.”
“You’re such a pessimist, Joe.”
“I’m a realist,” he corrected. “Anyhoo, I guess it’s none of my business what kind of hogwash you waste your time and money on. What’s this idea you were prattling on about?”
“It’s a brilliant idea.”
“The last time I heard those words from your lips, you wanted me to give an angry cat his own column.”
“It was Grumpy Cat,” I amended. “And that’s still a brilliant idea, by the way.”
“Yeah, right.” He scoffed. “I’m still trying to understand how having a four-legged animal on my payroll would benefit the paper.”
“One day, you’re going to open the New York Times to that cat’s face in the byline of his column, and you will feel like a total failure for not listening to me.”
“I’d love to know how a fucking cat would be capable of writing his own column.”
Obviously, he was warming up to the idea. I smiled.
“I’d write it.”
“Then, it wouldn’t be his column. It’d just be you writing another column,” he retorted.
“It’d be from his perspective.”
“How you get me to entertain these conversations is truly beyond me.”
Instead of focusing on the offensive nature of his statement, I pulled the conversation back to the matter at hand. I had a class to get to, and time was ticking.