Written in the Stars

by Alexandria Bellefleur

  Good idea. Between the hot librarian getup, complete with pantyhose, and the kernel of praise, Elle had a flashback to when her pretty fifth-grade teacher put gold stars on all her best work.

  “You mentioned wine?” Darcy prodded when Elle remained mute, silenced by the awkward fantasy playing out inside her head. A fantasy replete with bow chicka wow wow seventies porn music and slo-mo swishing hair.

  “Wine! Yes, wine.” Crouching on her knees, Elle set the notebooks aside so she could grab the— “Ta da! Wine.”

  Nose wrinkled and lips parted in revulsion, Darcy looked at the box of Franzia rosé in Elle’s hands like it was a personal affront. “What the fuck is that?”

  “Wine,” Elle chirped. “My favorite wine. That merlot I drank the other night? Disgusting. I don’t care how fancy a wine is or about trendy cocktails; I like drinks that actually taste yummy. If it comes in frozen slushie form, even better.”

  Darcy’s frown deepened as she digested that little factoid. “Must it come in a box?”

  Said box in hand, Elle made a beeline for the kitchen. Glasses, glasses, where would Darcy keep her—bingo. Near the sink, logical. Darcy’s middle name. “All my favorite foods come in boxes. Wine. Cereal. Takeout.” Elle smushed the cardboard seal into the box and plucked out the nozzle. She filled both glasses with rosé before passing one to a circumspect Darcy. “Here’s to—”

  Elle raised her glass in the air, momentum splashing wine against the back of her wrist, a dribble splattering against Darcy’s floor, a pale pink puddle forming atop the crisp white tile.

  “Here’s to not spilling.” Darcy gave a deadpan stare before dropping her eyes to the puddle and arching a brow, a silent command to clean it up. She left the kitchen, shaking her head, hips and hair swaying.

  Elle took a swallow of the sweet wine and sighed. “Cheers.”

  * * *

  Glass of rosé in hand, Elle settled in, getting comfortable on the floor in front of the coffee table. She lifted her glass, taking a generous swig, and set it down, cracking open the spine of her notebook. “All right. Let’s get to know each other, shall we?”

  “Do you mind putting that on a coaster?” Darcy gestured to the stack of white Carrara marble coasters.

  Elle snagged a coaster, then reached for a pen. “Fact number one—compulsive about coaster usage.”

  Darcy huffed softly and took a sip of wine, ignoring the notebook on the couch cushion beside her. “I’m not compulsive.”

  Elle clicked the end of her pen. “What are you then? I mean, tell me something about you. Where are you from, where’d you go to school, any pets? Greatest wish, biggest dream? How about any super sordid secrets I should know?”

  Darcy swirled the wine in her glass out of habit, obviously, because even Elle knew swirling Franzia was pretty pointless even if it did look posh. “I don’t think you need to know all that if we’ve only known each other a week.”

  Elle doodled a smiling flower in the margin of the paper. “What do you talk about on first dates? Successful ones.”

  “I was born in San Francisco,” Darcy offered up, not quite answering her question. “But I grew up across the Bay in Marin County.”

  Elle reached for the green gel pen and wrote that down. “California, huh? That must’ve been nice.”

  The left corner of Darcy’s mouth quirked upward. “It was.”

  Elle waited for Darcy to say something else, keep going, add an anecdote, anything. When she simply stared into her glass of pink wine, Elle bit back a sigh. “All right. So you were born in San Francisco and obviously you’ve got a younger brother. Any other siblings?” When Darcy simply shook her head, Elle grabbed her glass and took another swig. Coaxing details out of her was like pulling teeth. “How about the rest of your family?”

  Darcy’s teeth sunk into her lower lip for a brief moment before she tipped her glass up, polishing it off in one swallow. Impressive. “We had—have a small family. It’s just Brendon, my mother, father, and me. My grandmother—my mother’s mom—passed away five years ago.”

  Elle dropped her pen midsentence and stared at Darcy. “I’m sorry. Were you close?”

  “My grandmother?” Darcy’s brows rose.

  Elle nodded.

  “We were.” The platinum band on Darcy’s middle finger tapped against the stem of her empty wineglass. “My, uh, my father traveled a lot, for work. My mother hated how often Dad was away, so Brendon and I spent the summers at my grandmother’s house so my mom could go with him on his business trips.” Darcy pressed her lips together. “The summer before my junior year of high school, my parents divorced. We—my mother, Brendon, and I—moved in with my grandma. I loved living there.” Darcy tucked her hair behind her ears. “And that’s probably way more than you need to know after a week of dating—fake dating—me.”

  She could take a hint. “All right. Hometown, family, when’d you move here? Why’d you move here?”

  “Six months ago.” Darcy spun the stem of her glass between her fingers. An elegant move that Elle wouldn’t have been able to pull off without dropping or spilling. “I moved from Philadelphia where I majored in actuarial science at Fox Business School at Temple University before working at a midsize life insurance company. As for why I moved . . .” Darcy pursed her lips and shrugged. “It was time for a change.”

  “Time for a change,” Elle repeated. “That’s not, like, code for I committed a crime and now I’m on the lam, is it?”

  Darcy cocked one brow, lips curling. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

  A shiver raced up Elle’s spine at the look in Darcy’s low-lidded eyes and the way her voice had gone teasing, mischievous. Evasive. Elle sat up straighter and smiled. “Seriously. What brought you to Seattle?”

  Darcy’s lips flattened, eyes darting off toward the wall of windows on the far side of the room. “There wasn’t much opportunity for growth at the company I was with and . . . and I went through a breakup and unfortunately, other than my best friend, Annie, most of our friends were mutual, our friend groups intermingled, so my social life stagnated.” Her throat jerked as she swallowed. “It really was time for a change.” She turned, eyes narrowed slightly and chin lifted. “And that’s definitely more than you need to know after a week of fake dating me.”

  A breakup. Interesting, but Elle wouldn’t pry. It was none of her business. “So you packed up and moved across the country for a fresh start. That’s cool. Like spring cleaning for the soul.”

  Darcy cracked a smile. “I moved in the spring, so that’s a surprisingly accurate metaphor.”

  “What can I say, I’m full of surprises.”

  Darcy chuckled. “I’m getting that.”

  Elle bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep from grinning.

  “How about you?” Darcy gestured to Elle with her empty wineglass.

  “What about me?”

  “You know. Your story. Where you’re from, your family, that sort of thing?”

  “Oh.” Right, she’d gotten so wrapped up in learning about Darcy, who until now had been a closed book, that she’d forgotten they were both supposed to be sharing. “Um, born in Seattle on February twenty-second but I grew up in Bellevue. I’ve got two older siblings, Jane and Daniel. They’re both married. And I’ve got a younger sister, too, Lydia. Jane has a three-year-old, Ryland, and she’s expecting twins.”

  “Big family.” Darcy pulled a face and Elle couldn’t tell if it was overwhelm or wistfulness that made Darcy’s mouth twist and her eyes widen. “Are your parents still together?”

  She nodded. “They’re wildly in love with each other. My dad still buys her flowers every Friday.”

  Darcy smiled. “That’s sweet.”

  It was, but talking about it was doing stupid, painful things to Elle’s insides. “That’s the gist of my immediate family, but I can give you a better briefing closer to Thanksgiving, okay?”

  * * *

  Darcy nodded and reached for her pen,
black, unlike the glittery eyesore-color Elle had selected. She jotted down the basics she’d gleaned thus far. “Fair enough. Born and raised in Seattle—did you go to school here?”

  Elle tugged on her ear. “I did. I went to UW. That’s where I met Margot. We roomed together freshman year and when we were unpacking, I noticed she owned a bunch of books on astrology. I’d been studying it since high school, and as soon as I got my driver’s license, I applied for a part-time job at Wishing Well Books, a metaphysical bookstore not far from where I live now. On the weekends and over the summers, when I wasn’t working the register and stocking shelves, the owner kind of took me under her wing, like an apprenticeship. Margot and I bonded over it and we started Oh My Stars the next year. We didn’t really get any traction until a couple years ago when we got a job writing the astrology column for The Stranger. Our following grew, one of our posts went viral, and we pretty much blew up.”

  If someone had asked Darcy two weeks ago whether she was curious about what went into being a social media astrologer, she’d have unequivocally answered no. Now, after acquainting herself with Oh My Stars’s Twitter account, she’d have to say she was . . . but only from the standpoint that she didn’t like not understanding things. “And now you make memes for a living?”

  Elle threw her head back and laughed. “No. I mean, kind of? It’s way more than that.”

  “So what do you do? What’s a day in the life of Elle look like?”

  Elle shrugged. “Wake up, caffeinate, check email and social media accounts. That takes an hour or two. Margot and I handle most aspects of the business fifty-fifty, but we each have our strengths. Having majored in communications, Margot tends to handle website maintenance and our social accounts and I take on more of the readings because I have more experience there. In between appointments we do live Q and A’s, and in our spare time we make content because, yeah, memes get us retweets and followers, which in turn grows our audience. But that’s not where we make money. Not really.”

  Darcy tried not to frown. “How do you make money? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  Elle leaned back on her elbows, reclining on the rug. “We make a tiny bit from advertisements and paid sponsorships, but only if it’s a product or service we can get behind, like astro-themed apparel we’d actually wear or zodiac-inspired perfume that really smells good and aligns with your birth chart.”

  How a scent aligned with a person’s birth chart was a mystery, but Darcy didn’t want to interrupt.

  “Our book, which is an astrological primer and guide to compatibility, is up for preorder, but most of our income comes from giving chart readings. We offer thirty-minute and hour-long phone sessions where we review a client’s birth chart and break it down or, depending on how much they know, we might touch on a specific topic they want answers on, like their Saturn return. If a client’s local and would rather meet in person, we have a deal with the bookstore I used to work at so we can use their back room. Occasionally I’ll spend the day there and take walk-ins. We also have subscription plans where clients pay monthly or annually for shorter, check-in text sessions where they can ask any burning questions they might have about transits or retrogrades. That sort of thing.”

  “People actually pay for that?” Darcy winced as soon as the words were out of her mouth. “Sorry, that was rude of me. I just meant . . . isn’t something like that, one and done? You have your chart read and you’re set? If you believe in . . . that.”

  If Elle was offended, it didn’t show. Her head tilted to the side, a smile playing at the edges of her lips. Darcy cast a forlorn glance at her glass, wishing it were full, even if the wine was too sweet.

  “The planets aren’t static and neither are we. It’s good to check in with the stars and, if nothing else, it’s time spent on self-reflection.” Elle’s toes curled in the soft pile of the rug, her hot pink toenail polish catching the light. “As for readings as a whole, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”

  Darcy set her wineglass aside.

  “Have you ever worked for a company that had you fill out an MBTI questionnaire? INFJ? ENTP? Or enneagram?” Elle asked.

  Only every company Darcy had ever worked for, internships included. “And?”

  “Tons of people consider MBTI pseudoscience and it has known issues with validity and repeatability. But people dig it because it gives them a way to describe themselves and what they value. How they function.”

  Darcy had never been one to care about those four-letter designations. Half the time, her answers changed depending on her mood, the time of day, whether she’d eaten, and how much sleep she’d gotten.

  “It’s why we’re obsessed with personality quizzes. Yeah, there are think pieces about how it makes us narcissistic, but we’re not. We’re freaked out and confused. Existential angst is legit. We like to feel seen so we cling to meaning where we can find it even if it’s as basic as what your favorite item at the Cheesecake Factory says about you.”

  Darcy laughed. “My favorite item at the Cheesecake Factory is not a reflection of some deeper facet of my personality. I don’t even like the Cheesecake Factory. The menu is the size of a novel and they use blue-cheese-stuffed olives in their dirty vodka martinis. Not to mention, the decor is confused. Greco-Roman meets Egyptian meets Eye of Sauron. The whole place is bullshit. I’d rather go to a Medieval Times dinner show. It might be kitsch, but at least it’s consistent.”

  “Like that doesn’t speak volumes right there.” Elle tapped her pen against her teeth, smiling broadly. “What I’m saying is, we’re all just trying to understand ourselves and each other and what it all means. Why it matters. Astrology gives us a language for that. It helps us practice empathy. Which makes us less shitty.” Elle kicked a foot out, knocking Darcy’s ankle. Darcy froze at the unexpected contact. “Come on. What time were you born?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How do you not know your time of birth?”

  “I just don’t,” she deflected. She knew exactly what time she was born at, but she had already told Elle more about herself than she’d planned.

  Elle stared hard at Darcy’s face, and Darcy willed her eye not to— Damn it. She twitched. Elle threw her pen down and bear-crawled across the room. She heaved herself up onto the couch. “You’re so lying right now. You don’t want to tell me.”

  Darcy puffed out her cheeks and closed her eyes. “Eleven minutes past noon.”

  Elle grabbed her phone and swiped against the screen, tapping values into text boxes, before staring at what looked like a wheel divided into wedges of varying sizes. “Hm.”

  Darcy’s fingers covered hers, concealing the screen. “Stop. This is . . . strange.”

  Elle’s tongue darted out, wetting her bottom lip. “I thought you didn’t believe in it.”

  Darcy’s grip loosened, her fingers sweeping against the back of Elle’s hand and ghosting over the thin skin of Elle’s wrist. Darcy dropped her hands back to her lap. “I don’t.” But Elle did. “Fine. Whatever. Read my chart.”

  Elle spent a moment studying Darcy’s chart. “Interesting.”

  Darcy huffed. “You can’t say something’s interesting and not explain.”

  Elle looked up, smirking. “What happened to not believing in it?”

  “I don’t.” With another aggrieved sigh, Darcy pointed impatiently at Elle’s phone. “But you do. And you’re clearly passing judgments on me based on these beliefs of yours. So go on. Tell me something about myself.”

  “It’s not about passing judgments. It’s about empathy, remember?” Thumb swiping down, Elle scrolled back to the top of the page. “All right. Let’s see. You’re a Capricorn sun, Pisces moon, and Taurus rising.”

  None of that made a lick of sense.

  “Your sun symbolizes your ego, your sense of self. Capricorn’s an earth sign. You’re realistic, reserved, probably a little circumspect. Not known for taking risks. But you’re responsible, so kudos there. Your rising, or ascendant
, is the sign that was rising in the eastern horizon at the time of your birth. It often dictates people’s first impression of you, more so even than your sun sign. Taurus means you might be stubborn and resistant to change, but you’re probably loyal and dependable. Also, you likely crave stability and creature comforts like quality clothing and good food. Considering those placements together, no wonder you’re a skeptic,” Elle ribbed her gently.

  Darcy rolled her eyes.

  “Now, this Pisces moon is interesting. Your moon represents your inner self; it’s representative of how you deal with and express your emotions. You’re imaginative, compassionate, and occasionally value an escape from reality.”

  Darcy scratched the side of her neck, refusing to so much as glance at the television where she had two days’ worth of soaps recorded.

  Elle licked her lips. “You’ve got a Capricorn stellium, meaning you’ve got four or more planets in that sign. Big Capricorn Energy, basically. I won’t bore you with them all, but you’ve got Venus in Capricorn meaning you’re likely cautious when it comes to love and value goal-oriented partners. You take love seriously, you understand it takes commitment and devotion to make a relationship last. You yearn for the right person to share your life with.”

  Darcy scoffed, shaking her head. She gathered her hair off her neck and tossed it over her left shoulder. God, she was about to burst into flames she was so hot.

  “Your Mercury is in Aquarius, so you might value intellectual debates and even contradicting the opinions of others for kicks.”

  “Now you’re just trying to give me shit.”

  Elle leaned in, shoving her phone in Darcy’s face. “It’s all right here. Written in the stars. I’m merely an interpreter.”

  “Well, are you finished interpreting?”

  Elle gave an exaggerated eye roll and stretched across the gap between the couch and the coffee table to set her phone aside. Precariously balanced on her knees, straightening made her sway. The couch cushion dipped and sank under their combined weights, forcing them even closer together, so close Elle was practically in Darcy’s lap. She must’ve realized it at the same time as Darcy because her eyes widened, gaze dropping suddenly to where her hand gripped Darcy’s thigh for balance. Darcy’s skirt had bunched, riding high and exposing the thick lace band of her stockings. Elle’s cheeks pinked and her breath caught, fingers twitching. An inch higher and it would be her skin Elle touched instead of nylon.