by Emily Bishop
But the sign, the camp, and her.
I’d already missed the meeting, so what the hell. Perhaps seeing Aurora again would give me the clarity I needed.
I walked beneath the sign and down the dirt road that led into the camp. Five minutes later, I wended between plots and tents, toward her spot. Her RV and dark tent were still there, thank god.
I moved the flap back and entered. She’d already set everything out again—the velvet tablecloth, the cards, books, crystals, and candles—but Aurora was nowhere to be seen. Mistress the kitty meowed from the front step of the RV.
“Hey,” I said, and bent, scratching behind her ear. “Where is she?”
“She’s right behind you, wondering what the hell you’re doing.”
I straightened, slowly, excitement unfurling in my chest. She was here. She sounded angry, but she was here. “Aurora,” I said and faced her.
She’d tied her curly hair up in a messy bun atop her head and wore a camisole—no bra, good Christ—and the long skirt that swished with every step. Her lips parted, face free of makeup, so beautiful.
I grasped for words and found none.
“What do you want?” Aurora asked and folded her arms.
“You,” I replied.
She inhaled, sharply.
“A date. Let’s do something together. Now.”
Aurora pursed her lips and stood her ground, but she didn’t say yea or nay.
“Fine,” I said and reached into my pocket. I drew out my wallet, flipped it open, and extracted a couple bills.
Aurora’s eyebrows rose high. “What the hell do you think I am?”
I waggled the cash at her. Probably not the best way to make my point. “How much to have my palm read?”
Her guard lowered slowly. She dropped her arms to her sides. “You want your palm read. The proverbial skeptic.”
“Yeah. Humor me. The card reading was interesting. It would be fun to try palms. You do that, right?”
She nodded. “On occasion.”
“Do me.” In more ways than one, gorgeous.
Aurora considered me, a quick onceover then pointed to the chair I’d sat in the night before. “All right,” she said. “If you insist.”
“The money,” I replied.
“Keep it.”
“No. I don’t accept free stuff. Never have.” I walked to the money box she kept on the shelf, opened it, and slipped the cash inside. I returned to the table and took my place.
Aurora moved her chair around to my side of the table, and sat close. She held out her hand. “I’ll need your palm to do this.”
“Right.” I placed my hand in hers, dwarfing it. I’d never pictured myself with a petite woman, but Aurora broke every stereotype. She was off the charts, and I loved that.
“Here,” she said and traced a line down my palm, sensual, slow. “This is your love line. It’s strong, see? But it’s intercepted here and here. That equals heartbreak.”
“Oh.”
“Palmistry isn’t my strong suit,” she said and dropped my hand. “You should speak to Mama Kate. I’ll get your money –”
“No.” I took her hand and held it. “I want you to continue. It’s interesting.”
“All right,” she said, reluctance entering her tone. She turned my hand over again, this time looking at its side. “See here? These are your relationship lines. The stronger and deeper they are, the longer the relationships will last.”
“What do you see?” I studied her up close, her long eyelashes, and the intense concentration as she turned my hand flat again and marked out the lines in question.
“One shorter relationship, which ends sharply. Another long one. And that’s it. I—these intercepting the lines are supposed to be children. It looks like two—two children.” Aurora’s voice broke.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I need a drink of water.” She grabbed a glass from the other side of the table, dragged it close then glugged back some aqua. “There, see? Better.”
I didn’t buy it. The children or the relationships had spooked her. Had she seen something she didn’t want to? Not that I believe this shit. Science and hard fact, that’s all that matters. Apart from this feeling. Christ, this feeling.
It was a buzz between us. A tension I could touch or stroke, almost as I wanted to stroke her. “What else do you see?” I asked.
She smoothed fingers over my skin, felt the dips and markings. “You have a long life line. But, huh, it looks like you had a negative experience earlier in life. An accident? Were you in a hospital, in a coma, maybe?”
“That’s creepy. Yes, I was in the hospital when I was a kid. My, uh, my dad took me out on the ocean and I almost drowned. He wasn’t paying attention. I fell off the yacht.” I forced myself not to grind my teeth at the memory. I didn’t need memories of my father in my head now. Dickhead.
“That might be it,” she said then ran her fingers over a center line next. “Your intelligence or head line.”
“Is this the part where you tell me I’ve got a low IQ?”
“Funny,” she replied and put down my hand. “Is this your idea of a good time?”
“What?”
“This,” Aurora said, and gestured to the tent and then herself. “I get it. I’m a big joke to you and your friends and your—Felicity.”
“She’s not my Felicity. She hasn’t been for a while. And she’s an asshole.”
“You class two weeks as a while?”
Touché. “It’s not like that, Aurora. I’m not trying to mock you. I want to be around you.”
“Why? I’m not interested in being an actor’s rebound. I don’t need that drama in my life.” She rose from the table, walked over to her cash box, and brought back my money. She tossed it onto the velvet tablecloth. “I’m not anyone’s joke. I won’t be judged by you.”
“I’m not judging you, for Christ’s sake. Look, you’ve got this all wrong. I’m not the asshole here.”
“And I am?” Aurora’s nostrils flared. Even that was cute.
“No. You’re not an asshole, and I’m not judging you. I want to spend time with you.”
She tossed her head, and her bun wobbled. “Why? Why would you want that?”
“Oh, fuck, I don’t know, maybe because you’re gorgeous, mysterious, intelligent?” I got up and the chair toppled over behind me. I circled the table.
She walked the other way around it, keeping out of reach. “I don’t do flings. I might’ve given you the wrong impression last night, but that’s not who I am. If that’s what you’re after—”
“I’m not after anything.”
“Fine by me. Leave.”
“Not what I meant,” I replied.
“Then be clear for once.” She continued circling the table.
It was the weirdest game of cat and mouse I’d ever played. I didn’t play games at all, usually. I stopped dead in my tracks, and she did, too. “Stop avoiding me.”
“It’s not about avoiding you, it’s about avoiding complications.”
“Complications,” I replied and raised an eyebrow. “I’m more than a complication, Aurora.”
She blushed and scratched the back of her neck. “We don’t need to talk about that.”
I gripped the edge of the table and shifted it aside. Her glass of water toppled and splashed to the grass.
“What the hell are you doing?”
I crossed the distance between us and pressed my chest against hers, but my hands didn’t touch her. Just looked down into her eyes, wide and hazel, with a greenish bloom in her left iris—beautiful.
“Why am I a complication?” I asked.
She quivered against me, rubbed her arms and they brushed against my abs. “You’re not part of the plan.”
“Life doesn’t care about your plans.”
Aurora paled.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. Just something I heard already today. It’s nothing,” she whis
pered.
My mouth dried up.
Aurora was freedom made flesh, and all I could do was enjoy the experience.
“I want to see you again,” I said.
“You’re seeing me right now. You don’t understand, Jarryd,” she said. “Mr. Tombs, I mean.”
“Fuck, don’t call me that.”
“Fine, Jarryd. You don’t understand. I’ve spent my life working myself up to this time, this opportunity, and I can’t let it slip away. I have other concerns. I need to find a stable job. I have to figure out a proper savings plan. There are so many things you don’t know.”
A job? A savings plan? It might’ve seemed trivial to me, but I’d been in her position before.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Aurora said. “You’re you, and I’m me. You wouldn’t understand.”
I closed in again, and this time, I took her hands in mine and brushed my thumbs over her skin. The connection made her sway. I held back my reaction, kept control. “Help me understand. That’s all I ask.”
“I—”
“There’s something going on here, whether you want to admit it or not. I know I sound fucking crazy. We met yesterday, but we’ve got a connection, and I’d like to explore that. If it’s too much for you, too complicated, say the word and I’ll back off. I won’t approach you again.”
Aurora’s lips parted.
Don’t say the word. Christ, don’t say the fucking word.
“You want me to help you understand?” Aurora asked. “Why it’s complicated?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“OK,” she said. “OK, that’s reasonable. I can do that. I—uh, it will be difficult to explain here, now. Tomorrow. Tomorrow we’ll meet up and I’ll take you there.”
“Where?”
She smiled, a soft one that damn near melted the steel wall I’d built around my heart. “You’ll see. Meet me at the entrance to the park at 7:30 a.m. Bring shoes you can walk in, and some water to drink. We’ll go through the forest. It’s not too far from here.”
“I’ll be there,” I said.
Aurora nodded then looked away, toward the tent’s flap, now guttering in the breeze. “OK.”
I cupped her chin, tilted her face back to mine then gave her one sweet kiss—the merest brush of my lips against hers. “Tomorrow.” I took two steps back, turned, shifted the table to the spot it’d been before then picked up the glass that had thunked to the grass.
“Leave it. I can clean it.”
“I made the mess,” I replied and placed the tumbler on the table cloth. The tarot cards were there. The Lovers. Choices, romance to come. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” I left the tent.
Mistress followed me out, purring and half-tripping me. I scratched her behind the ears again then set off.
Aurora needed time, and I wouldn’t pressure her with my presence. As long as she’s honest with you. Not like the last one. I tried blocking the doubts out, instead of feeding into them.
Before Felicity’s extracurricular activities with her pool boy—how fucking cliché—I’d been trusting and totally unconcerned. I’d never imagined she’d cheat or that anyone else was capable for that matter. All that had changed.
I walked the long track out of the RV park, and the skin on the back of my neck prickled. I stalled, looked around. “Weird,” I muttered. Nothing moved beneath the trees, but I couldn’t shake the sense that something, or someone, was out there, watching.
It had to be paranoia—I didn’t have time for it. I marched beneath the sign to the RV park and turned in the direction of the hotel, thoughts on Aurora, on what’d she’d meant and the things I’d do to her given the chance.
Chapter 8
Aurora
Every step brought us closer to the cabin at the lake, and with it, my palms grew sweatier, my heart raced. This was too important to me to risk, and I hadn’t opened up to anyone else about it yet.
“It’s beautiful out here,” Jarryd said. He clutched a wicker picnic basket and kept an easy pace beside me, crunching over fallen pine needles and twigs. Birds hooted or chirped, swept between the trees. Small animals rustled in the underbrush. “So different from what I’m used to.”
“I can tell,” I replied.
“What? Why?”
“Well, you’re wearing a suit. On a forest walk. And you brought a picnic basket.” Which had totally given me butterflies the minute I’d walked around the corner and found him waiting, phone in one hand, basket in the other.
“I figured we’d get hungry.” He wasn’t defensive, but he did look down at his suit jacket. “This is all I brought with me.”
“Just suits?”
“Shit, you’re right. I should’ve brought a few fluffy robes along, too.”
I laughed at that, and the memory of offering him one, and for a second, the nerves dissipated. They slammed home again instantly, redoubled by the brief absence. “We’re almost there,” I said.
“Where are we going, by the way?”
“You’ll see.” It was too difficult to explain without being there. He had to understand how important this was to me, and in order for him to do that, Jarryd had to see it for himself. “Through here.” I ducked beneath a low-lying branch and took the path that wound through the trees, reminding me of the times I’d read books in a favorite spot, or dangled my feet in the water.
We crunched over the worn dirt and rounded a bend, slipping out from between the trees.
And there it was.
The cottage I’d called “home” for two years, right in front of the lake. The cool water was undisturbed, clear, pine needles drifting lazily on the surface.
“Wow,” Jarryd said. “This is some prime real estate.”
“Not really,” I replied. “It’s not connected to any of the main roads. When we lived here, we had to rent out a plot in the park to keep the RV and we walked everywhere.” I crunched across the grass.
“We?” Jarryd followed me.
I halted in front of the cabin and looked at its empty windows, the locked front door, wood worn with age. Echoes of laughter, my mother’s voice, haunted me. Home. The only place I’d called home.
A For Sale sign besmirched the front lawn, knocked into weeds and flowers.
“Aurora?”
I walked over to the solitary wooden bench beneath the four-paned window and sat down. He joined me. We looked out over the lake together.
“Me and my mother. This was where we stayed the two years before she passed.” Finally, I looked at him, drank in his features and the wrinkling at his brow. The unspoken questions in his gaze.
“I’ll explain it,” I said, before he could word them out loud. “You lay out the picnic. Deal?”
“Deal.” He opened the basket and drew out a blanket. “You sure you don’t want me to sit and listen?”
“No, this will be easier for me if you’re—busy.” If he couldn’t break my resolve to pieces while I spoke. At least it wouldn’t bring back tears I’d already shed.
“Got ya.” Jarryd busied himself laying out the blanket. Sunlight cut between the trees, glimmered on the surface of the lake. Soothing, natural sounds filtered through the silence.
“My mother was a wanderer. I never knew my father. He never had any interest in knowing me, so it wasn’t a great loss. I know that my mom, Libby, hated the fact that she couldn’t give me stability. I spent the first fourteen years of my life traveling from town to town, learning tarot, doing odd jobs when I could, attending whatever school would take me. The longest we stayed in a town was probably six months.”
Jarryd didn’t speak but continued laying out the paper plates and Tupperware. It helped.
“I got used to it. Well, that’s not right, I guess. I never knew anything else but my mom had. She always spoke about having a home together and settling down, and eventually that happened. She got enough money together and rented this place.”
The memory of moving in played on repeat.
“God, it
was the best feeling. I went to school and knew I could make friends and stay in one place. We’d finally settled down. The people seemed to like us, even though there were rumors about us being gypsies or strangers. Mom was sweet and kind, and people genuinely liked her when they spoke to her for more than a few minutes.”
Jarryd straightened. “So, that’s where you got it from.”
I bowed my head. “We lived here for two years,” I said, brusquely. The sooner I made him understand, the better. “My mother passed when I was sixteen. I couldn’t afford to stay in school, so I dropped out, got a job. Things went… sour. With my mother gone, rumors spread about me, about the cabin. They didn’t take pity on me. They saw me as the gypsy girl, the pagan, I always get a bad rep.”
Jarryd finished setting up then sat down on the bench. “What happened then?”
“I could barely afford to make rent on this place on my own. I got a job at the restaurant but it wasn’t enough. I didn’t have any marketable skills apart from those my mother had taught me, so I packed up my shit, repaired the RV, and left.”
“You repaired it? By yourself?”
“No, I had it fixed. Why does that matter?”
Jarryd stroked his chin with his thumb. “Sorry, I’m a car enthusiast. Anyway, so you left.”
“Yeah, I left,” I said. “But I’ve always wanted that feeling of happiness and stability. And though there were tough times after she was gone, this is where I’m meant to be.”
“It’s for sale. You want to buy it?” he asked.
“That’s right. I don’t have enough funds yet, but I’m going to make an offer on this place,” I said. “As soon as I can.”
“How much for this place?”
“Thirty thousand. It’s cheap for the setting, and because it needs work done inside.”
“That’s—” His phone buzzed, and he grimaced. “Fuck.” He drew it out and checked the Caller ID. “I can’t get a minute’s peace.”
“You can,” I said.
The phone’s shrill ring echoed through the clearing. Across the lake, a small flock of birds burst from a treetop in a spray of leaves.