Rock N Soul (47 page)

Gemma beamed at me. “Good. See? You thought about something else and you got a different card. So think about that. Think about school. And pick a card.”

I focused on college in my mind and tried to remember the way it felt to be in a classroom, to be making something of my life. Good, was how it felt. I just wished Chris could be here to see it. He would have been proud of me.

I picked a card. It was the Ace of Cups.

“Oh, for God’s sake.” I thumped my head down on the table, which caused a few of my cards to skitter off the table. I didn’t look up. “Those cards that just fell on the floor . . .”

“The Sun, the Lovers, the World. And the Knight of Cups.”

“What the fuck does he want from me?” I picked my head up off the table and stared at the cards. “I mean . . . is this him? Is he fucking with me?” I glared up at the ceiling. “I get it. You’re up there and you’re happy, I know. You don’t have to keep . . .” I blinked back a few tears that were only half-angry.

Gemma sat there in silence. I didn’t blame her for not saying anything. I wouldn’t have said anything to me right then either.

I swiped my eyes to get rid of whatever moisture was still there, then sighed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t get so upset.”

“It will get easier,” she said softly. “Maybe we should lay off on the readings for a few days. Just while you get more settled.”

“Yeah, maybe.” I slowly raked my cards together into a pile and put them back in the box along with the booklet of explanations. “I should go. I’ll call you, yeah?”

“Anytime,” she told me, and I put the deck in my jacket pocket and headed home.

I got to my apartment and stood there just inside the door for a while, looking around at all my stuff. I made a mental note to start bringing home some of the cardboard boxes they delivered those little bottles of hotel shampoo in. It probably wouldn’t take very many boxes to pack everything, especially if I finally threw out all of Carmen’s crap. Not the Incite the Masses stuff, because let’s be real—that was mine now. But the rest of her stuff could go. I could be packed and ready to move in just a few days if I really put my back into it.

I looked up at the big concert poster on the wall—really
looked
at it, for the first time since Chris had disappeared. Even before Chris had gone, I’d gotten in the habit of just letting my eyes skip over it, and it was a little jarring to give it such a long stare at this point. Chris was still sexy, still larger-than-life, but now that I knew him I could see the deep unhappiness in the tilt of his head and the angle of his shoulders. It was nice to know that he hadn’t been like that when he was with me. Maybe I really had made him happy while he was here. Maybe that was part of why the cards were telling me he was happy now.

I walked over to the poster and reached up to touch his face. “I miss you,” I said to it. Then I gripped the sides of the poster and took it down off the wall. There was enough space behind my TV to fit the frame, so I turned it around and slid it behind the TV stand. It just wasn’t healthy to have a giant picture of your dead boyfriend staring down at you all the time.

Dead fiancé, I corrected myself, then felt silly for that too. Just because the fucker had given me the ring that he’d always meant to use as his wedding ring and told me to wear it didn’t mean he would have married me. But then that made me think about the Ace of Cups, the marriage and engagement card that had started to come up in readings, so maybe he would have. Maybe that
was
what giving me the ring meant. And if he’d been alive, I would have said yes and then married the shit out of him. Which was ridiculously sappy, and I would have lost a ton of Cool Points for saying it if he’d been here, but it was true.

That line of thought would only lead to a pint of ice cream and crying into my pillow, so I abandoned it for the moment. There was other shit I needed to do. I sat down on my couch and opened my laptop, then typed
readmission to Emerson College
in the search bar.

“So they won’t just readmit me because it’s been too long,” I told Gemma a few days later when we met for lunch again, “but I talked to an advisor and she said that I can reapply and I should be able to get back in without too much trouble since I was in good standing when I left.”

“What about your scholarship?” she asked, picking up a piece of sushi in her chopsticks and popping it into her mouth.

I shrugged. “It’s gone for now, but there are a few others I can apply for. And besides, Grandma was so excited when I told her I was reapplying that she’s going to help pay. I think between that and financial aid and my job, I can swing it without too much trouble.”

“You’re going to stay at your job? I thought you hated it.”

I shook my head. “I don’t hate my job. I just hated what it stood for, you know? I didn’t want to be sixty and still working as a bellboy. But now that it’s not seeming like such a life sentence, I’m cool with working there for a couple more years while I finish school.” I pulled open an edamame shell and popped the beans into my mouth. “And besides, Richard is being pretty cool about working around my schedule once classes start. So it’s going to be fine.”

Gemma smiled at me. “I’m so happy for you, Tyler.”

“Well, thanks,” I said. “I just wish . . .” I didn’t even need to finish the sentence. We both knew what I wished.

“I know,” she said after a second. “He’d be happy for you too, you know.”

“Yeah.” I pushed my empty plate away. “And you were right, too. He made me promise to try and be happy. And I can’t be
totally
happy, not without him here, but I can do this much. I can try.”

“That’s a good attitude to have.”

I picked up my napkin and wiped the table with it, then pulled my tarot deck out of my jacket pocket. “I think I’m ready to try again.”

She smiled and pulled her own deck out of her purse. “All right,” she said. “Let’s see what the cards have to say today.”

The first card was the Page of Pentacles again. The school card. I held it up and showed it to Gemma, and she smiled.

And then the next four were the Knight of Cups, the Sun, the Lovers, and the World. A lump formed in my throat. “Maybe I should have waited a little longer after all.”

Gemma stared at the cards. “I have never seen anything like this. It feels like the cards are rigged.”

“Or they’re coming up this way for a reason,” I said, frowning at them. “I mean . . . do you think the cards are really trying to tell me something? Do you think
he’s
trying to tell me something?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But something’s going on. There’s no way that keeps happening just randomly.”

I pulled two more cards out of the middle of my deck. “The Hierophant and the Ace of Cups,” I said before even looking at them. I laid them down on the table and wasn’t even surprised that I was right. I mean, by this point it would have been weirder if I
hadn’t
been right.

She didn’t say anything, and I spread my cards out in an arc and stared at the table. “I mean—” I tried again. “If it’s him, why is he showing me the same thing over and over? It can’t just be him telling me that we made the right choice. I fucking get it. Why would he just keep telling me that?”

“I don’t know,” Gemma said.

I flipped another card, then burst into almost-hysterical laughter.

“What is it?” Gemma asked. When I just kept laughing, she reached over and gently took the card from me. “The Fool. Well, that’s new.”

I buried my face in my hands and tried to get a grip on myself. After all, this wasn’t funny. But then again, it sort of was.

“The Fool means—” she started.

“No, I don’t need to know what the books say it means,” I interrupted her, sitting back up and wiping my eyes. “He’s calling me an idiot.”

Gemma stared at me. “What?”

“It’s not just him telling me that he’s okay.” I tapped the Lovers card with one finger as my pulse started to race.

“Then what’s he telling you?”

I laughed, and it was only a little crazy sounding. “The fucking Knight of Cups with the Lovers. Chris and a choice. Between the Sun and the World. Holy shit.” I had to stop and take a few deep breaths so I didn’t hyperventilate. “And then the Hierophant and the Ace of Cups. Me and the marriage card. Me and his ring.”

“Are you sure—”

“I have to go.” I stood quickly and scooped all my cards up into a messy pile, then crammed them in my jacket pocket. “I’ll call you later.”

I let myself in the outer door of my apartment building and headed down the hallway toward my place. This was a long shot, I kept trying to tell myself. It was more likely that I was just seeing what I wanted to see in the cards. But still. It was worth a try. I pushed the door to my apartment open and rushed inside, nearly tripping over the stack of moving boxes I’d left in the middle of the floor.

“Okay, motherfucker,” I said to the ceiling. “If you’re just fucking with me, then I will burn your guitar. I swear I’ll do it.”

I pulled the chain with the ring on it out of my shirt and unhooked it, dropping the ring into my hand. “Come back to me if you can,” I whispered to it. “I love you.”

I slipped the ring onto my finger.

“Jesus,” Chris said from the couch. “It took you long enough.”

I stood there staring at him for anywhere between two and five thousand seconds. He smirked at me, complete with a single dimple, and I clenched my fists and opened my mouth a couple of times before words started to come out. But when they did, I didn’t even make it through the first syllable before my voice broke and my knees hit the floor. I knelt there, wrapping my arms around my stomach, and started to wheeze.

“Tyler,” Chris said. He walked over to slide down onto his knees a couple of inches away from me. “It’s okay.”

“It’s
not
okay, you dick,” I choked out, surprisingly loudly. I hadn’t intended to yell, but I’d sort of lost the ability to modulate my voice. And there he was kneeling in front of me looking fucking beautiful and I wanted to reach up and touch him except that I was afraid that if I let go of my stomach, my guts would fall out. “I thought you were
gone
.”

“I was,” he said. “I’m back now.” He put his hand on my shoulder, and I shrugged it off.

“What does this mean?” I demanded. “Are you . . . Did you give it up?”

“Give what up?” He pulled me into his arms, and this time I didn’t resist.

“Fucking
heaven
, you asshole. If you gave it up for me after everything . . .” I couldn’t come up with a threat to end that sentence, so I just smacked him in the chest and then tucked my face into his neck and tried to get a grip on myself.

“I didn’t,” he said, reaching up to stroke my hair. “At least . . . not permanently.” He kissed the top of my head. “I wouldn’t do that to you. You told me not to make you do that and I didn’t.”

“So what the fuck is happening?” I twisted his shirt in my fingers. “You better be back for a while because I will
kill
you if you came back just to make me let you go again after a few days.”

“I think I’m back for as long as I want to be.” He shifted so that he was sitting on the floor, and pulled me into his lap. “I got to choose.”