I opened my mouth and shut it again. Once again, the answer was no. Once again, I wished it wasn’t.
“That’s… a great way to put it,” I said, feeling absurdly choky about the whole thing. Apparently Jonquil read chocolate wrappers, too.
“Oh, I can’t take credit. It was something I read in Aunt Hagatha this morning. ’Course, she was talking about cats, but that’s the thing with Hagatha, I find. You gotta know how to interpret her. Not so different from Beale with his horoscopes, in a way. All depends on how you think the Universe is tryna talk to you, and what you’re finally ready to hear, don’t you think?” Jonquil chuckled lightly. “Some of us need to hear things a dozen times before it penetrates. So, we’ll fight hard, even though it seems hopeless.”
I blinked, my mouth hanging open.
“Anywho, about this flyer…”
“Email me the rendering,” I said quickly. “In fact, email me everything you have. I’m going to send it to a graphic designer I know, and then I’ll talk to a lawyer, just like I promised. But right now… I have something I have to do.” Immediately. Before I overthought it and stopped myself.
“Oh! Alright, then, honey. But first, send me your address. I’ve got a care package for you. Just a few baked goods from Lety and a little something the Mahjong folks painted for you. Don’t worry—nothing too risqué. We held Lorenna back.”
I gave her my address—hell, I’d have given her anything she wanted—then I booted up my laptop.
I couldn’t do anything about the Jayd situation or the paparazzi right then, but maybe… maybe that didn’t matter. Maybe I could figure that out in time, and maybe it was just an excuse I was giving myself about why I couldn’t take a stand for Beale—for us—and apologize, and fight to fix things.
Even though they seemed hopeless.
Maybe nothing I could do would change things between us, and maybe it would, but maybe the outcome didn’t matter either. Maybe Beale just needed to know that he was worth fighting for. Maybe I just needed to know that I could stop running and fight.
And sweet Tom Daley in a teeny-tiny Speedo, maybe it was time to take my own advice, because it was a sad day when the Universe had to parrot chocolate-wrapper truisms to you a billion times before you could hear the actual truth of them.
Hagatha was me—not a persona, not someone I pretended to be—and it had taken Beale to show me that, but that didn’t mean I had all the answers. Far from it. Sometimes I was sad and lost. Sometimes it was okay for me to ask for help and to admit I’d fucked up. To take things in a whole new direction.
Dear, Jeannie—
I wanna make a change to Thursday’s column. I think you’ll find the new one is neither boring nor flat, even if it’s a tiny bit off-brand. Remember you said you’d work with me?
—T.
18
Beale
Czarina’s StarCharts for Today:
Today’s your lucky day, Virgo! The darkest hour is just before dawn.
“Hola, Beale.” Lety greeted me with a bright smile and a menu as I slid onto a stool at the Concha one morning exactly six days after I found out Toby left town. “Jugo y tostadas?”
I set my elbows on the counter and nodded. “Yes, please.”
I’d been having juice and black bean tostadas at the counter every morning for the past week or so, and while the Concha wasn’t my favorite breakfast spot—even Lety got her breakfast at the Bean—it had precisely one thing going for it: I was pretty sure Toby had never darkened the door of this place, whereas being at the Bean made me think of him constantly and miss him more.
Of course, not being at the Bean made me remember why I wasn’t there, which in turn made me miss Toby more, too.
And, in reality, there wasn’t anything that ever made me miss him less. Already, my cat, my plovers, and the bed I slept in made me think of him. I’d actually sprayed his pillow with his abandoned cologne the other day, thinking that might help me sleep better, and it had kinda worked… until I’d woken up with his scent in my nose and his side of the bed empty, which had been worse than not sleeping at all.
So I was pretty much doomed to this state until I could fix shit and get him back.
Until I could earn him back.
The bell over the door jangled and the few breakfast patrons called out greetings as my brother slid onto the stool beside me.
“Morning, Beale. Coffee, please, Lety?” Rafe asked, summoning a dimpled smile.
Lety winked, and Rafe hunched over the countertop in front of him before turning to look at me.
“How’s it going?”
I grunted and shrugged. “You know. Fine.”
Rafe nodded. “One more time, and this time make it convincing.”
“I’m fine. Really. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because your soul mate Trey left tow—”
“His name is Toby,” I interrupted in a low voice. “And he was always going to go back to the city. The soul mate thing was… you know.”
Something I’d thought I’d understood, but I hadn’t until I’d tried to walk around and live my life with no sunlight in it.
Rafe made a noncommittal noise. “And have you spoken to him?”
“Not yet.”
I was waiting until I had something important to tell him. Like, for example, that I’d convinced Jayd Rollins—in a loving, supportive, nonthreatening way—to make some kind of statement about what had happened at the club so Toby could be free from the media scrutiny and choose to be with me—or not—without any of those clouds hanging over his head.
It was supposed to take a day or two.
It hadn’t.
“I don’t want to discuss it,” I insisted. “Move on.”
“Okay, then. I heard from Gage earlier. He and Jayd are in Wyoming. They’re hiking.”
I pondered geography for half a second and frowned. “Wait, Wyoming? When they started in Colorado? Pretty sure that’s not between here and there.”
“Yeah, well. Jayd has his own agenda. What a shock.” Rafe’s voice was dry as dust.
Lety set down my juice and a mug of coffee for Rafe, and Rafe winked his thanks.
“I thought you were ready to move on from this. You were the one who told Gage you were fine with him going to fetch Jayd.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Revisionist history. You talked to Dad, who talked to Gage…”
“Who still wasn’t going to do it because he felt like you’d be angry.”
“So then you sat me down for a lecture.” Rafe sipped his coffee and winced. “Remind me, why are we here and not at the Bean?” he whispered.
I snorted. “I have no idea why you’re here. And I didn’t lecture you. I reminded you why you should give Gage your blessing to go pick Jayd up. He’s your oldest friend. He’s someone you care about, deep down—”
“Way deep down,” he muttered. “Like, six feet under.”
“And it seems like maybe he’s questioning things, just like you and Gage and I did once, and it’d be good for him to have some support while he does that. Maybe it’ll help him feel more comfortable about coming out.”