“Uh, sure?”
But then I look in the bowl—not Skittles. Pills. All kinds.
“How do you know what’s what?” I ask.
“You don’t,” he says. “That’s the fun.”
“Yeah, no,” Drew says, pushing the bowl away. “She’s good.”
I glance at him. “I am?”
“You are.”
The boy shrugs, sidles away to offer pills to the group of girls lounging on the couch.
“It’s a thing,” Drew says. “Everyone raids their parents’ cabinets, throws the pills in the bowl. Don’t mess with that, okay? You have no idea what’s in there. Mixing shit—that’s how you end up in the ER, you know? Fucking idiots.”
My mouth turns up. “Well, I don’t need that bowl, since I have my very own private dispensary, anyway.”
He throws me a hooded glance. Maybe he really meant it when he said he wasn’t going to give me more than that last set of ten.
“The boyfriend?” Drew nods toward the phone in my hand as he reaches past me for a cup and the bottle of Maker’s.
I nod. “He’s MIA. Probably screwing some girl from his dorm or the surf club.”
I say this as a joke, but it suddenly occurs to me that it’s possible. Maybe he’s with someone like I’m with Drew and he sees her come down the stairs and he realizes she’s hot. Maybe that’s how it starts.
“Then he’s a fucking idiot.” Drew keeps his eyes on mine as he says it.
“Whatever.”
“Hannah. You’re gorgeous and smart and cool. If he’s fucking someone else, he’s an idiot.”
I don’t like the way his words fill me up. Also: No one has ever called me smart before.
“This isn’t a date,” I say.
My voice trembles a little, and I hate that.
“I know. If this were a date, this would be the last place we’d be.”
“What are you, a moonlit-walk-on-the-beach kinda guy?”
He shrugs. “Sometimes.”
I shake my head. “You’re an enigma.”
Every time I try to put Drew into the dealer/druggie box, he hops out.
“I think I’m okay with that,” he says, with that small half-smile.
I’m starting to get a nice buzz, a warm-all-over kind of feeling. I’m annoyed by the people around me. How loud and dumb they are. How they keep jostling me.
“Drew?”
“Yeah?”
“This party sucks. Let’s go.”
He steps back. “After you.”
We end up going to his house and liberating beer from his dad’s fridge, then stand around the kitchen drinking it, because couches and beds are for dates. And this isn’t a date.
“So, you packing tarot cards tonight or what?” Drew says as he pulls another Sam Adams from the fridge. “Because I distinctly remember being promised a reading.”
I laugh as I grab the Rider-Waite-Smith deck Cyn gave me out of my purse. “I guess having tarot cards is like packing heat, but I never heard anyone say it quite like that.”
His lips turn up a little. “How so?”
“They protect you.” I slide the worn cards out of their velvet bag, the colors beautifully muted, the images iconic, archaic.
“From, like, evil spirits?”
I shake my head. “From yourself. They show the truth about the world, other people, your life—and so it protects you from going down the wrong path.” I roll my eyes. “If you listen, of course. Obviously I ignore them on the regular.”
Just this morning I pulled the Devil: temptation. Addiction.
I shuffle the cards, pushing my energy into them.
“So how does this work?” he asks. “You gonna tell me my future?”
“No, it’s not like that. My mom always said tarot is basically just a friend who tells it to you straight about your life. No predictions—it’s not magic in that way. It’s magic because it helps you get what the fuck is going on. So.” I shuffle again. “Think of a question. You don’t have to tell me what it is. A question about something in your life you need some clarity on. How and What questions are best.”
“So not Will I be rich someday?”
“No. It’s not a Magic 8 Ball. Like, okay. How can I expand my entrepreneurial skills outside the pharmaceutical industry?”
He laughs. “Got it. Okay, I have a question in mind. It’s kind of … private.”
“You can keep it to yourself. The cards know all.”
“So it is magic.”
“It’s Something Else.” He’s something else, too, but I don’t say that. “Okay, keep thinking the question as I shuffle.”
He closes his eyes and gets this very serious expression on his face, which is so cute.
I shuffle, trying to focus, breathing deep like Mom as I channel my energy, my Something Else, into the paper between my palms. After three shuffles—I don’t know why, this feels like the right number—I divide the cards into three little piles.
“Okay. Pick one.”
Drew opens his eyes and, for a second, we just look at each other. When my face goes Karalis on me, making it look like I’ve been a little too heavy-handed with the blush brush, his lips twitch and he looks away.
Drew points to the center deck. “That one.”
I pick it up, and my fingers are shaking a little. I shouldn’t like how he looks at me—Micah, Micah—but I do.
“Okay, I’m going to lay out three cards: past, present, future. So we look at how your whole life is in conversation with this question you have.”
This is my favorite part—the story the cards tell, how it’s all connected.
I lay the top three cards from the center pile facedown in front of me, then, one at a time, turn them over.
“Ten of Wands for the past,” I say. “Page of Wands for the present. The Chariot for the future.”
“They don’t look scary,” he says, coming to stand by me. “That Chariot one’s cool. What do they mean?”
“Is your question about something you want? Something you’re trying to get?”
“Yes.”
“Makes sense.” I wonder what it is. He is such a mystery to me. And I wish he weren’t. “You have two Wands cards, and the Wands are all about passion, taking action on something. Fire energy. And the Chariot is interesting because it’s a water card, meaning a different energy. So, like, right now and in the past, you had all this fire energy, but now you need water. More emotion, more intuition. Feeling.”
I can’t look at him because I keep thinking about how Micah was my Temperance card, his water balancing my fire.
“Okay. Uh…”
His face is all scrunched up, and I laugh. “So, the Chariot is about perseverance. To not give up on this thing you want, even if it seems impossible. It’s all about creating a big change in your life. So whatever this thing you want is, you’re going to have to be all in because this card is kind of a bitch slap in the tarot.”
“Why?”
“Well, it’s basically saying that you can get this thing you want, but you’ve got to, like, man up. That sounds like toxic masculinity or whatever, but just—be brave. Don’t give up.”