Chapter 5
Jess
The line for on-the-fly birth charts and tarot readings was exceptionally long that night. Someone had heard on the grape vine that Jess was a “wizard of all things astrology,” and passed it on to their friend, who passed it on totheirfriend. Patrons who simply wanted to buy a pot of tea gasped to see the commotion erupting by the bay window. Didn’t they know that Sunday night washoroscope night?
Jess was good at online customer service – the kind that included forms and emails – but handling people who didn’t know how to queue or ask questions was best left to Amanda, who spent most of her days corralling shoppers at the local supermarket. She had the balls to tell one woman to wait in line. She didn’t care how much that dog barked!
Calm down, Leo.Jess had pegged the woman’s sun sign long before she sat down, her Pekingese dog shuddering in her lap. The dog was either terrified or utterly elated to be surrounded by so many caffeinated people. Jess couldn’t tell. She wasn’t a dog person.
The woman wasn’t interested in how her personality worked with the world or how she should handle it in love, money, and business. No, what the woman wanted was the reassurance that she was God’s gift to the world and didn’t need to change a damn thing. Jess asked for the time and location of her birth and double-checked her hunch.Look at that. Rising sign is Scorpio.It was days like these that almost made Jess a true believer.
Almost. She wasn’t quite that deep in the vat of Kool-Aid.
As soon as the woman was gone with her yappy dog, Amanda announced that she had to bounce so she could get to bed at a reasonable time. A lull in clients meant Jess had the chance to hit the bathroom and top off her glass of water. Her pot of tea was already depleted, but she decided to stick around a while longer to see what happened. Her horoscope had warned her that leaving her commitments earlier than usual could end with bitter disappointment. Nobody hated bitter disappointments more than a Libra like Jess.
“I think that person went to the bathroom,” she overheard a man say in the back room of the café. “The table’s reserved, anyway.”
“Oh, I know.” Jess stopped halfway across the teashop.That voice… no fucking way.“I was here to see her. Guess I’ll wait.”
Jess took another step forward, her boots echoing on the wood floors. Sure enough, there was Shannon Parker, her bushy hair as unmistakable as that soft, confident voice and the outline ofher assin those jeans.
Some things never changed from college. Like Shannon’s ass looking fantastic. Like Jess always staring at that ass.
“You’re looking for me?”
Shannon spun around. Her thin eyes looked Jess up and down before she forced a smile. “Hope you’re not… um… busy.” She glanced around their nook. Aside from the man studying biology in the corner, nobody else was around.
“You’re here. Here. To seeme.”
Some of that confidence faltered. Shannon was no longer the spitting image of the girl Jess used to bump into on a college campus. A few age-lines had appeared on her face. She had gained a little bit of weight. Her eyes were duller, or that could’ve been the heavy eyeliner obscuring her soul.
“Yes. Is it okay?”
Jess was officially in the Twilight Zone. First, the girl who ran out on her eight years ago appeared out of the blue, as if God had decided, “You know what? Fuck it! Jess ain’t got enough problems!” Now, one week later, they had not only bumped into each other again, but Shannon was here on her own volition. To seeJess,of all people.
“Sure. Have a seat.”
Was this, or was this not, the woman who glared at her as if she had leprosy when they saw one another at Trader Joe’s?I thought she was gonna call the cops on me!Jess was already figuring out the best places to go instead of her regular haunts. The last thing she wanted was to keep bumping into Shannon and making them both uncomfortable.
Shannon now sat in the client’s seat, her bag nestled comfortably on the floor and her elbow propped up on the table. Jess’s stack of astrology books cluttered half of the table, and she was keen to get“Lesbian Love Astrology: What the Stars Say About Sapphic Encounters”back in her bag. It was great for a certain clientele, but Shannon once made it clear that she didnotbelong to that subset of womanhood.
“I want to apologize,” Shannon said. “About the other day at the store. It was a bad day. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”
Jess finished tidying up her space and said, “It was a shock to the both of us, I’m sure. I mean, what are the odds of seeing each other like this again after…”
Neither of them said anything.
“You’re still into astrology, huh?”
Jess was slightly taken aback. The topic wasn’t unusual, given what she had on the table, but the sudden mention made her brain switch gears faster than it could process. “Yeah. It’s just a hobby, though. Sort of a side hustle.”
“What else do you do these days?”
Why do you care?That was a genuine question. Not only had Jess stopped thinking about Shannon after so many years, but having her express this amount of interest in someone else was almost unprecedented. “I freelance. Didn’t get much else employment about college…”Unlike you, I bet.Shannon had a sterling résumé by the time they graduated. The woman ran half of the campus dormitories. Her best friends were the leaders of student unions. A mutual professor once praised her in front of Jess’s class.
The woman could have any nice paying job she wanted with that track record. What was she doing in Portland? Wasn’t she a Californian?
“That’s cool. The gig economy is what it’s all about these days.”
