“Ooh, I see.” Amanda lay her beat-up tarot cards out in a simple spread. “One ofthose,huh?”
Jess didn’t know what her friend meant. It didn’t matter. Because she was so distracted by the tall and slender woman picking up a tea menu that it would’ve been impossible to interpret anything but the complicated feelings welling up in her heart.
And her thrice-damned loins.
***
Memory #1
The first time I saw her… how do you describe something as powerful as fate?
Sophomore year, I think it was. I woke up early enough to amble my way across campus to my first class. It was a beautiful morning. Sunshine. Early spring. Birds chirped, whatever.
There I was, walking to class without a care in the world. A baby lesbian only recently coming to terms with what it meant to sell one’s soul to Sappho. Dating pool was nonexistent. While everyone else batted their eyelashes and got laid on the same night, I was dreaming of the day when I would get myself a cute girl and maybe lose my virginity. Maybe. It would be an undertaking, as any baby lesbian in a tiny community will tell you.
I was outside the English and History building when I first saw her.
I didn’t know her name yet. How do you describe a veritable angel descending from Heaven and stalking across campus without her own cares? She didn’t see me. But I saw her.
God, did Iseeher.
There are people you meet and instantly know that they will change your life. They breathe the same air as you, but are otherworldly. Ethereal. They don’t follow your rules. They barely acknowledge your existence. They have their own problems to worry about and aren’t looking to get involved with yours. Yet there they are. They exist. For some reason, your paths have never crossed before.
They do now. It was fate. It was written in the god damned stars that have no business interfering yet again.
Stars that weren’t crossed, for fuck’s sake. Just a bunch of measly stars that have already blinked out of existence, but for some reason still shine in the night sky. Physics. Scientists. They tell you the stars have no power other than what astronomy assigns them. You, the astrologer, know differently.
I saw her for the first time that morning. She passed me without acknowledgment. I did a double-take. My heart stopped. My stomach jumped. Every neuron in my body braced itself for impact.
Time didn’t slow, though. She was gone, that firm ass swaying back and forth with her confident steps as she silently sang along to the music in her headphones. Everything about her swayed, rocked, and existed with effortless purpose. Did she know she looked so cool? That she was coordinated, with her light brown hair, knee-high boots, and casually baggy jacket that accentuated the dip in her back and the curve of her hips? Had she rolled out of bed that way?
I went to class thinking about her. I spaced out the lesson because I couldn’t stop thinking about her. What it would be like to talk to her. To learn her name. What she wanted from life.
What it would be like to kiss her. To simply stare at her from across the table and drink in what it’s like to be Aphrodite – because there is no other goddess she could be.
I felt love when I saw her in those few seconds. I felt free. I felt as if the air had lifted me off the ground and gave me wings that only she could see. She was an angel, after all. Angels know each other, I suppose.
You never forget that moment when everything changed, when you realize your life will never again be surprised.
You never forget when Aphrodite sends Cupid’s arrow in your direction. You never forget what it’s like to be betrayed by the planet ruling your cursed sign.
***
Shannon put down the menu and approached the register. The barista on duty was her usual cheery self. Somehow, the rest of the café continued to go on as if a cataclysmic storm hadn’t erupted between two people.
Because, apparently, Jess was the only one who felt it.
What were the odds? She hadn’t seen Shannon since college graduation eight years before. Their paths had diverged. Anything they felt for each other was sacrificed to the ether.
Most importantly, Jess had long moved on from her first real lesbian love.
Wasn’t that how shit worked, though? The universe didn’t like it when a woman finally got her life together and decided to move on. When she started dating (or at least tried to date.) When she went whole weeks, years without once thinking of that woman who made her partly who she was.
It hated that. It must interfere.
Jess kept her face covered and eyes pointed to her table while Shannon turned away from the register and continued to search for a place to sit. She bypassed the couches and tables by the register and ambled into the back room where Jess practiced her divination on Sunday evenings.
Amanda looked between them. This asinine movement ensured that Shannon’s attention was caught, and Jess officially entered the seventh layer of Hell.
