To this day, I think about how much she changed me. There were times I decided that, even if we never knew more than our first names, I could use her as an excuse to come out of my shell and find new opportunities in my early twenties.
Yet I hadn’t, had I? Because she still controlled me. This woman who didn’t know me from the other girls in her class couldn’t give a shit. She had her own life. I had to get over it.
That was the day I came out to my mother, bawling over the phone that I was in love with a girl who would never love me back.
She told me someone would, someday.
I miss my mother. I wish I had someone with that much optimism about my love life around today.
***
The teashop buzzed with people Jess had never seen before. She hesitated to put out her sign advertising tarot and horoscopes because the number of unfamiliar faces unnerved her.Why? God help me if I ever know.Sometimes Jess got like this. She didn’t consider herself someone with social anxiety, but after the week she had, would it be too much to ask Amanda to drop by and keep her company for a while?
Nevertheless, she propped up her sign in the hopes someone would pay for her weekly groceries. She was rarely that lucky, but she always hoped.
She may have also hoped to see Shannon come through those doors, but didn’t hold her breath. Nor did she think it would be a great idea to bump into her. They hadn’t exchanged a single text since parting ways a few nights ago. Like Jess had put some thoughts in Shannon’s head, Jess now dealt with her own demons pecking at her shoulder.
She set aside her astrology books and pulled out her personal deck of tarot cards. These were different from the old Rider-Waite deck she brought along for public readings. Her personal deck was meant forher.She knew how to read the Rider-Waites and construct easy-to-understand narratives for people who knew nothing about tarot. But if somebody asked her to do a reading with her personal deck, she would become flummoxed. It was too personal, too metaphorical to decipher with spoken words. Besides, everyone who saw this deck quickly became distracted by the cute feline illustrations. Because Jess Millswoulduse a deck of cats for her divinations.
While she shuffled the deck, she closed her eyes and thought of a question pressing at her subconscious.
“What do I do about Shannon? Are her pursuits genuine? Dare I get entangled in her web again?”
She fanned out her cards and picked the three that spoke to her the most. The first one she turned over was a mother cat leading her litter on a hunt. The second was a solitary cat staring into her soul with nothing but cautionary kindness.
It was the last one, the one that represented her future, that sent a chill down her spine. A cat drinking water, but the card was upside down.
Jess had been using this deck for so long that she didn’t need to look anything up. That was part of the problem. The moment she saw the kitties looking back at her, each one representing a pivotal part of her subconscious, she understood an unfavorable narrative.
That was the thing about tarot. It wasn’t about true divination. It couldn’t tell her what to do to change her fate. People who asked for readings thinking their problems would be solved with one piece of advice sorely misunderstood the point. Tarot was a storyteller. It forced the subject to investigate her soul, her subconscious, and face some of the most infuriating demons to peck away at the heart. For tarot to work, Jess had to be completely open with herself and understand what the cards tried to tell her. That was how an agnostic approached it, anyway.I have to know myself to know what to do.It was what made looking at these cards so brutal.
The mother cat and her litter were in Jess’s past. She represented learning how the world worked and the basic life experiences everyone went through.
Unless she was upside down – which she was. Then she represented missed opportunities that other people took for granted. Like having relationships. Any relationships at all, romantic or otherwise.
“Thanks,” Jess muttered. “For that reminder.”
She never dated while growing up. Nobody asked her out, and nobody she was interested in were aware of her existence, anyway. College had been her opportunity to start over again. She didn’t know anybody. They didn’t know anything about her. She had heard tales that college was a hot bed of sexual experimentation. She didn’t need a long-term relationship with a straight woman, but sex? That would’ve been nice.
It never happened. Well, except for thatonetime. The time Jess now asked about.
The card in the middle represented her feelings at the present. Regrets. More missed opportunities. Regrets upon more regrets.Regrets for what I have done in the past, and regrets for things that haven’t come to pass.That was almost too much of Jess’s nature, especially regarding someone like Shannon Parker. That woman was a giant walking regret.
But it was the future card, the upside-down water drinker, that brought the most unhappiness to Jess’s heart.
Upside-down cards didn’t have to mean something bad. Sometimes they represented a caveat, or a warning. When upside-right, the cat drinking from an oasis represented a much-needed bounty when times were tough. When upside-down? It meant the water would sustain the cat’s life, but the thirst would always remain.
Thirst. Why did it have to bethirst?
The cards were right, as always, with their ugly truths. Jess had been like a wayward kitten back in college, desperate for new life experiences that everyone else already had. Shannon had been her opportunity to change everything. To become a better version of herself. To see what the world truly had to offer. To come up with a plan that would give her the greatest memories she could have wanted.
Instead, she ended up with regrets that cut her to her core.
Now? Shannon may quench her thirst for the foreseeable future, but it would never be enough. She would always hold back. Jess would never find her eternal happiness with a flakey woman like that.
She cleaned up her cards the moment a client approached her table, visage dripping with smiles as she excitedly pointed out Jess’s display to her female companion. Back to work it was.
