Chapter Two
Harry
Look for new beginnings where you usually wouldn’t dare.
I lean back in my office chair, enjoying the feel of the supple leather against my hard-muscled back. My twenty-five inch computer monitor shows me the Zodiac Zone website.
I normally see these things as bullshit, plain and simple, but something about seeing Grace again has got me reading them.
I used to read them back when we knew each other.
She was so into them I couldn’t help get drawn in.
A girl with a head full of dreams.
And I couldn’t help but be sucked in by those dreams. There was something infectious about her belief in horoscopes, as though if she clung to old rituals tightly enough, the world would make sense.
I laughed at first when she first told me about them, in my douchebag way.
But then, one afternoon when I saw her sitting in the shadow of the stands near the soccer pitches, legs crossed, a contented smile on her face as she looked down at her phone, I was just too damn curious.
“What’re you grinning about, Nancy Drew?” I said, swaggering over.
She looked up at me, biting her bottom lip, looking up at me through the gap in her parted fingertips as she shielded the sunlight. “You’ll just laugh,” she said.
“No, what?” I urged, sitting down next to her and aiming a tickling hand at her side.
“It’s today’s horoscope,” she whispered, writhing against me. “It says I should stop living so cautiously and, jeez, that’s always been a problem for me, Harry. I guess coming here is the mostout therething I’ve ever done—What? Why are you staring at me like that?”
She was right.
I was downright devouring her with my eyes.
“I guess it’s the passion in your voice,” I muttered. “Do you think … Hell, don’t make fun of me, Grace, but do you think if I started reading horoscopes, you could forget all the times I’ve teased you about reading them?”
Her eyes filled with mischief. “I can’t promise that,” she said. “But I don’t think it’d be a terrible idea. I mean, even if they’re silly, I do find they really help sort of center me.”
So it began like that, just hearing the emotional pang in her voice when she talked about them.
The next day, I got up and went straight to my phone, navigating to the Zodiac Zone website.
Be brave, it told me.
I scoffed.
That was just generic as shit.
But then it went on.You’ve been waiting to tell a special person how you feel, but you’re scared, because you know circumstances are conspiring to cut your romance short. But time is no excuse to forgo love. So take the reins of your life in the hand. Be. Brave.
I’d never tell Nick just how profoundly that affected me.
That day, I poured my heart out to Grace, telling her I’d never met a girl like her, never fucking dreamed I’d meet a girl who could make me feel the way she did. Even if she was going back to America soon, circumstances wrenching us apart, I wanted to keep our relationship going.
Long distance, Skype sessions, goddamn pen pals if that’s what it took.
Whatever was required.
I became, honestly, a little obsessed with horoscopes during our magical romance.
