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For my Birdie. May you always know that love was the driving force.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER THREE: RUNNING UP THAT HILL
CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE SADDEST OPTIMIST
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: THERE, THERE
PART ONE
Love is only real if it can rage like a bonfire and also comfort like a fireplace.
It’s both, at once, the pain and the warmth. It’s why my heart is always cranked to maximum.
CHAPTER ONE
FALLING
LOSS
So, here I am on the edge of thirty-nine. Petulant, drunk, and obsessed with a charming but frustrating man in a white shirt and perfect jeans. I’m taking my one-millionth fancy cocktail and stumbling down a hallway to go see a tarot card reader. My friends all rolled their eyes, but I like the idea of someone telling me who I am and what my path is based on randomly turned up cards. Because seriously? Fucked if I know these days.
The Man with the White Shirt is mingling so excellently and effortlessly with my friends. His smile and those dark eyes and that body in those jeans — God, it hurts to look at him too long. He’s so handsome I can hardly stand it sometimes, and whenever he’s around everything softens in me. Usually. Tonight I’m all edges. I’m being a bit rude to him even. I’ll tell you why later, stick with me.
Right now, I’m stumbling down the hallway to see the tarot card reader. She’s, like, twenty-five, max, and drinking a gigantic glass of red wine. She locks the door and it’s quiet and all fortune teller-y in this closet we’re in. I’m drinking my strong fancy French cocktail as she shuffles the cards and thinking about how this is going to be such bullshit, but it’s my birthday so fun! fun! And then she turns over the first card.
LOSS. It says loss.
More cards come and it’s like they are shouting at me. FEAR. FUTILITY. What. The. Fuck.
They may as well say Your husband cheated on you and Now you think no one can love you.
“You used to know exactly who you were,” she says. “You were stable, confident. But now you have a veil of uncertainty over you. That’s because you’re being tested. To help you figure out how you say yes to things and how you say no.”
Whoa. How I say yes to things, how I say no. Not if. How. It’s as if she’s telling me I have choices. Some control over my life. I know that probably seems obvious to you, but right now? In this year? In this bar? This is news. This bullshit card reading has suddenly become really fucking real.
I return to my friends and try to be cheerful. White Shirt is there to greet me, all gorgeous and sweet. He’s searching my eyes for a sign, but I just say, “It was fun! She said freaky things!” Inside I think, Fuck, why can’t this real thing he says he feels for me be real enough?
I wake up the next morning in his bed, my head bashed in by booze I don’t even know the name of. My veins filled with lead instead of blood. Hungover. Massively. It’s my thirty-ninth birthday. I look at White Shirt as he lies sleeping, and I already feel far away. How did