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SFO are the reason I was found. I look at Donnelly. Thankyouthankyou. I’ll tell him again tonight.
“Now, now, now…” She says, searching for something. “There is a strong presence among you…so strong. I feel…the energy like a…” She molds the air with her hands. “A beacon…she calls to more than one.” Must be Sulli attached to Akara and Banks. And then my stomach plummets. Because she comes to a complete stop. Right in front of me.
“You’re the deepest emotional tether…because you’re tethered to the one who’s brought everyone together.” Donnelly. “And the one who will call you back.” Moffy. “And more…yes, you call to more people here. You’ve called to them quietly and possibly without you really knowing.” Why is Kinney crying? Xander tries to console her with Salem. There are more wet eyes that surprise me. Like Winona’s.
“The beacon.” Cordelia smiles, but it teeters in and out like she’s overwhelmed. “Will you take a seat?” She motions to the chairs blocking the TV. Where everyone can stare. “Uh…” Will she predict my future like Oscar and Jack’s? “I…” “Take your time. I’ll return,” Cordelia says kindly, then holds out a hand to Eliot. “You’d like to go in her place.” It’s not a question. “She knows me so well,” Eliot teases with an alluring smile. “To the stage?” “If you wouldn’t mind.” “I’d love nothing more.” Eliot walks backwards to give me two thumbs up like it’s easy peasy. Not so hard.
“There, there,” Cordelia runs her fingers down Eliot’s palms, then intakes a deep breath and stares upward at the ceiling. “‘These violent delights have violent ends, And in their triumph die like fire and powder, Which as they kiss consume.’” Tom leans into me to whisper, “Romeo and Juliet. She must know Eliot is a thespian.” Eliot grins and applauds. “Perfect oration.” Cordelia smiles sadly at him. “You will help the voiceless find a voice, but it won’t be without consequence.” “Ominous,” Eliot widens his eyes with a smile. “What else?” She pats the top of his hand. “Continue to love with
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“You, again.” She’s picked out Donnelly from the crowd. “The moment has come. Would you join her, please?” I open my mouth to relinquish him of this obligation. He might not want his future read, but he’s already at my side, taking the seat. When our eyes meet, a grin spreads across his mouth, and it really is like we’re two astronauts piloting a spacecraft together. Destination: Unknown. Is Cordelia our map?
“How long you’ve traveled to be where you are,” Cordelia begins, a sentimental look in her eyes, and she takes our palms. One in each of her hands.
“You have matching lifelines.” She peers from one palm to the other. “They are so very, very long.” Don’t cry. Don’t cry. My eyes glass. I hear a few gasps and thank Gods mumbled.
Donnelly grins over at me, and I murmur so quietly that only he could possibly hear, “Everlasting, we are.” He leans in—his gaze straight ahead while his lips brush my ear. “I knew it from the start.” I turn my head a fraction, our lips nearly skimming. “I believe it,” I whisper. Because Donnelly has always believed in me. He’s always believed in himself. Then when there was an us, he believed in that too. He’s punctured my cynical heart and filled it to the brim.
Cordelia muses, “Two souls inextricably intertwined…there were many paths, but all would always lead you to each other. There is only life together.” Destined. The overlapping timelines of our love has already made me believe that we’re meant to be. I didn’t rea...
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“Sorry to interrupt,” Donnelly says quietly to her. “Love this and all, but if you’re about to say anything about kids, could you just write it down and not show us?” Good idea. I’d rather this not be known right now. What if it’s a disappointing prediction? What if she says we’ll never have a baby—not even in the faraway, distant future?
Cordelia tips her head in a sweet nod. She procures planetary stationary from her worn satchel. She scribbles on the purple paper, then folds it into threes. Handing it gingerly to Donnelly, Cordelia says, “You will never fail her. She will always be with you.”
“If we need to get a hotel—” “What? No, no, no.” Mom raises her hands like she’s stopping traffic. “Stay a week, a month, a year, the door is always open.” I smile more at Donnelly. His chest rises. He seems beyond touched, and he nods into a slow-rising grin. “Thanks, Luna’s mom.” “Lily,” my mom says. “You can always call me Lily.” “Thanks, Lily.”
Donnelly feeds Moondragon fish flakes. Then he wanders to my off-kilter bookshelves and studies them. He tells me, “All I know is that she either has some special power or she’s just good at reading people.” He doesn’t mention the broken Spider-Man mug. Just spins around and examines my childhood room like he’s archiving the fauna of a new planet. “See anything you like?” I ask. He swings his head. “Looking at her.”
My heart soars, and after sufficiently drying Orion, I glide over to my boyfriend. He hooks his arms over my shoulders and we kinda sway in the middle of my room. “Thanks for letting me into your life, Hale.” “Thanks for letting me into yours, Donnelly.”
Is he…is he not telling me something? I’ve sensed this before, but I’ve never pushed. I still worry about prodding and detonating our relationship. Everything feels so right. Why would I change that? Maybe it’s too naïve. Maybe it’s not how real, lasting relationships work.
I laugh. “You forget I’m straight?” “You forget I’m gay?” “Nah, it’s my twenty-eighth favorite thing I know about you.” Farrow chucks Luna’s thong at me. “That high?” “The other twenty-seven things are just your music preferences.”
I didn’t care about falling in love as much as I cared about keeping Farrow in my life. When I was seventeen, he was the best thing that ever happened to me, and I don’t even know if he fully understood it. ‘Cause I never made a big thing out of it either. I preferred it that way. But this year, we’ve been talking about it more than we usually do.
“For the headache you’re giving me.” “Don’t forget the tissues,” I tell him and point to the Kleenex on the third shelf. “For the tears you’ll shed when I’m gone.” “Of joy.” He flashes a half-smile, then says to both of us, “Breakfast is done, son-in-law and whoever you are.” I grin. “Dementia’s already setting in?” Farrow laughs into a wider smile. Lo goes to the door. “You wish you could reach my age.” My smile softens. “Yeah, I do.” “You will,” is all he says before leaving.
“She’d go until she passed out every night if I didn’t stop her.” “Damn.” “Best lay in the fucking world though. Baptize her with my cum seven times a week.” “Okay,” Farrow cringes. “That’s where you lose me.” I grin. “She makes a cute cinnamon roll when I—” “Oh my God,” he interjects like his ears are bleeding. I laugh hard.
💀💀💀
“What’d that psychic say about lasts?” I ask Farrow. “We’d all have a last there? Could be the last time any of us step foot in the penthouse.” “She was just guessing and seeing what stuck,” Farrow says, lifting the hamper. This one might’ve stuck. ‘Cause I’m starting to believe no one’s going back.
“Your coach might need glasses,” I said when we left the rink. “He hasn’t let me start most of the season,” Ben told me. “He thinks I haven’t earned it. That I just made the team because I’m the son of two celebrities. I doubt there’s anything I could do to change his mind, outside of altering my DNA and having full facial plastic surgery.” “So you’re saying he needs worse eyesight,” I nodded. “We gotta steal his contacts.” Ben laughed. Made my day hearing it, especially since it’s his 19th birthday today.
Easton gets flagged down daily. Guy is bullet-proof to any questions about Xander. It’s like he’s the real undead. Told Luna all about Xander’s friends while we were in bed one night. She wanted to know more about Easton since he lives down the hall. I ended up talking about Spencer too. Luna smiled, “My brother would befriend a vampire and a ghost.”
He moves around her like he’s being picked up with the breeze. Long strides that take me one-and-a-half steps to catch up to. He’s not graceful like Beckett. He’s not water. More like, he’s tornadic. His peers are sucked into his sphere and get off on the static discharge, until he blows away.
I wanna ask him how many people he knows by name at this Ivy League. Home to over nine thousand undergrads. How can he even keep them all straight? But those are questions for a later date. Tab them into: The Mysteries of the Cobalt Empire. Right under what the hell happens on Wednesday nights.
