“Hell yeah, I’m good at this.”
That warmth flares into something molten, and his grin grows from small to brilliant. “Let’s go celebrate tonight. Just you and me.”
“What about Paul?”
“Guarantee you he’ll pretend to be too tired to socialize with us later,” Theo says. “And I want you to myself, anyway.”
My heart floats off into space. “Okay.”
His gaze drops to my mouth. “I’m going to kiss the hell out of you now.”
“Okay,” I repeat, dazed.
He does, right in front of Paul and the family of four who’s on the tour with us.
And, I suspect, in front of Gram, too, wherever she is.
Twenty-Five
God, that was good.”
Theo looks over at me, his face shadowed as we cross the dark parking lot, hands clasped. “Request for you to say that later tonight, in exactly that same tone of voice.”
I pull out of his hold, turning so that I’m walking backwards ahead of him. “I don’t take requests. You’re going to have to make me.”
His eyes sweep down my body; I’m wearing the Vegas outfit since I have nothing else. He watched me all through dinner like it was the first time I’d worn it.
We get to the van, and Theo backs me against it until there’s a millimeter of space between us. If I breathed, we’d be touching. I don’t, just to watch his eyes darken.
“Shepard,” he says in that velvet voice. It brushes over me the way his palm does, stroking up my neck until his hand is bracketing my jaw. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been making you nearly this entire trip.”
You can make me for a lot longer than that. I raise an eyebrow. “You think so?”
“You do it right in my ear, so yeah.” His mouth pulls up into a smirk. “I know so.”
“Then we’d better go so you can get on it.”
“I can’t wait to get on it.” He reaches behind me for the door handle. But instead of moving us so he can open it, he leans down to brush his mouth against mine, then parts his lips, inviting me to do the same. I taste the wine we had on his tongue, the lemon tart we shared. It was Theo in dessert form: sweet with a bite.
It’s been more than a year since I’ve been on a date, and none have ever felt like this—like it’s the start of something I’m desperate to name but can’t, whether it’s too soon or because we don’t have enough time left. As Theo kisses me with the moon peeking down at us, I know he feels it, too. It’s in the pace of his mouth moving over mine, the way he leans into me like he knows I can handle the weight of us, the way his hand tightens in my hair. It makes my kiss turn desperate.
Nearby, a car alarm chirps politely. Theo pulls back first, breathless, his lips glossy from me.
“Let’s go home,” he says, his voice barely a rumble.
“Yeah,” I say, wishing home meant somewhere less temporary.
But then my gaze snags on a neon sign in a storefront window across the lot. The psychic/tarot sign blinks.
It’s nearly ten, so it stands out. Maybe that’s why I straighten, pressing my hands against Theo’s chest to move him out of the way. Everything else around the storefront is dark, but a soft, warm light leaks out of the gauzy curtains, painted pink by the neon in front of it.
Theo’s arm winds around my waist. “What shiny thing just caught your attention?”
“Psychic.” I blink away from the sign and up into Theo’s face, awash in skepticism. “Let’s go see.”
“You want to go see a psychic right now?” he repeats, but I’m already walking, my sandals clicking against the pocked asphalt. He mutters, “Oh, Jesus,” but his footsteps aren’t far behind me.
It’s as if there are hands pushing at my shoulders, curling around my hand as it covers the chipped gold door handle. Before Gram died, I never thought of myself as spiritual, but since I lost her, I’ve been searching for ways to find her again, to hold on. Right now, I know I need to be here.
A bell jingles softly when I open the door. I expect to get hit with a face full of incense, but instead it smells vaguely of jasmine, like the bushes Gram had planted in her front yard. The space is small but clean, nothing like I imagined. One wall is an abstract mural of a desert landscape, an eye hovering in the middle of it, the rest a soothing sage. There’s a long, beautiful pine table in the middle of the room with an iMac, a deck of cards, several candles, and a shit ton of crystals and rocks. A deep green velvet chair sits on one side, two orange tweed chairs on the other.
“Hello?” I call tentatively.
Theo stops just behind me, his breath stirring my hair as he sighs. “Shepard, what the hell.”
A woman pushes through a set of yarn-woven curtains separating the front room from the back. Like the shop itself, she paints a surprising picture. She’s young, maybe a few years older than us, with long, curly brown hair. Her skin is damn near poreless, cheekbones high, with the most arresting green eyes I’ve ever seen. She’s wearing funky patchwork jeans, a cropped lavender sweater, and pink platform sneakers. She looks like someone Sadie and I would see at a bar and strategize about making our friend.
“Hey, folks, super sorry, but I—” She stops, taking us in, and puts a hand to her chest, stunned. “Wow, okay, I was going to say I’m by appointment only and I’m booked three months out, but . . .” Her eyes drift over us, sharp and far away simultaneously. She laughs. “Yeah. Wow, come on in.”
Theo lets out a quiet snort, then a grunt when I dig my elbow into his side. “I don’t want to interrupt you if you’re really not available. We were having dinner across the way, and I saw your sign.”
“I got distracted and forgot to turn it off, but now I’m feeling like that was the universe doing its thing.” She waves her hand, the thick gold cuff on her wrist wobbling with enthusiasm. “Seriously, come in, come in. I’m Flor, by the way.”
“I’m Noelle and this is Theo.”
“Hi.” His tone broadcasts this wasn’t his idea, but he pushes at my hips, following me into the room. We sit, and he scoots closer immediately, closing the three feet of space between us. When he catches me watching him, he raises his eyebrows like what?
“Close enough?” I murmur.
“Better view from here,” he says, tapping the desk, but his eyes stay locked on mine, and his dimple flashes.
A shuffling sound snaps me out of my trance. I look over to find Flor seated in the green velvet chair, a deck of tarot cards in her hands and a wide grin on her face. “I love this for me. Can I get your birthdays, place of birth, and time of birth, if you have it?”
I rattle off my information, and she writes it down, nodding. “Born at 12:12 a.m., got it. A midnight baby, cool.”
“That’s the only reason I remember, honestly.”
“What about you, my skeptical friend?” Flor asks, appraising Theo.
He tells her, then winks at me. “And I was born at midnight, on the dot.”
I roll my eyes. “Of course you were.”
Theo reaches over to take my hand while Flor works on her computer. She hums, her attention drifting toward us sometimes, other times off into space.