I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the deep blue sea of Reese’s staring back at me from the door, pleading with me, telling me that we had to make it. I called in to work that night, turned off my phone, and spent my next three days in bed praying for my heart to stop breaking—or at times for it to just stop beating.
I ignored the knocks at my door, and twenty minutes later, I heard the jingling of keys and then my door opening when the building manager and my little sister Alayna walked in.
“Thank you, Fred. I’ve got it from here,” I heard Alayna say before the door closed.
Footsteps across the room told me that she was walking to the bed, where I had my head buried under the covers. When she pulled the covers back, I put my hand over my eyes to protect them from the painfully bright light.
“Tessa, what happened to you?” she asked, and the tears came back, shaking my body. “Oh god, Tessa, you stink. The first thing we need to do is get you in a bath and get this smell off of you. Then we’ll get you some food,” she said as she sat me up and pulled me from the bed. Then, like a child, she put me in the bathtub.
Alayna washed my hair and gave me a soapy washcloth to clean my body. The rough cloth moving over my skin brought back memories of the caress of Reese’s fingers. When I got out of the tub, she towel-dried and combed my hair.
After my hair was taken care of, we sat at the table by the window and I tried to eat some toast she made for me. As the bread hit my hollow stomach, I started to feel a little better, a little more like I was still alive. I told Alayna that I couldn’t talk about it yet, that it hurt too much, and she agreed to let me take my time. Here she was, back home from years away at college, and instead of being there to celebrate and welcome her back, she was pulling me back from the edge. If I survived this, I would never be able to repay her.
Alayna called The Happy Valley and let them know that I wasn’t well enough to come to work. Then she spent the next week at my apartment with me, only leaving my side to go grocery shopping. She cooked, cleaned, and even brushed my hair before putting me to bed each night.
It was Sunday afternoon and Alayna was sitting on the couch reading a magazine. “I’m ready to talk about it,” I said. She put down the magazine and moved so I could sit next to her. Alayna listened quietly while I told her everything—how I’d met Reese, the moment I’d fallen in love with him in California, the story about how he’d found Ruby, how he’d shown me that he accepted me for who I was. And then I told her about the night he’d broken my heart when he confessed that it had all been a trial, a test.
She thought about all I had told her and then asked, “Tessa, do you still love him?”
“I do, Alayna. I know I do. But he hurt me. He played a game with me and I can’t trust him anymore. And if I can’t trust him, I can’t be with him.”
Now that I was feeling like I could stand on my own two feet without tumbling down a hole, Alayna left and life started to go back to how it had been before Reese—empty. I called Sarah at The Happy Valley and worked it out so I could come back on a part-time basis. I would dance on stage but wasn’t going to be available for any private dances for a while. I also asked if she could choreograph a new dance for me because I couldn’t continue with the one I had been doing when I’d met Reese.
“Reese”
It had been three weeks since I had told Tessa that I loved her and she’d told me that I’d hurt her. I was starting to think that I was wrong, that we wouldn’t make it. All Tessa had to do was forgive me, to swallow her pride, and we could be together. We could be happy. I knew with every cell in my body that Tessa was the one—she was my soul mate. But I wondered if she would let her pride get in the way.
Eventually, I had to go back to my home in California. Every night, I would sit in the dark on the roof, watching the ocean waves softly caress the beach, the firepit sitting before me empty and cold like the darkness that was seeping into my heart. I spent my restless nights dreaming about her, the sound of her laugh, the way my heart swelled when she smiled at me, how her skin smelled like heaven, and the look on her face when she came undone beneath me.
At the shop, everyone kept their distance, only approaching me if they absolutely had to. They were all walking on eggshells and I fucking hated it. Why had I ever listened to Madame Miranda, arranging my whole life based on the words an old woman had spoken to me when I was young and dumb? Where had it gotten me? Ten years later, I was in my thirties and was still chasing the fairytale of finding my soul mate.
Someone must have called Myles because he showed up with Marcus and Jake at the shop today. He told me he’d talked to Sam last night and that Tessa had finally come back to work. I didn’t even know that she hadn’t been working and was confused about why she’d taken three weeks off. I thought that maybe her little sister had finally come home and she had spent time with her.
That night, the guys dragged me out on the boardwalk to have a drink. We played a round of darts, but there was no fucking way I was going anywhere near the shuffleboard. I couldn’t think of her and the way her body had felt against mine when I showed her how to play. I wouldn’t be able to take that pain tonight. It had been at least a year since the four of us had all been together, and I should have been making the most of the night, but all I could do was stare into the bottom of my beer.
“I’m going to start calling you shuffle-pussy. Since when do you pass on a chance to show off your mad skills?” Marcus asked while dusting the board with sand. He had been trying to taunt me into a game for the past twenty minutes.
I was ready to call it a night and I’d almost had too much to drink when Myles said, “You know, Madame Miranda set up shop about a year ago when the carnival broke up. Her place is just few doors down from here.”
So that’s why he’d insisted we come down to the boardwalk. And the sly fucker had gotten me to do shots with him before dropping that bomb on me. From the looks on their faces Marcus and Jake had known that this had been the end game from the beginning. “It’s after one in the morning, Myles.”
“I know what time it is, Reese. I have a fucking watch. Let’s just walk down there and check it out.”
“Fine, but since you tricked me, you are picking up the tab. And don’t you dare use the company card, fucker.”
What could it hurt? I was sure she had to be all tucked up and asleep anyway. And if she wasn’t, I could finally tell her what I really thought of her little fortune-telling scam.
Myles laid down some cash on the bar and the four of us headed down the boardwalk. I knew which shop was hers before I could read the sign above the door. It was lit up with more neon than I had ever seen before. Great. So she keeps late hours. It probably helped her to scam people who had been drinking. But not me. Not this time. I knew better now. I knew better than to take any stock in what she said.
We stopped in front of the door and Myles held his hand out .“You first, brother,” he said.
I placed my hand on the cold metal handle and pushed the door open, the bells hanging above jingled announcing our arrival. I heard Madame Miranda’s old cracking voice call out, “Come on in, boys. Don’t keep an old lady waiting. It’s been a long time. Come. Let me take a look at you. I’m in the back room.”
“How the fuck did she know it was us?” Jake whispered to Myles, who just shrugged his shoulders and shoved me farther into the shop. I walked past shelves filled with tinctures, bottles containing unknown ingredients, and a couple of skulls that were so lifelike I couldn’t see how they could be fake. When I reached the doorway to the back room, I pushed the beaded curtain apart to step through. The smell of incense grew stronger and the smoke burned at my eyes, making them water.
Madame Miranda hadn’t changed much from what I remembered of her from that night ten years ago. She still wore bright robes that covered her tiny frame, her sticklike hands resting on the table in front of her.
“How is your ankle holding up?” she asked.
“How do you know about that?”
“Honey, I knew you were going to shatter it before you walked into my tent the first time. I also know what you’ve been doing ever since you walked out.” She gestured for me to sit in the chair across the table from her.
“You and I will talk later. I know what you have been doing too, and you have some explaining to do, young man,” she said while pointing a bony ring-covered finger at Myles, causing him to take a step backwards until his back was to the wall. Then she turned her gaze to Marcus and Jake, who were still standing just inside the beaded curtain. “Your time will come, boys. Soon. Very soon.”
Leaning toward me, Madame Miranda said, “So tell me, Reese. How are the sins going with Tessa?”
“Why are you asking me? I thought you knew everything. Or don’t you?”
“Reese Nichols, don’t you sass me or I’ll have your tongue in a jar faster than you can spit,” she warned with a commanding tone as she hit the table with her fist. “Now answer my question.”
The words began pouring out of me and I hung my head. “I thought I’d found her. I thought she had to be the one. We were so close, only one sin to go before we could really be together. I knew she had to be the one…” I looked up, my eyes filling with tears. “How could I love someone so much who wasn’t my soul mate, the other half of me?” Madame Miranda sat in silence, so I continued. “But she’s not the one. She couldn’t swallow her pride. She couldn’t love me.” My voice dwindled to a whisper and I hung my head again. “We didn’t make it.”
“Reese, I thought you were smarter than that,” she chided and my head snapped up. “I told you that your soul mate would make it through the seven sins with you. I never said that all of the sins would be hers. Did you really think that you were without sin, boy?”
My alcohol-heavy head wasn’t understanding her words “What are you talking about? I know I am not without sin.”
“You have put the responsibility of overcoming the sins all on Tessa’s shoulders. You have allowed your pride to hurt her.”
Madame Miranda’s words were sinking in now. It wasn’t Tessa who needed to swallow her pride—it was me. How could I have been so stupid, spending three weeks in pain instead of swallowing my own stupid pride, going to her, and making things right? I could only hope that she would see me, that she would understand.
“You silly, stupid boy. Hope is all any of us ever have.”
“Tessa”
“Come on, Tessa. It will be fun and I don’t want to go by myself. Please, please, please go with me?” Alayna whined for the millionth time today, putting her hands together like she was begging. She pouted with her bottom lip sticking out as far as she could manage, batting her long eyelashes at me. She used to pull this on me all the time when we were little, getting me to do anything for her.
“Alayna, you know it isn’t fair when you pull that shit.” I let out a breath. “Fine. I’ll go, but I’m not promising that I will be good company.”
She squealed and wrapped me in a big hug. “Oh, Tess, it’s gonna be so much fun! George said it was going to be a real masquerade ball where nobody takes off their masks and you don’t really know who anyone is. We even get our own dance cards and men actually have to wait their turn to dance with us.”
The part about not taking off my mask was the one thing I looked forward to. I could put on a mask and hide behind it, allowing me to drop the make-believe one I’d been holding for the past month.
“Okay, so the invitation says it is on Halloween night and that is only three weeks away. He also set it up so we can get fitted for our costumes and pick out our masks, but we’ll need to do that this week in case they need to make any alterations,” Alayna explained.
“I’m free tomorrow during the day if you’d like to go then.”
“It’s a date!” she said, the words ringing through my head, reminding me of when Reese had said those words to me, and tightening the vise that was always pressing in on my heart.
I met Alayna the next day, and after a quick lunch, we stopped by the costume shop. There were dresses of every color, design, and size hanging everywhere. It felt like being lost in a sea of fabric. Alayna came back from where she had been speaking with one of the associates and said, “We’re lucky that we came today, Tessa! They only have two dresses in our sizes left. I guess the nice thing is that it makes the decision easy. Mine is yellow and yours is a beautiful purple. We just have to try them on really quick so they can make sure they fit, pick out a mask, and we’re all set!”
The associates helped Alayna and me into our dresses. And she wasn’t kidding—they were real ball gowns, just like I had seen in movies. The bodice of mine was a strapless corset that actually had to be laced up in the back. The satin material was the most beautiful color of purple I had ever seen, and the skirt was layers upon layers of black tulle that flowed out from my waist and fell to the floor. When the associate had finished lacing me into the dress, she directed me to the mirror and stepped out to gather a selection of masks.
The dress fit perfectly, the tight lacing of the corset doing its job by making my waist look tiny and causing my breasts to mound under my collar bone, swelling with each breath I took. When she walked back in with a tray holding masks, it didn’t take long for me to find the one I wanted. The purple mask was covered in the same satin material the dress was made out of and was stitched with silver embroidery that attached tiny sparking crystals to the mask. Once I placed it on my face, the mask came to just under my cheekbones, exposing only from the tip of my nose down. I was starting to look forward to pretending to be someone else for a few hours.
Alayna complained the whole way back to my apartment about how I had been able to take my dress home with me but she’d had to leave hers there for alterations. “Why’d you get all the boobs in the family, Tessa?” she asked while cupping her breasts. “Couldn’t you have left some for me?”