Page 32 of The Friend Zone

I can’t help but squirm in the futile attempt not to laugh.

“Sit still!” The fortune teller pulls my hand toward her. “This isn’t a joke. You’re a very peculiar person. Looking at your handis like looking into a mirror. Two lines that start as one and then separate. It’s hard to explain but I see two lives running parallel. So very similar and yet so very different.”

That’s strange.

I don’t have the time to think about what it might mean, because Ryker beats me to it.

“Could it be because she has a twin sister?”

Madame Svetlana’s dark eyes widen. “That must be it. You started together, sharing your mother’s womb and now you’re like the two sides of a coin.”

Great. Now that Ryker gave her this information, who knows what other absurdity she’s going to come up with.

I suppress an eye roll, but the old lady doesn’t even notice, still staring at my palm as if it was the most interesting thing she’s ever seen.

“Now a lot of things make more sense. You and your twin share a very special bond, despite being opposite.”

A special bond.

Maybe she should change her name from Madame Svetlana to Captain Obvious.

“I see different and yet remarkably similar paths for you and your sister. But one thing is clear, both your lives are dominated by love. The number three is important for both of you. It looks like you’ll both be married three times.”

If I believed that Madame is the real deal, I would ask her if she means three different marriages or if her prediction could mean one marriage but with three men. That could mean that things will work out for Lake, Cash, Blaze and Luca. But what could it mean for me? I don’t plan on getting divorced and married three times.

I decide that this prediction must be some cryptic bullshit, vague enough that it could literally be interpreted in many different ways.

The second Madame Svetlana lets go of my hand, I open my purse to give her a tip. I know she said she would read my fortune for free, but what the hell. Making a living must be hard once the high season ends. Twenty bucks should be enough, right?

“Thank you for your time, Madame,” I say, but the fortune teller shakes her head.

“Wait! Madame Svetlana isn’t done.”

This time I can’t help but roll my eyes. What now? And I wish she stopped referring to herself in the third person.

She opens a small drawer carved into the table, under the tablecloth, and extracts a red suede purse. It looks like a small sack and I half expect her to get some change for my twenty out of that. I’m about to tell her she can keep the twenty, but she shakes the bag, making its contents mix together.

“I sense something else. If you open your heart, your soulmate is already on your path. I’m going to tell you his initials.”

There’s no way she can predict that.

I must admit I’m a little disappointed when the old lady ignores the crystal ball sitting on one side of her round table. That would have totally completed the experience I expected.

Instead, she offers me the bag after loosening the golden string that kept it closed.

“Dip your hand in there and take a token.” She instructs me.

“Oh, I’m sorry, these are stuck together.” I offer her three tiles that are firmly stacked one on top of the other, like a roll of quarters. “Are they magnets?”

Madame Svetlana’s eyes bore into me and a little sly smile curls her lips. “They are not magnets. There must be a reason why they’re stuck together, my dear. Everything happens for a reason. Let’s see now.”

She separates the three square tokens that at a closer inspection look like the pieces of a popular word game.

There must be some kind of trick involved here because she pulls them apart very easily, but when I tried to shake them apart, they felt glued together.

“C, R, J.” Madame Svetlana reads out, setting down each tile on the table in front of me. “This is your soulmate.”

This is ridiculous. “You said that love was already on my path. I don’t know any guy with those three initials.”

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