Page 106 of Sort of Seeing Someone

My mom extends her dainty hand. She wears a stack of crystal beaded bracelets on her wrist in a way that gives me slight Esther Higgins vibes. One of them is green peridot with a few lava rocks.

My gaze drifts back up to her face. Her eyes are eager and bright. Most moms want to go to The Cheesecake Factory for lunch with their daughters and gossip. Mine wants me to jump into the cold ocean waters with her and float around until we turn to prunes. Judging this moment for anything but the potential it has to be pure and wonderful makes me no different than a guy like Ollie. My desire to be anything but that supersedes my desire to hurl twenty questions at the woman.

“Okay. I’m ready,” I say, after disrobing and grabbing on to her hand.Note thatwhenI do, there is an absence of any sort of futuristic vision.

We really are cut from the same cloth.

29

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The line is not all that long at The Lighthouse, my favorite ice cream shop in the entire country, which is all the convincing I need to visit my second cash-only OB staple of the day.

“What’s good here?” my mom asks me.

“Literally everything. It’s an ice cream shop,” I explain, stepping up to place my usual order, an “OB Flurry”—chocolate soft serve mixed with hot fudge and cookie dough pieces. It’s a cavity in a cup, but I will never get anything else.

“I’ll try Moose Tracks in a waffle bowl,” my mom requests.

“One or two scoops?”

“Two,” I quicklyanswer for her. If a double scoop keeps us here, together, longer—then adouble scoop it is.

Our sweet treats come out a few moments later. I tip the cashier extra as I can tell she loaded mine up with cookie dough—just how I like. We find an open patio table outside and take a seat. Even though we just spent the last forty-five minutes floating around in salt water, I’m remarkably exhausted. It feels good to plop down on the metal bistro chair. As I scoot it closer to the table, it grinds against the cement.

I know that sound.

“So you’re here on a field trip?”

“With my sisterhood, yes. This is the kind of thing we do in our old age. Look for vortexes, mine for crystals, attend moon beam meet-ups. I know it sounds kitschy, but it’s fun and it gives me something to do.”

“When do you head back?” I ask.

“Bus leaves at 7am, just after a sunrise yoga session on the beach.”

I ask her to stay longer. I tell her I can rent a car and we can roadtrip back to Sedona. I tell her we can listen to podcasts and pull tarot cards together. I tell her how fun it will be.

“I can’t,” she says. “I’m going back in time tomorrow. The sisterhood is visiting the world’s most respected Past Life Regressionist.”

She can tell I’m confused, so she continues on.

“It’s a form of hypnosis that takes you back to a previous life. It can help to explain traumas or prejudices carried into this life. I wonder who—or what—I once was.”

There’s not an episode ofCall Her Daddythat can compete with that. So I tell her it sounds fun and to let me know what the guy says.

“So now catchmeup,” my mom segues. “You’re moving back here and opening a shop? That must mean things are going pretty good for you.”

Clearly my mother doesn’t have social media.

“It’s kind of the opposite, actually,” I begin. “And a long story.”

“I have time,” she says—and I barely know how to process that.

Our relationship isn’t perfect, and it’s nothing like any other mother-daughter I know. It’s riddled with trauma, drama, and some hocus-pocus. But when she sits across from me in the flesh, and tells meshe has time, I know to take her up on it. Even if it’s time spent telling her about my bad fortune.

“I came across a psychic who said I had met the one, but that essentially he slipped through my fingers, and that I’d have another chance with him. Turns out, she was a hack and none of that was true. So I wasted a lot of time and energy with the wrong guy, while simultaneously taking business advice from someone I shouldn’t have ever listened to. So now I’m here. Not trying to pick up any pieces, but to start fresh completely. I want to open a metaphysical wine shop in the building that used to be Joe n’ Flow. It’s for lease.”

“That psychic doesn’t sound like a hack to me,” my mom says, taking her side. “Maybe what the psychic was musing on had nothing to do with your love life. Have you ever considered that? You worked at Joe n’ Flow. You loved it. You lost it. But you’re getting it back. You have a second chance.”

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