Star-Crossed ✔️

31

- 31 -

A few years back on the European leg of my second tour, Dustin and I went to a fortune teller in France. It was mostly for jokes because it was just there and we were a little drunk and I had cash to blow.

The woman hardly spoke English, but Dustin took French in high school so between what she couldn't say and what he could understand, we got the gist. I had been laughing about the decision before we walked in, but once we were seated in front of her, I felt a sense of unease. She had narrowed eyes like a cat, half-mast and scrutinizing, as if she could see into our very souls. Maybe she could.

Dustin got some corny fortune about a flourishing venture of love or something, which didn't necessarily come true in the coming years until just now when he seemed smitten enough with Kelsi to talk my ear off about her. He seemed content with the reading, smiling ear to ear while the woman tried to speak it into existence without knowing what a player Dustin could be in that era.

I, on the other hand, seemed to stump her for a moment. She held my hands in hers and closed her eyes, taking a few deep breaths consisting of mostly patchouli incense. Dustin remained silent as if any noise would break the connection between me and the psychic.

Finally, she read me. She said I had been living selfishly for a long time. I didn't tell her she was wrong because she wasn't. Sweat beaded on my forehead in her small insulated tent while she told me there would come a time in the near future that I'd be faced with a chance to right my wrongs, to put my efforts into helping someone in dire need. It sounded like generic hippie-dippie bullshit at the time. Of course I'd help someone at some point.

But then she looked into my eyes and said, "La moitié d'un cœur en réparera un autre, alors partagez le vôtre avec soin," which Dustin couldn't directly translate. I ended up Googling it later that night, then chalked it up to mumbo jumbo.

Half of a heart will mend another, so share yours carefully.

I didn't think of Noah Russo at that time, or any time after, but it was buzzing within me now. He was curled up in my lap, sniffling into my shoulder while I cradled him on the couch. I rubbed his back, picturing his thumping heart beneath the layers of skin and muscle and bone. In my mind, it was torn in two. Sliced in half by monsters in expensive shoes.

We didn't talk about it. He just cried and I held him and that was that. I could smell remnants of marijuana in his hair and on his clothes. He clutched my shirt, my bicep, my hair, whatever he could get his hands on as if he were afraid I'd leave if he didn't let go. I peppered kisses over his head like I was closing the holes left behind.

"Have you eaten?" I asked when he was quiet for a while, so much so that I wondered if he'd fallen asleep. I was trapped under him on the couch in his living room, the blinds drawn tight so it was nearly pitch black in the room. Not that it'd help if the windows were open. It was nearing two in the morning. I dropped my voice to a whisper, not wanting to wake him necessarily but definitely wanting to take advantage of his company. "Noah?"

He moaned into my shoulder, hand tightening into a grip on the side of my neck. I ghosted my fingertips along the knobs of his spine, his sweatshirt long since abandoned after an hour of crying raising his body temperature.

"Hey," I cooed, nosing into his unruly curls. "Have you eaten today?"

I bit back a smile at the slight huff he blew into my neck, squirming on top of me. "My mon't memember," he said, lips pressing against my shirt with every word. I scratched the nape of his neck into the ends of his hair and he sighed contently.

"Come on, let's go get something to eat," I said, lightly pushing on his hip with my hand that was crushed under his body. I wanted food for purely selfish reasons; it was amazing he hadn't woken up from my stomach growling. "Baby."