CASUAL AFFAIR; brendon urie

Chapter Six

"Can I read your palm?" it blurted out my mouth before I could stop it, and I really felt like clapping my hand to my forehead and face planting the earth. Forever.

"Um, sure." A line formed between Brendon's brows, but he smiled encouragingly enough, and obliging held out his uninjured palm, the one I'd been holding onto. Which was good it was his uninjured one cos I felt like I had little to no control over my own hands and could crush it in a death grip. "You know how to read palms?"

"Kinda. I mean, yes, but-" I shrugged. "Jessa - my friend - went through this new agey phase where she was totally into all this shit. She taught me a thing or two."

"Radical." Brendon smiled, and looked slightly alarmed when I snorted with laughter. "What?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing. I just didn't realise people still said radical."

He didn't blush like I would have, had someone said that to me, but instead gave me an unwavering look with those brown eyes, never breaking eye contact once, and his lips hinted at a smile. "I'm not like other people."

"I know that." I smiled softly, and pushed his fingers back so that they were straight and made sure his palm was flat. "Well, first up, this one right here," I traced a finger along it, the line towards the top of the palm, under the fingers. "Is your heartline. It's supposed to represent love and attraction." I explained. I looked up slightly to see him nodding, taking it in. "Yours is quite gridded. That's supposed to mean you have flirtatious attitude to love, and you are one which can be prone to fall in love easily."

"Well, we already know that that's true. Well, the last part, anyway." Brendon said, and then he smiled sheepishly, a little guiltily. "I guess I can flirt my ass off, too."

You don't need to tell me that twice. "Gridding on the heart line is often seen in intensely creative artists, like musicians and writers, as well as deeply driven scientists." I added, with a smile. Then I took my finger and ran it along the line that started at the edge of the palm under his index finger and flowed across the palm towards the outside edge. "This is your head line. It's generally interpreted to represent the person's mind and the way it works, including learning style, communication style and intellectualism. It's also believed to indicate a preference for creative or analytical approaches to information." I removed my finger from his palm briefly and tapped my forehead. "A scientific or artistic mind." I didn't bother to tell him which he had, because he wasn't a stupid man and it wasn't hard to guess. But what I did feel like saying that his head line was more crooked than I'd seen any others. And although I'd never seen one like it, I knew what it meant. A sort of kaleidescopey way of thinking, one could say. A mind that most certainly did not work in the way others did, but was most certainly not any less inferior in any way.

Brendon was watching me as I paused, thinking it all through in my head, waiting patiently. I shook myself a little before putting my finger back on his palm, this time tracing the line that extended from the edge of the palm above his thumb and travelled in an arc towards his wrist. "This is your life line. They used to think that it told you how long your life would be, but now it's all been pooh-poohed." I said, and then immediately blushed and regretted my choice of words. Pooh-poohed? God, how childish did that sound? I only ever said that with Jessa.

"And finally," I said, scrabbling to cover up my faux pas. "Not everyone had one of these - I don't, but you do, and this-" my finger ran the length of the line that ran under his ring finger, stopping at the arc of his life line. I secretly took that little bit of joy that there was no ring on that finger, or at least anymore. "Is your sun line. It's believed to indicate fame or scandal." I finished with a flourish, and went to move my hand away, but Brendon's fingers curled around mine and held them in place.