Luna’s visibly struggling to lock in on one emotion out of the extensive menu of them we’ve offered her. For one, we did not come anywhere close to getting ten thousand dollars from Mr. Yoon, and fled the scene having forgotten about the money altogether, which had her so discombobulated that all she could do was gape at us. Her shock over our failure, mingled with anger relating to Aisling’s antics, already had her teetering on a precipice. So when we filled her in on the rest of our interesting non-lunch at Half Moon Mill, she started laughing hysterically and hasn’t been able to stop.
“I wish I could have seen your faces!” she howls. “Pretending to be a couple! Oh my god! And then you go in and Alex is there! Both your exes!” She doubles over. “You’re both so stupid.”
I throw back the rest of my coffee, which is the last thing my nervous system needs. Stupid, indeed. “Shut up.”
“I love that we’re able to laugh about this now,” Aisling tells her mom, beaming. “Ha-ha, look at us all having a good time!”
“You’re not having a good time for at least a month,” Luna replies, and it’s impressive how quickly her tone catches heat. Candles are an apt magical conduit for Luna. In the stories Grandma used to tell us when we were little, the fire fairy’s other form is a firefly. It brings light to others but tries not to get close enough for capture, and strives for harmony with nature. Although a wise, pacifist creature, if provoked it will respond with quite a temper. Grandma gave young Luna a pair of yellow nylon wings, which she wore until they were bent and shredded; to Zelda, who loved to hear about water sprites (mysterious creatures with creepily smooth faces and an appetite for human bones), she gifted a necklace of shells and driftwood. Sometimes I saw myself in characters who were gnomes, sometimes in mischievous pixies or damsel princesses, so I didn’t quite know what to make of it when Grandma gave me a magic wand. I think maybe it was for changing myself into whoever I wanted to be, once I’d made up my mind about who that was.
Aisling slumps into the chair behind the cash register, lower lip jutting out. Her efforts to be cute and sad are fruitless: Luna is a steel pillar. “I only wanted to flavor her tea.”
“Don’t give me that BS. Nobody uses nettle for the taste.”
Aisling’s focus darts to the middle of Luna’s forehead. She braces herself. “Okay. I was trying to perform an exorcism.” We all holler. “But!” She waves her warms. “But Mrs. Davis is awful. I’m not even exaggerating. She said I can’t go on the end-of-year field trip to Columbus Zoo because I turned in three assignments late this quarter. Which isn’t true, either. How is it my fault that she lost my homework?”
Luna buries her face in her hands. Gusts a heavy sigh. “My child. Tried to perform. An exorcism.”
“She needs one!” Ash cries. “That lady’s evil.”
I have to turn around to hide my spurt of laughter. Trevor tugs the collar of his shirt over his mouth.
“Stop it, both of you,” Luna snaps at us. “And you!”
I turn again; she’s glaring viciously at Morgan, who’s pretending to be working on his laptop. (He isn’t—he’s trawling Etsy for vintage fits. He likes to dress like it’s the 1980s and today is wearing eyesore acid-washed jeans and a fluorescent purple shirt.)
“Me?” He points at himself. “What’d I do?”
“You’re a terrible influence.”
The shop is Aisling’s second home—she even took her first steps here—and she spends a lot of time with us, probably overhearing too many adult conversations, to be honest. She vents about her many preteen nemeses when she comes in after school, and Morgan, who was a miscreant as a youth, is far too inspirational.
Morgan offers up his palms. “I’ve never in my life suggested that she try to purge the demons from her teacher.” He jerks his chin at me. “The hex was her idea.”
“Hey! I said that in confidence. As a joke.”
“I think we’re getting off track,” Aisling cuts in hastily. “Remember how Aunt Romina and Trevor are pretending to date? Whew! That’s wild.”
“Take this and run to the market.” Luna holds up a grocery list along with two twenties, waving them. “No stops. And no messing around in the store, because if you do, Ron will tell me.” Ron’s the manager. Luna makes it her business to know absolutely everybody in Moonville on a first-name basis. “When you’re finished, you’re going to go read two chapters in The Modern Witchcraft Guide to Magickal Herbs and write a five-hundred-word essay on the importance of using herbs responsibly, on top of your regular reading-up on tarot and homework. After that, you’re on dinner duty.”
“Pizza?” Aisling says hopefully.
Luna crosses her arms. “Eggplant rollatini.”
Ash falls to her knees. Shakes her fists at the ceiling. “Stelllaaaaa!”
Luna snaps her fingers. “Get busy. Tonight, expect a long, super draining heart-to-heart about why it is not acceptable to poison your teachers, which is not something I ever thought I’d have to say out loud. I hope you know that you will not enjoy a single minute of your suspension this week.”
Ash grabs the grocery list and scampers off, with the promise to be miserable while she’s gone. As soon as the door’s closed, Luna sighs. “Mrs. Davis really could use some of our special teas, though. That lady’s got the worst energy.” She pounces on Trevor and me. “What next? I assume we’re going to go back and pitch to him tomorrow?” The subject change gives me whiplash.
“We haven’t thought of a new plan yet,” I admit. “After we heard about the wedding, we drove here to freak out. And it was clear that Mr. Yoon didn’t invite us there to discuss the loan, he and Kristin just wanted to surprise Trevor with the big news. So . . . still not sure what we’ll do on that front. But if he’s going to be in town all week, we’ll have more opportunities to talk to him about it. Maybe we can invite him to the shop? Show him what a great job Trevor’s doing.”
“Yes.” Luna’s already taking notes. “Good. This can be good. Next time, I’ll be there to help, so it’ll go correctly.”
“Excuse you!” I cry. “You said you had faith in us!”
“And where did that get me? You two drove back here without mentioning the loan to him! We’re going to have to sell the lot for way less than we paid for it and the space next door will be turned into a Yankee Candle store. That’d be just my luck. Losing money on top of losing money.”
“Oh, it’s not going to be a Yankee Candle store,” I tell her. “You always jump to the worst conclusions. If we have to sell, maybe it’ll become a Sonic or something.”
She grips her pencil, face white. “It’ll be another witchcraft boutique, I bet. This town is mentioned in too many witchcraft blogs; it’s only a matter of time before some of these tourists decide they want to stay and make some tourism money of their own.”
Since it’s her turn to freak out, I shove my worries aside and pat her head. “It’ll all turn out okay.”
“My dad’s getting remarried,” Trevor says, mostly to himself. He shakes me like I’m a rag doll. “To someone I don’t even know! She could be the mafia.”
I cackle. “Kristin? Yeah, sure. She could be the tooth fairy, too.”
His eyes narrow. “It’s been ages since you knew her. You don’t know what she might be into these days.”
“You should have seen him when Teyonna walked over,” I tell the other two, smirking. “He was like a cartoon wolf, jaw on the floor.”
“I was not! I did not!” He springs up onto an armchair, fingers wrecking his coiffure. “Was I that obvious?”
“Sorry, but yes, you were. What about me? How’d I come across? Smooth, I hope.”
“You were a disaster. But I knew you weren’t over him, so maybe I was only seeing what I already knew.”
“You didn’t know that! That’s not true.”
“Everybody knows,” Luna says soothingly, massaging my shoulders. I try to swat her away but give up because it feels nice. “Even when you were with Spencer, I could tell your heart was still Alex’s.”
I feel my face contort, a blush flooding. “Was not.” I’m furious at my transparency, for being this wound up when it’s been years since we were together, and I’ve had other relationships since then. By all rights, he should have been packed away in a long-forgotten box like everything else from high school. Damn him. He’s so stubborn that even as a memory, he’s refused to be scrubbed out.
Trevor crows. “Was so, and still is. And his eyeballs, by the way, were sparkling at you like cocktail juice right up until Allison paused drinking the blood of virgins and sleeping in her daytime coffin long enough to tell everybody we’re together.” He uses air quotes for together.
“Who’s Allison again?” Luna divides a puzzled look between us, pausing her note-taking. The headline, ominously underlined, is Don’t take no for an answer. “She’s the cousin, right?”
“Cousin and archenemy. Told Teyonna I wasn’t good enough for her. T didn’t understand. I stole the helium tank to impress her, not because I’m some delinquent.”
“I’m dying to know why you stole a helium tank.”
“To blow up a hundred green balloons with,” I explain. I’ve heard this story before.
Trevor is ripping off pieces of my florist’s tape to give himself a tape beard. “Green’s her favorite color. I was going to release them in the sky over her house, then shoot them down with a bow and arrow to celebrate her doing so baller in pharmacy school.”
“Aw, what a sweetheart.” Morgan spins his chair.
“Right? But Allison was all like, ‘My cousin’s immature, you can do better, you should go out with my boyfriend’s best friend instead.’ T said she was gonna stay with me anyway, but after I showed up at her house with squirt guns, she said she didn’t think I was cut out for serious relationships.” He broods over this. “I thought the squirt guns would be fun. She’d been under so much stress, you know? From school and working. I just wanted to see her laugh.”
“And you?” Morgan turns to me, eyes glinting intently. “How’d it end with you and King?”
“It ended in a garbage can. Literally. He threw away all of our mementos—stuff I gave him during our two years together, anything that reminded him of me.”
Morgan and Trevor wince. Luna’s turned murderous; she was with me when we walked past Alex’s house and discovered him making a trip to the garbage bin with my homemade presents in tow. As if he had any right to be mad at me! Him! I’m steaming just thinking about it.
“A mess!” I smack my own face with a bunch of freesia. “How are we going to rewind all of this and tell your dad it isn’t true? I don’t want to lie to the guy I’m trying to get a loan from. Not the right way to start business.”
“Romina, you naïve potato,” Morgan interjects with a tut. “You’re not going to tell the truth. The truth never helps.”
Luna throws a pencil at him. “Quiet, you. You’ve done enough.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Morgan grins devilishly. “This is an opportunity to make them writhe in jealousy.”
“Alex isn’t going to be jealous,” I deadpan. “He’s the one who ended it, right before we went to college. If he wanted me, he could’ve kept me.”
“Then let him see what could’ve been his. Make him sorry for what he lost.”
“Ooooh.” Trevor pitches forward. “Yes. You’re on to something. Did Teyonna look a little flirty to you, Ro? She looked a little flirty to me. I think I’ve still got it.”
“Don’t.” Luna slashes her arms in the air. “Don’t make this worse by lying more.”
“The idea . . .” I ruminate. “Is appealing.”
“I’m not involved.” Luna busies herself straightening candles that were neat as a pin to begin with. “I don’t want to hear about it, I don’t want to know a thing. This is how you wind up with bad luck.”
“If I tell Teyonna we only pretended to be dating because of that shit Allison said about me not being able to keep a girlfriend, I’m going to look pathetic,” Trevor says darkly. “Not to mention, that guy Alex? My new stepbrother? He was giving me the dirtiest look! I wanted to pop him in his pompous face.”
“He is pompous,” I agree heatedly. This is what happens when you receive too much praise from authority figures throughout your life. Alex actively worked to make himself the favorite student of every single teacher. The principal, too, who’d been good friends with Alex’s dad when they were young. I’ve long suspected that when Alex and I started dating, Mr. Schneider phoned Mrs. King to discourage it. Unfortunately for Mr. Schneider, the only thing Alex loved more than his mentors’ approval was a girl who flouted all the rules he lived by and made him feel like a big strong hero.
Trevor shakes his head. “We can’t go down like this.”
“And what would your dad think?” I point out. “If we turned around and were, like, ‘Never mind! Just kidding!’ We’d look like idiots. He’d never give us the money. And we desperately need this money. There are fliers all over town about the night market starting on May first, which seems impossible to pull off right now. We’ve got vendors on the line already.”
The shop is silent as Trevor and I give this ruse serious deliberation.
“I think Morgan’s right,” he says at length. “This is a golden opportunity. To make Teyonna realize that I’m a fantastic boyfriend, actually.”
“How dare Alex invade my life again,” I spit. “I’ve been counting on him never coming back here. He’s been gone so long, I was this close to putting him out of my mind for good. I’d been doing so well, too! It took forever to get over him.”
Morgan punches the air. “Yes! Go get under their skin. Make them sorry.”
“I’m a catch, aren’t I?” Trevor is irate. “I’m not all that bad.”
“You’re not,” I assure him. “You’re a great catch.”
“And so are you.”
We high-five. “We’re great catches!”
He nods energetically. “They’re going to see it. They’re going to know.”
“Okay, we’ll keep the façade up, but you’ve got to be convincing.” I slant him a threatening look. “Don’t go mooning over Teyonna, all right? You’d better kiss the ground I walk on, or else.”
He falls to my feet, kissing the floor.
I nudge his elbow with the toe of my shoe, laughing. “Ew, Trevor. That’s disgusting.”
“I believe in gestures. And I believe in us!” He gathers me into a crushing hug, lifting me a few inches off the ground. “I can be a good boyfriend, Ro, I swear. You won’t regret this.”
“Y’all are tempting some ugly fate,” Luna mutters.
My inability to forge deep, serious, lasting connections with the men I’ve dated throughout my twenties might stem from the fact that I am not, as is painfully obvious to my family and friends, all the way over Alex. And I don’t like the effect he had on me when we were young, either, so I’m sore about that, too. When we started dating, I was a wild, self-centered, carefree young thing, and he stunted my development with his pretty, hypnotic eyes and slow, deep, “There’s my girl.” Now I weep at diaper commercials, I invent distinct personalities for each of my crocuses, I chalk hopscotch boxes on the sidewalk for kids to play on. I am overly emotional when I watch videos of babies reacting to eating lemons. It is entirely his fault. He brought all of my nerve endings to the surface, when life would’ve been smoother if I’d remained feral.
If my heart hadn’t been hollowed out after our breakup, it wouldn’t have been such easy prey for Spencer to take advantage of. If you think about it, really, Alex is where it all went wrong for me.
I need to get some face time in with Mr. Yoon at Half Moon Mill this week, anyway, to hopefully persuade him to give us a loan, so wouldn’t it be serendipitous efficiency to accomplish a second task alongside this one? Willingly putting myself in Alex’s physical space again is like realizing the doctor accidentally sewed his scalpel inside me during surgery. It’ll hurt to open the incision site back up again, but we have to get that scalpel out. This time, I’ll heal properly.
And if regret just so happens to eat Alex alive while I’m receiving my closure and securing our funding? If he sees what he could’ve had and rues every day of the past eleven years without me?
Then so much the better.