Jenny really wasn’t in any mood for a party, but as per tradition, Nic had rented out the balcony area of her favorite restaurant, Amanda’s, for her birthday dinner, and invited a dozen of their closest friends to join them. She’d almost asked him to cancel it, pleading jet lag and a lingering emotional exhaustion, but the thought of sitting home alone with him looking at her worriedly would be even worse. Too much to deal with.
A hot shower and a nap after he picked her up at the airport helped get rid of most of her lingering doubts. And, as he’d predicted, it was hard to stay depressed surrounded by a dozen of her dearest and most entertainingly insane friends, two of whom arrived wearing inflatable T-rex costumes, bearing ukeleles. Before she could ask what the hell, they promptly struck a jangling chord and burst into what they might have thought was song.
“Happy birthday!” they chorused, followed by a dramatic “ugh!” then repeated “Happy birthday!” She rolled her eyes and covered her face, but they continued, undaunted. “Now you’ve aged another year, now you know that death is near, happy birthday! (ugh) Happy Birthday!”
“Oh my god, stop!”
The servers, used to them by now, circulated with trays of food, utterly ignoring the performance. The rest of her friends - traitors all - and half the downstairs diners applauded and cheered.
“Please god, don’t encourage them,” Jenny said to the rest of the party. “If you do, they’ll go through the whole song, and I’ll have to kill them.”
Thankfully, someone took their ukuleles away, replacing them with glasses of champagne, and the singing stopped. They shed their costumes and propped them up on chairs, and, inevitably, people started having their photos taken next to them.
“Cheaper than having one of those photo booths set up,” Nic said, and Jenny just turned her head into his shoulder, trying very hard not to laugh.
“These people are all nuts. Get me another drink?”
Nic disappeared to round up some more champagne, and someone came up behind her, placing something lightweight on her head.
She reached up to check what it was, her fingers encountering the plastic-and-glitter of a tiara. “Oh yeah, that was what was missing,” agreed, reaching up to adjust it properly, and turning to greet the gifter.
The older woman beamed at her, fluffy grey hair streaked with purple, and eyes done to match. “Happy birthday, Jennyanydots. You don’t look a day over forty!”
“And fuck you very much, too,” she said, exchanging cheek kisses. Patty had been her very first agent, and even though they’d gone their separate ways professionally, she was still one of Jenny’s go-to girls when dirt needed to be dished and drinks poured.
“Seriously, though.” Patty hooked an arm into Jenny’s, pulling her aside. “You’re putting on a pretty face, but I know you, and even at a glance that bright-and-shiny isn’t fooling me. Please tell me there’s no trouble in paradise, because I’d hate to have to kill him - but I’d do it, for you.”
“And I love you for it, but no, everything’s fine at home.” And it was. Or it would be, once she got her shit together and moved on. “I just had one of those emotional highs-to-lows and the landing was bumpy. But I’m in one piece.”
“Ah-hah. Your love life confuses me,” Patty admitted. “But so long as Himself is still part of it, okay.”
“Always and forever. Who else would put up with us?”
And if the joke fell flat to her ears, Patty didn’t seem to notice. Nic came back with an open bottle, and she clinked her glass with everyone who wanted to toast her, pushing the smile until it started to feel normal again.
A few hours later, she was still smiling, this time in relief as she waved farewell to the last revelers heading down the stairs and out the door while Nic tipped the servers and settled their tab. When he came back with her coat she peered at him suspiciously, sensing he still had something up his sleeve, but if he did, she knew he’d tell her when he was ready, and not a minute before.
They’d arranged for car service to get home, assuming they’d be in no condition to drive. It was late enough that the streets were mostly empty, although there were plenty of people out and about, enjoying an uncharacteristically not-freezing night.
“You weren’t drinking much,” she observed, watching his face in the dim light of the car.
He hmm-hmmed. “Just in case you needed your head held over the toilet. That was in the wedding vows, remember?”
“Pffft.” She knew her tolerances, and wasn’t anywhere near them. “I may have eaten too much, though.” She shifted, curling into his side as his arm went around her shoulders. “Why did I order the fettuccine?”
“Because it’s good, you like it, and it was your birthday so there were no calories.”
“I think that only applies to cake.”
“Cake and pasta. And cheese. And champagne. Trust me, I know these things.”
She giggled. “I love you. Have I said that recently?”
“Not for a few hours, no. Thank you, I was beginning to get worried.”
“I do, though. You’re…” and maybe she’d had too much after all, because she couldn’t think of the word she’d wanted to say. “You’re everything. You…make me happy.”
He tightened the arm over her shoulders, pulling her closer against his side. “I’m glad,” he said. “You make me happy, too.”
“We’re enough, right? The two of us?” She’d meant to make it a statement, but it came out as more of a question.
Nic chuckled, a low sound that went straight up and down her spine, as usual. “If you want me to tell you how ‘ardently I admire and love you,’ I will, but I will mock you for it in the morning.”
She elbowed him, but not hard, since he’d put up with her making him watch that movie in every incarnation that existed.
“I do, though,” he said, more seriously, his free arm reaching over to take her hand in his own, warming her fingers between his own. “I’m very glad I agreed to marry you.”
“Damn right.” They’d wanted more. She still wanted more. But they would be enough for each other.
They sat in silence for the rest of the trip home, Jenny fading into a comfortable fugue state until the car pulled up in front of their house.
“All out,” Nic said, opening the door and sliding out, then reaching back to offer her a hand. “Thanks,” he said to the driver, who lifted two fingers in acknowledgment, and pulled out the moment they were safely on the sidewalk.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.” Why was he hovering like that? “Hon, the day it takes a few glasses of champagne to topple me, I will be old. What, are you afraid I won’t be able to get it up tonight?” She poked him in the chest, a grin curling her lips. “Scared you can’t handle a cougar?”
“Pretty sure you have to be over forty to be a cougar,” he said, catching her finger and kissing it. “But you’ll rock it once you’re there. Now come on, inside before we both freeze important bits off.”
She pushed open the gate, looking up at the townhouse, and frowned. “Did you leave a light on?”
“Oh. I must have forgotten. Sorry.”
She stopped dead. “That’s your bullshit voice, Nic. Please tell me there’s not a surprise afterparty, because I really wanted to throw you onto the bed and make you squeal.”
“Those are very manly exhalations, thank you very much.” He put his hand on the small of her back and pushed her forward. “No crowds waiting for you, I promise. Inside, wench.”
But the moment she opened the door, Jenny knew someone else was there. She couldn’t have said how she knew - some feeling of another body in her home, or a change in air pressure or who the hell knows what - but she tensed, ready to push Nic back out the door and scream for the police, when she saw her.
Amy.
Sitting on the sofa in jeans and a dark blue sweater, her hair a tousled mess, arms curled around her knees like a little girl waiting to find out if her puppy was going to make it or not.
“You…” Jenny’s brain hit a wall, then backed up, her head turning to look at her husband. “You gave her a key. You knew.”
“Happy birthday?” Amy’s voice was soft, tentative, and Jenny turned back to her, torn between anger - how could she ignore them and then just show up like that? - and surprise - damn it, Nic! - and a surge of hope that she quickly tamped back down again. She’d opened her heart to the other woman, enthusiastically if unexpectedly, and it had been rejected.
“I asked her to come,” Nic said, his hands easing her coat off her shoulders, taking it and her pocketbook away and leaving her nothing to hide behind. “But she said yes.”
“Technically, I said yellow,” Amy corrected him, and somehow, weirdly, that made some of the tightness in Jenny’s chest ease.
Yellow. Not green, not expecting everything to be okay and forgiven or whatever she was looking for. Yellow. Slow down. Talk about what’s happening.
“I can do yellow,” she agreed cautiously, sitting down in the chair opposite the sofa. Suddenly, Nic’s concerns about her sobriety made sense. There was no way this conversation could be happening without everyone clear-headed.
“Just out of curiosity,” she asked him, “what would you have done if I’d gotten soused?”
He didn’t even hesitate, coming back to join them, after depositing their coats in the closet. “Gotten you upstairs before you noticed anything, and sprung her on you in the morning over a greasy omelette and a lot of coffee.”
“Man with a plan,” she said, leaning back in the chair and, lifting her chin, looking directly at Amy for the first time. “So.”
“So.” Amy looked tired, the skin under her eyes and around her mouth showing signs of lost sleep, and a small, petty party of Jenny was pleased, even as she also wanted to soothe those signs away. “First, I, um. I’m sorry. For freaking out. Okay, no, I’m not sorry for freaking out because come on. But I’m sorry for how I freaked out. Even if I thought you two were nuts, and the jury’s not out on that, entirely, I behaved like… fuck. I don’t know. Badly. And you two didn’t deserve that.”
The words rushed out of her almost all in one breath, and when she was finished she heaved a breath in and then exhaled, as though not certain what came next.
That…had not been what Jenny was expecting to hear, if she’d let herself expect anything.
Nic was the one who put words to what Jenny was thinking. “What freaked you out the most, the scrying, or the fact that I Saw you?”
Amy seemed to close in more on herself, pulling her legs in tighter before answering. “Um. Both? No. The scrying shit is… hell. The world is weird and I don’t know how physics work, so who’s to say other shit isn’t real, either. I’m just a paper-pusher.”
“Uh-uh. Second rule of the house,” Nic said. “No denigrating yourself. Punishment is saying three nice things about yourself. Out loud.”
Amy gave him such a look, Jenny laughed, despite her incredibly mixed feelings right now. “You can’t punish her for not knowing the rules. Consider it a first warning.”
Nic looked between them, then bypassed the sofa to pull the hassock over and sit on that. Three people, staring at each other, waiting for someone else to start.
“So I’m just going to say that you could be crazy or I could or we all could and put it aside for now, because…” and Amy threw up her hands, every inch the stereotype of the exasperated New Yorker. “Whatthefuckever.”
That hadn’t been what she’d expected to hear, either. “So… you’re okay with him being a Seer?”
“I don’t know. No. It’s nuts. But I was sitting there in my apartment feeling miserable, and I wasn’t okay with that, either.” She took a deep breath, then exhaled.
“But I do know this. I’ve never, not fucking ever, reacted to anyone the way I did you. Both of you. And that terrified me.”
“We pushed too fast,” Jenny said.
“No. Maybe. But I said yes. I wanted to say yes, you didn’t force me into anything. It was green all the way. And even without the whole… thing, that was what really freaked me out.”
“Because you don’t usually…”
“Right.”
Her blush was still the most adorable thing Jenny had ever seen. “I really want to stay mad at you,” she said, rueful.
“It’s okay if you are. I get it. I just… we can fight, and not…” Amy tugged at her hair, her mouth quirking sideways. “I was going to say and not break up, but we didn’t actually…stop laughing at me! This is new. And confusing.”
“I’m sorry.” Nic did sound sorry, but Jenny knew her husband well enough to read his amusement just by the way he was holding his shoulders. “Just say whatever it is you’re feeling. We’re big kids, we can handle it.”
Jenny wasn’t so sure of that; she felt like she’d been strung on wire and then twisted too tight, and if Amy said the wrong thing - or the right thing - that wire was going to burst and she was going to come apart.
“Jenny?”
“Yeah.” She found breath in her chest to speak, barely. “Go on.”
“Like I said, you guys kinda overwhelmed me. In a good way,” Amy hurried to add. “Not bad at all, it was all, wow. Like, the stuff I’d read about, that other people talked about, but I’d only ever felt the edges of it before, the kind of ‘okay, this is expected, this is how it goes, but I don’t get the big deal’ kind of edges. And then suddenly. Wow, I got it. And it was amazing. And I was barely coming to terms with that when you threw a serious fucking grenade into the conversation, okay?”
Jenny winced. “Yeah, I’m—”
“Don’t say you’re sorry,” Amy snapped. “Don’t say anything until I’m done.”
Oh god. They really did have a baby dom on their hands. Jenny mimed zipping her mouth and throwing away the key.
“I don’t like the whole seer thing, no. I really don’t like the idea of me being, I don’t know, fill-in-the-gap girl for some vague wish, or whatever. But as much as that freaked me out, still freaks me out… I tried meeting other people. I figured maybe I’d just… found the key to the lock, or something, and now it would work for me. But it didn’t. And I missed you guys. How could I miss you so much when I’d just met you? And don’t give me any of that ‘fated’ crap, I don’t believe in fate.”
“Neither do I,” Nic said, ignoring the ‘shut up’ look Amy gave him “It’s not fate. Scrying isn’t a guarantee; people aren’t puzzle pieces. You could have been in a relationship already. Jenny might have turned the wrong way and never seen you. You might not have responded to her email. We might-”
“Okay! I get it.”
“When I See something for a client, I still have to create the blueprints, and explain it to the contractor.”
“And yes, that is weirdly reassuring, thank you. I just…” she swallowed, and shook her head, then threw up her hands. “At least the contractor knows how to build a house. I have no fucking clue what I’m doing, or why I’m here, or why you even want me here. Because of something you saw in a crystal ball?”
“It’s not - you know, the way doesn’t matter.” Nic caught himself mid-sentence, leaning forward to catch Amy’s hands in his own. She stilled, almost like a mouse caught between a cat’s paws, her eyes flickering between him and Jenny. “And to answer your question, I’m going to ask Jenny a question of my own. Jen, love, when you introduced yourself to Amy at the party - not when you saw her, but when you introduced yourself, and she looked at you, what did you think?”
She didn’t hesitate with her answer. “That she had the most amazing face. Her eyes, and her nose. And don’t ask me why I think your nose is sexy, I have no clue. But I wanted to kiss it. Like, on the spot.”
“Oh my god.” Amy rolled her eyes, her cheeks blooming again with color. “I hate my nose.”
“You’re not allowed to hate it. I love it. I want to take photographs of it.”
“And then?” Nic prompted.
“And then she let me sit down, and if I hadn’t had that stupid breakfast meeting I would have stayed there all night. Because she was shy, and funny, and snorts when she laughs, and she knew my work but wasn’t a fangirl about it - Amy, you weren’t, and trust me, I’d had my fill of people trying to butter me up that night. You were just… honest. It was amazing.”
“And me,” Nic said slowly, like he was finding the words a piece at a time. “When I went to meet the two of you that night, I figured Jenny had overreacted.” He saw the look his wife gave him, and shrugged. “So we met, and I’ll be honest, even after that, I told myself that it wasn’t what Jenny thought, that she’d projected what she remembered of the scrying onto you, because you were hitting so many of our buttons.”
“But?” This time it was Jenny prompting him.
“It’s like I said, scrying just shows what should be, what could be; making it work, well, that takes work.
“Jen’s the romantic, not me. I believe in compatibility, not fate. But I also know that my scrying doesn’t lie. I know we’re meant to be.”
Amy stared at him frowning. “Why?”
“Because you came back to us.”
Amy blinked, and her mouth pursed up into a knot, like she’d just tasted something and she wasn’t sure if she liked it or not. Jenny felt herself holding her breath.
“Show me. The scrying thing.”