It’s early afternoon on Halloween, and our plans for tonight are somewhere between traditional Halloween for Maisy’s sake and Pagan weirdness for Pen. The rice krispy treats are a compromise. Pen wanted to hand out apples to our trick-or-treaters. A traditional harvest food. Maisy wanted candy. Pen suggested candy apples. Maisy countered with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
I suggested rice krispy treats, and they both agreed—Maisy because what kid doesn’t like rice krispy treats, and Pen because she reasoned that since rice is harvested in the fall it was just as suitable as apples.
I slap down another treat and roll my eyes. “Okay. Fine. I’m listening now.”
Pen exhales through her nose. I have no doubt that she’d breathe fire if she could. “As Mercury appears to move away from Earth, things go pear-shaped. Especially in relationships and with communication.”
I don’t want to admit how relevant this seems. Relationships and communication going pear-shaped, that is.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t see how Mercury moving away would mean that Lark doesn’t touch me for over a week.”
“Mercury doesn’t reallymove away,”Pen explains. “It justappearsto move away.”
I scowl at her. “So it’s just an optical illusion?”
She nods at me like I’m a five-year-old.
I add crazy eyes to my scowl. “And people believe that a planetary optical illusion fucks up their shit?”
Pen glares down her nose at me. “Do. Not. Dismiss. Mercury in Retrograde,” she scolds. “Don’t you remember when I was seeing Janika Smalls? And we were supposed to meet up at the Feed N Seed for the Cedryl Ballou and the Zydeco Trendsetters’ show?”
I freeze because Janika Smalls is a sore spot for Pen. I know the story, but now that it’s come up, I have to just let it play out. Pen needs to exorcise the memory.
Again.
“I sent her a text to say I was running late because my car wouldn’t start, and I wasn’t gonna walk by myself to Grant Street at ten o’clock at night. I hit SEND!” She practically yells. “But Janika never got the message. And by the time I got my battery changed, she’d triple-texted me asking where the hell I was? And me? I never heard even one of those texts.”
Pen is working herself up. Building up steam like a teakettle on the boil.
She waves a hand in the air and shimmies her shoulders from side to side, nearly turning this drama into an interpretive dance. “And what do I find when I walk into the Feed & Seed? But Janika pressing some girl from Fightingville against one of the wooden posts, kissing her into next May and sliding a hand under her skirt.”
“I know—”
“Classic Mercury in Retrograde consequences. Transportation interference. Miscommunication. Relationship drama.” She counts them off on her long fingers. “An astrological trifecta.”
I nod and hold my tongue long enough for Pen to get over her recollection of Janika Smalls and the Retrograde Regrets. I package and tie off two more rice crispy treats. When I’m fairly confident she won’t cat claw me, I speak up.
“Be that as it may,” I say evenly, “it doesn’t really explain that Lark was practically knocking down walls to get into my pants at night and steal kisses in the daytime, and now it’s like there’s some kind of force field around him,” I complain. “Seriously. No touching in over a week.”
“What happens whenyoutouchhim?”
My face falls. “I’ve stopped.”
“Why?”
I swallow because saying it out loud hurts more than I want it to. “Because when I do, he jumps like I’ve rubbed him with poison ivy.”
The worst thing happens then. Pen’s face goes soft with sympathy. And that makes the hurt hurt even more.
“Oh, Stella.”
I hold up a hand and shake my head tightly. Pen gets it and wipes away her softness in a blink.
“You asked him what’s going on?”
I roll my eyes in answer.
“Of course you didn’t,” she mutters. “It’s Mercury in Retrograde.”
