She held up the screen so I could see:
You are in charge of your own pleasure. Don’t be afraid to take it, selfishly and often.
If it hadn’t been in her astrology app, I would have thought she’d written it herself. That she’d somehow read my mind and was telling me to make my move. But no, it was right there on the screen.
“I have something for you,” I said, my bravado evaporating under her gaze, grasping for anything I could do in that momentbesidestake my pleasure.
Amy’s face broke into a grin. “Yay, presents!” She held out her hands in front of her, opening and closing them.
“Alright, close your eyes then,” I said, but she pulled a face.
“If you give me something gross, Philip?—”
“It’s not gross, I promise.”
“Fine,” she sighed, then complied. I reached into my backpack and pulled out what I had ordered her earlier in the week, placing the small cardboard box in her hands.
I took a moment to look at Amy before letting her open her eyes. It would be so easy to lean in and kiss her right now; to do what I’d been wanting to for years, and what my horoscope was literally telling me to do. She looked so beautiful, with the setting sun filtering through the trees to cast orange streaks across her freckled skin.
“Okay, open,” I said instead, and it took her a moment to process what I’d given her and read the front of the box, but when she did, she gasped in delight. God, I wanted to make her make that sound again and again.
“Phil,” she said as she turned it over, her voice heavy with emotion.
“I went for an oracle deck in the end,” I explained. “All the research I did implied that you can sort of bond with a tarot deck, right? So I didn’t wanna just buy you a new one. But this looked cool.”
It was cool, actually; I’d flicked through it when I’d opened it. It was an astrology-themed deck with a watercolour design style. All of the cards were heavenly bodies and houses, from the zodiac constellations to the planets to the phases of the moon. Most of it meant nothing to me, but given how astrology-obsessed Amy was, I hoped it would mean something to her.
“It’s perfect,” she said quietly, opening the box to see the cards. For a good five minutes, she flipped between reading the cards and paging through the accompanying booklet that explained their meanings.
“Do you wanna do it now?” she asked suddenly, and I was embarrassed at how long it took me to realise that she wasn’t propositioning me, and to shake off the effect that misunderstanding had had on me.
“Yeah, go for it,” I said, helping to clear space between us on the blanket. I was inexplicably nervous all of a sudden. I’d never done any kind of reading, and I just knew I’d manage to bungle it. I didn’t even believe in all that, but I didn’t want to mess it up somehow.
Amy held the deck out in front of her and had me put a hand on top and focus all my energy into it. I didn’t really know what that meant, so I just zeroed in my attention on the spots where my hand met hers on the edges, and the heat that passed between us. Amy had her eyes closed, and I supposed I should do the same, but I still couldn’t take my eyes off her.
“Okay,” she said with a nod, opening her eyes, and I quickly shut mine so I could pretend to be slowly opening them too. “Tell me when.”
She started shuffling, and I wasn’t sure what to look for, but I was pretty sure I’d done it wrong when she reached the end of the deck and I still hadn’t said anything.
“Sorry,” I said, but she shook her head.
“That’s okay. Don’t tell me to stop until it feels right.”
When she started again, I tried to focus on the shuffling, having her stop about two-thirds of the way through. She drew the card that was on top at that moment and put it between us. It was a red circle with a constellation in it and the word “Sagittarius” written below.
“What does it mean?” I asked, and Amy laughed.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I mean, I know what Sagittarius is. That’s Morgan’s sun sign actually. But oracle cards are all different, so I need to use the book.” She opened it up and flipped through until she found the corresponding page, squinting as she read through it.
“Hah!” she shouted, not properly laughing, just that one “hah”. Then she kept reading.
“What?” I asked when she didn’t explain, trying to lean forward over the booklet to read over the top, but she yanked it away from me.
“Let me read!” she said, then scooted a few inches away from me and resumed reading. Another few seconds later, she nodded and shut the book.
“So the good news is that this deck is amazing.”
“That’s good,” I said warily. “What’s the bad news?”
