I choke out a sob, all alone now. The moment over, the curse . . . in full effect.
I don’t wait for Luke to come back; I already know what will happen anyway. It’ll be too much to take, so I grab my bag off the floor and slip out the door.
Once outside, I order an Uber, walking to the gates just outside the studio where a driver can pick me up.
It only takes five minutes for the car to arrive, and I hop in the back.
The tears keep coming as we drive away, heading toward my apartment. The driver asks me if I’m okay, checking on me in his rearview mirror every now and then.
I’m definitely not okay. I’m not sure I’ve been worse, to be honest.
When we get on the 134, I realize I don’t want to go home right now.
“I’m sorry, can I change my destination?”
The driver takes pity on me, probably because of all the crying, and gets off on an exit before heading back the way we came.
It’s not long before I’m at my parents’ home. I thank him and quickly get out, walking up to the front door.
The house is quiet when I walk inside, but as soon as I enter the kitchen, I find Gigi sitting at the table, eating a bowl of cereal.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, concentrating on her cereal. She only gives me a quick glance before going back to it.
“Where are Mom and Dad?”
It’s then that she really looks at me, when she hears the thickness in my voice.
She frowns. “They went to go buy more flowers for your mom’s garden,” she says. “Why are you crying?”
I sit down in the chair next to her, my bag slipping to the floor. I can’t stop crying long enough to tell her what happened.
She pats my hand, a tender move for Gigi. “I heard you cry many times growing up. This one sounds to me like heartbreak.”
I choke on a sob.
“The curse?” she asks, and I nod.
Her face softens. “Was it Luke?”
“Yes,” I say, getting the one word out, grabbing a napkin from the holder my mom always keeps on the table.
“I saw how you looked at him at dinner last Friday. Tell me about it.”
I calm down enough to explain everything that happened back at the studio. How I’ve been trying to avoid my feelings and not let the relationship progress because I was worried about what would happen if we kissed.
“So basically, exactly what I was trying to avoid happened,” I tell her, a fresh set of tears rolling down my cheeks.
“Last time we talked, just you and me, you asked me what I would’ve done if your grampa had walked away after he kissed me,” she says.
“You told me you would've been devastated, but you still would've kissed him. Because you had to know,” I say, then hiccup.
She chuckles. “That’s right.”
She sets her spoon down, folding her hands on the table, looking at me the way she does when she’s about to say something she means.
“You know what your problem is? You’ve been treating this curse like a math problem. Like if you just kiss enough men, eventually you’ll land on the right answer.” She shakes her head. “That’s not how love works, my dear. There’s not a formula for it.”
“So what do I do?” I ask, wiping my nose with the napkin.
