Page 142 of Love Spells: And Other Non-Refundable Magic

I study her face.

“I started wondering if there was something about me that only worked from a distance.”

The words hurt more than I expect them to. I shift closer without thinking, my hand settling over her ribs. She covers it with hers.

“Like maybe I’m fun when you first meet me,” she continues. “I’m good at first dates. I can talk to virtually anybody. I can make people laugh. But then eventually they get enough of me to realize that maybe I’m…” She trails off.

“Maybe you’re what?”

“I don’t know. Too much?”

She says it quietly. But it doesn’t sound like one of her punchlines.

I don’t tell her she isn’t too much. The instinct is there, immediate and almost painful, but it would be too easy. And I don’t think that’s what she’s asking of me.

Merry looks down at our hands instead.

“So I started treating dating like there was some piece of information everybody else had that I didn’t. Like if I could just figure out what I kept doing wrong, I could fix it.”

Something about that sounds familiar. The belief that there must be an answer somewhere outside yourself if you look hard enough.

“Did you ever figure out why?” I ask.

Merry is quiet for a moment.

“No. Not really.” Her fingers shift beneath mine. “I have theories. Some of them are very unflattering.”

I wait, and eventually she continues without me having to ask.

“I think I try too hard. Not in a creepy way,” she adds quickly. “At least I hope not. God.”

A laugh slips out of me.

“You know what I mean. I liked someone, and suddenly I was so aware that I liked them. I wanted it to work, so I would start thinking about whether I was being too intense or too available. And then I’d decide I was being ridiculous and should just be myself, except now I was thinking about whether I was being myself correctly.”

I can picture it too easily. Merry turning something she wanted into a problem she could solve if she gathered enough information.

“Either that, or I’m cursed romantically.”

Merryweather laughs, but something in me stills.

I’m struck by the strange sensation that I’ve heard this before, except I can’t place where. The familiarity comes first, a little tug somewhere in the back of my mind, followed almost immediately by the image of a conversation on a screen. This is how so many of my clients talk, humanizing the bad luck in their lives until it becomes something with intention, something that has singled them out specifically. A curse. The universe. Fate with a personal vendetta.

It’s easier, sometimes, to believe something is working against you than to accept that you can do everything right and still not get the thing you want.

I look at Merry. She’s still staring at the ceiling, apparently unaware that anything about what she said was unusual.

Even then, what she says doesn’t really matter. It’s the general feeling. The certainty that there must be some larger explanation for why love hasn’t worked the way it was supposed to. The instinct to turn disappointment into evidence of something bigger. A pattern. A force. Something happening to her that could explain why trying harder hadn’t fixed it.

I’ve spent weeks trying to teach Primavera to stop doing exactly that.

Merry’s eyebrows pull together.

“What?” She smiles, and the corners of her eyes crinkle. “I don’t mean I literally think there’s some ancient lesbian curse on my bloodline.”

I laugh, and the odd little thread in my mind loosens.

Still, when I settle against her again, the phrase stays with me a little longer than it should.