Hey giiiirl, the Main Street Art Fest starts tonight! Come with??? We’re gonna have beers and ganjaaaaa!
The text was followed up by a string of wink-face, leaf, and smoke emojis. It took me a beat to realize the text was from Victoria; I’d forgotten to save her contact in my phone. Curled up on the couch with my morning coffee, I quickly texted her back.
For sure! I’ll be there!
It was a relief to already have a new friend willing to invite me out. Having Inaya had made the entire move easier, but if I was going to settle down here and get a long-term job, I needed more than just one friend, and Victoria had been nothing but sweet to me so far. I’d worried at first that she wouldn’t be, considering she had that Hot-Girl-Instagram-Influencer thing going on. It had only taken years of having people judge me by my appearance to finally start getting it through my head that I shouldn’t judge other people by theirs.
An art festival sounded like a danger to my wallet, but I wasn’t about to miss it. I could walk to Main Street easily; it was only a little further from home than the university, just in the opposite direction.
I arrived in late afternoon, bundled up in a cozy jacket, beanie, and comfortable sneakers. Main Street wound between Abelaum’s charming brick buildings, lined with cherry trees that shaded glass display windows for numerous cafes, bakeries, antique shops, and clothing boutiques. The street was bustling as Friday university classes ended and more students showed up to participate.
“Rae!” Inaya’s voice cut through the crowd. Ahead, I could see her, Victoria, and Jeremiah crowded around the space reserved for the university’s art students. Inaya was waving her arms excitedly, and I jogged over to join them.
As I got closer, I realized it wasn’t just those three familiar faces watching me arrive. An older man, in his 50s, if I were to guess, watched me approach with the ghost of a smile on his face. He was gray-haired, dressed in a perfectly fitted suit. Something in his face, the set of his eyes, reminded me of Jeremiah.
“I’m so glad you came!” Inaya enfolded me in a hug. Victoria squeezed me after, and made sure to give me a glimpse into her oversized bag so I could see the little bottles of wine tucked within.
“Rae, this is our dad,” Jeremiah said, motioning to the gray-haired man who was watching me with a smile. “Dad, Raelynn.”
“Miss Raelynn!” Kent’s smile was warm, as were his hands as he grasped my outstretched one. He was handsome, carrying a certain sophisticated charm about him. He looked like he’d head a Historical Society, like he was the type to enjoy studying ancient texts by flickering candlelight. “A pleasure to meet you, my dear. I hope you’re feeling welcome in Abelaum so far?”
“Very.” I smiled. “Victoria and Jeremiah have been wonderful. I’m glad to finally meet you. I’ve heard you practically own the town, Mr. Hadleigh.”
Kent waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, ridiculous! Abelaum is home, full of family and friends. Whatever it needs from me, I’ll gladly give. And if you need anything, Miss Raelynn, just let me know…and please, you can call me Kent.” He paused a moment, as if something had crossed his mind that he wasn’t sure he wanted to give voice to. Then he said, “You know, I went to school with your father. High school, and then university. Richard, isn’t that right? Richard Lawson?”
I nodded. “Yeah, my dad grew up here. How did you know I’m a Lawson? Family resemblance that strong, huh?”
He chuckled and gave me a wink. “A lucky guess. The Lawsons lived in Abelaum a long time. It’s nice to have one of you back again. Anyway, don’t let an old man’s rambling keep you. Enjoy yourself! Have a look around.”
Victoria seized onto my arm the moment her father’s attention dwindled, and with me on one side and Inaya on the other, we wound between the tables to explore. She popped out little pink bottles of Rosé, poured them into three empty water bottles and passed them around so we could enjoy the sparkling alcohol as we walked.
“Should we wait for Jeremiah?” I said, noticing he hadn’t followed. Victoria just shook her head with a little roll of her eyes.
“He’s playing Daddy’s Favorite today,” she said, and stuck out her tongue in a mock gag. “He always gets all high and mighty about drinking every time a new semester starts, and he’s under the soccer coach’s eye all the time. Suddenly, he’s devoted to health and wellness.”
We wandered and sipped, until I got distracted with a table of hand-painted tarot decks and couldn’t resist stopping. The pretty girl sitting behind the table had long blonde hair, and wore a lacey black dress that reached over her boots. Her pointy, green-colored acrylics were spread over the cover of the book she was reading, a worn-out paperback with a lady swooning in the arms of a shirtless man on the cover.
“Did you paint all these yourself?” I said, looking in awe at the attention to detail on each card in the sample deck. She nodded with a small smile, but before she could respond, Victoria interjected.
“She paints every single one. It’s why she’s locked in her room all the time.” Victoria sighed heavily, half-sitting on the table. The blonde girl’s mouth shut, her smile fading slowly as she put down her book. Victoria went on, “Everly, this Raelynn. Raelynn Lawson.”
Everly’s bright blue eyes widened slightly. For a moment, she looked at me as if she knew me, as if she was excited, as if — then it was gone. Nothing but a calm, gentle smile remained. “Nice to meet you, Raelynn.”
“It’s nice to meet you t —”
“You should pull some cards for her, Ev,” Victoria said, tossing the sample deck toward her. I glanced over at Inaya, to see if she was getting as peeved about Victoria’s suddenly bitchy attitude as I was, but she just shook her head and mouthed, I’ll tell you later.
Everly didn’t look thrilled, but she began to slowly shuffle through the deck. I chewed at my lip, torn between wanting to move on and break whatever tension lay between Everly and Victoria, and staying so as not to be rude. But as I wavered, Everly smiled again and said in her soft voice, “Come a little closer, Raelynn.”
I stepped up in front of her. She looked at me as she shuffled the cards, but her eyes were distant. She suddenly didn’t look so young anymore. “It’s Rae,” I said, then quickly clarified, “I mean, my friends call me Rae. You can call me Rae.”
“Rae,” her lips curled around my name, like it was something sweet she wanted to eat. “I like that. Somewhere between masculine and feminine.” She set her cards face down on the table, took a deep breath, and pulled the first card.
It depicted a stone tower standing tall among a forest, flames licking from its upper window as storm clouds gathered around it. Everly set the card down carefully and paused.
“Change,” she said softly. “The life you knew, your strong tower, has been dramatically changed. It is no more.” Her lips parted again, only to close without a sound. Whatever she was going to say next, she’d changed her mind.
Well, that felt far more ominous than it should have. I smiled, glancing with a little uncertainty at Victoria, who just shrugged her shoulders and took a long gulp from her “water” bottle.
Everly lay down the next card. It depicted a man lying face down in the snow, his arm outstretched as if he’d been reaching for something. Numerous swords were pierced through his back, pinning him to the ground, blood staining the snow.
Everly said nothing. She wasn’t looking at me anymore, but her eyes kept flickering to the side as if she was looking for someone. She pulled the last card, turned it to set it down —
“Excuse me.” A woman had sidled up behind me, and I jumped at the sound of her voice. “How much do these cost?”
Everly snatched up the cards, smiling brightly as she answered the woman. Victoria hopped down from the table with another sigh.
“Let’s find a bar,” she said, finishing off the last of her Rosé. “I’m starving.”
She led the way as Inaya put her arm around my shoulders and leaned close to whisper in my ear, “Everly is Victoria’s half-sister. Kent had an affair right before Victoria and Jeremiah were conceived. They’re only a few months apart.”
My eyes widened, and I had to resist the urge to glance back. Everly definitely hadn’t inherited the Hadleigh family resemblance, but I could at least understand Victoria’s derision for her a little better, not that the situation was in any way Everly’s fault. Victoria had pulled further ahead, and seemed to have found a bar that was to her liking as she called back to us to hurry up.
But my mind was still on the cards. I didn’t know much about tarot, but I think the last card I’d got a glimpse of would have been fairly obvious to anyone: a skeleton in a black cloak, carrying a large scythe as it rode a white horse across a barren field.
Death.
The bar was bustling with people, but we managed to get a table near the back. Victoria ordered a round of beer and appetizers, insisting she was going to pay for everything. I suddenly got the feeling she had started drinking long before I met up with her that day.
She’d evidently extended an invitation to other friends too, because we’d only been there a few minutes when another group turned up: two women with their boyfriends, and two men who Victoria knew from one of her classes. She quickly clung onto one of them, and before long she was seated on his lap, another round of beers was ordered, and the conversation had grown to such a volume that no one could really tell what was being said, but none of us cared anyway. The bar was filling up, and I was feeling pretty good with two beers warming me and the high energy surrounding me.
I wasn’t sure when he showed up. Maybe he’d been there the whole time and I just hadn’t noticed, but I doubted I could have overlooked him. I glanced across the table, laughing at something Inaya had said, and Leon’s gaze slammed into me, sharp and burning, those pale green eyes holding me captive for only the briefest of moments before snapping away.
Leon was seated in the corner, his back to the wall, leaning back on his barstool with his arms folded and a grin on his face. His arms were bare tonight, allowing me to take a good look at his tattoos. Colorful swaths of ink, like the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, marked him from his wrists to his shoulders. He wore tight black jeans, Converse, and red t-shirt with jagged lettering emblazoned across the front. He wasn’t sitting alone. I could only see his companion’s profile, but where Leon’s tattoos were bright, the other guy’s were dark, shadows and deep details inked across his biceps. Snakebites pierced his lower lip, and a black barbell was studded through his eyebrow above honey brown eyes.
I considered it an unspoken rule of the universe that more than one absurdly hot person couldn’t exist in the same place at the same time, especially not in such close proximity to each other, and to me. But these two — muscular, grinning, dark enough to straddle the fine line between intriguing and terrifying — were not only sitting directly within my line of sight, but they kept looking at me.
Leon was really staring, but his companion was stealing glances too, turning just enough to look at me over his shoulder before turning his attention away again. A blush was rising on my face, and for what? Just because they were looking at me? Or because I’d gotten off to the thought of Leon doing awful things to me, and now I had to sit here with his eyes on me and those thoughts prodding at my brain again?
I tried to ignore them. Leon’s gaze was hot on my skin, as palpable as fingers stroking my flesh. My foot began to tap against the rung of my barstool, and the mozzarella sticks were suddenly too cloying in my mouth.
I didn’t want food. I didn’t want more beer. I wanted to satisfy this insatiable curiosity that kept dragging my eyes back to that evil smirking dude in the corner.
Leon and the other man were conversing, and it wasn’t easy, but I tried to focus on the noise from their corner instead of the noise surrounding me. There was a brief moment of quiet as Victoria got up to use the bathroom and one of the couples made their way to the bar to order a cocktail. Only then was I able to catch a few brief moments of what they were saying.
“…finally let me out. Fuck, if that’s all he needs me to do, what’s a little…”
I would have been able to understand more if I had dared to watch Leon’s lips move. But I knew that if I raised my eyes in his direction, I’d find him staring back.
“…about you? Hunting again?”
Now, his companion spoke. The man’s voice was deep, the kind of voice that balanced firmly on the edge of sarcasm, as if he’d laugh at any moment. “Yeah. I’m getting close….be fun…if she doesn’t kill me first…”
I was distracted as Inaya got up to leave and hugged me good-bye. By the time I sat down again, the corner table was empty, and Leon and his friend walked past our table.
His eyes met mine: a challenge, an invitation. There was a pre-roll clutched between his fingers, and his friend had an arm slung over his shoulders. Through the bar’s window, I watched the two of them round the corner of the building, likely going to smoke in the alleyway alongside it.
I wasn’t the only one who’d watched them pass. Victoria had glared at them the whole way out, and with them gone, our gazes locked with each other instead.
She smirked. “He’s hot, right?”
Her boy toy of the night didn’t look pleased with her statement, but I couldn’t disagree. “Yeah, and a dick.”
She shrugged. “Pretty things don’t need to be likeable, do they?”
My foot kept tapping against the stool. I slipped my hand into the pocket of my jacket to grip my vape. “I’ll be right back.” I got up from the table. “Gonna go smoke real quick.”
