Ripple

Thing 1

There I was, nineteen, nursing a swollen lip and feeling stupid.

I did not know what I was being brought into.

I thought my friend Dainy needed a nanny, so I slept on her sofa and watched her baby. That first week, I told myself I was helping, that I was doing something good. But under that, I was just hiding — from him, from the bruises that never really showed until later.

When I closed my eyes, time slowed in my brain. I thought I could stretch it thin, long enough to make a new version of myself before the next decision.

One morning, I made the choice.

I told myself I was too young to be responsible for someone so small. I said I couldn’t be anyone’s caretaker when I didn’t even know how to care for myself. It was easier to take care of a man-child than a baby, or at least, that’s what I said then.

So I went “home.”

Deflated. Feeling alone. I felt it in the car ride — that deep, aching hollowness when you realize the person driving you somewhere doesn’t actually want you there.

He said, “You’ll do better this time.” I nodded. But I knew that wasn’t true. Living in the lie felt comfortable in the moment, kept me safe a little longer.

Three months. That’s how long I stayed. Long enough for the snow to fall and melt again.

Long enough to learn how quiet you can make yourself when you’re terrified of setting someone off.

It was winter when I finally pulled my strength up and left for good.

It didn’t feel brave. It felt like surrender.

I moved in with my aunt in New Jersey.

She was a tarot reader, a real one, not a hustler like people said. My dad called it “a con,” but I believed her. I believed in her. She saw things. Maybe she just listened harder than most people did.

She offered to teach me. So I said yes.

Her apartment always smelled like incense and lemon polish. She’d sit cross-legged on the floor with her deck spread like the petals of a strange flower, explaining each card as if it were alive.

The Fool.

The Hanged Man.

Death.

“Nothing in these cards is evil,” she said once. “They just tell the truth. People get scared of the truth.”

I tried to be like her — calm, knowing, balanced.

But her boyfriend was the opposite. He sneered when she read for clients, called her “fat,” “crazy,” “witch.” And sometimes, when she wasn’t looking, he stared at me too long. That kind of look that makes your stomach turn, that makes you fold your arms over your chest like armor.

My aunt didn’t notice, or maybe she did and chose not to. Loneliness makes strange bargains.

So I started going out. Dive bars mostly. Places where nobody knew my name. I never gave a real name til that night.

One night I met a band playing in the corner — loud, messy, half-drunk but full of heart. The lead singer had a voice like gravel and honey. He and his brother took me in like a stray.

We sat on curbs smoking cheap cigarettes, sharing fries, pretending the world wasn’t burning behind us.

They called me “kid,” even though we were the same age. For a while, it was enough. Music and smoke and the feeling that I was floating between stories , not trapped in one.

I went home, the cards were waiting for me. I started pulling them at night. Quietly.

The Tower.

The Star.

The Lovers.

They came up again and again, whispering in patterns I didn’t yet understand.

Thing 2

There I was, nineteen, nursing a swollen lip and feeling stupid. This time, I stayed. less scared of the unknown for once.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and committed myself to my nanny role. Baby Flora. Her tiny fists, her milk-drunk smile. The way she’d giggle at sunlight.

I learned to cook, badly at first. Burnt pancakes, over salted soup. The ever competent teacher Dainy would laugh it off. She said, “You’re learning.” And I was, slowly.

Every day was a small ritual.

I brushed Flora’s curls, untangling them gently, like unwinding the knots in myself. I stopped biting my tongue until it bled. I stopped apologizing for existing.

I was no longer bitterness and blood. I became something else. Sweetness and sunshine.

We made flower crowns and chased each other in the yard. I built tiny worlds for her out of daisies and dirt.

Nothing ever really worried me. Or maybe I just didn’t let it.

I avoided men altogether. I didn’t trust their smiles, their eyes, their promises. I didn’t need them. I had Dainy and Flora, and that was enough.

Sometimes, when the baby was asleep, Dainy and I would sit on the porch with wine and talk about the moon. She believed in energy, crystals, tarot all the same things my aunt had taught me, in my younger life.

We never spoke about my bruises or the boy who caused them. But she knew.

She always knew.

Life became gentle, like a lullaby that never ended. I watched seasons shift through the window: spring buds, summer storms, autumn leaves, winter light. Time folded itself neatly here. I thought: "maybe this is what safety feels like."

The Reading

The cards are laid between us.

The air smells like chamomile and smoke. A candle flickers, gold light against the dark curve of my wrist.

I look up and see her.

Me. But, more worn, trying to hide it

Twenty-five and trembling, the version of me who never stayed with Dainy. The one who left, who learned the hard way that love can rot from the inside out. Her lip is healed, but her eyes still shine with the ghost of someone else’s anger.

She sits across from me like a question I never answered. Like an old friend I lost touch with.

I push her a cup of tea heavy with honey.

She hesitates, then wraps her hands around it. The warmth makes her shiver.

I shuffle the deck. It hums, alive with something older than both of us.

The cards slip like whispers through my fingers. I feel her watching me, testing if she can trust me.

“The past,” I say, turning over the first card , The Tower.

Her eyes flinch.

I nod. “You had to burn the false home to find the real one.”

She frowns. “Did I? Because I still don’t know where I belong.”

“The present.” I turn the second card , The Star.

I watch her shoulders lower, just a bit. “You’re learning how to hope again,” I whisper.

She looks at me, as if I’ve said something she’s been waiting to hear for years.

“The future.” The third card flips, The Lovers.

Her breath catches. “It’s not about him, is it?” she asks softly.

I shake my head. “No. It’s about you. The choice to open your heart again,to yourself first, and then maybe to someone who won’t bruise your name when they say it.”

She looks terrified.

Her voice breaks. “But what if it hurts again?”

I reach across the table. Our fingertips meet , the contact electric, tender.

“It might,” I admit. “But love isn’t supposed to be safe from pain. It’s supposed to be safe within it.”

Silence folds around us. The candle flares, a small golden explosion, as if it agrees.

For a moment, we blur — one timeline bleeding into another. The reader and the read become the same woman: older, softer, still learning.

I see flashes behind my eyes, flower crowns and bar lights, baby giggles and guitar strings, two paths that led to the same table.

“I used to dream of you,” she says suddenly.

“I know,” I whisper. “I used to miss you.”

She laughs, small and shaking. “You’re happy now?”

I pause. “I’m… whole.”

Her eyes fill. “That’s enough.”

The candle burns lower. Wax drips like slow tears.

I take her hands fully this time ,no hesitation.

Our palms fit perfectly, like they were never meant to be apart.

“It’s safe to love,” I tell her, this time, she believes me.

Her body softens, her outline begins to fade ,not gone, just absorbed. I feel her fold back into me, like breath returning to lungs.

I sit there for a while after she’s gone, staring at the cards.

The Tower. The Star. The Lovers.

The story of everything I ever was. What we become

I gather the cards slowly, one by one, until the table is empty.

For once I am not.

Outside, dawn is rising ,soft pink bleeding into the night.

I pour another cup of tea.

Steam curls up like smoke, like prayer.

Somewhere deep inside, two versions of me hold hands and walk forward together. For the first time in a long, long while I believe in love.

I don’t flinch when I think of love anymore