You Say She's Just a Psychic Friend

Chloe and Hannah ate their hot dogs on a bench opposite the vendor, watching the people walk past, some of them stopping to sate their own hunger on the same bread and sausage meat as the girls. Beside the cart selling hot dogs was a small, open doored Yurt, and inside an olive skinned woman with dark frizzy hair offered tarot card readings. It seemed out of place to Chloe, something better suited to Halloween than Spring, but it was also a staple of the traditional fun fair. Not to mention that this so called ‘amusement park’ didn’t seem to have much else going for it. It needed all the attractions it could get.

Inwardly, she rejected the idea of fortune telling. It was a scam, to make money feeding of people’s insecurities. And people indulged it, because it was easier to listen to a card and let something else take responsibility than make the decision for yourself. And yet, at this moment, she wished someone could take the responsibility to talking to Hannah away from her. They’d barely spoken since they’d left the Ferris wheel, since they’d spent the whole ride making out, since Hannah had all but verbally admitted to asking Chloe out on a date.

The nervous red-head finished her meal and scrunched up her napkin, tossing it into a nearby trash can like a basketball player scoring a three pointer. Turning to her older, blonde companion, she found Hannah smiling, her head tilted as she watched Chloe with dazzling, light blue eyes.

“Nice shot,” Hannah said casually, like she hadn’t just been sucking Chloe’s face off fifteen minutes prior.

“Ha, thanks,” Chloe bit her lip, internally psyching herself up for the conversation to come. “But, uh, listen, I think we need to talk.” Hannah simply arched her eyebrows, so Chloe continued. “I just want to, uh, clear the air after what we...after what happened, because, um, you know, I’m not…I have nothing against it, and it was nice, but, um, what I’m trying to…what I mean is, I’m not gay.”

Hannah chuckled, leaning back on the bench now and staring ahead at the tarot card reader. “Me neither.”

“Ah, but, what I meant was, um, I like boys. Just boys,” Chloe clarified, fidgeting with her hands on her lap, head slightly bowed. “I’m not like…into both.”

“You can say bisexual, it’s not offensive. But, honestly, it’s not what I’d call myself either. And I don’t mean that in the sense of not wanting to put a label on who I am,” Hannah spoke frankly, her voice solemn and introspective. “I’m just obsessed with beautiful things. Especially, beautiful people.”

Chloe blushed, feeling a heat rising out of a pit in her stomach and spreading all over. “I can’t just throw myself into something because I think the person is pretty though. And you are, um, I mean, pretty, too. But, it has to be about more than the physical for me. I need a deeper connection with a person before I can date them, and those people have always been boys.”

“Are you saying you don’t like my personality?” Hannah growled, causing Chloe’s face to redden even further with embarrassment. Before she could offer an apology though, Hannah laughed to signal that she was joking. “Honestly, I understand where you’re coming from. My longest relationship was with a guy.”

“That’s right…Peter, yeah?” Chloe guessed, a finger on her chin as she pulled the name from the deepest recesses of her memory. “I don’t think I ever met him, but I remember Zack talking about him growing up. He was good friends with Taylor too, right?”

“Yeah, Peter, that’s right. But who he is, isn’t important. What is important is what you felt.” Hannah replied, brushing her blonde hair from her face. “Look, I’m not going to **** you to date me. Just…think of it like this, we were having fun until you realised it was supposed to be a date? You enjoyed my company?”

“Of course. You’re smart and funny and I liked hearing how much this place means to you,” Chloe gestured around with her hands, indicating the entirety of the park. “And I don’t think I’ve ever been around someone so open and confident with their body and their sexuality, except maybe Heather, but I don’t think she has half of your experience. Honestly, I’ve suffered from poor body image for a lot of my teenage years, so I find your confidence really intriguing.”

“You might be surprised about Heather,” Hannah quipped, before quickly returning to the issue at hand. “But, can you imagine talking about a guy like how you just talked about me? You’d totally think you had a crush on him. Because I’m a girl though, you think it can’t possibly be true. We have these set ideas of who we are that we cling to for safety, but I think it just hardens us to new experiences.”

“I…I guess I can see how that would work,” Chloe gulped, imagining how she talked and thought about Kurt and Gavin and Zack and trying to find a difference in how she thought and interacted with Hannah. “Shit…am I actually considering this?”

“We can take this slow, if you want. I don’t want to rush you…though, full disclosure, after the heavy petting on the Ferris wheel, I’m really horny,” Hannah confessed, leaning closer to Chloe. “There’s nothing I’d like more than to take you back to my place and fuck you better than any man ever has.”

Hannah’s words instantly send a quiver running throughout her body. She chewed on her lips as she thought about Hannah’s hand on her thigh, the blue panties she’d borrowed soaked at the simple, enticing proximity of the blonde fingers. If she put aside all of her reservations of being with a woman, outside of a one time thing or group participation, she had to admit that she was incredibly riled up also.

“I want to say yes, that I’d like that too,” Chloe admitted, blushing even harder, until her skin was as crimson as her hair. “But, I can’t tell if I want you because I want you, or if I’m just so horny that anyone will do. You know?”

“How about a little tarot reading?” Hannah suggested. “Perhaps the fates can give you a little push in the right direction?”

Chloe almost laughed aloud at Hannah suggesting something she’d judged others for doing earlier. But, with no better alternative, and slightly confused about who she was and what she was supposed to do, she nodded. Hannah took her hand and led her to the small, open tent. Inside, their nostrils filled with incense, of amethyst and lavender. The swarthy, dark-haired woman greeted them, and bid them sit, which they did opposite her at the table. She watched them with intense, grey eyes as she took their money and begged them to ask a question of the cards.

“I…I’m trying to make a pretty big decision. I know what I want to do, what my instinct is telling me to do but…” Chloe hesitated, unsure how to phrase her dilemma for a stranger. “I feel like if I go through with what I want to do, I’m in somewhat betrayed who I am as a person. So, I guess my question is should I go with my gut, or stick with what I know?”

The woman nodded, closing her eyes and tilting her head back slightly as her hands worked at cutting the deck into several piles, before bringing them back together. Then, she divided the cards into three stacks, set before Chloe and she was asked to turn over the first one.

“The Lovers,” The Teller declared as Chloe flipped over a card with the image of a man and woman naked beneath an angel. “In the past you were tempted and struggled with your emotional self and your carnal desires.”

“YES,” Chloe shouted, thinking of how she acted after the break up with Zack, how she sought physical affection with Kurt in the absence of romantic love with her best friend, and how that obsession with her baser satisfaction, led her to fuck Gavin, and inadvertently destroy his relationship with Victoria, just as Ashley had ruined hers. Having not meant to respond so loudly, Chloe clamped a hand over her own mouth.

“You may have succumbed,” the Teller continued, her eyes looking up from the cards and deep into Chloe’s now. “But this is not bad. It is just a reminder from your past that you have a choice. Now, the Present.”

She indicated towards the middle card, which Chloe promptly turned, revealing a picture of a woman dressed in pale blue robes between two pillars, a crescent moon at her feet.

“The High Priestess,” The Teller explained. “The link between the seen and the unseen, it is shrouded in mystery. The world around you is not what it seems, and intuition is key to forging a path onwards.”

Chloe’s eyes widened at the word intuition. Maybe the woman had used that word because of Chloe’s question, or perhaps she would have conjured this meaning regardless of which card had been drawn. But, for some reason, Chloe felt an affinity to this ‘High Priestess’, as if she could feel the cards tapping into something inside of her she never expected to be revealed. She wanted to know whether to trust her gut and here were the cards, telling her that was the only way forward.

But, there was still one card left to flip, the card to represent the future. At the Teller’s request, Chloe turned over the card. On it was a tall, flaming tower having been struck by lightning.

“The Tower,” The Teller’s voice turned grave. “There is dramatic and unexpected change in the future, possibly even catastrophic and dangerous. It is not necessarily dire, it may indicate a new start or freedom, but it is always unseen and sudden.”

Chloe was initially startled by the idea of danger and crisis being predicted in her future, and she was almost tempted to write off the whole reading completely. It reminded her of the stereotype of all fortune tellers seeing bad omens, talking about **** and terror. But, as Chloe listened she came to think of it in line with the others. Choice, intuition and change. These were the tentpoles of her reading, and of course if she made the decision and trusted her gut, it would change everything. And she couldn’t get any more drastic than that.

As they stepped out of the tent, Chloe looked over at Hannah, who was staring at the ground, contemplating the same reading. With a hand on the blonde’s shoulder, Chloe drew her attention and said, “So, your place then?”