An Ex for Christmas (Love Unexpectedly 5)

He’d shrugged and taken a sip of his Coors. “Just one of those things, Byrne. You’ve gone this long without making it weird—don’t start on me now.”

I got it. Some things just weren’t meant to be questioned; they simply were.

Mark and I are one of them, I guess.

Where was I going with this? Oh, right. Mark and I are close—as close as a guy and girl can be without hooking up (which we’ve never done—I know you were wondering). But anyway, we’re close and yet there are some things we don’t see eye to eye on.

My “superstition” (his term—I call it “cosmic wisdom”) is one of them.

Which is why he’s not going to be nearly as excited about my afternoon as I am, but I tell him about it anyway.

“Okay, so,” I begin. “Actually…do you have any wine? I just realized I should celebrate.”

“Celebrate whatever you read in your tea leaves, or celebrate the last day of school?”

“The last day of school,” I say. “And it wasn’t tea leaves, it was a fortune-teller.”

Mark groans, but he opens the fridge and pulls out a bottle of my favorite pinot grigio. Let’s just say I’m over here frequently enough that he keeps it stocked.

“Okay, so anyway, I was waiting on the platform and I feel this lady watching me, right?” I begin as he pulls a corkscrew out of a drawer. “So first I think maybe she’s just a little off, but then she starts talking, asking me if my parents are looking forward to their anniversary trip. Their thirtieth-anniversary trip. Like, she specified the exact number, and she was right.”

He pulls out the cork. “So she knows your parents, knows they’re about to go on an anniversary cruise. Big deal.”

“No, she did not know them. I’ve never seen her before.”

Mark lifts a finger pistol to his head, pretends to pull the trigger.

“Okay, but that’s not even the cool part,” I say as he gets a glass out of the cabinet.

“You don’t say.”

“And, she told me I’d already met him.”

“Already met who?”

I roll my eyes. “My one true love, obviously.”

Mark glances up. “What?”

“That’s exactly what she told me. She said I’d already met him—I’d already met my one true love, and I would reunite with him before Christmas. Or something. I’m paraphrasing.”

Mark stares at me, his eyes piercing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well…” I lean down and pick up Rigby and pull him onto my lap. He’s too big for such things, but I only see my baby a few days a week. I’m allowed to pamper. “I thought about it the whole way home, and I think it means that I let someone get away. Clearly one of my ex-boyfriends was the one.”

“Clearly,” he mutters, turning his attention back to my wine.

“You don’t believe me.”

“No,” he says setting the class in front of me. “I don’t think that a crazy woman you met on the train platform has some brilliant insight into your love life.”

“Then how’d she know about my parents?”

“Maybe she’s been on the platform before. Heard you on the phone planning the trip for your parents.”

A logical answer, but not the right one.

My grandma taught me to listen to what she called “flutterings,” which I later learned was my gut—my intuition. And I’m confident this lady was legit—she really did have the Sight. And I really have already met The One.