“Let me tell you something.” He took her hands in his, guiding her to sit on a tufted pink stool as he knelt in front of her, looking up to meet her eyes. She nodded, feeling her emotions begin to regulate. “I know that it feels like we missed out on those ten years, but I need you to know that from my end, we didn’t, because you were always with me. Everything I pushed myself to become, I did it because I knew we would come back together, and I wanted to be the kind of man you deserved.”

“How did you know that?” she asked. “That we would come back together? Because I didn’t.”

“You’re going to laugh.”

“I would never laugh at you.”

“All you do is laugh at me.” He smiled, his tone once again slightly unserious. They were returning to the prickly push-and-pull of their dynamic, now supported by an undercurrent of constant, unquestionable love.

“Okay, true, but how did you know?”

“Because I have…” he reached over to grab a tissue from the box on the sink, handing it to her to dab under her eyes. “Because I have a kind of… faith, I guess? In the universe? I guess you could call it spirituality. And years ago, I went to see this woman, and she told me that we were destined to be together.”

“Like, with a crystal ball?” Alex couldn’t believe it: it was so deeply unlike the serious, analytical Danial she knew. But then, she thought, there was so much of him she still didn’t know, so much she would spend the rest of her life discovering.

“Well, technically with coffee grinds. But yes, basically. She was so sure that we would end up together—although she did take pains to say that it would be very complicated.”

He rolled his eyes at the memory, and Alex laughed.

“Bee said the same thing about us.”

“What do you mean?”

“She said that there were some… communication issues in our charts, something about my Mercury and your Saturn. Or maybe it was the other way around.”

“She still has my chart?” He cocked his head slightly, raising an eyebrow.

“She has every chart she’s ever done,” Alex explained simply.

For a moment, they just looked at each other, taking everything in.

“Anyway,” Danial finally continued, “once the coffee reader told me it would work out, I just trusted that it would happen. Also, frankly, I knew that if the universe didn’t hurry up that I was just going to go to Philly and do it myself, once I worked up the courage.”

“I can’t believe you saw a fortune teller.” Alex laughed again, crumpling the tissue in her hand. “Was this during your Burning Man era?”