Lightning in Her Hands (Witch Magic #2)

Chapter 6

6

Should I (fake) marry my former best friend for money?

posted in r/Advice by TealLightning five hours ago

My childhood best friend (m26) just asked me (f28) to marry him. His grandmother won’t give him money his grandfather left him unless he’s married. He’s offered some of this money to me if I marry him.

I haven’t been a good friend to him these last few years, not as good as he’s been to me. I want to make it up to him and do him this favor.

On the other hand, though, this is a huge commitment. I would live with him. People would think we got married for real. The works, basically.

I don’t have a boyfriend or anything, but…what if things go wrong?

wunderk1nd33 —Did his grandfather not have a will? Because if he did, his grandmother can’t legally keep his money from him. Just sayin’

notabeetlewiththumbs —how much money we talkin? ’cause anything less than 20k, nahhhhh

yaeatmeorels3 —if you don’t have an SO, then why not? You can always become friends again, even if not BEST friends.

pinepinepine —what would go wrong? it’s not like marriage is irreversible and you’d be a ruined woman if you divorced him or had it annulled or whatever.

TealLightning —Just scared of ruining the little friendship I have left. This man used to mean the world to me, once upon a time.

pinepinepine —Just don’t sleep with him. And you’ll be fine.

HeroLemon701 —No, DEFINITELY sleep with him. Because fake marriages are my favorite romance trope and this isn’t going to work unless you guys fall in love, imho.

TealLightning —Sleeping together is not a possibility. He’d have to be attracted to me first.

HeroLemon701 —So you’re saying you’re attracted to him? lol?

TealLightning —He’s a good-looking guy but he said, and I quote, “I’m never going to sleep with you.” So yeah.

HeroLemon701 —Wait a minute. What even is this conversation you had? I don’t randomly talk to my friends about whether or not we’re sleeping together. Which means, there’s some attraction both ways, right? Cause why else would you even talk about that?

HeroLemon701 —You both have thought about it. Which means if you marry him, the chances of it happening are 100000000%. Add another 1903809820% to that if there’s only one bed.

TealLightning —That’s…not how percentages work. And life isn’t a romance novel, friend

HeroLemon701 —Just don’t come crying to us when you marry your best friend and have the best sex of your life and you think you’ve fallen in love but you’re not sure how to proceed!!!

HeroLemon701 —Just kidding. PLEASE come to us when that happens.

HeroLemon701 —Seriously, please please update us on this real life romance trope

TealLightning —If that ridiculousness you just described even comes close to happening, I’ll literally tag you when I post about it, deal?

HeroLemon701 —DEALLLLLL!!!! **cackles in romancelandia**

The Cranberry Craft Festival is always peaceful until ten in the morning, when most church services have ended. The rows between the tents and the tables fill with foot traffic, and Lani and I greet everyone who passes by. We field the same questions, over and over again— Do you really make these yourselves? and Why are these prices double what I can find at Target? Too many people here have never made anything by hand in their lives and it shows.

We each share the table, with my half covered in candles I dipped and poured myself. I was really into it about two years ago—infusing the beeswax with my own blend of essential oil fragrances, and sometimes I would forage in either one of the two state parks here in Cranberry for skeleton leaves to decorate the candles with. But to be honest, I’m burned out on candle making, pun unintended, and I have been for a while. It’s the fifth hobby in almost that many years I’ve put a lot of time and energy into, and I really thought this one would stick. The fact that it hasn’t makes me feel like even more of a loser than I already am, especially since Lani’s convinced it’s my calling and purpose and what separates us from the rest of the nine-to-five boring-job world .

“Got our drinks!” Leilani hands me a peach-hued papaya mimosa—our tradition—and we both sit behind our table, our backs to the sun.

“Did you have fun at the wedding reception?” she asks. She’s got her chestnut brown hair dyed with chunks of turquoise tucked under an Indiana Jones–type leather hat. Her maxi dress is navy with a pattern of forget-me-nots, and she has abalone and jade rings on all her fingers, even her thumbs.

“It was nice. Nate and Fern looked happy.” I give her a sideways look. “So, are you going to tell me your big news or what?”

“Hold on.” She grabs her bag, a patchwork tote she made from sari silks. “Let me show you a few of my new pieces first.”

Leilani sews her own bookmarks. I mean, really gorgeous work, made from scraps of fabric she finds at thrift stores. She takes apart old skirts and blouses and lace stockings and refigures them with her sewing machine, making the kind of markers you can slide on the corner of a book as well as the standard long rectangle you can just throw in.

Recently Lani’s made this whole new line of bookmarks in which she’s taken inspiration from all over the world, with a focus on patterns inspired by Indigenous textiles. I’ve never said this to her aloud, but I wish she would go back to her old whimsical, floral and spiral-pattern style. But if I actually voiced this opinion, then that means I would be admitting defeat to Sage, who I’m always defending Leilani against. Sage thinks Leilani is a cultural-appropriating spoiled brat. Which…sometimes I can see her point of view.

But unlike Sage, Lani was there the last eight years.

“Ta-da!” Leilani pulls out a set of bookmarks. They’re a huge departure from anything she’s ever made before—in shades of beige and white, with little scraps of gold illustrating symbols I don’t recognize. My first thought is that color-and-humor-hating Amá Sonya would love these.

“Wow,” I say.

“Aren’t they great?” She sighs and smiles. “These”—she lifts them up—“are my ticket out of this hellhole.” She gestures around with a grimace on her face, as though we were sitting in some kind of postapocalyptic wasteland rather than surrounded by people trying on knitted scarves and snacking on white-chocolate-drizzled popcorn. But Leilani’s always hated Cranberry. Or even all of Virginia, for that matter. I’ve never understood how anyone could judge an entire state based on their infinitesimally tiny viewpoint of the world, but Lani’s always been that way. Before Sage met Tenn, she had similar feelings about this area. I guess some people look at a place and can see nothing but their own bad memories reflected back to them in Technicolor.

“What do you mean, your ticket out?” I take one of the bookmarks in my hand, examining it. It’s beautiful. But again, it reminds me of Amá Sonya. Specifically, her house. So clean, you could eat off the floor. Perform surgery on the kitchen counter. Everything about it devoid of personality or character. Instead of returning to her old work, Leilani has gone further into the direction of creations distinctly not her .

“I mean, my mom’s friend in Napa saw these new designs, and guess what? She’s signing me on as creative director for her couture accessory company. It’s called The Beauty Martyr.”

She angles her phone in my face, scrolling through a store shop made up of lampshades, throw pillows, mug coasters, everything the color of white granite with the occasional shimmering minimalist metallic design. All the models are thin, with light-colored skin, able-bodied, traditionally pretty according to Western beauty standards, and they wear nothing but flowing, silky clothes in beige and white.

It’s boring as hell.

I force a smile on my face. “That’s so great—”

Lani interrupts me by pulling up a photo of a house. “There she is,” she breathes, thrusting the image too close to my eyes.

I back up, letting my vision focus. “Your dream home?” I squeal. I can’t really tell what it looks like, since the view is aerial. But it’s got a Spanish tile roof, with a pool in the back that overlooks the ocean. It’s massive, probably with ten bedrooms or something like that. “But…” My voice deflates when I notice that the landscaping looks weird. The property’s covered in palm trees, the kind you only see in places that don’t get deep frosts in the winter. “You’re leaving.” When I finally realize what she’s telling me, my stomach sinks. My shoulders tighten. My heart begins to beat too fast, too loud.

Leilani grins. “And I have you to thank.”

“Me?” I can barely get the word out. Lani doesn’t notice.

“Remember how Nadia was doing all that research on your ancestry? And she mentioned those caves they had found in that area of Texas where she thought you guys were from?”

“It was rock art. Not caves.”

Leilani shrugs. “Either way, I did some research of my own.” She pulls up another image on her phone, one of ancient Indigenous paintings. People from long ago, people who may have well been the ancestors to us Flores women, ground minerals and used them to paint sacred designs into rocks. I remember Nadia’s excitement when she first saw them. How some of the paints glittered with gold—a sign to our family that a deity is close by. How some of the forms resemble what Nadia says are the old gods.

Lani holds one of her new bookmarks side by side with the phone photo, pulling me away from that memory. “My mom’s friend? She saw these and hired me instantly.” She smiles and shrugs. “It never would’ve happened without you, Teal.”

I can’t keep my eyes from the photo versus the bookmark. It’s…it’s the same image. Obviously the materials are different. In the original, mineral paint sits atop a rock somewhere in southern Texas. In Leilani’s bookmark, it’s embroidered with metallic thread. But both designs are of geometric patterns, some formed into what resembles human figures. Or maybe the old ones, like Nadia believes.

I can envision it now. A white woman in California is going to order these from this homogenous Instagram-influencer accessory store, for her book club, also full of white women. They will gush over the design. They will pat themselves on the back for supporting a female artist of color. They probably will assume Leilani is Indigenous herself. Even though she is not. She is a white Latina, with most of her ancestry from France. She has never even been interested in her Puerto Rican heritage.

Just everyone else’s.

Thunder rumbles in the distance, as deep and dangerous as a hungry jaguar.

Leilani doesn’t hear it. She tosses her hair and puts her phone away. “Like I said, Teal. The universe is in motion . This is just the next stage of love for me. The unconditional love of this world .”

Lightning flares across the sky so big and bright, there are a few startled gasps all around us. Even Leilani blinks out of her the-universe-is-only-love stupor. “Yikes, it looks like it’s going to rain.”

“So when do you leave?” My voice is quiet. I’m trying to count by breaths, but it’s hard.

“Aren’t you listening to me? That’s the big news. That’s what’s happening this week, that my mom and I were talking about?” She laughs. “I leave on Thursday. I’ll be completely moved in by Saturday.”

The wind picks up all around us, making the tents’ fabric crack like whips. I need to get a handle on this. I begin to deep-breathe again.

Leilani watches me closely. “Why aren’t you happy for me?”

“Give me a minute.” I gesture to the weather.

“Oh, right.” Lani rolls her eyes, which does not help my mood. I turn away from her, desperately pulling the most calming images I can while doing my four-beat-inhales and eight-beat-exhales. I imagine myself on the beach, lying down on a towel while sipping a mojito. Me dancing with my sisters at the wedding.

Carter’s hand on mine, as his voice counts with me.

When I open my eyes, the sky has cleared. The dark clouds aren’t completely gone, but it doesn’t feel like a thunderstorm is upon us anymore.

Leilani’s closing a transaction with a customer.

“That was almost bad,” the lady says, taking the bag of culturally appropriated bookmarks, gesturing to the receding dark line of clouds.

Lani laughs as the lady turns away, but when she angles her face back toward mine, the laugh, the smile, everything is gone , just like that. Her expression is forlorn. “And that, Teal, is why I really need to speak the truth of my heart.” She takes my hand in hers and begins speaking slowly, as though I were a small child. “I’m creative director of a thriving company. I got here on my own, without any help. And I just need to cut any and all negative energy from my life now.”

I snap my hand back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She sighs and lifts her hand, pointing at me like that explains everything. “That’s what I’m talking about. You with your anger and your”—she lowers her voice—“ bipolar disorder. You’ve been dragging me down for years and I didn’t make the connection until both my aromatherapist and guardian angel connected the dots for me. They said I’m a hashtag girl boss now, and all my old so-called friends have to go. You see, Saturn is in my ninth house. You probably don’t know—”

As she explains why the universe has dictated to her that she needs to dump me as a friend, I take the opportunity to think about every red flag I have ignored that has led to my utter astonishment that this is actually happening right now.

How even though Leilani was here for me the last eight years, she was only here in the most superficial way. She’d bring me vegan cake or buy me a series of classes on transcendental meditation. The second I started weeping from my grief over seeing my fucking baby sister fall to her death? Lani’d realize she had a meeting or appointment to run to. If she knew I was having a really bad depressive spell, she’d leave me on read for up to two weeks.

How slowly, over the years, Leilani has become an entirely different person from the one I used to know. She’s gone from encouraging me to go to therapy when we were teens to telling me that if only I’d just focus on love, all the bad things in my life would fade away. And if they hadn’t yet, that was because I just hadn’t tried hard enough.

How Leilani has had everything given to her. Her claim, I got here on my own, without any help , is the biggest lie I’ve heard in a long-ass time. Her parents are millionaires. Everything she has achieved has the underpinnings of extreme financial privilege…and she’s never admitted that. Because then her idea that she’s become a self-made woman by the sheer power of the universe’s love would pop into a zillion sticky pieces.

Besides the fact that she steals. She steals the gods and the sacred designs of cultures she doesn’t belong to in order to make a profit.

I bury my face in my hands. Why hadn’t I listened to Sage about Lani? But I already know the answer. It’s because of my own damn pride.

“Plus, you know I just didn’t want to hurt your feelings on this, because I know that it’s your whole family tradition and all—”

I whip my head up, trying to figure out how she’s bullying me now, in that way that is so unique to her. Spiritual-washed bully, that’s Leilani Rodriguez to a T. It’s only taken until now, when it’s directed at me so acutely, to see it.

“…because you just happen to get sad every time the weather’s bad. It’s…no offense, but it’s a little narcissistic, you know? Projecting your feelings on the weather?”

“What did you just say?” My voice is low and guarded. The thunder is rolling back in, and I can feel it in a way I’ve never felt before. Like it’s not just on the outside, but also inside me. “You think my and my family’s gifts are lies?”

She shakes her head. “Not lies, just metaphors. I mean, come on, Teal. Did you seriously believe that you control the weather?”

Lightning returns to the sky, and it gets so close that Leilani jumps. She clears her throat. “So I just wanted to wish you a really good spring, before I go. I’m sure you’re going to have a great life and I wish you all the best. I will pay for our table here till the end of the season, you know, as a parting gift. You’ve got a lot going for you, Teal, with your little candle-making hobby and—”

I want to hurt her. To somehow help her feel a smidgen of the way she is making me feel right now. I slide my hands under my thighs, pressing in on them until the chair pinches the meat of my hands. If I don’t restrain myself, I might punch her like I punched Sage four years ago.

It’s not that she doesn’t want to be friends anymore. That’s not the big deal. I understand that people have the right to be friends or not friends with whoever they want. But does she seriously have to insult me on her way out the door? Does she have to tell me that the one thing I trusted her with, the one thing in my life that has caused me so much suffering, is just in my head?

I need to go, and I can’t let her see how mad I am. It’s too risky. The urge to knock her out hasn’t passed yet. So I paste a saccharine-sweet smile on my face. “Aw, Lani. You didn’t have to. And I wish you all the best, too.”

She beams. I know this is exactly what she’s hoped for—for me to be complacent, to focus on the love of the universe and just find it in my heart to understand. To understand that she’s too full of love to be cruel, even as she insults me to my face. To understand that she’s too spiritual to culturally appropriate in her designs, even as she basically copies-and-pastes the work of my ancestors all the way to the bank.

“I gotta run to the bathroom.” I wink at her as I leave.