Burning Moon (Wattpad Version)

Chapter 7

But since I didn’t like Damian, and this was not a date and I definitely wasn’t attracted to him, I didn’t care if he looked at me like I was a Yeti that had just emerged from hibernation and was eating the arse end off a low flying cow. I continued to savage the burger, and got so lost in the process, that at some stage I caught myself making loud 'mmmmmmm’s'. I don’t think I looked up once either. I was just so focussed on the task of consuming as much fat as possible. I swallowed the last mouthful and finally looked up and straight into the face of a smiling Damian.

“What!” I snapped at him, a fleck of something flying onto the table.

“Have you ever considered a career as a professional eater?” He said, putting a chip into his mouth. 

Although I’d just claimed not to care, I was terribly offended by this suggestion, and he could see that.

“I mean that in the nicest way possible.” He said, pointing to the corner of his mouth in a you’ve-got-something-on-your-face kind of gesture.

I grabbed my serviette and rubbed my mouth, then looked at him for confirmation that it was gone. He shook his head and pointed to the other side and I repeated the process again, looking up for confirmation once more. But Damian shook his head again, took out his iPhone and took a photo of me. He turned the phone around so I could see.

How I'd managed to get tomato sauce on my forehead is beyond me.

“Ooops,” was all I could manage, but before I could do anything about the splotches of wayward sauce, Damian had leant across the table and was wiping my face with his serviette. He had such a look of concentration on his face as he poured a little bit of water onto it and went to work on my forehead. Then my cheek, and then the corner of my mouth. My lips tingled as the cool fabric touched them. Suddenly all I could feel were my lips and all I could see was him.

I pulled away quickly and sat back in my chair.

“Thanks.”

“Pleasure.”

This whole situation was just so, so bizarre. Here I was, on my honeymoon, in the most romantic place in the world, with a stranger who had just been gently, and very familiarly, wiping my face clean with his serviette. Who the hell had seen this coming? Who would have guessed that right now Michael and I would NOT be married and NOT be on our honeymoon?

Not even my mother's psychic Esmeralda (real name Jane) had predicted this, not that I placed much confidence in her psychic abilities, but surely something this big would have come through somewhere, considering she ‘read me’ the day before my wedding! My mother had insisted on it. My mother didn’t do anything without consulting her; she barely went to the toilet without a phone call to find out whether her bowel did in fact want to move. I’d never held psychics in very high esteem, especially not this one, who my mother met in rehab. 

When Michael and I had first gotten together, my mother had insisted that I get ‘our cards read’ to make sure we were compatible. Of course I’d said no, but then she pulled her now famous, dramatic, guilt trip on me; 

“It’s fine, don’t go, it’s your choice. But what am I going to do now? I've already paid. Maybe I can get a refund? But it’s fine if it’s not for you, sweetie. Oh my God, but she cancelled that other appointment for you! But I'm sure she won't mind. Like I said, no worries.”

So half an hour later I’m sitting in Esmeralda’s 'reading room', a dark and grotty cottage at the back of her property. As I walked in, I was instantly deafened by the cacophony of wind chimes. Chimes made of shells, feathers, crystals and the skulls of little woodland creatures hung like bats from her roof. The next thing to assault my senses was the incense that practically choked me, followed by the near heart attack her pet Monitor lizard Sid gave me, as his scaly tail brushed past my ankle.

And there she was, in full chiffon-draped glory, the star, Esmeralda sitting at her little table covered in black velvet. And you know what it’s like, even if you don’t believe in the powers of the woman sitting across from you fingering a pack of dirty cards, you want to. My mother had obviously told her about Michael, and even though I knew that, I still soaked it all in.

“I see a man. A blonde man,” she had said in a very fake mystical sounding accent.

Of course, your heart does cartwheels at this point.

“Yes, I see him very clearly now,” she fanned her cards out and moved her fingers around in little circles, “I see your future with him. I see you walking down the aisle. I see he will be very rich one day and you will live in a big house.” I hung on her words like a child. “Yes, I see three children. I see blonde children with blue eyes and one is a boy and the other two are girls. And you will be very happy and in love forever.”

And of course you want to believe it all, and I did, right up until the second I held that note in my hand. I’d believed that Michael and I were meant to be and that we’d ‘live happily ever after’. Perhaps I’d wanted the fairy tale so badly that I’d missed something real?