Past Lives

March 1st, 2015

“Okay, lemme see your hands,” Penelope finally gives in, though she isn’t sure why.

She isn’t sure why she’s done a lot of the things she has in the past week. Particularly things that involve Harry. She tells herself the only reason she’s agreed to this particular thing (late night food at a diner a few blocks from the shop) is because Harry had spilled her coffee not even ten minutes into their shift and he owed her.

But she isn’t sure how he’s managed to convince her to teach him how to read palms.

“Gina only taught me the basics,” she admits, pushing empty plates and mugs out of the way and laying his hands down on the table, palms up. She tries her hardest to ignore the jolt in her stomach when their skin touches.

Harry is already leaning in, listening intently as if she’s teaching him the secrets of the universe and speaking softly as not to disturb them, “‘S alright.”

“Right,” she mumbles, cheeks turning a little pink with all of his attention on her, “What’s your dominant hand?”

Harry wiggles the fingers on his right hand.

She nods and swallows harshly, “So that hand would represent your past lives. Your left would represent you and your future. Which do you want me to read?”

He mulls it over for a second and she tries her hardest not to guess his answer before he wiggles the fingers on his left hand. Her stomach twists uncomfortably but she pulls that hand closer anyway, flattening his hand to examine it.

“There’s three major lines, sometimes four,” she looks for his, afraid to trace them yet, “This is the heart line,” she gently places her index finger on it and runs it along it, “Yours starts in the middle, which means you fall in love easily. I-it’s also parallel to your head line so you have a good grip on your emotions. See how it splits in two here? That means you’re more prone to putting others’ needs ahead of your own emotions. N-not always a good thing...”

She feels like her heart might beat out of her chest, fall out onto the table for him to finally see, but it doesn’t. And Harry doesn’t show any indication of his thoughts or feelings, only nods smally, eyes still fixed on her finger against his palm.

“So this is your head line,” she slides her finger across his palm, tracing it carefully and ignoring how hot her fingertip feels, “First of all, it’s separated from your life line, that means you’re adventurous. It’s deep and long so you think things over and over before you come to a decision but you’re good at keeping your head clear and focused.”

He nods seriously, drinking in all the information she gives him. It scares her a bit, to have the upper hand like this, with someone like him. She’d thought that was what she wanted all along, to be smarter, stronger, one step ahead. But now he’s so focused and intent on latching onto every word that spills from her lips and the power of it scares her.

“Your life line is here,” it’s the easiest one to read yet, “It’s long, which has nothing to do with the length of your life actually, and deep. That means most people in your life count on you, like their emotional rock. It swoops like this, that means you’ll have strength and enthusiasm in all you choose to do.”

He leans in a bit closer, watching her sweep across it, before pulling away and blinking slowly, “Have I got the fourth line?”

Her heart stops in her chest and begins to pound, heavier and heavier, with his eyes on her, “Y-yeah. Right here,” she breathes, tracing across his palm, from bottom to top, “I-it joins your life line, you developed your aspirations early on. You’ve always known who you are and you’ll stay true to that,” she pauses, takes in a deep breath and releases it softly, “The line’s deep. It means you’re deeply controlled by fate.”

He laughs, throws his head back, lets his eyes crinkle. His hand catches hers and squeezes, and she swears that her veins are livewires. He understands the irony, but he believes her, and she has never felt so alive. It absolutely terrifies her.

*

Harry’s like a magnet. Penelope can’t stay away and once he’s got her pulled in, there’s no getting unstuck.

It’s the weekend following the diner incident and she doesn’t know what they are or what they’re doing, she’s tried not to think about it until she absolutely has to. Until she’s sprawled out on her living room floor with him, staring up at the high ceiling, a bottle of wine between them.

She’s a little drunk.

“What are your parents like?” she asks softly, trying to imagine them. Who he inherited his eyes and his nose and his lips from. Who gave him his patience and his even temper and his warm heart.

“Lovely,” he shrugs simply, eyeing her without turning his head, “Mum’s a teacher, dad’s a doctor,” there’s a pause, a heavy hesitation, “Y-yours?”

“Dead,” she’s drunk enough to be numb, not so drunk she feels the pain amplified in her chest. It’s nice. The perfect amount. She wants to stay like that, nothing haunting her, not her mother, not her father, not Harry and their looming, inevitable future.

“Fuck. Shouldn’t have said that.”

“‘S alright,” she tells herself the need to reassure him is because she doesn’t want his pity, “‘M alright.”

And sometimes, like right then, she really is. Other times she’s screaming from the bottom of her clawfoot tub, letting the air leave her chest because it’s the only way to make the hole there feel less gaping. But Harry doesn’t need to know about that. Harry doesn’t need to know about a lot of things.

“Y-yeah?”

“Yeah, right now,” she hums, trying to keep her voice light, “It’s better this way. Maybe they’re happier now.”

Harry’s silent, shifts onto his side and props his head up a little, “They weren’t happy?”

Penelope realizes what conversation she’s lead herself into, but that tug in her chest, the one that rolls her onto her side to meet his eyes, is already pouring out words. She wonders if that’s what it means, if that’s what it’s supposed to make her do.

“No,” she shakes her head peering up at him, his eyes are dark but focused on her, “Not ever I don’t think.”

She can see realization click in his eyes and his features and it eases her a bit, to see him make the connection without forcing her reasons from her, “That’s why you don’t want this.”

She rolls away, back on her back, tries to shrug carelessly. She isn’t sure if she subconsciously wants him to know or if it had all come out by mistake, but she has a growing fear it’s the former. That fucking pull in her chest she’s convinced herself she needs to avoid and suppress. Whatever the hell it means.

“We won’t be like them,” Harry’s still on his side, peering down at her so intently that she has to shut her eyes. Her whole body is a little too warm, from alcohol, from the topic of conversation, from Harry’s gaze.

“You don’t know that,” her throat is a little constricted, straining her voice and she wants more wine, “You don’t even know what they were like.”

Harry pauses, reaches for the half empty bottle and passes it to her, “Tell me then. So I can make sure of it.”

That’s how he finally breaks down the brick walls she’s built around her old, old, tired soul. With a nice bottle of wine and those big, green, genuine eyes.

She lets it all spill out (maybe because she never has, maybe because that feeling in her chest is urging, urging, urging). The screaming, the fighting, the ruined holidays and birthday parties. The way they tore each other apart, but refused to let go of one another. How even when her father fell ill, everything was just as intense and fragile as it had been before. How even when her father passed away, it still tore her mother apart, drove her to the very edge and over the cliff. How she’d learned it was much easier and safer to stay solitary than to find someone you loved so destructively and dangerously, and have to find them and lose them again and again.

When she finishes, sucks in and releases a big breath, he’s still watching her intently but carefully. She feels a bit sick, but not from the wine. She’s never wished more that she had some real psychic ability, that she could read him as well as he seemed to be able to read her, that she could better prepare herself for whatever he’s about to say.

He’s quiet, head clearly racing as he turns over words and sentences, trying to find the right thing to say, “If I could promise that that would never be us, would you still want this? To be happy, to be in love, to be with your soulmate than to die? Fade off into some unknown, oblivion? Never live another life?”

He’s cornered her. He knows how badly she wants more than this lifetime, how badly she wants to see and be everything there is in the world, how badly she wants to be really, truly happy.

“You can’t pro-”

“If I could.”

Her drunken head mulls it over, running through happy scenarios she’s never let herself consider possible before, before she can stop herself. There’s really only one way to stop her head from overthinking when it comes to Harry. So she doesn’t give him a spoken, definite, forever answer. Instead, she tugs him closer by the collar of his outrageous, printed shirt and presses her lips to his.

*

Alcohol is the easiest way to let him in, Penelope has learned. Even when he’s wriggled his way into her routines (bringing her coffee when she’s huddled up in the library scribbling school notes and potions, walking her to the train after their shift, texting her stupid jokes and stories to the point that she doesn’t keep her phone on silent every hour of the day) she keeps herself guarded. That tug in her chest is always there, the one she’d hoped would disappear with time, like a playground crush, but it’s harder to ignore when she’s a little intoxicated.

Harry invites her to a St. Patrick’s Day party. Neither of them are Irish and Penelope isn’t sure she’s ever been to a real party. She texts about five people she can consider friends on a regular basis and none of them have ever invited her to a party (though maybe that’s because they know she’d never show).

It takes a little convincing, but she agrees. It’s more of an act at this point. She quite likes being drunk around Harry, it makes it easier to pretend they’re just college students, just friends that like to kiss and fuck and drink. No more complicated than that. When she’s drunk she isn’t a witch, she isn’t alone, she isn’t sad, she isn’t scared.

The party is at a house outside of the city, just like hers but more suburban. It’s not as big or as old or as elegant. There are teenagers everywhere, music pouring out of the windows, lights on in every room. It has some sort of open door policy and she follows Harry inside, keeping herself tucked close until she can survey the crowd and make a judgement.

He introduces her to Niall, another sociology major with a thick Irish accent and good taste in beer. It’s his party she soon learns, after a drink or two. They all get along easily, as if they’ve known each other their entire lives.

Niall’s telling some animated story about some trouble he and his brother got into back home when a big, football player looking type, comes in and slaps Niall on the back, asking about more beer. Niall directs him towards the fridge but Penelope isn’t sure the boy really needs more.

He rips the door open without realizing his grip on it and she swears before the light in the refrigerator is even on, Harry’s tugging her by the hip, closer to the doorway, “Look out.”

Three amber bottles roll out and crash to the floor, glass and foam spewing across the kitchen, just where she’d been standing across the fridge.

“Shit,” she giggles, grateful it isn’t her, and looks up at him, his eyes a little darker than usual, “Thanks.”

His eyes dart away, “Don’t worry about it.”

After a little while, the three of them float into the living room, people Penelope has never met flittering in and out of their conversations. When Niall goes for the next round of drinks and Penelope’s head is a little fuzzy, she catches Harry staring.

“What’re you watching?” she mumbles, trying to follow his line of sight across the room but he’s too tall and there’s too many people blocking her view.

“They’re fighting,” he nods at the couple across the room in a corner, his voice is soft and faraway and almost trancelike, “She’s going to slap him. She’s going to leave. And he’s going to cry.”

The cloudiness that’s wrapped itself around Penelope’s brain makes her think he’s playing their little game. She doesn’t contradict his prediction this time though, partly because she’s a little too drunk, partly because she thinks he might be right.

She watches as it happens almost in slow motion, the hissed argument turns to shouting, loud enough to be heard throughout the house over the music still pounding out of the stereo. Her face falls at something he’s said and the way he catches her arm a little too harshly, and her other hand winds back fiercely. Penelope swears the slap echoes across the room before the girl storms out, the boy clutching his cheek with watery eyes. He doesn’t go after her.

“Sometimes I think you’re too good at this,” she mumbles to Harry, tugging at his printed shirt sleeve, trying to get his attention back on her.

He hesitates, his eyes fluttering shut as he blinks a little too slowly, “We hafta go.”

“What?!” she scoffs, almost offended at the suggestion, “Niall went to get us more drinks!”

“Penelope,” he tears his eyes away from the boy, they’re darker and cloudier, from the alcohol she assumes, “We need to leave.”

“Why?!” she sticks out her bottom lip, he’s being a mood killer, “‘M actually having fun!”

His jaw clenches, “I’ll buy you McDonald’s if you leave with me right now.”

Her eyes narrow in suspicion, “You know it doesn’t take this much work to get me into your bed, right?”

“Penelope,” his nostrils flare, cheeks turning pink, “Please.”

She agrees, there’s a grumbling in her stomach and she doesn’t see Niall anywhere and she isn’t having that much fun anymore without a drink in her hand anyway. He takes her hand, grabs their coats and tugs her out the front door before she’s even had the chance to button hers.

“Harry,” she whines, one hand in his and the other on the last button on her coat, as they flee down the sidewalk, “Slow down, they’re open twenty four hours.”

She isn’t sure he hears her until they reach the corner bus stop, well-lit but deserted.

Harry turns to her, lips parted as if the words are just about to slip out, but he doesn’t get the chance. A police car with lights flashing and siren silenced is flying down the sleepy street. His lips press back together, corners turned up in the faintest hint of a smile as he shakes his head and rubs the back of his neck.

The pull in her chest is stronger and despite the alcohol clouding her head, everything just makes sense.

*

She lets it slip away into the night with the fog and the smoke of the city. She doesn’t bring it up until the next morning, when she wakes up sprawled out in Harry’s bed in his cozy apartment, fully clothed with his hair in her mouth.

Penelope turns it over and over in her head, smoothing it out and piecing things together until her skin is itching with questions. This could change everything. She can’t stop thinking about all the clues she could’ve missed or if she hadn’t missed any at all. If Harry had just been particularly careless and drunk the night before. Most of all she can’t stop thinking about why he didn’t tell her, why that wasn’t a convincing argument when he very first asked her for drinks.

Harry begins to stir when the alarm next to his bed reads 12:07 PM. Her heart stutters in her chest, stomach erupting with something that feels a lot like nerves and excitement and possibility.

“Harry,” she breathes, lips pulling into something strange, not quite a smile, not quite a grimace.

He stirs, face pressing further in the warm skin of her neck, “Hm?”

“Wake up.”

He makes some sort of noise in the back of his throat, whole body stretching in a way that reminds her of Marie. His jean clad legs are poking out of the end of the sheets in an attempt to stay smaller than her and keep his head near her chest and his hair is an absolute mess.

When his head pokes up, eyes blinking heavily, she doesn’t hesitate because she knows if she does she won’t be brave enough to ask, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She’s still brave in the afternoon light. Not as brave as when the moon was high in the sky the night before and they both felt invincible, but brave enough to ask because they haven’t left the little world they’ve made in his bed, in his apartment.

His brows knit together in confusion, studying her while he tries to wake himself up. She watches the realization flicker across his features and feels her stomach twist a little bit more.

“I didn’t want to manipulate you,” he shakes his head, rubbing the backs of his hands against his eyes, “Y-you found out?”

“You weren’t exactly subtle last night,” she thinks it’s a bit funny that he can see glimpses into the future (to what degree, she isn’t sure) but can’t remember pieces of their drunken night before.

“Fuck,” he mumbles and yawns, “That’s why I don’t drink liquor.”

Her heart stutters again but this time her stomach sinks a bit, “D-did you not want me to know?”

“N-no, no,” he shakes his head, voice becoming a little lighter as he tries to shake off sleep, “I did. I do. But. On your own terms. Like I said. I-I didn’t want you to feel manipulated or tricked or anything.”

“Do you do that?” her brows knit together, awake enough to want all of his answers, “See things that can manipulate people?”

“Y-yeah, I suppose,” he nods, eyes puffy and tired, “There isn’t much rhyme or reason to what I see. I-I try not to though. Unless ‘m certain it’s for the best.”

“Have you seen us?” her stomach rolls a bit, “Was telling me not for the best?”

“Of course I saw you. I’ve been seeing you my whole life,” he lets out a small, sleepy laugh, “I wasn’t sure if it’d be for the best or not, but I knew it wasn’t right. It wouldn’t be fair.”

She swallows down his words and they settle somewhere warm in her chest, “Your whole life?”

“Since I started seeing,” he admits, watching her, “I didn’t always have a face or name. Just a feeling. A glimpse into a moment.”

It should scare her but it eases something in her. It feels certain. It is foolish and impractical and uncertain, just like them, a fucking witch and a psychic with tangled legs and fates. But she believes it, she’s seen him do it. She believes him. Something in her has been looking for an explanation as to why he seemed to believe in them so blindly and adamantly despite how much she suppressed it. For an explanation.

And now that the biggest, strangest puzzle piece has fallen into place, she trusts it. The world feels less off center and things she didn’t understand about him before make sense. For her, it changes everything. It’s ironic, a witch pretending to be a psychic finally trusting her soulmate enough to give him a chance simply because he is a genuine psychic. She supposes their entire relationship has been filled with sick irony.

“I wish you’d told me,” she confesses softly because it’s true. She wishes he’d saved her the fear and denial and trouble. Most of all, she wishes she’d been smart enough to figure it out on her own.

“I don’t,” he shakes his head, knowing smile on his pink, chapped lips, “You’d have hated me more.”

“I never… hated you,” she settles on, she’d been terrified. Though by the look on his face, he knows, he’s known forever. She wonders if he’s always known how this would change things for her. To have something certain to fall back on in a life of uncertainty and unusualness.

“You still hate me a bit,” his smile grows into a smirk, “It doesn’t matter now though, does it?”

Penelope shakes her head because it doesn’t. This feels like a new beginning, far better than the first, filled with anxiety and stubbornness and shaky ground. This feels steady and certain and maybe worth trying for.

His smirk becomes a grin, “Lemme see your hand.”

She isn’t sure what he means at first, still focused on processing all this new information, but gingerly he takes her left hand, smaller and rougher than his, in his own. His tired eyes are focused on the lines crisscrossing her palm, the ones holding all the things he has yet to learn but a lifetime to discover.