Sweet Nothings: A Karma Café Novella Read Online Free PDF Page B

you.”
    Bianca made a face. She’d have stuck out her tongue, too, but that’d just cement her image as a silly schoolgirl. Still sweet and innocent, pure as driven snow.
    She was so tired of that image.
    Tired enough that she lifted her chin in determination, pulled back her shoulders and gave Anja a resolute look.
    “Help me seduce him.”
    Anja’s mouth dropped open, but no words came out.
    “What do I do?” Bianca insisted. “You said yourself that he’s not indifferent. So why wasn’t he flirting back? Why didn’t he take the hint that I wanted to get beneath his towel?”
    "Why didn't you take his hint and pull the towel away?"
    Brow furrowed, Bianca threw up her hands. "Why can't you just answer the question I ask instead of the one I'm afraid to face?"
    Anja’s laugh was both wicked and sympathetic. The other woman crossed the room to a large altar centered under the northern window. An hourglass shaped woman handcrafted in ceramic held center stage with crystals and blooming flowers scattered around her. Anja poured a small amount of clear liquid into a stone bowl at the Goddess' feet, lit a cone of incense so the air was blanketed in an aromatic fog, then lifted a wooden box and took out a silk-wrapped package.
    "We'll do a reading," she said, returning to sit opposite Bianca on a round tufted pillow. Her smile was reassuring, but Bianca's stomach still knotted.
    She'd known Anja for years. The other woman had never been shy about showcasing or offering her talents. But as often as Bianca had watched her lay out the cards for others, she'd never been brave enough to get a reading for herself.
    The gilt edged cardboard rectangles flashed as Anja unwrapped them from their silken cover. They felt like fire in Bianca's hands when she took the deck to shuffle. Energy zinged, either from nerves or sparked from the rapid movement of the slender cardboard, prompting her to quickly hand them back.
    The room was silent, intently so, except for the sound of the cards sliding against each other. Anja laid them out, face up in the shape of a triangle, with one card in the center. She looked at the spread, her brow furrowed in concentration. The room dimmed, as if the sun had scurried behind a cloud, making Anja’s dark eyes glow like black jewels.
    Despite her nerves, Bianca leaned forward to see if she could catch a clue, but it was like trying to read a foreign language in picture form. The images on the cards were pretty. Exciting, and a little scary, but she had no idea what they meant.
    She looked across the table at Anja, ready to ask what she saw. But the other women's expression didn't invite comment. Instead, Anja muttered to herself, her words indistinct as she tapped the card that looked like a tower toppling into the ocean with the tip of her magenta fingernail. She lifted it and stared at the remaining cards, then shook her head and set it back in its place.
    Nerves started to unravel in Bianca’s stomach, leaving an ill feeling of disquiet behind. She wanted to ask what it meant, but where before she’d hesitated out of respect for the woman practicing her art, now she was simply afraid of the answer. Because whatever it was, Anja didn’t look happy.
    "You're killing me here," Bianca finally muttered when the silence made her feel like she was standing on an ever-shrinking knife-edge about to topple into a vat of boiling oil.
    Anja's reassuring smile didn't hide her sigh.
    "You're at a crossroads," she finally said. "Life is made up of choices, of changes. Change often makes people hesitate, but it is necessary for growth."
    "Isn’t that a little clichéd?" Bianca asked skeptically. Not that she doubted the truth of all of that esoteric, woowoo stuff that Anja lived by. She just didn't understand most of it.
    She'd spent enough time with overprotective friends to understand prevarication, though.
    Anja gave another sigh, this one impatient. Then she tilted her head and gave Bianca a direct