Page 3 of Thank you, Next

Somewhere in the back of her mind, her mother’s words about correlation and causation rang, but Alex wasn’t a scientist. She was a lawyer. Where Alex saw patterns, she logically concluded that the common denominator among all her exes pairing up at least semipermanently after breaking things off with her wasn’t that all these people were opposed to commitment and partnership. They were just opposed to it with her.

That made Alex sit back and try to take a drink out of her now empty wineglass. She wanted to call someone. Her sister would be busy with her small children, and her more conventional sibling would not have time for any theories about why Alex apparently made her romantic partners want to marry other people.

And she wouldn’t call her mother, either. Dr. Maureen Finnegan-Turner wouldn’t have any soothing words or any insight into why Alex’s discovery made her feel a little empty inside. Her mother would have a reading list and possibly some suggestions for new psychiatrists.

No, the only person Alex could call right now was her grandmother and namesake. In addition to being one of the most famous Black women on the planet, Lexi Turner was the only person who could make sense of why Alex felt so shitty about this. She’d call her in the Uber to let her know she was on her way.

TWO

Alex didn’t ask Lexi why her personal tarot card reader happened to be at her house when Alex pulled up in an Uber less than an hour later. Lexi Turner was a jazz legend, a noted actress, and a renowned eccentric. You simply did not ask questions like “Grandma, why is your boyfriend in a large cage in the pool house?” when you were dealing with the great Lexi Turner. Unless you wanted her to tell you about how she’d been into BDSM when the woman who wrote Fifty Shades of Grey was still in diapers.

Lexi was wearing a sequined caftan and a matching headwrap. Her face was fully made up, and she had arranged herself on a purple velvet chaise as though at any moment someone was going to appear from the kitchens at the back of the house to feed her grapes and fan her. Other than the fact that Lexi was about a half foot shorter and could likely balance a platter on her ample bosom, looking at her grandmother was sort of like looking into her future. Lexi and Alex shared the same eyes and the same face shape. Lexi’s skin was a few shades darker than Alex’s, but there was no doubt that they were related.

Given that Lexi had an aesthetician on call, her grandmother had more than once been mistaken for her mother.

“Darling.” Lexi’s voice projected across the great room of her Baldwin Hills mansion, bouncing off the rococo-by-way-of-art deco columns to the foyer. “What’s got you so upset? Whatever it is could probably be cured more effectively by a new lover than a late-night visit to an old woman.” Lexi looked her up and down and narrowed her shrewd gaze. “At least you don’t go to bed at eight o’clock like your normie sister.”

Lexi tried to keep up on teen slang, but she was usually about a decade behind. “It’s a Friday.”

Lexi raised a hand and summoned her into the great room. That’s when Alex noticed the blond white woman sitting across from her grandmother. “Alex, this is Star Sign.”

Alex didn’t balk anymore at the LA woo-woo parade in and out of her grandmother’s house. Sometimes she got lucky and the energy worker that her grandmother was working with was just a Goopy massage therapist. Sometimes she was not lucky and ended up having to use a package of sessions with her grandmother’s new shaman friend who spread a substance that smelled remarkably like manure all over her body before chanting off-key in a spectacle of cultural appropriation that was uncomfortable for everyone involved.

“What is Star Sign doing here on a Friday night?” Alex narrowed her eyes at the woman. Lexi was a kind and open soul who happened to have made a lot of money touring and selling jazz records over the past forty years. Although she’d had some down times during the eighties and nineties, a few of her songs had become hits again after she did a duets album with a wildly famous pop star. Lexi’s financial security and her openness made her vulnerable. Since Alex’s father had died—although he likely would have been at Lexi’s door with his hand out—Alex felt as though it was her responsibility to protect Lexi.

“I called her after you said you were coming over,” Lexi said, as though that explained why a practical stranger was here to greet her. “Your chakras seemed out of order, and I thought she could help.”

“My chakras are fine.” Alex didn’t have a spiritual problem. She was just thrown by the fact that her ex had found someone to marry before she’d even gotten it together to go on a single date after their breakup. “I was just upset.”

Lexi stood up and crossed the room in her usual elegant float. Alex had met a lot of famous people because of her grandmother. LA was a small town, and it got smaller when you were related to a legend. Some of those famous people had stage presence but seemed to fade into the background when the stage lights weren’t on. Others, like Lexi, couldn’t or wouldn’t turn it off. All the light in every room seemed to fall on Lexi’s face wherever she went.

Her grandmother led her to one of the couches and touched her shoulder until she sat down. Then Lexi pointed her long fingernail to a steaming cup of tea. “Drink that.”

“What is it?” After accidentally ingesting magic mushrooms from the manure shaman, Alex didn’t drink or eat anything at her grandmother’s house without ascertaining its origins.

“It’s wild sweet orange tea, with a little bit of bourbon.” Lexi rolled her eyes. “One bad trip, and it’s like you don’t trust me anymore.”

“I ran around in my underwear at a party you were throwing.” Alex was still mortified thinking about it. “And I was a teen.”

“It was the most interesting thing that happened that night.”

Alex nearly choked on her drink. After the mushroom trip and the underwear incident, another interesting thing had happened that night. Alex’s face heated thinking about it, but Lexi didn’t know—could never know.

“You still haven’t explained what Star Sign is doing here.” Alex turned to the woman, who gave her a broad, seemingly genuine smile. “I don’t need my chakras aligned, and I imagine your nights and weekends rate is quite high—”

“Oh, I’m here on my own time.”

Alex raised her eyebrows, ready to toss this woman out on her ear.

“I invited her over, Alex. Don’t get your panties bunched. Although maybe bunched is what you need. Bunched on the floor after some hot guy has ripped them off—”

“Shhhhhh!” Alex wanted to find a piece of furniture to crawl under. It wasn’t necessarily embarrassing to have a grandmother who had a legendary number of famous lovers because she’d moved to Los Angeles in 1970, when quaaludes and cocaine had loosened the already loose morals of hot young famous people. But it made Alex feel like a total square. And it didn’t help that she was already feeling something she couldn’t yet name about the fact that she seemed to be all her exes’ final stop before happily ever after.

“I’m just saying that you need to loosen up. You haven’t gotten any since you and that incredibly hot man broke up.” Lexi and all Alex’s friends had agreed that Jason was the hottest guy she’d ever dated. And it had bewildered Lexi when Alex and Jason called it quits—she simply didn’t understand why Alex would let someone that good-looking slip away.

Although Lexi was a pro at offering emotional support, she sometimes lacked understanding of the dating problems of mere mortals. Lexi had never been dumped. Eight husbands, and she had always been the one doing the dumping. Once, Alex had asked whether Lexi had preprinted prenuptial agreement forms at the ready in case she got in the mood to get married on whim.

“I really thought you should have married that man.” Lexi wasn’t going to let this one go.