7 Years Bad Sex (11 page)

‘I was,’ Casey agreed. ‘But whose fault was that?’

‘I didn’t know the love heart was going to interrupt your toast,’ Sasha defended herself. ‘Besides, you could have still smiled at each other.’

Alex shook his head. ‘You’re all nuts. Casey, you can’t be taking this seriously? So we didn’t look at each other, but that hardly means we’re cursed!’

‘But…’ Casey felt herself turning pale. ‘Remember I asked whether you felt the earth quake? That was right at that moment.’

‘Classic presentation,’ Liza squealed. ‘Growling earth noises always accompany a curse being activated!’

Irrational tears pricked at Casey’s eyes. If Liza and Sasha were right, she and Alex were doomed to seven years of misery.

Alex’s voice pierced her consciousness. He sounded a little angry. ‘Liza, shut up. This is ridiculous and upsetting.’

‘Sorry,’ Liza offered meekly. She held up her hands apologetically. ‘I thought you’d be excited to find the cause of—’ She caught the look on Alex’s face and didn’t finish her sentence.

‘Alex,’ Casey whispered, ‘but everything adds up. And we haven’t—we haven’t since—’

Alex rushed to kneel in front of Casey. ‘Casey, look at me.’ Gently, he tipped up her face with his hand until she was forced to look him in the eye. ‘Casey, we don’t believe in curses. Right? This is—it’s ridiculous. Seven years bad sex, hah! Well, bring it on, I say. I’ll drink to that!’

He raised his glass of beer in a defiant gesture. Before Casey could stop him, he downed his drink with his eyes closed. Time stood still.

And in that moment of time standing still, the lights dimmed. The room shook. Casey was
certain
that the room shook because one of the glasses on the table spilled over even though nobody had touched it. And there was that growling sound again as though the earth was passing a comment on everything that had been said. Casey felt lightheaded—and the moment passed.

‘Oh my gosh!’ Sasha gripped hold of Casey’s arms. ‘Did you feel that?’

‘That was awesome!’ Liza jumped around in glee. ‘I told you this is real!’

Alex rose to his feet. ‘You’re all delusional. This is some kind of mass hysteria. Come on, cut the crap.’

‘Did you see the glass?’ Myles chimed in from the sofa. ‘It spilled. And I swear I didn’t touch it.’

Casey shook her head in dismay. ‘That’s exactly what happened on the yacht.’

‘Oh my GOD!’ Liza suddenly screamed. ‘Does that mean we’re all doomed now?’ She, too, retrieved her smartphone and started scrolling through Internet pages frantically. ‘Is there a curse by association?’

‘Calm down,’ Sasha instructed. ‘I don’t know what to believe anymore. I don’t really believe in curses. You know I’m a facts kind of person.’ Casey grinned. Sasha used to joke about how law school had beaten all sorts of airy-fairy notions out of her brain, with the result that she was now a top-notch solicitor, although she rarely brought that up in front of her friends.

Sasha smiled as if she was reading Casey’s mind. ‘As I said, I’m a facts person, but I have to admit this curse is quite compelling. What I can’t figure out is how to break it.’

‘I don’t think you can,’ Liza wailed. ‘It’s like seven years bad luck after breaking a mirror. There’s no counter-jinx for that either.’

‘Well, there goes nothing then,’ Alex threw in sarcastically. ‘I’ve broken more mirrors than I can count, and I don’t consider myself particularly unlucky. Don’t I have a lovely wife, a great band, fabulous friends, and a nice home?’

‘I don’t see the relevance,’ Liza objected.

‘I worked for a house-clearance company in the summer holidays at uni and also when I first started playing in a band,’ Alex explained loftily. ‘I used to break mirrors for a living. And the last one would be less than—ooh—five years ago. So my luck should be well out, but still I’ve got what I’ve got. I’m hardly unlucky.’

Liza opened and closed her mouth as if to say something but sat down heavily on the sofa. ‘Point taken,’ she mumbled at length.

‘But even
we
said we must be cursed,’ Casey reminded Alex softly. ‘Lots of times.’

‘Yeah, but we were only joking. We didn’t
mean
it, did we?’

‘But now we know there is such a curse—’

‘Casey, it’s a load of rubbish. Ignore it. What’s going on between you and me is
not
the product of some ridiculous superstition.’

‘Well, what is it then?’

Alex raked his hands through his hair. ‘I don’t know,’ he conceded. ‘I don’t know. But a “seven years bad sex” curse? Nah. That’s absurd.’

He pulled Casey into an embrace, and she relished the warmth and feel of him against her. She felt immensely reassured. Alex had to be right. There could be no such thing as a curse on their sex life.

But somewhere at the back of her mind, she worried. She worried about the grain of truth in every cliché, every stereotype, every superstition. She worried about the earth-shaking moments. She worried:
What if?

 

~Alex~

 

‘Come on,’ Alex coaxed Casey out of bed. ‘There’s something I want to do today.’ It was a Thursday morning in July. Alex had fully recovered from his little herbal episode, although he was still reeling from Sasha and Liza’s curse revelation a few days previously. This afternoon, Blue Heart was due for the dress rehearsal for their Apollo gig the following day, but the morning was free. Neither Casey nor Alex had booked in any music students, to give themselves time to prepare for the gig.

‘What?’ Casey grumbled sleepily. ‘I want to have a lie-in.’

‘You’ve had a lie-in. It’s nearly nine o’clock. Now come on, our appointment is at eleven-thirty.’

‘Our appointment?’ Now Casey’s attention was piqued. ‘What appointment?’

‘You’ll see. Trust me.’

He knew Casey was still brooding over that matter of the curse. Somehow, she seemed to believe it, even though she denied it. Alex instinctively understood that this wouldn’t help matters at all, so he intended to exorcise that particular demon. He had made a ton of phone calls and eventually located someone who had seemed to have his head screwed on in a sensible fashion, and he planned to enlist that person’s help even if he didn’t know it.

A short while later, Alex pointed at a little shop window almost directly opposite Tottenham Court Road Tube station. ‘And here we are,’ he gestured.

‘Here we are, where?’ Casey didn’t understand.

‘Psychic Sam,’ Alex elaborated. ‘Psychic Sam will tell us the truth about whether we’re cursed.’

Casey stopped dead in her tracks. ‘Have you gone completely mad?’

‘No more than you.’ Alex refused to have an argument. ‘I know you’ve been worrying away about what Sasha and Liza said. Well, let’s see if that curse is in our aura. It either is, or it isn’t. If it is, I promise I won’t laugh about it anymore. But if it isn’t, we’ll have to move on. Deal?’

‘I suppose so.’ Casey bowed her head. She looked entirely unconvinced.

Alex frowned. ‘I thought you’d be excited.’

‘I don’t believe in this stuff, and you know that.’

‘I
thought
I knew that. But your persistent worry about that curse has really thrown me. And anyway, what have we got to lose? We can always laugh about it afterwards.’

‘Did Liza put you up to this?’

Alex grinned. Liza
was
into this kind of stuff, as they all well knew, and it wasn’t an unfair assumption of Casey’s that Liza should have engineered this session. However, not so on this occasion.

‘No. This is all my doing. And Sam’s not short for Samantha, by the way. Sam’s a man.’

‘Ah.’ Casey chuckled. ‘And that makes a difference how?’

‘I thought at least you wouldn’t be able to accuse me of having dragged you to a run-of-the-mill Mystic Meg.’

‘Psychic Sam, eh?’ Casey grinned, good humour somewhat restored. ‘Let’s see what he has to say.’

The interior of Psychic Sam’s emporium looked more like a corporate headquarters than a clairvoyant’s lair. There was no flute music, no whale songs, no candles or incense, no ethnic throws or colourful wall dressings. Instead, Psychic Sam favoured pale green walls with clean lines, black leather sofas, and plenty of daylight.

Sam himself was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. He looked to be in his thirties, and he could have easily walked off the set of a popular soap opera. Alex shook Sam’s hand vigorously and introduced himself and Casey.

‘What can I do for you?’ Sam enquired solicitously. ‘Would you like a couple’s reading or individual readings?’

‘Err—um. As a couple, please. We—we just got married, and we want to know—it would be nice to get an idea—’

‘I get it,’ Sam cut in. ‘Kids, prosperity, what the future holds. Am I right?’

Alex cringed. He was experiencing an instant dislike for the man, and considering the extensive research he had done to find the right kind of psychic, this was a big disappointment. But there was no getting around the fact that Sam was too smooth, too smug, like he could really read them like an open book. Maybe coming here was a mistake.

Too late now.

‘Please, sit down,’ Sam invited. ‘Would you like anything to drink? Tea? Coffee?’

‘No, thank you,’ Casey replied. ‘If it’s okay with you, we’d much rather get on.’

Sam crinkled his brow but said nothing. He simply fixed them both with a piercing stare before he nodded.

‘Okay, so let’s commence.’

They were all sitting down now, Casey and Alex side by side on the sofa with the psychic opposite them in an armchair.

‘Let’s hold hands,’ Sam encouraged, taking Casey’s left hand and Alex’s right hand as he spoke. ‘Let’s form a circle of trust.’

Alex wanted to gag, but he didn’t withdraw his hand. In fact, Sam’s hand was nice and warm and oddly soothing to hold. Casey’s hand was trembling slightly, and Alex squeezed it to reassure her.

‘Good, good,’ Sam praised them after a moment. ‘Now I want you to close your eyes and breathe deeply.’

Oh God,
Alex thought.
I so can’t do this. I’ll laugh. Why did I come here?

He half closed his eyes and peeked at Casey and Sam. Casey’s eyelids were fluttering as though she was dreaming. Sam’s eyes were closed and still, and he looked completely at ease. Alex nearly jumped out of his skin when Sam addressed him.

‘No peeking now, Alex. Go on, relax. Close your eyes.’

How the heck?

Alex felt like a schoolboy caught cheating. He gulped a couple of times but obediently forced his eyelids together. There, that was the best he could do.

Psychic Sam started to hum. There was no other word to describe it. He seemed to hum from the inside out, with no discernible words coming forth, not even the obligatory ‘ohmmm’ that Alex had expected.

Alex could feel himself grow sleepy and relaxed almost despite himself. Silly though it was, the situation was comforting. He noted that Casey’s hand had stopped trembling.

‘Okay, so here’s your story.’

When Sam finally spoke, Alex was startled.
How long had they sat there in silence with only the psychic’s humming for company?
He resisted checking the time. They were still holding hands, and he didn’t want to be accused of breaking the spell.