Morning light filtered through my thin curtains, casting stripes across my laptop screen like prison bars. I’d been sitting cross-legged on my unmade bed for forty-three minutes, staring at the empty reply box beneath Jason Green’s email. My fingers hovered over the keyboard like nervous birds, darting down to type a few words before retreating again. The half-finished cocoa on my nightstand had grown cold, a skin forming on its surface like the doubt congealing in my mind.
“Dear Jason,” I typed for the fourth time, then paused.
The previous attempts sat in my mental trash bin, each discarded for different failings. The first had been too eager, gushing gratitude that revealed the desperate edge of my financial situation. The second swung too far in the opposite direction—clinical and detached, as if I were a corporate entity rather than a person. The third struck an awkward middle ground, neither warm nor professional enough, with a forced casualness that read as insincerity.
How did online tarot readers respond to client inquiries? I had no model to follow, no template to adapt. My clients always showed up at my actual store—real people I could see and talk to—and I had zero idea how to communicate with strangers online.
My fingers tapped nervously against the trackpad. Too eager? Too professional? Too casual? Each tone carried its own risks. Too warm might suggest I was starved for connection rather than clients. Too professional might come across as cold, at odds with the empathic quality Jason claimed to appreciate in my videos. Too casual might undermine any perception of expertise.
I deleted “Dear Jason” and started again.
“Thank you for reaching out about a reading,” I typed, then frowned. That sounded like an automated response. Delete.
“I’m so thrilled you connected with my videos,” I tried instead, then grimaced. Too enthusiastic, bordering on desperate. Delete.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. The tarot reading from the night before had confirmed Jason’s intentions were genuine. I needed to trust that and respond authentically, not crafting a persona I thought he might want to see.
“Dear Jason,” I began again, my fingers moving with more certainty.
“Thank you for your kind words about my videos. I would be happy to meet for a reading.”
Simple. Direct. True.
I continued typing, letting the words flow without second-guessing each syllable.
“The Starbucks café on 5th avenue across from Bryant Park has private tables in the back where we could work undisturbed. Does tomorrow at 2pm work for you? And yes, PayPal is perfect.”
I read over the response, scanning for any hidden desperation or awkwardness. It seemed… normal. The kind of email anyone might send to arrange a business meeting. Not too eager, not too distant.
Before I could second-guess myself again, I hit send. The email whooshed away into the digital ether, the animation a visual reminder that my words were now beyond retrieval.
I closed the laptop and set it aside, suddenly unable to look at the screen anymore. What if he didn’t respond? What if he’d changed his mind overnight? What if—
My phone vibrated against the nightstand, the harsh buzz against wood making me jump. A notification banner slid down from the top of the screen:
“PayPal: Payment received $100.00”
I stared at it, disbelieving. I unlocked the phone with a trembling finger and opened the PayPal app. There it was—a payment from Jason Green, exactly as promised. No delay, no negotiation, no questions asked.
A hundred dollars. Real money, already in my account.
A laugh escaped me, high and slightly hysterical. I pressed my palms against my eyes, feeling a sudden rush of emotion that threatened to spill over into tears. Not sadness, but a complicated cocktail of relief and validation that burned in my throat.
Someone had watched my videos. Someone had valued what they saw. Someone was willing to pay for my time and insight.
The room around me seemed to brighten, as if the payment had adjusted the light levels of reality itself. The stack of books beside my bed—tarot guides and psychological texts—no longer looked like the pathetic evidence of a failed endeavor but the tools of a legitimate practice. The crystal on my windowsill caught the morning light and scattered tiny rainbows across the wall.
“This could be the beginning,” I said aloud to the empty room, testing the words, seeing how they felt in my mouth.
The air shifted subtly, the temperature warming by a few degrees. Auntie materialized first, her form more solid than the others typically appeared, every detail of her dress visible down to the gold earrings she always wore.
“Or a continuation,” she said, her voice carrying that familiar hint of determination. “The path never truly ends, it only changes direction.”
She gestured toward the laptop with a translucent hand. “One client becomes two. Two become ten. This is how businesses grow.”
I nodded, remembering her stories of the business she’d built from nothing.
“What if he’s the only one?” I asked, voicing the fear that lurked beneath my momentary elation.
Ma appeared then, her form more diffuse than Auntie’s but carrying the same sense of warm certainty. “Then you learn from him what works, what doesn’t, and you adjust.”
“One client who sees your value is worth more than a hundred YouTube views from people who scroll past without engaging,” Grandpa added, his form manifesting beside the window, the morning light passing through him.
I looked down at my phone again, at the notification still visible on the lock screen. One hundred dollars. A single client, but a real one.
“But what if—” I began, only to be cut off by Auntie’s dismissive wave.
“What if the sky falls? What if aliens invade? What if, what if.” She made a scoffing sound that reminded me of her reaction to melodramatic soap operas and nollywood movies. “You’ve been given an opportunity. Take it.”
Her directness, bordering on harshness, was exactly what I needed. The endless spiral of “what ifs” would paralyze me if I let it.
I stood, suddenly energized, and moved to my closet. If I was meeting a client tomorrow, I needed to present myself as a professional. Not in the corporate sense, but as someone who took their craft seriously. My usual leggings and oversized sweaters wouldn’t project the image I wanted.
As I sorted through the limited options hanging in my closet, the spirit guides began to fade, their purpose fulfilled for the moment. Auntie lingered longest, watching my deliberations with critical eyes before finally nodding approval at a simple black dress I’d pulled out.
“With the green scarf,” she advised, then vanished before I could thank her.
I held the dress up against myself, examining my reflection in the small mirror attached to the closet door. The woman looking back at me appeared different somehow—still me, but with a subtle shift in posture, in the set of her jaw. A version of me who might, possibly, have something valuable to offer the world.
I laid the dress carefully across the foot of the bed, smoothing out wrinkles with a gentle hand. Tomorrow at 2 PM, I would meet Jason Green. I would do a reading. I would be paid for my insight.
A smile spread across my face—the first genuine smile in weeks.
One client. One reading. One step onto the path revealed by the Ace of Pentacles.
It wasn’t success, not yet. But it was a beginning. Or as Auntie had said, a continuation—the next stretch of a path I’d been walking all along, even when it seemed to lead nowhere.
I checked my phone again, half-expecting the payment notification to have vanished, revealed as a hallucination born from desperation. But it remained, solid and real. One hundred dollars. Proof that something had changed.
Whether it was the world shifting to make space for me, or simply me finally stepping into a space that had been waiting all along, I couldn’t say. But for the first time in months, the future held something more than dread.
It held possibility.
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