“I am not stalking you.” I smiled and gave a slight laugh. “Even if all evidence points to it.”
“The evidence is fairly overwhelming, but I suppose we could attribute some instances to chance.” He returned my smile.
“Why is it we can never have a normal conversation?” I asked.
“Why would we want to? I find the oddities in life to be much more interesting. If our conversations were normal, I suspect I’d be less inclined to want to converse with you.”
It felt weird to realize I agreed with him. If he weren’t so strange, he wouldn’t be friends with Phoebe or Bianca, and the two of us would never have a reason to talk. Most of all, if our conversations were normal, I don’t think I’d even remember them. And as annoying as he was to talk to, I always felt alive after. That wrong way rubbing seemed to spark something in me.
“It might help if you didn’t keep trying to prove me wrong,” I said.
Sebastian’s gaze grew intense and I tried to read his eyes, but in the darkened room, it was impossible. He shifted, the movement tugging at my hand and I realized it still clasped his. Letting go, I dropped my hand to my side, curling my fingers in at the tingles running through it.
“Perhaps I’m not trying to prove you wrong so much as I’m trying to get you to prove me wrong.”
“So you do believe in love.”
“No, I don’t, but I wish I did.”
“I…” My words drifted away as a thick haze gathered around him.
I stepped back reluctant to enter his future and risk seeing something other than what I wanted to. My retreat halted. I’d completely forgotten my whole purpose in being at the party, or getting Bastian to be here.
Andrew.
I turned and ran through the living room, pushing people out of my way. Once outside, I searched the backyard, but he was no longer by the fire. I quickly made my way over to Travis and Javier.
“Hey, have you seen Andrew?” I asked, my heart thundering in fear.
“He went back inside a while ago,” Travis said.
“Like how long?”
He shrugged and tossed a handful of grass into the flames. “I don’t know. You and that guy were talking.”
“Bastian?”
“Sure. Whatever. Maybe two or three songs ago.”
Great. That meant Andrew had been gone five minutes, possibly more. A few minutes didn’t seem like much time when you considered the number of minutes the average person would live through in their lifetime. But I knew how five minutes was enough time for everything you knew or dreamed of could end.
“Why didn’t he come get me?”
Travis snorted. “I’m not his nanny. The guy went to take a leak. Were ya gonna hold his hand?”
“You’re gross.” I swatted at his arm as he and Javier laughed.
I went back in, searching for Andrew in the mass of bodies moving around the rooms. Going into the kitchen, I ran into Owen and Bianca, both of whom looked way too serious.
“Where’s Nadine?” I asked, my instincts and suspicions going into hyper drive.
Owen shrugged and walked off.
“That was weird,” I said to Bianca, who gave me an apologetic smile.
“He and Nadine broke up. So, we’re gonna take off and try to catch the last half of the derby.” She moved to go around me, but stopped when I put my hand on her arm.
“What about Nadine? Have you seen her?” I asked.
“After she and Owen broke up, she disappeared out upstairs,” Bianca said. “Holy crap, do you think she and Andrew are…? I totally forgot about that.”
My stomach heaved as I turned away from Bianca and headed for the stairs. Every step I took came with a prayer that everything I did worked. As easy as it would be to check my future, I needed to see this with my own eyes.
I’d never been upstairs in Javier’s place, but the wallpaper was unmistakable. The hideous floral pattern looked even more garish than in my visions. Each door I passed was open and empty. I turned a corner and there at the end of the hall was the only closed door.
I stopped outside of it, unsure if I wanted to confront what- who was behind it. If the vision was true then all of my efforts to change it had been for nothing and the tiny ray of hope I held of my gift being more than simply a tool to torture me with would die. As would the possibility of a future with love.
The possibility of something other than the future I expected was equally terrifying. If I succeeded in changing this event, then I had no clue what would come next.
“Are you gonna stand there forever?” Bianca whispered behind me.
I glared at her over my shoulder, giving her a quiet shush. I wasn’t ready to face it yet, but she wasn’t willing to wait. She reached past me and swung the door open. My heart jumped into my throat. Someone lay on the bed and the sparkly fabric covering that body was, without a doubt, Nadine’s new dress.
“Yo, Nadine!” Bianca said loud enough to wake the dead.
Nadine sat up and I braced myself for Andrew to appear next to her, but he didn’t. She was alone.
In my visions, she always looked sexy, flirting with him. What she didn’t look like was this. Puffy, red-rimmed eyes and tear stained cheeks were about as far from the images I’d had as she could get.
“Owen dumped me,” she said. Her words carried a mix of sadness and confusion. Her head dropped into her hands, blond curls bouncing as she struggled to hold in her muffled sobs. “He dumped me.”
I couldn’t even figure out how I felt. It was like being numb from shock. I went over to sit next to her and wrapped an arm around her.
“I’m so sorry. He’s an idiot.”
Over Nadine’s lowered head, Bianca made a face and I gave her a ‘what else could I say’ look.
“No, he’s not. What’s so stupid is I’m not even really sad about him dumping me.” Nadine sniffled and drew away from me. “I mean, I already knew that’s where we were headed. I just thought he’d at least wait until after New Year’s. Now I don’t even have a date for my own party.”
“Gee, Nada, how ever will you stand the loss?” Bianca asked. Nadine glanced up at her.
“I know. I’m a horrible person to even be thinking about that. I should be upset because he doesn’t want to be with me, but I don’t think I wanted to be with him anymore either.” She sighed, and wiped her hands across her cheeks. “How crappy do I look?”
“You look fine,” I lied.
“Yeah, right.”
“Here.” Bianca held out her purse. “I’ve got some makeup. Your skin’s a bit pasty compared to mine, so the foundation isn’t going to work, but some powder might help.”
“Thanks.” Nadine took the bag and went to the mirror hanging above the dresser. “What are you guys doing up here anyway? I thought you would have left with Owen.” She directed the last part at Bianca.
“He wasn’t ready to leave yet,” Bianca lied. Luckily, Nadine was a trusting person. She didn’t even question the likelihood of him wanting to hang out at a party he never wanted to come to in the first place.
“I was looking for Andrew,” I said, trying to gauge her reaction to his name. She didn’t even blink an eye. “We couldn’t find him downstairs so we thought he might be up here.”
“I saw him in the living room right before I came up here.” She focused on applying a new coat of mascara. When she finished, she turned toward us with a giant fake smile. “Better?”
“Much,” I answered before Bianca could come up with a snarky reply. “Come on, let’s go back down.”
The three of us turned to the door just as Andrew appeared.
“Whoa! Girl power powwow,” he said as he took a step back into the hall.
“What are you doing up here?” Bianca demanded, eyes narrowing. I wanted to hug her for her loyalty.
“Looking for the can,” he said. I noticed then his little shuffle dance. “The one downstairs has a huge ass line, but Javier said there was one off the master bedroom
.”
“Not in here, maybe across the hall.”
Andrew pushed at the partially closed doors on the other side of the hallway and sure enough, it was the master bedroom. He rushed in and through a door on the far side of the room.
“Go ahead, I’m gonna wait for him,” I said to Nadine and Bianca.
Bianca wiggled her eyebrows. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
She and Nadine went downstairs, their giggles fading quickly into the thumping music from below. I leaned back against the wall, chuckling. Bianca’s words left me with very few options since she’d be a virgin all the way up until her third year in college primarily because she continued dating guys her parents didn’t approve of and who she wasn’t into anyway.
Andrew came out a minute later, wiping his damp hand along the side of his legs. “Dang, you’d think in a place this size they’d have more than two bathrooms. What were you doing up here?”
“Looking for you. I couldn’t find you downstairs.”
“I was waiting for the can then I ran into that guy you were talking to.”
“Bastian?” My heart jumped.
“Yeah, I asked him what you were talking about and he went into this really long story. I kinda tuned him out until he stopped talk.” He took my hand as we went down to the main floor. “How do you even have a conversation with the guy?”
For some reason, I felt the need to defend Bastian, but considering I wondered the same thing only a few minutes ago, it was hard to find a defense.
“It’s not easy.”
Andrew laughed and for the first time that evening, I felt like actually having fun. I tugged him toward the living room where a mass of people bounced in time to the beat.
“Let’s dance,” I shouted over the music.
“You know I can’t dance,” he protested.
“All you have to do is bounce and shuffle.” I didn’t give him a chance to argue. I pushed him into the center of the crowd and started dancing.
He was a terrible dancer, but it didn’t matter. I was free. Free of the constant sense of betrayal I’d carried for months, of a future where my best friend and boyfriend humiliated me.
Free.
The rest of the night passed in a blur. For so long now, this night represented the end of my love life, of my closest friendship. But that hadn’t happened and I reveled in the idea that maybe I wouldn’t become the crazy cat lady.
It wasn’t until I got home and was half-asleep that it hit me.
If Bastian hadn’t been at the party, Andrew probably would have made it upstairs before I did. He would have been with Nadine by the time I got there.
It was all because of Bastian, and the only reason he went was because of me.
I had changed the future.
Not a little thing like the color of pants Phoebe wore or the way Nadine spilled her nail polish. I had stopped an event that would have created massive ripples in the lives of Nadine, Andrew, and me.
What did that mean? What would my life be?
I stared up at the ceiling, suddenly wide awake, a knot forming deep in my chest as the unknown hit me hard. Fear was not an emotion I felt often. Fear of pain was one thing, but fear of the unknown was paralyzing.
My eyes squeezed shut and I focused on my inner vision. There were flashes of me, but they were so fleeting I couldn’t grasp onto them. It wouldn’t have mattered much if I had anyway. The cloudiness that had taken over Sebastian’s future had settled over mine. Gradually the vision became clearer.
That’s when I saw it. Something I had never seen before. It wasn’t much, only a handful of images, but it was happy and there was love. It was a future I never dared to dream of.
Chapter 13
Morning was always my favorite time of day, maybe because Phoebe rarely woke up early enough to ruin the peaceful quiet.
Today though, everything seemed a hundred times better, and it all had to do with what happened last night, or rather what didn’t happen. The future had changed. Andrew hadn’t cheated on me and Nadine didn’t betray me.
Every part of my life would trace back to that event - the college I went to, the friends I socialized with, my choice to never marry.
I slipped out of bed, toes curling as my feet hit the chilly hardwood floor. My reflection in the mirror above my desk stared back at me. In a vibrant blue glow, my future floated around me. The small glimpse I had last night before I drifted off to sleep had been enough to know things were going to be different.
Butterflies swirled through my stomach. Breathing deep, I pulled inward and looked at what my life would be like.
Even with the slight blur I was growing accustomed to, what I saw went beyond anything I ever dreamed. I hold a child with brown hair and my blue eyes. A man, tall and lanky, glasses atop his graying hair. We are old, withered with age. Little boys running at our feet. Love radiates from me.
Blinking, I slid back into the present and reality hit me hard. I placed my hands on my dresser and leaned forward until my forehead pressed against the cool mirror. My heart raced and I struggled to draw in slow, deep breaths.
Somewhere inside me, I had hoped that I would be with Andrew. It may have been but a flicker barely visible in the depths of the lonely future I had anticipated, but it had been there. Last night, though, the flicker grew exponentially until I imagine I felt like most people do when they are in love.
The man in my new vision wasn’t Andrew. While his height and facial structure were familiar, the fog obscured the details of his face enough that I couldn’t say whether I already knew him. I may love Andrew now, but years from now, he would be but a faded memory resting in the shadow of my adoration for this mystery man.
The idea of still not being with Andrew tugged at my heart, tears gathering in my eyes, but they refused to fall. What this new future held for me was what I would have chosen for myself, filled with love from a partner and children and happiness. There were still so many unknowns. It would take months to fill in the gaps, yet I could live with the changes, because love would exist for me.
“You feel different.”
I turned to look at Lily. She hovered in the doorway, her eyes trained on me.
“How so?” I asked.
Her head cocked to the side as she considered the question. “Ever since Thanksgiving, when you saw something in Sebastian’s future, you’ve been tense and sad. When you told me about Nadine and Andrew, it explained the sadness, but it was still there.”
“I’m sorry.”
Lily’s ability to feel someone’s pain and negative emotions caused a burning throughout her body before and during her healing of them, intensifying the longer she resisted.
“It’s not your fault, Chloe.” She smiled softly, tucking a stray auburn curl behind her ear. “So why the change? All the tension and sadness is nearly completely gone. You’re almost happy.”
“That’s because I think for the first time in months, I really am.” I flopped backward onto the bed, legs dangling so my feet brushed the floor. “I did it, or I guess I should say Bastian did. He changed the future.”
“So he stopped…” Her words trailed off.
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“By running into Andrew on his way to the restroom.” I gave a short laugh. “It seems so simple when I say it. Nothing I tried before made any impact then Bianca mentioned Bastian wasn’t going to the party so we decided he was our chance. We got him to go, but it still didn’t seem to make a difference. Other than making things a bit foggy, no one’s futures changed.”
“But it worked.”
I laughed. “Yeah. Everything is different.”
“So the change is good?”
I thought of the emotions that had transferred through the images in my vision.
“It’s good.”
“Then I’m glad for you,” she said, but she gave a look suggesting she wasn’t sure if she believed her own words then left. I shook my head. Sometime
s the Freaky Matlin label was too obvious.
It was Monday before I noticed the ripples, and they started with Nadine.
“Roaring Twenties,” Nadine said as we walked down the hall.
“What?”
“Hello, my New Year’s party? I watched this movie with the guy from Titanic. It takes place in the twenties.”
“The Great Gatsby?”
“Yeah, well okay so I didn’t watch the whole thing, but there’s this one scene where they’re at a party and it just hit me - Roaring Twenties. That’s what it’s called, right?”
“Yep,” I answered. At least it was a better concept than celebrity couples and I couldn’t find fault with her source material even if she had no clue what The Great Gatsby was about.
The party wasn’t supposed to happen. When Nadine realized everyone knew about her and Andrew, she would cancel it, but she didn’t because they never hooked up.
I shifted closer to her so my hand could pass into her future, being careful not to go too far in. I am at Nadine's. Dancing with Andrew. Bursting fireworks above us illuminate the yard. The fog creeps in and I pulled back.
Her party wasn’t canceled and the promises I made to go were suddenly more than meaningless agreements. That meant her future had been changed.
Every step I took along the path to stopping Andrew and Nadine from happening had focused on changing something I considered as my future. Those visions may have been of the two of them, but in my mind, they were about me. I was the one betrayed, the one who suffered, the one who became the crazy cat lady.
Yet, they were the ones who would have made the choice. By changing the situation around and taking that choice from them, I altered not only my future but also theirs and possibly even the people they would become.
Going back into the haze around Nadine, I drift past flashes of New Year’s. The fog lingered, thickening the farther in time I go. The jumbo screen at the drive-in theater. Nadine smiling. Darkness. It is… something I can’t see. And then the nothingness of death.
There was no sound to my visions, yet the words were as clear as if I had spoken them myself.
Dance alone and you lose. In a tug of war, right is right, and left is lost.
Watch Me: Teen Paranormal Romance (A Touched Trilogy Book 3) Page 11