Page 49 of The Déjà Glitch
“What’s going on, Jack?” she asked, fearing the answer.
He tried to pry Angelica off himself but only succeeded in moving her backward a few inches. “Gemma, this is not what it looks like.”
“Oh?” she said, the pain in her chest uncomfortably radiating out into her limbs. “It looks like you forgot to tell me you have a girlfriend.” She hated the tearful pinch in her voice almost as much as she hated the sight of Angelica Reyes clinging to him like plastic wrap.
Angelica’s mouth popped open. She still had her arms looped around his neck. She looked back and forth between Jack and Gemma. “Wait, are you guys like...?” Her brow furrowed and she scoffed at Jack. “Oh, this is rich. You lose your shit over me sleeping with someone else, and here you are days later with some doe-eyed assistant? Nice, Jack.”
Gemma reeled at everything she’d said. She felt as if she’d stepped in a hornet’s nest and was being stung all over. She obviously didn’t know Jack like she thought shedid, and the need not to have her heart trampled in front of a stranger—twostrangers, apparently—overcame her.
“I need to go,” she said, and headed for the door.
“Gemma, wait!” Jack blurted.
Angelica folded her arms and glared at her. “Yeah, probably best for you to leave, sweetie. Girls with your brand of ambition don’t usually fare well in this town.”
The mean words felt like a taunt verging on a threat. Gemma pushed past them and out the door back into the sunny day.
“Angelica, stop it,” she heard Jack say behind her. “She’s not my assistant. I don’t even have an assistant.”
Gemma made it to the gate and hurried down the stairs. The warm, tender feelings she’d had moments before from seeing bits of Jack’s life on display felt like they were tumbling from her grasp and shattering on the stones. She made it back to his driveway to find a shiny red convertible parked sideways and blocking in Jack’s car. Of course Angelica Reyes drove a sports car fit for a villain. Gemma skirted around it and set off into the street.
The narrow avenues of the hills had no sidewalks. Traffic was minimal and cars and pedestrians and bikes all shared the same cracked concrete space. The sun beat down on her from above as she started in the opposite direction from which they had driven in. She made it two houses down before she heard Jack.
“Gemma, wait! Please.”
He had said the same words so many times that day; what was once more?
She kept walking until he caught up and reached for her arm.
“Leave me alone, Jack.”
He held on to her so that she turned to face him. His eyes were as blue as ever under the soaring sky. Remnants of the shock she’d seen inside his house lingered on his face. “Please, let me explain.”
Embarrassment at her foolishness for letting herself trust him prickled her whole body. “You didn’t tell me you have a girlfriend. Convenient detail to leave out of this little fantasy of yours.”
“She’s not my girlfriend!”
Gemma looked over his shoulder to make sure Angelica hadn’t followed him. “No? Then why did she show up desperate to see you and make amends before she flies off to Europe? You sure you didn’t plan to meet up over there and start your new life together?” Gemma felt the bite in her tone growing harsher. Her defenses were up, and she’d had enough experience getting hurt to sharpen her blades.
Jack ran his hands through his hair, exasperated. “Look, I’m sorry she’s here, but I don’t know what’s going on. She’s never shown up today before. I haven’t seen her in essentially five months!”
He sounded sincere, but she found it hard to care.
“Well, she’s here now, so.” Gemma turned to leave again, feeling a hot ache at the back of her throat that felt embarrassingly like tears. She was not willing to listen to any more far-fetched explanations of things that had or had not happened before, and she was not willing to cry in front of him.
“Gemma, wait!”
“Goodbye, Jack!”
“Where are you even going?” His voice faded behind her. She did not turn around but pictured him standing inthe middle of the sunny street with his arms out in question.
She continued up the road and around the bend. A slight incline forced her breath to come out harder. By the time she made it to an intersection and turned downhill, a layer of sweat had sprung up on her skin. She continued walking, angry at Jack and at herself for entertaining the idea of something possibly blossoming between them and doing her best not to imagine Angelica Reyes feeling him up in his house. Perhaps they had gone to his bedroom, and she was giving him a proper goodbye before she jetted off to star in another blockbuster.
“Argh!” Gemma grumbled, and swiped at a nearby lilac blossom innocently dangling in someone’s yard like a bunch of fragrant grapes. The familiar smell hit her like a smack in the face. She noted that the bush hung over a sandstone wall made of mismatched bricks of all sizes. Some were skinny, some were wide, some were little squares, and others long bars. The striking pattern stood out as familiar not because she had walked the street on a previous iteration of the day, but because she had walked it as a child.
She’d been ignoring the coincidence, pretending it wasn’t some bizarre and possibly cruel twist of fate from the moment Jack had turned them into the hills, but she knew exactly where she was. She knew the lilacs, the stone wall, the latticework wound in wisteria across the street. If she looked a few houses down, she’d see a distinctively tall palm tree rising into the sky like a beacon.
And there it was.