Page 75 of The Déjà Glitch
They looked at each other in confusion.
“Ma’am,” the woman who had shut the door said, “the doors are closed. This flight is cleared for takeoff.” She looked at Raul in alarm as if there were a true threat to assess.
Gemma expected him to heroically demand they open the doors and let them through, but when he stayed silent and cast her an apologetic look, she realized he hadn’t expected them to get there too late. He had helped her in hopes of a grand-gesture reunion at the gate. Going any farther would set off a cascade of events that no one wanted to be responsible for: opening the gate, delaying the flight, changing everyone’s agenda. For as much of a nightmare as LAX was, Gemma knew it ran on a strict schedule.
And she had missed her chance.
“I’m sorry, Gemma,” Raul said, and the sincere disappointment in his voice knifed into her still-pounding heart.
Everything, all the optimistic rushing of the past five minutes, came to a screeching halt. Gemma felt as if a wave had slammed into a seawall and left her battered in the surf.
Lila murmured something into her camera and stopped the video. She dropped her tripod to her side with her brow furrowed in sorrow. “I’m sorry, Gem.”
Gemma felt like she was under water as the sad scene slowly unfolded around her. The airline employees cast her concerned looks. Raul scanned the nearby gates for signs of trouble. Lila stared at her feet. The man on the tarmacwaved his light stick, and the plane pulled away from the jet bridge.
She walked to the window and pressed her hand to the glass. Night had fallen and bulbs of every color lit up the runways like a neon flower garden in neat rows. She had no idea what was going to happen when Jack left. She might wake up in the same day and be none the wiser. Or, perhaps worse, she might wake up tomorrow, actually tomorrow, and remember everything.
Raul quietly cleared his throat. “Uh, Gemma? Listen, you have to leave now before we all get in some serious trouble. I thought this was going to end differently, but...”
She turned to the forlorn look on his face. The fanfare of an emotional reunion might have at least distracted them from the penalty coming their way for breaking the rules, but they were basically sitting ducks standing at the empty gate. He was right; they had to go.
Lila said something to Raul that Gemma didn’t hear and then looped her arm through her elbow. “Come on.”
She led her through the bustling throng in a daze. They casually joined the stream of travelers heading to baggage claim and disappeared into the crowd like they had been a part of it all along. When they emptied out into the cooled night air back on the sidewalk, Gemma hardly remembered leaving the gate. The journey blurred into broken pieces she couldn’t put together for the sudden feeling of the piece that made everything whole having gone missing. Vanished into the night on metal wings, never to be seen again.
The pain in her chest was like a chord that had never been struck before. Deep and resonant and connected to apart of her heart she didn’t know was capable of such feeling. She stopped wondering how it was all possible and trusted that the ache over losing Jack meant that everything he’d told her was true. Every last bit.
And now he was gone.
“Can we stop for a second?” she asked, suddenly overwhelmed and tired.
Lila turned to her in surprise after her having been silent for the past several minutes. They had crossed the busy street and made it to the parking garage. “Sure. We can stop.”
Gemma had already started to sit on the small curb near the elevators. Their arms remained linked, so she pulled Lila down with her.
“Uh, Gem, it’s kinda gross here. Do you want to maybe—? Okay.” Lila gave up trying to talk her out of sitting on the ground. Instead, she sat down beside her and patted her arm.
“I ruined it, Lila. I ruined everything.”
Lila’s dauntless optimism seemed to have left with Jack’s plane. She let out a heavy sigh and leaned her head into Gemma’s shoulder. “Yeah, that didn’t end up the way I hoped it would. I’m sorry, Gem.”
Gemma shrugged in defeat. “I don’t know what’s going to happen now. Is tomorrow actually going to be tomorrow? Or are we stuck forever?” An uncomfortable sense of panic tightened her throat. She thought about Dr. Woods’s spinning globe and how it had stopped when he poked it with his stylus and suggested that all of reality might have been stuck as well thanks to her and Jack.
A wave of guilt washed over her. She groaned and heldher face in her hand. Her mistake may have had consequences beyond only herself, and that was too much to bear.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer for you, Gem,” Lila said. “But Idoknow there’s nothing we can do about that plane being gone. I also know we still have passes to Nigel’s show...”
Gemma lifted her head to give Lila an ashamed look of remorse. “I’m so sorry, Lila. I’ve totally ruined your birthday.”
She shook her head with a small, forgiving grin. “Nonsense. The only way you could do that is by staying here in this gutter. The night is young and who knows, this might be our only chance to live this version of it. Come on.” She stood and wiped her hands on her bottom before holding one out to pull Gemma up.
“You’re way too optimistic for someone stuck in an endless loop.”
“And you’re way too cynical for someone who fell in love in a single day.”
As much as the reminder stung, Gemma knew she was right. She had fallen. Completely.
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