26. CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 26
N early midnight, Lexi yawned while exiting the baggage claim area, pulling her suitcase behind her as she stepped to the arrivals pick-up curb. She scanned the long line of cars for Margot’s shiny black Audi convertible while taking in the familiar sights of the Philly airport. She was glad to be home again. Still, she had to force aside the memory of how the noise of the jets had affected Gideon just a couple weeks prior.
A few days after her notorious Fourth of July experience, she’d hired a pet sitter for Dexter and booked a flight to spend a week with her parents in Phoenix. Her frayed nerves had been ready for a heaping helping of her mother’s homemade cobbler served up with a giant dollop of love and attention, and her parent’s desert home was as calm a place as any to do some major life planning.
While there, she’d taken the first step of telling her folks she’d met a man, a musician who toured the world performing. She knew they weren’t savvy enough with the internet to Google him, though she’d considered creating a fake web page showing the tour dates of one Gideon Ashe, concert pianist. Assuming she chose to make the transition to his world, eventually she and Gideon would tell her parents the truth and introduce them to her new world. But it was not yet time for that.
Two quick honks and a flash of platinum hair announced Margot’s arrival, and Lexi threw her bag in the tiny trunk before slipping into the leather bucket seat beside her bestie. Though it had only been a week, it felt wonderful to be back. It was much easier to believe that Gideon and his world actually existed when she was here in Philadelphia.
While she’d been in Arizona, she’d almost come to think the whole thing had been an elaborate delusion, especially since she’d been unable to connect telepathically with him from that spot on the globe. Before she’d left, Gideon had warned her that might be the case, so she hadn’t freaked out at her inability to reach him, but as soon as her plane had landed at home, they’d had a lovely, flirty, mental reunion.
Margot leaned across the console to hug her. “Welcome home, baby doll.” She pulled out of the airport and onto the highway for the drive back to Old City.
With the top down, the breeze whipped Lexi’s hair in her face, and she dug through her purse for a scrunchie to pull it up into a tight bun. The rushing sound of the wind and road didn’t stop Margot from blasting her with questions, however.
“You didn’t tell your mom and dad about what happened on the Fourth, did you?”
“Of course not,” Lexi said as they drove over a bridge crossing the Schuylkill River, the bright neon lights of Philly’s big sports complex looming up on the other side. “They knew I was out of sorts, though. How could they not? They’re my parents. I blamed it all on having been fired. I told them I needed a little down time to make some big life decisions.”
Margot shot her a glance, studying her face before she turned back to watch the road. “And were you?”
“Was I what?”
“Making big life decisions. You’re not honestly considering moving to the other universe, are you? ”
“Of course, I am. If it wasn’t for the damn transition process and the—”
“The six hours of sheer agony. Your possible death.”
“Margot.”
“It’s crazy. You’re being crazy, Lex. You barely know him.” She checked over her shoulder before swerving into the exit lane.
Lexi gripped the door handle, her tension rising, and not just because Margot took the exit ramp onto Columbus Boulevard at a far faster speed than she should have. Lexi hated being called crazy, and her best friend damn well knew it.
“I know him a lot better than you can imagine. Telepathy, capiche ? We’re connected. You wouldn’t understand.” Though truthful, she hadn’t meant for her words to be so harsh and condescending, but the decision was difficult enough without Margot playing devil’s advocate and purposely pushing her buttons. “Anyway, I haven’t decided anything yet. If I could just get a vision, I’d—”
“Still no vision? That’s got to be a bad sign.”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” she said, but Margot had unintentionally voiced her biggest concern.
Over the course of her contemplative week in Phoenix, Lexi realized that though she appeared brave on the surface, ready to face anything in the name of love, when push came to shove, she was truly frightened of the transition process. Terrified of the pain, of the possibility of… dying.
But it went deeper than that, this mucky swamp of indecision she was rapidly becoming mired in. Yes, she’d learned to control her visions and was happy about that, but they currently weren’t giving her any more information. She had no idea if the transition would be a success or not. And as Margot had just pointed out, Lexi feared that the lack of visions was a bad sign. Does no vision of the future mean no future?
Strangely, though she’d lived most of her life without any control of the visions and had been used to the idea that her destiny was out of her hands, now that she could ask for visions on demand, she’d become paralyzed by the idea of acting without the information of her foresight. She found herself unable to take a step without knowing what was around every corner.
Her curse, which had become a blessing, had now become a different curse.
Margot turned north onto Fifth, passing Independence Hall on their left. “Speaking of visions, have you had any at all? What about anything to do with that… what are they called… Orpheus something?”
“Prometheus Group. And no, I haven’t seen anything. But I assume the other world has a hoard of precogs and clairvoyants working on the case.”
Margot shot her a look, missing a giant pothole in the road as she did so. Lexi’s teeth rattled in her skull and she gripped the door harder.
“Really? I hadn’t thought of that, but you must be right. Have they found anything?” Margot asked as she shifted gears, her fingers white knuckling far more than the mild late-night traffic should’ve called for. “Can their seers even see what’s going on in our world though, across the dimensions like that?”
Lexi shrugged. Between the late hour and her friend’s relentless interrogation, she was growing fatigued, and anxious to be home. “I honestly don’t know. I assume so.”
She wasn’t altogether sure, however, if her own ability for clairvoyance across dimensions was a common gift, or if it was tied specifically to her telepathic connection with Gideon. She suspected the latter, but was far too sleepy at the moment to delve into the details of psychic parameters with Margot, who seemed to have downed a fair amount of caffeine late in the day and was becoming exhausting in her own right.
They pulled up at Lexi’s apartment, and though her friend was still plying her with questions and was ready to come inside to continue the conversation, Lexi thanked her for driving and begged off.
After reuniting with her cat, unpacking her suitcase, and changing into a nightshirt, Lexi grabbed a pint of Cherry Garcia ice cream for dinner and sank onto the couch. That was when she realized something—she was depressed.
Now that the extreme adrenalin rush of the Fourth of July and following few days had died down, fear crept in. Fear of the transition, fear of leaving everything and everyone she knew, fear that her gifts were suddenly failing her with their silence. She couldn’t decide what to do, feeling too blind to make any decision, and over the past week she’d become thoroughly immobilized.
She knew she’d had no choice but to have gone through the portal on that fateful Friday night. If she hadn’t, the visions would have kept haunting her. And she loved everything about the wonderful world she’d found, loved that she could be at home there with her psychic gifts. More than anything, she loved Gideon.
Madly, deeply, loved him.
But somewhere over the past week—maybe in the face of her father’s goofy jokes and her mother’s warm hugs—her excitement had become anxiety, her anxiety had become depression, and now, her pint of Ben and Jerry’s had become empty.
Lexi tossed the carton and went to bed, telling herself she was just overtired and being silly. She didn’t have to decide anything right now, after all. Gideon had said so himself.
She had all the time in the world to make up her mind.