Lost In Rewind (Audio Fools #3) (12 page)

“This may be rude, and I understand that it’s none of my business, but I would do close to anything to hear what you recall my grand-mère once telling you. I don’t think I’ll ever have an opportunity like this again.” She reaches out her hands across the table and boldly takes hold of my wrists. I let go of the bottle to allow her a better grip, surprised by her brazen behavior. Without letting go, she continues to plead. “Jeff, I’m begging you to tell me. I promise it will be our secret, and I will never mention this to another living soul, but I have a choking need to know what she predicted and why she chose to speak to you.” I hear the desperation in her voice.

I look at her small, delicate hands holding my wrists and have a kind of déjà vu moment that brings my mind back to the night I met her grandmother at the top of those stairs. I turn my wrists to expose my palms and feel the fortuneteller tracing my lines and painfully sealing my fate. I look back into Kali’s hopeful expression, awaiting my verdict, and it’s clear what I must do.

Fortunes are meaningless unless you know the lives they forever changed.

“
Take On Me
” by a-ha

I
’m lured by a stranger I know nothing about. I have this intensely, foreign, stomach-churning sense in my gut to take hold of him. He needs to tell me what Joella revealed to him all those years ago. I don’t know what I’ll do if he denies me this information. My heart beats at an unimaginable rate as I hold on to his wrists as if he’s my last hope. But hope of what? What am I hoping he tells me? He has not a thing to do with my life, or my future, except having had my grand-mère choose to speak to him. My gut and every cell in my body screams for me to keep digging and hold on to him until he speaks and puts this crazy thirst of mine to rest. I hope to God this is not my loneliness clinging to anything that once had contact with my past—my dead past.

He twists his wrists in my hands to reveal his palms, still wet from the cold beer he just held on to a moment ago. I look away from his outstretched hands and back into his eyes, but they’re shut, and he suddenly seems miles away. His nostrils attempt to capture more air, but I can see when he loses the internal battle that’s obviously been evoked from within. I can feel his grief and his struggle to not cry. The look on his face is painful, but in an odd way, also peaceful. I know the moment when the memory hits him, and I sense him give up and allow it to play in his mind. I wonder if it’s Joella’s words that triggered the turmoil I both felt and saw in his face earlier. Or maybe it was the consequences of his actions to her words that caused the chaos that still lives within him. Whatever it is—
who
ever he is—I must know what Joella Gitanos predicted. She’s gone, but her words are calling to me. I need to uncover the truth, the reason for his presence here, and what was so special about him to be the only living person that I know of to have been granted a sitting with the person I wish I had more time with.

“Jeff, are you all right?” Tears run down his cheeks. “Jeff, will you talk to me?”

He abruptly pulls his hands from my grip as if I forcefully held on to him, and then opens his eyes. They are the most extraordinary and tragic things I’ve ever seen.

“Nothing I say will make any sense to you. It only makes sense to me. She had no way, no right to know the things she said to me. I wish I could ask her why? Why did she stop me that night? Why did she say anything to me? I didn’t ask for my future. I didn’t want it.” He’s all worked up, getting himself angry. He’s right. None of this makes any sense, especially if he won’t tell me what she actually said to him.

“I want to understand. Only you can make me understand. I know I’m not her, but I’m the only living link left of her, and I spent five years here trying to understand her. Maybe I can help you. Maybe you can help me. If you need to be angry with someone, then be angry with me. I don’t care if you yell or talk; I just want you to tell me and make me understand why you—why would Joella Gitanos choose to talk to you?”

He gets up from his seat and my heart drops. He’s about to leave.
Please don’t go.
He’s about to go back to whatever hole he crawled from and leave me with even more questions than I already had. He can’t just come here, stir me up like this, and then leave.
He can’t do this to me!

I look up in shock at a man that I suddenly have a burning desire to know. I don’t want him to go. He must see the fear in my eyes, because he stretches out his hand to me. I’m confused and my brain can’t decide what’s happening. Does he want to shake my hand? Is he leaving? Or is he leaving and taking me with him?

“Come.” His hand is outstretched in midair, and he and I both know this isn’t a question. “You and I are about to get better acquainted.” His words ring with a confident finality to them, while his eyes look like a Photoshopped illusion, and I feel hypnotized by both.

I take his hand without an ounce of hesitation, and at this point, I’m quite sure I’d follow him into hell as long as he keeps looking at me.

I come out of my trance-like state and realize we’re upstairs again.
Did I go up the stairs?
I question my fuzzy memory. He pulls the heavy black curtains to one side and unlocks a door using a key. He’s now holding it open for us to enter into Joella’s old quarters—the ones that haven’t been used since I moved here five years ago, the ones I haven’t yet found the key to. Joella wasn’t able to go up and down these or any other stairs. Everything I know about this part of the building comes from stories I’ve been told by Lauren and her mother. I’ve only seen the outside portion that every patron who visits the facilities sees. I’d never been invited, nor had I ever been asked to go beyond that point. Jeff leads the way as if he’s been in this off-limits part of the bar hundreds of times before. We’re inside, standing in the middle of a round room, and I suddenly feel his strong hand holding on to me. I look around my unfamiliar surroundings and gasp at the location he’s brought us to. He moves us in deeper, pulling me toward him. My mind slowly allows the rest of me to process that I’m walking through my grand-mère’s private chambers, and that’s when I stop pretending to be strong and everything goes black.

“Baby, it’s time to get up.” I hear my maman and feel her warm lips kissing my head.

“Maman, I had a bad dream.” I whimper and crawl into her arms as I recall bits and pieces of my nightmare.

“We don’t repeat bad dreams. We allow them to evaporate with the night.” I feel my beautiful maman pull me close and gently stroke my back as I inhale her familiar vanilla scent, trying to forget the man with frightening eyes who always appears in my dreams.

“Kali, Kali, please don’t do this to me.” His voice is familiar. Where is my maman?

I slowly open my eyes before closing them again. The dim light burns my lids and makes my eyes tear up. His warm hand rubs my cheek and it forces me to melt into his touch. But as I attempt to open my eyes again, his touch is gone and so is his hand—another illusion. I find him sitting a few feet away from me with his arms folded over his body. He’s watching me intently, waiting for an explanation.

“Who are you?” I’ve asked this already, but this stranger named Jeff seems to be in no hurry to answer any of my questions.

“Perhaps I should be asking you that?” he counters, and I, too, don’t feel the need to say more than I already have.

How did he know to bring me here? Who gave him a key? I sit up from the bed he must’ve laid me on, and look at him, realizing that my gut was right about him. “How did you know about this place?” I question, somehow knowing he must’ve been so much more to Joella than I originally thought.

“I’ve never been in this room, but I’ve seen it in my mind before. She gave me a reading in the room we first passed through. It’s where you fainted. Why did you faint on me, Kali? I’m prepared to talk, but I need to make sure you’ll be okay with the things I tell you.”

I can’t look away from him and those eyes of his.

I notice a key dangling on a black cord around his neck. He instantly grabs hold of the key and hides it under his T-shirt. He momentarily looks away from me and rubs his chest, making sure the key is in its place. He’s waiting for me to answer, and I wish I could explain to him why I blacked out. I wish I could tell him that I am prepared to hear everything. But the truth is I’m scared out of my mind and I’ve never felt my heart beat this hard in all of my twenty-five years on this earth.

“
Don’t Stand So Close To Me
” by The Police

L
ately my presence seems to make the women I encounter faint on me, and this is not a welcomed side effect. I wanted to show Kali the room where the fortuneteller, her grandmother, gave me her stupid reading, but that plan just went to shit. The second we entered that room, I felt her small hand begin to shake in mine, right before going limp, as she stopped holding on and began to fall. I was instantly reminded of Sara fainting in the bathroom six months ago, allowing the familiar terror and fear to flood through my veins again. I had Kali nestled in my arms, unresponsive to my touch. I looked around to find a flat place to lay her weak body on and tried to wake her. The living room we were in only had chairs, so I proceeded farther inside and carried her to the next room before placing her on a bed. It was dark, and a strong smell of roses hit me immediately. I’d never seen this room in my life, but it felt familiar like a childhood bedroom that you never forget.

I called out her name, trying to wake her up. I couldn’t help but stroke her hair and face, and that, too, seemed natural. Who the hell is she? Where do I know her from? Why do I feel like I’ve been here already? It had only been a few seconds, but I thought perhaps I needed to call an ambulance. As soon as the thought entered my head, her eyelids flickered. I instinctively moved away from her. I didn’t need to scare her more than all of this already has. Her color slowly came back to her cheeks and my treacherous heart began to beat again.

The fear in her eyes does crazy shit to my insides. I know she’s not scared of me, but I still feel like a dick for somehow causing that look. This isn’t sexual or anything, but I crave to hug her fear away.
Who the fuck are you, Kali?
Why do I care so much who the fuck she is in the first place? She sat up, and as if reading my thoughts, asked me who I am. I don’t know how to answer that. I don’t think I’ve figured that part out yet. I feel as if she knows more about me than I know about myself. And my questions seem to elicit a similar mute response from her.