Unhinged

Chapter 3

The long dreaded meeting with Nora had arrived. Nora was often in a sour mood and rarely smiled for anyone, but Alexis had the ability to bring that out of her. "Thanks for FINALLY meeting me." Alexis glanced over at the driver's seat, a slight smirk forming on her face. "So where are we going?" Alexis asks, "I don't know but I heard there's a great lunch spot called Lucali, want to go there?" Alexis nodded as Nora entered the address into the search bar, the traffic was horrid, which was what is to be expected for a Sunday. Looking for parking was even worse. The streets were lined with cars, things were different here, people enjoyed the weekends thoroughly, they made every minute count.

They walked into Lucali, and in moments of silence, Alexis often took the time to recenter herself, to find her peace, but she carried a small dread, masked very well but Alexis was a talker and the silence was deafening. "Here you go ladies." A man dressed in a white shirt and an apron with a tag named "Jonathan." They both sat down intensely scanning through the menu.

"You haven't said a word in the last ten minutes, is something bothering you?" Of course there was, but she was not about to let Nora know, she had the ability to downplay any situation that she was not directly affected by. Alexis had come to her senses realizing she hadn't addressed the question yet. "Yeah, I've just been so exhausted lately, I don't know why." Nora nodded to acknowledge the statement,"Maybe it's work?" Alexis knew it wasn't work, it was Elijah, their marriage had been calmly moving along but she craved chaos, a detrimental part of her craved the madness of doing something that she shouldn't. All of her friends knew this side of her, they had not seen it in a long time.

"Yeah, John's got me working on something that is extremely heavy, I love it but it can take a lot out of me." Nora was never interested in Alexis' job so of course there wasn't a follow up question. They had both decided on getting bottomless mimosas and an assortment of mini cakes and sandwiches. Alexis knew that her liver was truly being put through way too much but alcohol was necessary to get through this brunch with Nora. The conversation droned on mostly about the guy Nora was currently dating and about how the people at work were all idiots. Not her colleagues, the patrons. This always tickled Alexis because that was the sole purpose of her job, to serve people.

Only a couple of hours had passed but both Nora and Alexis had gone through at least five glasses of mimosas. Through a fuzzed state, Alexis allowed herself to let go of a little bit of what she had been so intensely been holding on to, due to Nora's dismissive nature she felt that she could allow herself this little bit of relief.

"You know what is so strange? I've been seeing this weird lady, and the name Ava is glued to the back of my mind. I have no idea who she is or what is going on but in the last few days I feel like she's just been there." Alexis knew not to get into the specifics, she kept repeating to herself not to mention the fabric store or how she had received a distressing text that had not retained in her phone. Nora looked like she was deep in thought, and as predicted she had said something along the lines of maybe it could be a sign from the universe. Nora enjoyed her fair share of the paranormal and attributed some of it to that, insinuating that maybe Alexis was being haunted. Alexis knew that Nora would not have offered anything insightful so she took what she had said to humor herself when she was alone.

A text pops up on her phone in a moment of shared humor, the name read Devon. Her secret, not lovers but not friends, they had shared a connection on several fateful nights. He had a way to bring her out of her shell, to almost make her someone else. He was the chaos.

"When am I seeing you again?" Her chest tightened reading this, not out of fear but because Devon had the ability to make her nervous, which almost never happened, it was always the other way around. The best well kept secret, no one knew except for Mia and even she didn't know the full extent of emotion, to speak on it would bring it into reality, almost a mantra for Alexis.