SKIPPING TIME

Chapter 25

                 

Cacee jumped to her feet to get more towels. But the momentary intuition that there was something important happening, something she kept missing, abruptly grew stronger. She turned and looked directly at Jess for one of the few times since they'd broken up.

He leaned against the closed bathroom door, seeming to watch Ray. His eyes, however, were blank and unseeing. In fact, his face might have been a white wall for all the expression it contained. Cacee froze as cold fingers gripped her spine. She'd seen that face before. Once. At the museum. As if sensing her gaze, Jess lifted his eyes to her. They remained as empty as the carved eyes of a statue but, as Jess looked away from Ray, Cacee heard the water shut off.

A memory bloomed in her mind with such startling vividness she might have been there. The museum again. Jess's face, blank and expressionless as he stared at... something... a painting? Yes. He was staring at some kind of painting on the wall. But a painting of what?

She strained, but saw only darkness, like there was an actual hole in her recollections. With a frustrated scowl, she returned to the memory of Jess looking away from the painting. In her mind's eye she watched as Jess turned from the wall and every portrait in the room landed, face-down, on the floor.

Cacee's eyes widened. Like the second he looked away from Ray, the water shut off. Her head jerked towards her father. He was mopping up the mess of suds. Just like he mopped up yesterday when Jess walked into the room and the sink overflowed. And like he swept up when Jess came out of the backroom and one of the blades from the ceiling fan crashed into the coffee table. Like he cleaned up from all the accidents and malfunctions that plagued the warehouse but never happened until Jess came in the room.

Her mind rewound and then seemed to play in fast-forward. The wind in the alleyway the night they got mugged. The wind and the trash whipping around, repeatedly crashing into his opponents... but never hitting Jess. The same wind in the alleyway when Ray's enemies attacked. And the blond man, the night she and Jess arrived in New York. The blond creep who kept telling them to go with him. Jess standing up, the wind whipping around, the trash at his feet dancing as the streetlight shattered. Then at the motel. Ray and Jess arguing. All the bulbs in the room breaking. And here. Jess waking up for the first time. All the lights going dark as he swung himself out of bed to go after Ray.

A combination of fear and awe turned Cacee's legs to jelly, and she staggered a little. She clearly recalled Ray's story about Bear and how positive Ray had been that, "Prom-Queen-Carrie-telekinesis" didn't exist. She whispered, "Holy crap! He got that one wrong, didn't he?"

She was unaware that she'd come to this same realization at least six other times, just as she was unaware of her head swinging back towards Jess. Or of the way his eyes immediately locked with her own. She didn't notice how he winced and rubbed the back of his neck. More importantly, she didn't notice the tiny, almost imperceptible shake of his head as they stared at one another. No. Don't. Stop.

The expression vanished from Cacee's face, as if all her emotions were flowing down some invisible drain. She and Jess looked at each other and a comforting warmth started in her mind and seemed to spread outward, calming her body, loosening the knots in her neck and soothing the incessant ache in her joints. Everything will be okay. The thought filled her, pushing away everything but the calm peacefulness that comes from knowing all is well.

"Sweetheart? Can I get some towels?"