Page 5 of The Déjà Glitch

“You too. I’ll walk out with you.”

Gemma had half a mind to offer to meet him after she went home and tended to Rex, but a long night out was not in her plans. She felt him walking closely behind her as they worked through the crowd, and she didn’t mind at all. She punched a rideshare order into her phone and saw a swarm of cars nearby on her screen, ready to pick her up in minutes. Before she made it to the door, she scanned for Lila. She caught her eye over at the other end of the bar where she was tossing back shots with a gaggle of other painfully cool influencers who had joined the party. Gemma waved, and Lila blew her a kiss. Then Lila curled her hands into a heart and pointed at Jack with a thumbs-up. Clearly, she thought they were leaving together.

The thought pushed a rush of warmth into Gemma’s cheeks as they stepped outside into the balmy evening. West L.A. teemed with nightlife: cars whizzing by, clusters of friends clutching one another and laughing, thumping bass pouring from the doors of venues where Lila was likely to end up at some point in the night. All of it both exhilarated and exhausted Gemma.

But mostly exhausted.

She saw the car she had called whip around the corner and approach. Her moments with Jack were quickly coming to an end.

He turned to her on the sidewalk, and while she expected him to ask for her phone number, or even her last name, he instead got a strange look on his face. Almost as if he was in pain.

“Gemma, before you go, I just want to—”

He cut off like he didn’t know how to finish.

Her car came to the curb behind them. The driver lowered the window and called her name into the knot of people milling around the sidewalk.

“What is it?” she asked Jack, suddenly concerned over his distress.

He took a determined breath. “I’d like to test a theory, if you don’t mind.”

She frowned at him. “O... kay—?”

Before she got the whole word out, he stepped forward and slipped a hand around her waist. He used his other hand to reach for the nape of her neck and paused with his lips inches from hers. Whatever his theory was, it obviously involved a kiss, and Gemma found herself more than willing to help him test it out.

She pressed her lips to his, answering his request for permission, and almost lost her balance when they made contact. Thankfully, his hand around her waist kept her upright. She wondered, fleetingly and through a consuming haze, if anticipating her reaction was the exact reason he’d placed his hands where he had.

It felt enormous. The pull of his lips, the soft push of his tongue against hers. She had only known the guy for an hour, but the contact felt like a lifetime of intimacy wrapped up into one showstopping kiss. Gravity shifted again, and the center of everything became the points where their bodies touched. It was the best kiss of her life, and it ended as abruptly as it had started.

Jack released her, face flushed and lips shining. She could hardly see straight, but he held her gaze with an intensity she was seeing in his eyes for the first time.

Her driver called her name again, and she hardly heard it for all the blood rushing in her head. Her heart was pounding.

Jack gave her a pleading look in their final moment together. “Please remember me, Gemma.”

He let her go, and she was too stunned to think what an odd thing that was for him to say.

CHAPTER

2

Gemma woke toa soft, wet nose pushing into her palm that was hanging over her bedside. Rex, the most faithful man in her life, woke her like clockwork every day. She relied on his elderly bladder as her alarm.

“Yes, I’m up,” she mumbled, though she still lay flat on her back blinking at the ceiling. She patted his furry head with one hand and flopped the other into the downy fluff of her comforter. Lila had gifted her the free sample after she gushed about it to a few hundred thousand Instagram followers asthe best blanketyou could buy for your bed. Gemma actually owned a fair amount of free stuff courtesy of her friend’s influencer status.

Rex took the friendly pat as invitation to jump up onto the bed. He stood over Gemma and shoved his muzzle into her hair, taking a few snorting sniffs and licking her ear.

“Yes, good morning to you too. Come on, let’s go outside.” She sat up and pushed back the covers. Rex gingerlywalked to the edge of the bed and lowered himself to the floor two paws at a time. Jumping up was fine but getting back down was hard on his knees.

Gemma climbed out of bed and combed her fingers through the scruffy hair on his head that she sometimes spiked into a little mohawk. The shelter had told her he was some kind of terrier-Lab mix. She had considered doing one of those doggie DNA testing kits now that they were readily available, but his wiry black hair and adoration of water was convincing evidence that the shelter had gotten it right all those years ago.

She passed him to take her own bathroom break before she pulled on a hoodie and stepped into flip-flops to take him outside. One thing her NoHo apartment building did not have was a yard, and Rex’s ultra-regular bathroom schedule kept her climbing the building’s staircase four times a day: once as soon as they woke, again before she left for work, then again as soon as she got home, and finally once more before bed. On the rare occasion he gobbled up something unseen on the sidewalk or she let him indulge in table scraps that she shouldn’t have, she found herself regrettably descending the stairs in a middle-of-the-night zombie daze to prevent having to shampoo her rugs.

Rex waited by the front door like a perfect gentleman, tail swishing and eyes bright. Gemma slipped her phone into her hoodie pocket and unhooked his leash from the peg on the wall. Their bathroom breaks were not long; she paid a dog sitter good money to drop in midday and take him for a real walk while she was at work. Trips one through four down the stairs culminated in a slow stroll along thesidewalk until Rex found his preferred bush and they turned back home.

They made it to the lobby, a nondescript utilitarian room with a wall of mailboxes and a perpetually empty reception desk, and passed through the glass front doors. Outside, the flat, modest expanse of North Hollywood greeted them with another day of sun. Palms and telephone poles lined the street, backlit by a blue-gray sky that only L.A. could paint. Gemma’s lungs had grown accustomed to smog; she hardly noticed it. But on days she craved fresher air, she loaded Rex shotgun in her Prius and cruised up the coast to Malibu or took him on a hike in Temescal Canyon.

Their street still slept for the most part. They wouldn’t run into anyone else until their second trip down the stairs in a few hours. Then it would bustle with babies in strollers, Rex’s neighborhood canine friends, exercise enthusiasts out for a jog. On their first trip, they could really only rely on Mr. Weaver to be stationed in his yard across the street.

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