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Finally, he picks the jacket up, tucks it under his arm, and begins to walk toward me.
For the briefest of moments, we make eye contact, and I swear he’s going to recognize me, but just like everyone else, he walks right through me.
I turn to follow him out the door, but just as I do, everything around me goes dark.
• • •
I blink three times at the bright red hand on the crosswalk sign across the street. On the fourth blink, the little white stick figure appears.
Mackenzie steps off the curb and then stops. “Are you coming?”
He’s not looking at me strangely.
Well, maybe a little strangely, seeing as it’s time to walk and I’m frozen in place, but he’s definitely not looking at me like I transported myself to another dimension and then reappeared out of thin air.
Still, I need confirmation.
“What just happened?”
Mackenzie looks from me to the light. “I’m not sure I understand the question.”
I shake my head and rephrase. “Did anything weird happen to me just now? Did I go anywhere?”
A deep line forms between his eyebrows. “No?”
I was in that bar for at least thirty minutes. Long enough for Mackenzie to notice something.
“I didn’t zone out? Even for a second?”
Mackenzie blinks back at me. “Like a seizure?”
My pulse quickens. “Yes!”
He shakes his head. “No. At least not that I saw.”
My insides deflate. Although I’m grateful it wasn’t a seizure, that would at least be a logical medical explanation.
“Hey, are you okay?” The crease between his eyes deepens enough to see it from where I’m standing.
I nod, more out of habit, but then notice the crosswalk countdown has started.
“We should go.” I leap off the curb and pass him, taking off in a jog-walk. Mackenzie catches up just as I reach the other side.
The rest of the walk back to our apartment is free of unwanted hallucinations. We are both quiet as we climb the stairs and search our pockets for our apartment key.
Mackenzie finds his first, sliding it into the lock. He turns the handle and holds open the door to let me in.
I head straight for my bedroom, feeling like lying down is probably my best course of action, but he calls just as I reach my door.
“Hey, Annalise…”
I turn and, for a moment, ignore what happened with the jacket. “Yeah.”
He takes a step toward me but then stops. “Tell Koko ‘thanks for coming.’ It meant more than she probably realized.”
The warm, fluttery feeling from before returns. “I will be sure to do that.”
He smiles, and then his gaze dips momentarily to my chest. I feel a slow heat bloom beneath my ribs until it occurs to me that there is a real, bona fide reason why he is looking at me that way.
