Chapter 5: The Butterfly Effect
"Wait." Jamie took a tentative step toward the woman he'd been waiting for all night. "Can I just talk to you for a minute?"
By way of answer, she pulled her phone from her pocket and refreshed it. She flashed the screen so he could see. Jamie took the opportunity to move closer, positioning himself between her and the hotel's revolving doors.
Bora Bora - AF1685 - 8:48am - On Time / No gate assigned
"That's loads of time," he said. "Let me buy you a coffee."
She looked dumbfounded. Genuinely thunderstruck. Had no one ever asked her to coffee before? Not that he was asking her out in the usual sense. Jamie could see how it might come across as an odd move at 6:30 in the morning.
He waved an arm to indicate the empty lobby, then fixed her with a steady, open gaze. "Look, no cameras now. No show. Just me. I'm not asking you on a date. I need your help. Will you just hear me out? It's important, or I wouldn't ask. Life or death."
She craned past him, eyes on the revolving doors and the curb beyond. "That's the shuttle bus to the airport. I'm sorry. I need to..."
She beat a hasty path toward the doors, brushing close enough for him to feel the air current as she went past. Jamie resisted the urge to grab her elbow. He let her go by, but he turned to follow in her wake. He slipped himself between the bus's folding glass doors before they closed.
Outside the bus windows, the rising sun hung low, casting the longest shadows of the day. She stood in the aisle despite the empty seats that lined the windows in two parallel rows. She faced the front of the bus, holding the handrail overhead and keeping one hand on her suitcase. She had a purse slung across her chest and a backpack hanging from one shoulder. Eyes alert and wary. A house cat with its claws out, considering whether to scratch.
At the sight of her, Jamie closed his eyes, wishing he'd let her go. Would this waking nightmare never end? He hadn't meant to corner her. He knew better than to do that to a woman traveling alone at odd hours. She was right to have her guard up. She would never listen to him now.
The bus was empty aside from the two of them and the driver. Jamie slumped into an empty seat by the front and hung his head. "Never mind. Sorry. I'll get off at the next stop. I didn't meant to..." He shook his head, wincing at the pain in his stiff neck.
She set her backpack down and took a seat. Not across from him, but not at the farthest point away. A long moment passed before she spoke. "Are you OK?"
"Not really. No." His neck was killing him. He'd done something to it in his sleep.
There was a moment last night when he thought she might be the one to save this neck of his. But no. She'd been the one who snapped it. The noose had already been around it long before she showed her pretty face, but she'd dropped the floor out from under him. "Fuck my life."
He heard her sharp intake of breath. Such a schoolteacher, he thought. Would she give him a demerit for swearing in class?
"You were really that desperate to get on that show?" she asked instead.
He looked up. "Look, I know you didn't mean any harm, but this is my livelihood at stake. That was my career you were playing games with."
"I wasn't playing anything! They asked me for an hour of my time."
He scrubbed his eyes with his fingertips. They felt like sandpaper. He couldn't begin to imagine the state of his hair. "I know, I know. I'm sorry. It's not your fault. I'm about to get dropped by my agency, but I dug my own grave. It's nothing to do with you." He covered his eyes with his palm, unable to bear the look on her face. "Oh God. Kill me now."
"Can't you get a new agency?"
He pulled in a shuddering breath. Get ahold of yourself, man. This was pathetic. He dropped his hand and forced himself to meet her eyes. A change of subject was in order. "Who are you going with?" he asked. "To Bora Bora. Girl's trip or something?"
Her eyes flicked down for a split second before she looked at him again. She smiled, but she was clearly a rank amateur when it came to faking her emotions. "No. Just me. My honeymoon for one."
He blinked at her.
"You've never heard of a woman traveling alone before?"
"Let me guess. Did you recently finish reading Eat Pray Love?"
The tiniest trace of a smile quirked her lips. "No, but I saw the movie."
"Right." He arched his neck back, attempting to crack the vertebrae between his shoulder blades. "The book was better."
"You read it?"
"I read things from time to time."
She looked skeptical.
"I am semi-literate, despite appearances."
"You're not exactly the target audience. That's all."
He shrugged. "Know thy enemy..."
She smiled outright then. She pulled out her phone and directed her attention at the screen so as not to give him the satisfaction. "Oh shit."
"Problem?"
"Delayed two hours."
He adjusted his features into a suitably doleful expression. "Bad luck. They don't usually delay the early morning flights."
She sighed, still looking at her phone. And then she said with far more force. "Oh shit."
"What now? Cancelled?"
But no. Something else. She looked genuinely shaken. He leaned toward her. For once the look on his face was not a mask. "What happened?"
Her index finger floated upward, requesting silence as she read. A furrow formed between her eyes. Jamie scooted across the aisle into the empty seat beside her. She held the phone out for him to read over her shoulder, scrolling with her thumb back up to the top of the page.
CNN International
Dozens missing in French Polynesia after mudslides near popular resort
"That's where I was supposed to be," she whispered. Not to him. To the universe at large, perhaps. She didn't seem entirely aware of Jamie's presence.
Her hand was shaking. He touched her wrist to steady it. She looked at him with rounded eyes. "Literally. The resort where I'm supposed to be. There are tourists missing."
Jamie sensed her gaze pass through him as if he were a ghost. The tremor in her hand had spread. He could feel the faint vibration from her whole frame trembling. He fought the urge to put his arm around her.
Maybe he should have. Jamie wasn't sure. He did his best to comfort her with words. "You're fine. You're not there. You're half a world away."
"I was supposed to fly last night. I got bumped." She squeezed her eyes shut. "They asked, and I said— I said—"
He did slip his arm around her shoulders then. She didn't seem to mind. She leaned against him. "So that's what brought you to my cocktail table last night."
"I said yes. Pure random chance."
"No such thing." He squeezed her shoulders and fluttered the fingers of his other hand in the air. "A butterfly flapped its wings somewhere..."
She looked up at him. At him, not through him. He had the strangest feeling she was seeing him for the first time since they met. He dropped his arm.
"A butterfly flapped its wings," she repeated slowly, finishing the ending that he'd allowed to trail off. "And changed the weather half a world away?"
He hadn't expected her to recognize his reference. The Butterfly Effect. Tiny changes and their consequences, compounding infinitely through time and space, could explain the most random-seeming of events. An air current from the beat of a butterfly's wing could set off a chain of events that led to a hurricane on the other side of the planet. "Everyone believes in either random chance or fate," he explained, "but the truth is more complicated than either one."
She nodded. "I wrote a term paper once about Chaos Theory."
"Did you really?" Good God, he thought, when was the last time he met someone who understood his ramblings? But she didn't look at him blankly. On the contrary, she looked vaguely incredulous that the likes of him might be familiar with such a concept.
"I haven't thought about that in years," she said. "Did you study it in college?"
"Saw the movie." He released his hold on her shoulders. "You have it wrong though. Close but not quite."
Her eyebrows went up.
He grinned and bumped her shoulder with his own. "A butterfly flapped its wings in Bora Bora and changed your airline ticket half a world away..." He pulled out his phone and refreshed the screen to show her.
Cozumel - AM2834 - 7:34am / Gate 34E
"I can't," she whispered.
"You can't go to Bora Bora. Come with me instead."
"A whole month?"
"A nice break from reality. We'll lie side by side on a beach and forget the world exists."
She searched his eyes, and Jamie knew in that moment he needed to drop the mask. Let her see the truth, the mess of a man he really was. He drew her an outline of the facts in rapid fire. "Listen, I'm backed into a corner. My agency is going to drop me, and already I'm damaged goods. I'm too old to start fresh somewhere else. D'you understand? I need this or I'm dead."
He held his breath and prayed to whatever higher power might preside over butterflies and beautiful optometrists.
"I suppose..." she said at last. "As long as it's strictly a career thing."
"As opposed to what?"
"I have less than zero interest in a romance."
Not with somebody like him, Jamie silently amended. Oof. He couldn't help but laugh at her directness.
"Right, of course," he chuckled. "All purely for show."
She bit her lip, and Jamie sensed her making mental calculations. "OK, but I have one condition. Non-negotiable."
"Anything," he said.
Her eyes flitted briefly to his mouth before meeting his open gaze again. "No kissing allowed. For show or otherwise. Is that going to be a problem?"
Jamie straightened his face and put his hand across his heart. "Of course not. You have my word."
She held his gaze for a long moment. Finally, she nodded and repeated his vow back to him. "Fine. You have my word as well."
Jamie tilted back his head, and the knot in his neck released its tension all at once. "Thank you, thank you, thank you." He breathed the words three times, a chant to the ceiling of the bus, before turning to Cora again. "You're saving my life," he said to his salvation. "I swear I will make it up to you somehow."
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