When We Collided(63)

I don’t know how long I’ve been searching exactly, but it’s night again, and I am empty-handed, magic-numbers-wise. So I stop at home to look around my house for 760.

My mom is in the kitchen with a local painter friend, drinking wine and looking kind of dressed up.

“Hey,” she says. “I was just starting to wonder where you’ve been.”

“Oh, you know, just playing around with the kids and Jonah,” I say, hurrying past. Jonah. The magic word—one quick mention and whatever I’m doing is wholesome and innocent and inherently good.

She laughs and rolls her eyes at her friend. Once I’m halfway up the stairs, I hear her say stuff like how I’m almost never home, always with my cute boyfriend, ya know, teenagers in the summertime, gotta love it.

There’s some dirt on my trench coat, though I have no idea how it got there, so I pull a new outfit from my closet—a colorful skirt that sits low on my hip but flows all the way to my ankles. It covers a lot of skin, so I choose a black tube top that shows some of my stomach. I toss the fedora onto the bed and pile bracelets up my arms. I’m a jangly, brightly hued vision. A vision! Sylvia dances around my room in hyper approval.

My laptop catches my eye, and I figure, you know, why not? I search 760.

Oh Holy Mother of the Infinite Stars. It’s one of the area codes for San Diego.

That’s it!

And in the very same moment, I start to wonder what this number trail is leading me toward. It could be anything. It could be something the rest of the world doesn’t even realize exists. It could be the secret to time travel. Maybe the universe has chosen to reveal this secret only to me, and if I just keep following the numbers, I’ll be the first human to achieve it. Oh, where will I travel to first? Maybe the universe will give me a number sign for that, too! Back to the 1920s, to my ballet days, into suffrage and jazz? I dearly hope so. I’m delighted to be the chosen one, and I’ll do the universe proud, too. All my life has been building to this. My hands tremble with the knowledge that I’m heading toward something so remarkable. Maybe I’ll find it in San Diego, maybe San Diego will just give me numbers to lead me farther, but no matter: I’ll follow the clues anywhere.

My Vespa keys jangle in my hand, and I call to my mom that I’ll be back later, and she barely looks up, laughing to her friend about who knows what.

I walk smack into Jonah on my front porch.

“Hey,” I say, breezing past him. I’m a girl on a mission.

“Hey.” He trots beside me until he’s in my peripheral vision. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything is magnificent, lover, but I’ve gotta bolt. Got a date with history.”

He keeps following alongside me. “I don’t know what that means.”

“Neither do I, really, but I’ll find out, won’t I?”

I feel him grasp my arm. His eyes trace down my whole body. “What are you wearing?”

“Um, clothes, what does it look like?”

He frowns—what a buzzkill, honestly—and whispers, “Viv, that bra thing is, like, completely see-through.”

“It’s a tube top, and I don’t care. Nothin’ you haven’t seen before!” Then I laugh and pull my tube top down for a second just because I can. Jonah looks horrified and tugs it back up, glancing around to see if the neighbors have noticed my bare breasts in the one split second I set them free. Prude. “Relax, my love, everything is wonderful, and there’s nothing to worry about.”

Jonah frowns, and at this point, he’s seriously cramping my style and pissing me off. “Are we okay?”

Ugh. “Of course. Why wouldn’t we be? I mean, I’m fabulous; I don’t know how you are.”

He circles his arms around my waist, and the heat of his bare skin feels good on my stomach—soothing. “I haven’t heard from you all day. You didn’t answer my texts. I don’t know. We fought and then . . . you came over last night, and . . . I don’t know.”

My mind can barely make out his words because I’m looking at his lips and my body is like a hmmmmmmmm sound from the tips of my ears to my toes. I pull him into me, closer, and I kiss him with all the ferocity that I feel. It’s like heat blooming all over my body, and I can’t think of any reason not to get naked with him right here in front of God and any of the neighbors because I really don’t care. Sex is a natural thing, you know, like, big freaking deal.

He wrenches back from me and says, “Hey. Can we just talk?”

Jesus. Like, honestly. Way to slam the brakes on what could have been a lovely naked roller-coaster ride, but WHATEVER.

“Can’t. On a mission. Gotta fly because there are big things in store for me.”

“Where are you going?”

“It’s a surprise.” I mount my Vespa, my noble steed.

“Can I go with you?”

Nope! Wait. He could be useful for directions. I don’t have a plan for that, and it would be easy enough to drive south and wait to see signs for San Diego—or more numbers before I even get there; who knows?! But he might as well come, I guess.

“Okay. Sure. Climb aboard, second matey.”

His face disappears under the extra helmet, and he hands me my new helmet.

“Um, no. I cannot be caged inside that thing; I can’t breathe.”