Lorelai nodded, feeling her shoulders relax. Itwashuge. Her biggest fear had been that she was some kind of modern-day Grim Reaper, but that wasn’t the case. She rubbed her temples. If only she could get these nightmares to stop. It was hard to see the positive side when images of death continued to haunt her in her sleep.
‘Anything else?’ Joanie sipped her tea, and snuggled in closer to Lorelai.
‘I’m still having nightmares,’ Lorelai said and Joanie squeezed her arm in sympathy. She thought carefully about what she wanted to say next. ‘I’m desperately sad about what I saw when I kissed Darren, but I don’t feel the same way about the other two deaths I saw. I’m glad we changed James’s fate, but Darren’s death has hit me harder. Maybe it’s because I got to know him a little bit and there was a connection therebeforeI kissed him.’
‘Right…’ Joanie knew where this was going.
Lorelai’s voice was shaking. ‘Which means I don’t think I’d ever be able to have a meaningful relationship,’ she said in a rush.
‘Lorelai…’ Joanie said in a warning tone.
‘I’m serious. If just a brief conversation with Darren has leftme feeling this way, how am I going to feel if I fell in love with someone? How could I put myself through seeing what end is currently mapped out for them and feel that kind of heartbreak every time I kissed them?’
‘Are you thinking of Grayson when you say that?’ Joanie’s eyes lit up.
‘Are you even listening to me?’ Lorelai sat up and reached for her tea.
‘Answer my very intrusive question and then I’ll listen.’
In truth, Lorelai had been thinking only of Grayson throughout this whole ordeal. She had conducted her experiment last nightbecauseof Grayson.
‘Yes, Joanie.’ Lorelai rubbed a hand over her tired face. ‘I am thinking of Grayson.’
‘Knew it. I knew it, I knew it,I knew it.’ Joanie punctuated each word with a prod.
‘But you’re not listening. Ican’tthink about him anymore. My life works best the way I was living it before. Alone.’ Lorelai felt a tightening in her chest. This was the right decision. This was how she could protect herself, and everyone else. So why did she feel as though her heart was breaking?
Because it is.
‘No, Lollie, you can’t honestly think that’s for the best,’ Joanie pleaded.
‘It is. Say I fall hard for Grayson and kiss him and see how he dies. Then what? I just live with that pain, carry it with me every day? What if he’s only got a couple of years, or months, left? What if he dies a horrible, tragic death that completely changes everyone’s lives? How could I stay with himknowingwhereit was headed? How am I supposed to live with that? I can’t.’ Lorelai didn’t realise she was crying until her voice cracked.
Joanie turned to face Lorelai, and began to wipe away her tears with her sleeve. ‘Look at you, you snotty mess. Come here.’
They sat in silence for a while, Joanie holding Lorelai, letting her cry it all out. Joanie didn’t speak again until the tears stopped, and Lorelai’s breathing returned to normal.
‘Sweetie,’ she began, ‘if Grayson is going to do die of old age in sixty years or so, then there’s not going to be anything you can do to change that and it’s still going to be sad for everyone who knew him. Death is a part of life and we all have to deal with people we love dying. It’s inevitable. If there’s one thing we can all be certain of, it’s that we’re all going to die one day and you can’t stop that from happening. Yes, you can do something no one else can. But if you see that he’s going to die young in some kind of preventable accident or tragedy, then you might be able to stop it. You have the gift of foresight, so you could make sure he gets the old-age death.’
Joanie’s words hung in the air. Joanie only ever spoke of what Lorelai could do as a positive. Lorelai had thought Joanie said these things to balance out Lorelai’s negative views on it all, on how she saw her ability as something that made her less than everyone else. But ever since Grayson had entered the picture and they spoke of it more and more, she realised Joanie genuinely thought of it as a good thing. Something to be embraced.
‘This doesn’t feel like agift. It feels like a dirty secret, and this huge responsibility all at once. I just want to be normal.’
‘There’s no such thing as normal!’ Joanie threw up her hands, exasperated. ‘Everyone thinks they’re not normal. Newsflash – normal is in the eye of the beholder.’
Lorelai shook her head. ‘But you don’t know how thisthingfeels! It’s too much.’
‘My dear sweet friend,’ Joanie continued, ‘how do you not realise just how many people would be desperate to know when their loved ones were going to be taken from them? I think you’d be surprised at how many people would want to know so they could relish their final days, and say all the things they never got to say. To be able to plan a proper goodbye. People spend their entire lives wondering,What if I’d said that? What if I’d done this? Maybe if they’d known I felt this way things would be different. You will never have to deal with that if you choose not to. One kiss and you and your loved ones can prepare for the day everyone always feels unprepared for.’
Lorelai took a few sips of her tea and thought about what Joanie was saying. She was making valid points, and was offering a point of view Lorelai hadn’t considered before, but Lorelai knew it couldn’t be as simple or as straightforward as that. People were different. There was no blanket rule for everyone. One person might want to be prepared for the day they died, while the next person could find that knowledge a burden and end up spending their life waiting for the axe to fall.
‘So, you’d want to know, would you? If I kissed you right now, you’d want to know how you were going to die?’ Before Lorelai had even finished her sentence Joanie was nodding fervently.
‘Yes! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if I knew how I was going to die, I’d know I was invincible through everything else.’
‘It doesn’t work like that!’ Lorelai exclaimed.
‘Why not?’
