Pyro

“What do you mean?” I asked. He couldn’t be serious. “I’ve always helped in the past.”

“This time you can’t,” the man said.

“I can’t believe that. I won’t accept that.”

“You’ll have to. I can guarantee that you won’t get a premonition to prevent it. You won’t find out about it until after the fact.”

“Then how do you know about it?”

“You know why.”

“That can’t be the only reason. You’re supposed to keep me from having that premonition, aren’t you? You’re supposed to help prevent me from seeing that premonition.”

“No. Hailey, you know that I don’t know how those things work anymore than you do. You also know that you don’t always see everything. You also know that you’re not supposed to help everyone.”

“I know, but I should be able to. You’ve just said that someone who’s important to me is going to be in that fire and that I can’t stop that person, because you don’t who that person is or why they’re so important to me.”

“That’s what I said.”

“So I don’t understand why I’m not supposed to help and why you already know something that I’m not supposed to know. I also don’t understand why you’re warning me about this. If you’d never said anything I wouldn’t do everything that I possibly could to trigger a premonition or just go to that hotel and stay on the look out.”

“I don’t know either. My powers don’t normally work that way. At least, they never have before.”

“Jackson…”

“Look, I never should have revealed myself to you in the first place.”

“Why did you?”

“You know why.”

“Because I was near death…”

“Because I like you, and I care about you. I’ve been with you your whole life. I don’t want anything to happen to you. Not if I can prevent it.”

“Jackson, you know you’re too old for me.”

He laughed. “I know, you’ve told me often enough. One of these days, you’ll say yes.”

“Jackson, my friend, I’ve already seen my future and you aren’t him.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I just told you, I saw who I was going marry.”

“There’s something else.”

“Yeah, the person I’m going to marry is a woman.”

“What?”

“You didn’t know?”

“I didn’t know you liked women.”

“I do.”

“I guess then I won’t be the person you’re going to spend your life with.”

“No, but you’ll be around.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll see in a couple of years.”

“Hailey…”

“Just wait. It’s really good.”