The Time Traveler's Boyfriend (15 page)

“Actually, she’s only twenty,” I lie.

Adam is still frowning. I can tell he doesn’t entirely believe me, but he’s not sure what to make of the whole thing. Finally he leans forward, like he’s trying to read my face. I do my best to look impassive.

“Here’s the thing,” he says. “I’m dating this really great girl. She’s funny, she’s smart, and she’s really, really sexy. But she won’t tell me a damn thing about herself.”

I clear my throat. “Sounds frustrating.”

Adam shakes his head at me. “What would you do in my situation, huh, Psychic Girl?”

I can’t even blame him for being upset with me. And what’s worse is that I’ve got two more days left with him. It’s not long enough. How am I going to build up his confidence when we’ve got only two days left and the guy doesn’t even trust me?

That’s when I see it: the bolt of lightning that splits his face in two. For ten years, that’s meant only one thing.

Adam notices the look on my face and his expression changes to one of concern: “Beth? What’s wrong?”

“Migraine,” I manage. The pain hasn’t started yet, but I know it’s just a matter of time. And there’s zero chance of getting any rescue medications other than an ibuprofen. I don’t have health insurance in this year, and my 2000 counterpart hasn’t yet been blessed with migraines.

“Is that like a headache?”
Adam asks, his brow furrowed.

When I had my first migraine in the future, while dating Adam, he knew exactly what to do. But he doesn’t seem to have that experience yet. I’m going to have to explain it all to him, which is the last thing I want to do while on the verge of a pounding headache. “It’s like the worst headache you can imagine. Horrible pain, nausea … the works.”

“Tell me what to do,” he says.

He brings me back to his apartment in a taxi. Just as the taxi arrives at his building, the first jab of pain hits me. The world suddenly becomes painfully bright and I shut my eyes tightly. “Hey,” Adam says, nudging me. “You okay?”

I shake my head.

He has to ask the driver to get his wheelchair out of the trunk while I sit in the cab with my eyes shut. After a minute, I hear him pull open the door. I crack my eyes open and see him sitting there, gesturing at his lap. “Hop on,” he says. “You don’t even have to open your eyes.”

I comply, and he gives me a somewhat bumpy ride upstairs. Each bump is a little bit of agony. I am so grateful when we arrive in his bedroom and I can climb into his bed. The little jabs of pain have turned into a distinct pounding and the nausea is starting to rise. I feel like I might throw up.

“Tell me what to do,” Adam says softly.

“Turn off all the lights,” I instruct him.

He goes around his apartment, shutting off every light, even the ones that are too far away for me to notice. He closes the blinds in the bedroom,
then reports back to me. “What now?”

“Mozart,” I whisper. “Do you have any Mozart?”

“Yes, of course,” Adam says. My eyes are closed but I hear him fumbling through his CD cases. At one point, a stack of them falls over and I cringe at the noise. But finally, I hear Mozart playing softly on his stereo. The gentle sound relaxes my shoulders.

“Anything else?” he asks.

“Lie with me,” I murmur.

He complies. He transfers into bed beside me and tentatively puts his hand on my back. I move toward him and he wraps his body around mine. “Is this okay?” he asks me.

I nod.

I know I’m supposed to be working on making him love me today, but instead we spend the entire rest of the day in bed, his body entangled with mine, soothing away my horrible pounding headache. After a few hours of this, my headache is completely gone. Nobody is able to get rid of my migraines like Adam.

***

Adam brings me dinner in bed that night, which is very sweet of him, even though it’s just a bag of bagels and cream cheese. I love the smell of freshly baked bagels. I remember a few months ago, Adam brought home a bag of particularly fresh, piping hot bagels, and I took one and cuddled it against my cheek. He still makes fun of me for that one, but seriously, that was one snuggly bagel.

“You didn’t have to do this,” I tell Adam now.

“Of course I did,” he says. “You’re the sickie.”

And he insists on spreading the cream cheese on my bagels for me, even though it’s way too much cream cheese and I’m sure it’s not low fat. And I read once that eating a bagel is like eating eight slices of bread. Under ordinary circumstances, I try to stay low carb, and now after a week of looking at my twenty-two-year-old self’s figure, I’m especially depressed about my weight situation. But somehow I still can’t resist fresh bagels.

He hands me a bagel and I take a bite. “Amazing,” I say. “You should be a chef.”

Adam sticks out his tongue at me. I don’t know whether it’s how cute he looks at that moment or just the fact that I miss my boyfriend so much, but I put down my bagel, straddle him on his lap, and start kissing him. I guess he wasn’t that hungry because he suddenly seems totally uninterested in bagels.

After a few minutes of kissing, Adam whispers in my ear: “Let me go down on you again.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “Your turn.”

Adam clears his throat and looks away. “Uh, I told you that I can’t, you know, feel it anymore. So it’s nice of you to offer, but it’s not going to do much for me.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I say.

He frowns at me and that’s when I lower my lips onto his earlobe. I hear him gasp, presumably unaware that it would have this impact on him. I’m guessing girls had sucked on his earlobes before, but maybe they got more sensitive after his injury.

A few seconds later, I’ve got him squirming and gasping for air as I run my tongue over his left ear. He slips his fingers under my shirt, pressing his palms firmly into the bare skin of my back. His eyes start to water and he squeezes them shut. I keep going, the way I’ve learned to after dozens of sessions with my boyfriend, and wait until the moment when he literally seems to lose control and squeezes all the breath out of my chest. Then he slumps down in his wheelchair, staring at me through hooded eyes.

“Whoa,” he says breathlessly, clinging to me so that I can’t escape from his lap.

There’s a layer of sweat on his brow, which I wipe off gently with my fingers. “You enjoyed that, I take it.”

He grins at me. “Do I have to dignify that with an answer?”

“It would be nice.”

“I enjoyed it,” he says. “That was fucking incredible, actually.
You’re
incredible.”

“Why, thank you, Mr. Schaffer.”

He reaches out and brushes a strand of hair away from my face. “I’m really starting to fall for you, Psychic Girl,” he murmurs.

Then he buries his face in my neck and I hold him close to me. He’s definitely really into me,
that’s for sure. I wonder if maybe I overdid the earlobe thing. Oh, well.

***

Here’s the thing:

Let’s say my plan works and I do such a great job boosting Adam’s confidence that The Bitch can’t destroy him the way she did. Great news, right?

Except it has occurred to me that if Adam doesn’t develop commitment issues around this girl, that means he might not still be single at thirty-seven years old, when I first meet him at that dinner party. He might be married with kids by then.

I’ve thought about that possibility a lot. Losing Adam.

If that happens—meaning, I fix him and he meets someone else—I’ll come back to 2013 and I’ll be single. More single, because I won’t even have Adam in my life. It really sucks, but at the same time, at least that way Adam will be happy.

I want him to be happy, even if he can’t be happy with me. I mean, I’d rather he’d be happy with me, but at least he’ll be happy.

I can live with that.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I end up spending the night at Adam’s apartment, and when I wake up in his bed the next morning, I feel really disoriented. I’m waking up next to my boyfriend, whom I know very well, but it’s a version of him that I hardly know at all, and in an unfamiliar bed. I stare at his unlined face and my fists clench with frustration. I’m going back to 2013 tomorrow. Tomorrow! And while he seems to like me a lot or even be “falling for” me, I can’t say for sure that I’ve made any lasting impact on him whatsoever.

Adam senses me watching him and his eyes crack open. He smiles when he sees my face. “Hey there, you,” he says.

“Hey, yourself,” I reply.

He runs his fingers over my cheek, just gazing at me for a minute. “You are so sexy first thing in the morning.”

He’s such a liar. My hair is a rat’s nest and my eyes are puffy. I’m pretty much the opposite of sexy.

But we’re on the right track. I think about some possible romantic activities we can do today, something that will help seal the deal. “Any thoughts on how you’d like to spend the day?”

“Yeah, I
gotta go to work, lady,” he says. “Some of us aren’t on perpetual vacation.”

“But …” I start to tell him that tomorrow I’ll be leaving, but I have a feeling that will result in a conversation I don’t want to have. “Okay, then. I guess I’ll fend for myself.”

“Sorry,” he says. “How much longer are you staying in the city anyway?”

I shrug. “It’s sort of … flexible.”

Adam smiles at me. “Well, I hope it’s a long time.”

As I watch him transfer into his wheelchair and hit his moderately inaccessible bathroom for a shower, I can’t help but think that I’m going to miss this version of Adam. He’s not quite the guy I fell in love with, but he’s pretty great in a lot of ways. And he hasn’t been ruined by some redheaded vixen.

After Adam leaves for work, I’ve got to figure out what to do with myself the rest of the day. It occurs to me that time traveling is actually kind of a nice way to take some vacation time. I’ve just gotten two weeks off and I’ll come back to 2013 without having missed a day of work. Score.

The bad news is that I have no friends here and no working credit cards, so my options are a little limited. I make myself some toast and watch a little bit of boring daytime TV. I look through Adam’s bookshelves, which contain some of the books he has now but is missing all the physics books he uses to help him in his inventions. I wonder when he decided to become an inventor. Somehow I thought it was something he’d always been interested in.

I eventually come across a large photo album. I pull it out and see tons of pictures of Adam and his friends, mostly from college. Photos from parties, a ski trip, a vacation in Cancun. I can’t help but notice that there are no photos of Adam where he’s in a wheelchair. Not even one. Eventually, that’s going to change, though.

There’s a photo of Adam standing between the World Trade Center Twin Towers, holding his arms out in the air. It occurs to me that there’s still over a year and a half before those planes crash into the WTC. So many people died there. Could I somehow stop it from happening?

But no, I’m certain that I can’t. The same way I couldn’t stop Adam from getting hit by that car. Some events can’t be changed.

But then again, here I am, making changes to the past. I have to believe that the things I’m doing here will have some impact on the future.

Or maybe I’m just kidding myself.

***

I end up taking a walk along Fifth Avenue, intending to mostly just window shop. Even though I have money left over that I swiped from my parents’ stash, it seems like it would be awkward to take a bunch of new clothes back with me through time. I mean, what if taking that extra dress means that one of my toes won’t make it back to 2013? Plus I’m not even sure how the clothes would go with me—last time, I just disappeared without warning.

Still, it’s very hard to look at clothes all day without buying anything. I’m only human, after all.

The last stop on my excursion is Lord & Taylor’s. I’m browsing the dress suits (my personal passion) when my eyes fall on an outfit that makes my jaw drop open. It’s a gray Anne Klein two-piece suit with a skirt that falls to a respectable length, and a neck lined with little jewels. It’s lovely, but that isn’t why I can’t stop staring at it.

This is the exact suit I wore during my interview to get into teaching college.

I remember how confident I felt in this suit, how for the first time, I believed that I looked like someone smart enough to be a teacher and responsible enough to be a good student. This suit is what helped me ace the interview. This suit helped me become the person I am today.

I don’t even bother to try it on. I pay cash for the suit in young Claudia’s size (size two—damn her!), intending to leave it in her closet. She’ll never know I bought it for her. But when she needs it, it will be there.

I get back to my parents’ apartment by five o’clock, clutching a shopping bag with my new suit carefully folded inside. As I walk in the door, I hear the phone ringing and I have a feeling I know who it is. I run for it and catch it on the sixth ring. “Hello?” I answer breathlessly.

“It’s Adam,” he says. “I’m glad I caught you. Are you busy now?”

“No …”

“Great,” he says. “I need you to meet me somewhere.”

Nice timing. I cringe at the thought of heading into rush hour traffic, but I remember this is my last night in 2000. I have to do whatever Adam asks of me. “Okay, where?”

Adam recites an address for me
that’s so familiar, it makes my heart start pounding. “Can you repeat that?” I ask, hoping I heard wrong.

He repeats the address. And it’s exactly as I heard it the first time.

Adam just read me the address of his home in 2013.

***

I am officially freaked out.

I’m not kidding. Why in hell would Adam want me to meet him at the place where he lives in the future? How does he know that he lived there? Has he discovered my little scheme and wants to call me on it?

Freaked out is probably an understatement.

I’d love to grab a taxi, but at this hour, they’re going to be hard to find, and I’ll likely sit in traffic for hours. The subway, on the other hand, will be a quick ride.

I don’t love the subway in New York. First, it smells like urine. I’ve never been on a subway car that didn’t smell at least faintly of urine. Or beer mixed with urine. Second, I get groped on the subway with surprising frequency. It’s happened to me at least five times in my life. I know that doesn’t sound like a lot, but I think even once is too many times to be groped by a stranger on the subway.

But the good news is
it’s fast. And if you’re freaking out about something your boyfriend just told you, there’s no quicker way to get to him.

As soon as I get out of the subway station, I sprint the two extra blocks to find Adam at the brownstone. By this point, I’m really sick with anxiety. Especially when I see him in front of the brownstone and notice that he isn’t alone but rather with a middle-aged woman with a hawk face and her black hair pulled back in a tight bun.

“Beth!” He waves to me enthusiastically. Well, at least he doesn’t look angry.

“Hey,” I say, and then I have to stop to catch my breath. I lean forward, clutching my knees as I gulp in air.

“You okay?” he asks. I nod wordlessly. “You didn’t have to run. This is actually perfect timing. Naomi just got done showing me the place.”

Naomi? I look up at the black-haired woman who offers me a cold, spidery hand. “I’m Naomi Levy, Adam’s real estate agent.”

I look at the brownstone then back at Adam. Suddenly, it all makes sense. He’s thinking about buying the place! “I’m Beth Williams,” I say.

“Will you be living here too?” Naomi asks me, glancing from me to Adam with a judgmental look on her face.

“No,” I say. Maybe I say it a little too quickly because Adam gets this hurt look on his face. If only he knew how much I’d be dying for him to ask me to move in with him in 2013.

“I just want to get her opinion,” he says.

But he doesn’t really need my opinion. I can tell he loves the house the second he shows me the side entrance that bypasses the steps to the front door. I walk through the empty rooms with him, imagining his furniture filling the bare spaces. He points to the spot where his ratty couch with the mustard stains sits in 2013. “I want to buy an extra-wide television and put it right there,” he says.

“No,” I say. “That’s where the couch goes.”

Naomi gives me a look when I say that. She probably thinks I’m being a controlling girlfriend or something, but I’m not. I’m just helping him out by telling him where his couch is supposed to be.

“So,” Adam says, a grin spreading across his face. “Does that mean you like the place?”

I don’t even hesitate. “Yes,” I say. “This is your house. Put down an offer right now.”

Naomi smiles at that, but she still has that odd look on her face. Adam says, by way of explanation: “Beth is psychic.”

So now I sound like a complete nut job. Oh, well.

Adam fills out a few forms for Naomi before she locks up the house and tells him that she’ll get back to him when she hears from the owners. Adam can’t stop smiling. “I really like this place,” he says. “I really do.”

“You’re going to be really happy here,” I say, settling down on the steps of the brownstone so that I can look him in the eyes.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Psychic Girl,” he says. He leans in and pecks me on the lips. He means to peck me on the lips, at least. It evolves into a much deeper kiss than I think he intended. “Beth …”

“Listen,” I say, pulling away from him. “Speaking of me being psychic and all, there’s something I need to tell you.”

“I thought you weren’t psychic,” he teases me.

“Adam, I’m serious,” I say, which wipes the smile off his face.

I thought about this on the ride over. I don’t know if I’ve accomplished what I needed to these last two weeks, so I have to take out some extra insurance. I have to warn him about The Bitch. Maybe if he sees it coming, she won’t hurt him so badly. It’s my last chance to help him.

“Adam,” I start, “after me, there will be other girls …”

He grabs my hand off my lap. “What? Come on …”

“I mean it,” I say, shaking off his hand. “You’re going to meet this girl who you’re going to think is great. The greatest girl you’ve ever met. Maybe a redhead—I’m not sure about that part. She’s going to be your first real relationship after your … injury. And she’s going to break your heart.” I heave a sigh. “I just had to warn you so you don’t get hurt.”

I don’t know how I expected Adam to react. But what he does is lean in and kiss me again. His breath feels so warm against my face. “I don’t think we have to worry about that.”

Maybe he thinks the psychic thing is bullshit or something, I don’t know. But it’s obvious he’s not taking my warning seriously. “And why not?”

“Because,” he says, “
you’re
my first real relationship after my injury.”

At that moment, as he kisses me on the steps of the house where he’ll someday live, I realize three things, three immutable facts:

1.
Adam’s right—I am his first real relationship after his injury.

2.
He is very much in love with me.

3.
I am about to disappear suddenly, leaving him abruptly, and cruelly breaking his heart.

And that’s when I finally catch on to the horrible truth:

I
am The Bitch.