The Time Traveler's Boyfriend (16 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

After my realization, I’m in shock for at least … I don’t know, fifteen minutes. Adam keeps kissing me, but all the while I’m thinking that I can’t believe I’m the one who ruined his life. Twice!

He must not know it’s me in 2013. I go by a different name now, and my hair is different, and he’s had time to forget my face. Plus I’m sure he doesn’t expect me not to have aged at all in fourteen years. He just knows some girl named Beth made him fall in love with her in 2000, then disappeared abruptly and was never seen again.

All I know is I’ve got to make this right. I just don’t know how.

“Hey,” I say, disentangling myself from him. “There’s something else I need to tell you.”

“If you could tell me who’s going to win the
Superbowl in February, that would be awesome,” he says, still trying to lean in to kiss me.

“No, really,” I say, putting my hand against his chest to keep him firmly at arm’s length. (Although, technically, I
could
tell him who will win the Superbowl.) “This is important.”

“Why are you so serious today?” he asks me, blinking his brown eyes behind his glasses.

“Because,” I say, taking a deep breath. “I’m leaving soon. Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” His face contorts with surprise. “Why didn’t you tell me? I would have taken the day off! I thought you said you were flexible?”

“I … I have to get back to my class,” I explain lamely.

“Okay.” Adam nods, absorbing the situation. “That’s all right. Look, I want to stay in touch. Do you think we can do the whole … long distance thing? I’m a good pen pal.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “It’s too far.”

“How far?”

“Really far.”

Adam isn’t trying to kiss me anymore. He’s just frowning at me and gripping the push-rims of his chair. “Where do you live? You can at least tell me that much.”

Oh, Adam, I wish I could. I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment then open them again. “China.”

“
China
?” He stares at me. “Seriously? You live in China?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, fine,” he says. “Say something in Chinese. Anything.”

Crap. I search my brain. I must know one phrase in Chinese. It would be pretty pathetic if I didn’t. “
Ni hao
,” I finally come up with. And I can tell I haven’t impressed him.

“You are so full of shit, Beth,” Adam says, glaring at me, his hands folded across his chest.

I am. I am totally full of shit. This isn’t working and I’m just insulting his intelligence and making him hate me. I’ve got to try a new tactic, one that seems to work like a charm on all men, including Jed and even my Adam.

“Listen,” I say. “I know you think you like me and all, but … you just don’t get it. You’re only twenty-four and I’m a lot older than you. I’m older than you think I am and I want different things than you do.”

Adam narrows his eyes. “How old are you?”

“I’m thirty-six,” I admit.

Adam blinks a few times. I see that I’ve actually taken him a bit by surprise—I think he thought I was thirty at the most. I can see him studying my face for lines, and I’m almost offended that he seems to believe me. “I didn’t realize …”

“Well, now you know,” I say. “I want to get married and have kids right away, Adam. And you’re only twenty-four and I know you don’t want those things right now.”

“Says who?” Adam retorts.

I sigh. “Come on. You’re a
child
.”

“A child? Is that honestly what you think of me?” Adam asks, sounding hurt. “I may be only twenty-four, but I want the same things you do. I want to get married and have kids too. And I know we haven’t known each other that long, but I feel like I could see myself doing those things … with you.”

“Yeah, but not in the next year,” I point out.

“I’m not afraid of commitment,” he says. “I promise you.”

Could I get that in writing, please? This is too unbelievable for words. The twenty-four-year-old Adam is perfectly willing to marry me and settle down, while his nearly forty-year-old counterpart doesn’t feel ready. What the hell?

“You think you’re ready …” I begin.

“I’m ready,” Adam says firmly.

I believe, at least, that he seems to think that he’s ready, that he believes he’s willing to do anything for me. I’m not sure I can shake this guy.

“You don’t care if I’m ready, do you?” Adam says. He shakes his head. “You want a commitment, but you don’t want one from me.”

I gesture helplessly at him. “You’re too young …”

“Too young or too crippled?” I see the anger on Adam’s face. He’s starting to get bitter. I’m doing this to him. I’m creating that guy with all the lines on his face, all the gray hairs … the guy who can’t settle down because he feels like he’s not worth it. I see it happening and I’m just as helpless to stop it as I was that night when Jed hooked up with Crystal-Joy.

Maybe Adam was right when he said the future outcome can’t be changed.

“You’ve got to believe me,” I whisper, my voice hoarse. “It’s not about you. It’s about me. I have to go.”

“It’s not you, it’s me,” Adam muses. “How original.”

“Adam—”

“Why don’t you just be straight with me for once?” he says. His cheeks are pink but I don’t think it has anything to do with the cold outside. “You don’t want to be with me anymore. That’s it, right?”

“No!” I say. “That’s not it! I do want to be with you. It’s not what you think, I swear to you.”

Adam focuses his brown eyes on me. “Then tell me the truth.”

The truth. I can’t tell him the truth. For starters, the truth is so crazy that he’ll never believe it in a million years. And furthermore, didn’t Adam say that if his past self found out about the time machine it could create some kind of, like, rip in the fabric of the universe or something? As much as I love Adam, I’d rather not destroy the whole universe. Unfortunately, that doesn’t leave me with any other options. “I can’t,” I finally say.

“Why am I not surprised?” Adam says quietly.

He roughly grabs the wheels of his chair and takes off down the street. I watch the back of his head as it gets smaller and smaller as he moves further away from me. Then he turns a corner and he’s gone.

***

I sit on the steps of Adam’s brownstone far too long, hugging my knees to my chest. I sit there long enough that I’m worried I’m going to catch a cold, which I’ll then bring back to the year 2013 and it will wipe out half the city because nobody has immunity. That seems pretty unlikely, though. Still, I don’t want to get sick, so I get up and take the subway back to my parents’ apartment.

When I get back, Claudia is all trussed up and ready for a night out on the town. It makes me tired just to look at her, wearing her tight skirt, low-cut shirt, and leather boots. Actually, it not only makes me tired, it makes me cold. I know she’s just going to wear the thinnest of jackets when she goes out.

I can’t believe the lengths I used to go to in order to look good. Or how often I used to go out at night. These days, my idea of heaven is a night at home with Adam, maybe watching a movie on the television with popcorn from the microwave.

Claudia perks up when she sees me. I was crying for a while on the steps of the brownstone, but my eyes have long dried up. And I wasn’t wearing a ton of make-up that had the potential to get smeared, so I don’t think it’s that noticeable.

“Beth,” she says. “Do you want to go to a club?”

Lord, no. “That’s all right,” I say. “I’m kind of tired.”

“We’re going to Limelight,” Claudia says, whipping out a compact to check her lipstick. It’s dark red. I used to have a bit of a goth thing going. “It’s going to be really fun. I’ve totally seen some older guys there.”

It occurs to me that “older” to Claudia probably means, like, twenty-nine. I’m not “older,” I’m just old. Nobody closer to forty than to thirty goes clubbing. Or if they do, I don’t think they’d be the kind of guy I’d want to meet. The word “pathetic” comes to mind.

The doorbell rings, and Claudia squeals, “It’s him! It’s him!”

“Who?” I ask, wracking my brain to try to remember who I was dating a week after New Year’s in 2000.

“Anthony,” Claudia says, a dreamy quality to her voice. “Oh, my God, he is
so
hot. Like, just so amazingly sexy. Incredible abs.”

I still have no memory of the guy, which makes me a little disgusted with my younger self. This is why I’m still single. Because I spent my youth chasing jerks with great abs.

“Can you get the door?” Claudia asks me. “I just have to fix my hair.” She pats her hair, which already looks perfect.

I go to answer the door and see a tall guy who practically looks like a bodybuilder—he is just that ripped. I can almost smell the testosterone oozing out of his sweat glands. “Hi,” I say, turning my head slightly in disgust.

“Hi,” he says, looking over my shoulder. “Is, um, your daughter home?”

I almost cry. This is just the worst day ever.

“She’ll be out in a minute,” I manage, not bothering to correct his mistake.

I leave Anthony in the living room to fend for
himself and retire to the guest bedroom. I throw myself into the bed and bury my face in my hands.

I miss Adam. My Adam.

This twenty-four-year-old kid is nice enough, but I miss the man I fell in love with. I miss all the quiet nights Adam and I spent together in his house, just the two of us. I miss his sexy crow’s feet and gray hairs. I want to see him now, so badly that it’s physically painful.

And most of all, I want to spend my life with him.

Whatever I’ve messed up here, I’ve got to fix it. I’ve got to make it so that Adam trusts me and is willing to commit to me. And I am beginning to think there’s only one way to do that. There’s only one way to change the future:

I have to tell Adam the truth.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Warning: If you live in the universe and especially in the Milky Way galaxy, you may face the end of your existence soon. I mean, it might be totally fine and I might just be a Nervous Nelly, but it’s probably best if you prepare yourself. Maybe buy some batteries and stock up on bottled water and canned foods.

I decide to wait until the next morning to call Adam. It’s a risk because I have no idea at what time I’m going to get sucked back into that wormhole, but he was still angry with me the night before, so he needs time to cool off. It would be better if I could give him a few days, but I don’t have that kind of time.

I wait until around ten in the morning before I dial his number. Luckily, we’re in the pre-cell phone era, so he can’t screen my call. I hear a sleepy male voice on the other line: “Yeah, ’lo?”

“Hi, Adam,” I say. “It’s … Beth.”

“Oh.” His voice is suddenly wary.

“Please don’t hang up,” I say. “I’m ready to tell you everything.”

That perks up his interest. “Really?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Can you meet me at that coffee shop by your house in an hour?”

“I’ll be there,” he says. He hesitates. “You’re really going to tell me everything?”

“I am,” I promise.

I just hope the universe doesn’t get destroyed. But right now, I consider it worth the risk.

***

Adam is already at the coffee shop when I arrive. He’s nursing a paper cup of coffee, and his eyes widen when I walk into the café. He doesn’t look happy exactly, but not angry anymore either. It’s hard to read his expression.

I don’t bother to get my own cup of coffee, even though I could sure use it. I head straight for his table and slide into the seat across from him. “Hey,” I say.

“Hey,” he says. His eyes don’t leave my face.

“Thanks for coming,” I say.

He nods and tugs on his earlobe. He’s still clearly a little pissed off about yesterday. I guess I can’t blame him, what with that whole lame China story. “So let’s hear it.”

The words are on the tip of my tongue but I’m having trouble pushing them out. “Maybe I’ll get myself a coffee.”

“Or you could just fucking tell me now,” Adam says.

I deserve that. “Okay,” I say. I pick up a napkin lying on the table and start shredding it into pieces. “Here’s the thing, I’m not from here.”

“You told me that.”

“Right, but …” I take a breath. “I
am
from New York. I’m just not from … now.”

Adam shakes his head. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m …” I close my eyes, summoning up all my courage. “I’m from the year 2013.”

“
What?
”

I look around, expecting to see some big rip in the fabric of time, whatever that looks like. But no. We’re all still okay. More or less.

“I know it sounds crazy.” I don’t think I even recognized quite how crazy until I saw the look on his face. “But you invented this time machine in 2013 and you sent me back in time to 1999.” He’s just staring at me so I hurry on. “Well, first you sent me back to 1997 to keep you from getting into an accident on your bike, but then you ended up getting hit by a car anyway. And then I came back to 1999.”

He’s looking at me very intently, his expression unreadable. Does he believe me? I have no idea. “So why did you come back to 1999?” he asks.

“Because,” I say, “I wanted to stop you from getting your heart broken by this awful bitch. Except I didn’t realize the awful bitch was
me.
So I messed that one up as well. I just figured the only way to fix all this was to come clean.”

There’s a long silence between us. I continue shredding the napkin, just holding my breath, waiting to see what he’ll say.

“Wow,” Adam says finally, his eyes wide and unblinking.

“I know,” I say.

He pushes his coffee across the table. “You must think I’m a complete idiot, don’t you?” he growls at me. The anger in his voice now is about ten times worse than yesterday. “You promise me the truth and then you come up with this bullshit story about a fucking
time machine
? Are you kidding me with this, Beth? Or whatever your real name is.”

“I’m not kidding,” I insist. “It’s the truth!”

“Here’s a tip,” Adam says through his teeth. “When you break up with a guy, it’s better to tell him you don’t like him anymore or you’re interested in some other guy than tell him some bullshit story that insults his intelligence. I hurt my back, not my
brain
, despite what you seem to think.”

“I don’t think that,” I whisper. This isn’t going how I imagined at all. “I’m telling the truth.”

“Fuck you,” Adam says. He starts to push back from the table. He’s going to leave. I can’t let that happen.

“Please stop!” I cry. I fumble around in my purse. “Look in my wallet. None of my credit cards expire for twenty years! And you saw my driver’s license the other day …”

“You mean your
cousin’s
license that you took from her?”

“No, that was mine,” I insist. “You have to believe me, Adam. I never mean to hurt you. The only reason I came back here was because I love you.”

Adam looks up at me. He’s got his hands on the push-rims of his chair, and I know he’s going to leave. I don’t think I can stop him anymore. “If you never meant to hurt me,” he says, “then you fucked up big time.”

With those words, he moves toward the exit. I stand up, watching him leave. That really didn’t go well at all. Should I go after him? Try to convince him that I’m really telling the truth?

Except that’s not going to happen. Because at that moment, I start to hear a whooshing noise in my ears. I’m leaving. I’ve run out of time and I haven’t managed to fix a thing.

I race outside the coffee shop, looking for a place to hide. The whooshing is getting louder and I know I don’t have much time. The world starts to spin and I can’t see any obvious places where I can conceal myself. I check back in the café and see a sign for the bathroom. I make a run for it, hoping nobody will stop me for not having made a purchase.

It’s a single ladies’ bathroom. I shut the door behind me, knowing that I can’t lock it or else nobody else will be able to get in. I stare at my reflection in the mirror, which starts to subtly distort. I shut my eyes as a sensation of vertigo overtakes me and I feel the ground disappearing below my feet.

The spinning becomes very intense for a few seconds, then it stops and I feel something solid underneath me. I am home.

I open my eyes, prepared to face Adam’s dark, empty living room. Instead, I see my boyfriend sitting in his wheelchair a few feet away from me. My knees tremble and he grabs me to pull me onto his lap just before I collapse.

“Welcome back, Psychic Girl,” he says.