TIme After Time

but I can tell by the look on her face that she is.

“But don’t get mad. It wasn’t Anna at all. Justin tried to kiss her—he made that part crystal clear. I mean, if you weren’t in the picture, who knows, but…”

I flash back on what I saw last night when I went to 1997. How Justin met Anna at her house, and the two of them walked to school together. And then I think about the guy I saw her with eight years later. The guy she kissed in her driveway. I hadn’t even considered the possibility that it could have been Justin, but now I can’t get the idea out of my mind. I don’t think the guy had red hair, but I never got a very good look either. I remember how Mr. Greene wrapped him up in a fatherly hug and led him into the house.

“The whole thing is totally one-sided…” She stops and lets out a cynical laugh. “Which should have been my first clue, right?” She matches my posture, her head against the wall, her legs kicked out in front of her. “I’m not quite sure why I’m waiting around as if I’m perfectly content with being his consolation prize.”

She starts to say more. I wish she wouldn’t. I don’t have the energy to think about any of this right now and I have much bigger things on my mind. Before Emma can speak again, Anna and her mom return to the waiting room and sit down in the chairs across from us.

“Nothing new, I’m afraid,” Anna’s mom says as she twists her hair around her finger and lets out a heavy breath. Then, without prompting, she launches into a story about a stroke patient she worked with a few years ago. I pretend to listen before I shoot Anna a look and thankfully, she understands.

“We’ll be right back, Mom,” she says, and she grabs my hand and leads me down the hall toward the vending machines. She digs around in her jeans pocket for change. “Want to split a bag of Doritos?”

She’s about to slip a quarter into the slot but I stop her. “Wait. There’s a coffee shop across the street.”

“Yeah?” She covers her mouth as she yawns. “Actually, that sounds good.” She tells me to wait by the elevator while she tells her mom where she’s going, and she comes back holding her coat. I help her into it.

The coffeehouse is nothing like the one we’re used to, far more institutional than cozy, with metal tables and matching chairs. Anna finds a spot in the corner window while I go to the counter to order. A few minutes later, I return with a bowl of soup, a chunk of bread, and a latte.

Anna picks up the bread and turns it over in her hands. “This reminds me of Paris,” she says. She gives me a tired smile before she takes a bite. “Sadly, this tastes nothing like that baguette.” She stares down at the bread, looking disappointed. “I’m convinced I’ll never taste anything that delicious again.”

I don’t respond. In fact, I hardly say a word as she finishes off her soup. But as she’s balling her napkin up and stuffing it into the empty soup container, I can’t hold it in any longer.

“I have to tell you something,” I practically blurt out, and she looks up at me. I probably should have planned out what I was going to say, but I didn’t. Now I’m just making it up as I go along and hoping it will make sense. “Remember last night, when we were sitting outside and you told me I couldn’t fix this?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I thought of something else I could do.”

She takes a sip of her coffee and waits for me.

“I went forward.”

She yawns again. Then she says, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I went forward…into your future. To see what happens to him.”

Her head springs up and she goes to set her coffee cup on the table but she loses her grip and it crashes to the table. Some of the coffee splashes over the side, and Anna reaches for her napkin to wipe up the mess. She suddenly stops and stares at me.

“I don’t want to know, do I?”

I nod my head. “You do. It’s good news. He’s going to be okay.”

She lets the napkin drop as she puts her elbows on the table and buries her face in her hands. I can’t tell if she’s crying or laughing or so overwhelmed, she’s doing a combination of the two.

“It will take a while. In a couple of years, he’ll still walk with a limp and he won’t have full use of his right hand, but eventually, he’ll be fine.”

“Eventually when?”

I look at her. “I’m sorry, Anna. I wish I could tell you that, but I can’t.”

“No, of course you can’t. Okay.” She shakes her head hard, like she’s scolding herself for asking in the first place. She comes in even closer. “I still can’t believe you did this,” she says excitedly. “What else will you tell me?”

She takes a big sip of coffee and licks the froth from her lips and I take a deep breath. “I saw enough to know that my coming here is a mistake.” There. I’ve said it. “I’m not supposed to be here, Anna. It’s changing your whole life.”

She presses her palms into the table to steady herself. “For the better.”

“I’m not so sure anymore.”

She looks out the window and doesn’t say anything. “What aren’t you telling me, Bennett? What did you see?” She gives me a hard look.

“I saw you and your family with a happy future. And if I tell you any more about it, it might not happen that way.” That’s enough. That’s all she gets to know. Anything else and I might change what I saw, and I can’t do that.

“Well, it’s my future. I want you in it.” Her eyebrows pinch together. “Don’t you want to be in it?”

I nod. “But think about it,” I say, shaking my head. “If you’d been in the car with your dad yesterday you would have known something was wrong. You would have seen the signs and gotten him to a hospital faster. He might not even be here right now.”

“Oh, come on…he had a stroke. That would have happened no matter what. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I was here, Anna. With you. And I shouldn’t have been. If I hadn’t been here you would have been with your dad.”

I didn’t expect to feel this way, but the more I talk to her, the more anger I feel building up inside me. I seem to be livid with everyone right now. With Emma, for telling me about Justin and Anna’s near-kiss, because I didn’t want to know that, especially today. With Anna, for making me think that do-overs were okay, simply because her best friend’s life was at stake. With my dad, for letting me believe I was more powerful than I really am. And with myself, for going forward and opening up a view into a future I never should have seen and certainly don’t want to exist.

And it’s selfish, but I’m angry because it’s starting to seem like every time I do something good for someone else, I’m the one who pays the price.

I take a deep breath and steady myself for my next words, the ones that have been rattling around in my head ever since I returned from her house on Christmas Eve 2005. This is it. If I’m going to guarantee the life I saw for Anna, where she’s happy without me, I have say it.

“I’m not coming back anymore.”

“What?”

I start to reach for her hands but before I can, she pulls them away and stands up. The metal chair tips over behind her and crashes to the floor, and she looks over her shoulder like she’s considering righting it, but she doesn’t. She turns on her heel and heads for the door, out into the cold.

By the time I catch up to her she’s standing at the edge of the curb, waiting for a break in the traffic. “Anna. Please.”

She stops and turns around, arms crossed, tears sliding down her cheeks. “You cannot do this!” she yells as the cars speed past us. “You cannot do this to me. You promised you wouldn’t leave…” Her whole face is bright red and the tears are coming fast now. She tries to wipe her face dry but she can’t keep up.

I grab her by the arm, but she pulls it away. “Go!” she yells. “If that’s what you want, just go!”

I feel something in me snap.

“What I want?” I yell back at her. “What do you mean what I want? When is this ever about what I want? I don’t have anything—not one single thing—that I want. Don’t you get it?” In my mind’s eye I see Anna, standing in her