TIme After Time

I smile and give her an exaggerated nod. “Truly devastated. I had no idea what I was missing.”

“Right?” She keeps coming in closer, shouting to be heard above the music. “And now your life is complete.” She rests her hand on my arm and lets it linger there a little too long. When I instinctively take a step back, she gets the hint and lets it drop.

“So, what are you doing over vacation?”

I shrug. “People keep asking me that, but I don’t think I have a very good answer.”

She tilts her head to one side. “What’s your answer?”

“Hanging out,” I say definitively, crossing my arms like I’m proud of myself for being so aimless. Megan shakes her head as if she’s actually disappointed in me and I shrug. “See what I mean? I’m not shooting very high.”

“No, not so much.”

I think about the only plan I have. The one I can’t tell her or Sam or Brooke or anyone else about. The plan I do not want to think about right now.

“Bennett?” Megan is using a singsong voice, waving her hand back and forth in front of my face. “You still here?” she asks.

I blink fast. “Yeah. I’m sorry. What did you say?”

“I said that I’m just hanging out too.” She looks down at the ground for a moment, and locks her eyes on mine. “I said, ‘Maybe we could hang out together?’”

I don’t say anything at first and Megan stares at me, eyebrows raised, expression hopeful, while I consider her suggestion. It’s not like I know her that much better than I did at the end of last summer, but I think back to the words I said to Sam in the park that day and feel a little bad about my response. Megan’s nice. She’s pretty. And from what I’ve learned about her over the last few months, she’s not at all vacuous. Besides, Lindsey’s incredibly cool and she likes her. I don’t know, maybe it’s time for me to find a “four of us” that exists in 2012 and not in 1995.

“Maybe,” I tell her.

Then we hear a crash in the distance, coming from the kitchen. “Uh-oh, that did not sound good. I’d better go find out what broke.” She brushes my arm again and says, “See you,” before she heads off, pushing past people, fighting her way out of the room.

As soon as she’s gone, my stomach clenches. I don’t want Megan and I don’t want another four of us. I want Anna. Here. Now. So I don’t have to wake up tomorrow morning with my chest hurting and my mind all fuzzy, or go to sleep tonight feeling sick because I can’t stop picturing that horrible look on her face the last time I saw her.

“Kathryn’s on her way.” I look up and see Brooke in front of me, her thumbs still tapping against the glass on her phone. “I think we’re going to—” She stops cold when she sees me, hand clenched at my forehead, my face turning redder by the second. “What happened?”

I need to get out of here. I need air.

“Do you want to go?” she asks, looking me square in the eyes, and I nod quickly.

Even though it’s winter, I still haven’t put the soft top back on the Jeep. I’ve been driving around a lot this way over the last month: top down, cold wind, tunes loud, heat cranked. I maneuver out of the parking space I found a few blocks from Megan’s house and drive away.

“Do you want to talk—” she begins and I cut her off with a curt, “No.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Brooke’s thumbs flying across the screen, and I can only assume she’s texting Kathryn with her change of plans. I wonder if she’s got a cover story or if she’s texting her the truth: Bro’s a wreck. Need to stay.

Her attention must move from texting to music, because as I crest over the next hill, she asks, “How about Coldplay on random shuffle?” It comes out like it’s a question, but when Brooke’s in the car, I rarely get any say in the music anyway. Not that it matters. I couldn’t care less what we listen to, as long as it keeps her from feeling like the silence is uncomfortable and it’s up to her to fill the void.

“Ooh, good song,” she says, cranking up the volume. She reclines the seat back and stares up at the sky. I don’t know what it is. I just drive, listening to the lyrics.

Can anybody fly this thing?

Before my head explodes or my head starts to ring.

I can feel Brooke turning her head to look at me every once in a while, but I ignore it, keeping my eyes fixed on the road in front of me, tightening my grip on the steering wheel. Our house is only a block away now. It’s early. I’m not at all ready to go home. And this song is right. Anna and I have been living life inside a bubble.

“Mind if I keep driving around for a bit?” I ask her.

She kicks her feet up to the dashboard and reclines back even farther. “I was hoping you would. I like this view,” she says as she stares out the open roof, into the sky. Instead of taking a left turn toward our house, I take a right toward the Great Highway.

The Ocean Beach parking lot is dark and empty, and I pull into a spot facing the Pacific. I twist the key backward in the ignition, cutting the engine without killing the music. We’re quiet for a long time.

Finally, Brooke speaks. “Why are you doing this, Bennett?”

I lean back against the headrest and let out a heavy exhale. “Please don’t… Not tonight.”

Brooke twists in her seat to face me. “On a completely different timeline that no longer exists, Anna came looking for you, remember? Because she felt so strongly that you were supposed to be in her life. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

I shrug. “I thought it did, but no…apparently it doesn’t.” I haven’t looked at the page in my notebook in months, but I don’t need to. I’ve read those words from her letter so many times I’ve committed them to memory. Someday soon, we will meet. And then you will leave for good. But I think I can fix it… ”

“You’re making this far more complicated than it is, Bennett.”

“It’s very complicated, Brooke.”

“No. You saw her with another guy and you freaked.”

“I think there’s a little more to it than that.”

Brooke stares at me.

I fix my eyes on the sky and comb my hands through my hair. “Look, I know what I saw. She’ll have a better life without me. Every time I go back there, I’m just keeping her away from the future she’s supposed to have.”

“But that’s not the future she wants.” Brooke tucks her hair behind her ears and leans across the console. “Besides, what’s to say she won’t do it all over again anyway? You saw her happy in two thousand five, but when she gets to two thousand eleven she could make the same decision she made last time— to go back and find you again.”

“Why, because we’re, like, destined to be together or something?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Yeah.”

“You’re just a romantic.”

“Maybe. But I’m also quite logical.” I let my head fall to the right and stare at her. “What you saw doesn’t matter because that future isn’t set in stone and you know it. Everything single decision you’ve made beyond that moment is changing what you saw.”

“Or, it’s changing nothing.”

“If you’re not part of her life, you’ll never know.” Brooke doesn’t take her eyes off me. “Go talk to her.”

I know she’s right. I went more than a month without speaking to Anna once before, and that was excruciating. I can’t believe I’m doing it by choice this time. I rest my elbows on the steering wheel and hold my head in my hands. “I will.”

“Hey,” she says, and I twist my neck to look at her. “Now.”

“I’m not going right now.”

She cranks up the heat and rubs her hands together in front of the vent. “I’ll be fine here. Come back in twenty minutes or so. I’ll wait.”

“I’m not going right now,” I repeat, this time slowly and with more emphasis on each word, because