Him

2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 passed in a glimpse. We did not talk much in that period. Just texts, here and there. ‘Happy birthday. How are you? All good? Yeah. You?’ Shit like that. I didn’t want to know more about what she was doing. It was too painful. I tried to forget and just follow her plan.

You’re probably wondering – oh there was a plan?

There was. Her plan was for us to continue living our lives separately, doing the best that we can to correct the, and I want to quote her exactly on this, mistakes of our past.

“If we are meant to be together,” she said. “We’ll be together like the first time, when the time comes.”

Correcting the mistakes of our past. Myself, I was not too eager to revisit my past in order to change something about it. But for Nat it was different. Different story, different objective. No matter how upset I was with her and with the whole situation, I still couldn’t get myself to hate her for trying to change this particular event.

So, what did I do? I kept on betting on sporting events. I took some of that money and bough a lot of cheap crypto currency. I took another chunk of money and invested in the stock market. I didn’t have a clear plan; I was winging it. But it was enough that I roughly knew how the financial market would end up that I could use it to my advantage.

So yeah, I got kind of rich in less than three years. Not billionaire rich. Just comfortably rich that I could sit on my ass at home, without doing too much work. I was well off for the rest of my life.

I bought a nice house, moved in with Christine but that didn’t last. I knew how we first ended up our relationship. I couldn’t get past that. This time, I broke up with her. She ended up in Denmark (or was it Norway?) as intended, met that fellow…she was about to get married again. Well, not again, but you know what I mean.

I started travelling, more than I could have ever afforded before. Three months in Europe. One month in Japan. Six in South America. It was easy. It’s always easy, when you have the money. I put on the ‘charismatic Jamie’ mask wherever I went. So, I had buddies around me, travelling, partying, spending time together. Casual girlfriend here and there. But nothing long lasting. Whatever I did, I kept looking forward to the future, to the year of 2018.

It was a lonely way of living. But it was brought on by the whole experience. I could have never been completely honest and close to someone without telling them what had happened to me. And who would believe it? Who would not think that I was crazy?

That was what happened with Jon. I made the mistake of telling him the truth. He didn’t buy it. I could see it in his eyes that he thought I was mad. And just like that – I lost him. I realized it would never be the same again between me and him. He was already suspicious of my newly acquired fortune. Hearing the story made him think that I was either making fun of him or that I was just high from drugs. We couldn’t resonate with one another anymore. So ended my only genuine friendship.

It was painful to some degree but it could have felt worse. I was so numb from leaving Nat behind, that I couldn’t really feel much else on top of that. At that moment I had decided to never share the story with anyone else ever again, never try to change anyone and anything besides myself.

Ha ha, yes, I’m seeing the irony.

Throughout all this, of course I would check Nat on social media. Look for pictures, check-ins, updates. They were all painful. First an innocent photo with Theo. Then it’s her a bit rounder in the waist, then a photo of the three of them together. The next year, Nat in a bikini – honeymoon in Mexico? A couple months after, a new baby. A year later, all four of them on a vacation in Hawaii.

You’re probably thinking - how the hell did I think that we’re ever going to reunite in 2018 (as per our original timeline) when she would pursue a life with this guy. Have children? To be honest, I have no idea how to respond to that. I just kept that hope. The hope that destiny will still bring us together. That we were meant to be together. Somehow.

But no matter how naïve I was, not even I could hold that much hope after that fabulous photo of the four of them on a beach in Honolulu.

So, you can imagine my surprise when my phone rang in early 2016 and it was her.

**

Her

“You think I’m crazy.”

Emily was staring back, no emotion discernable on her face. Things were going a bit different than our original meeting. Understatement of the year.

“But what if I get this guy to confirm everything that I had just said?”

“You realize that you’re probably not the only insane person out there,” she replied.

This was proving to be more frustrating than I had anticipated. I had barely made her listen to me all the way. Making her believe me was an entirely different type of challenge.

“What if…what if I were to say things about you, things I shouldn’t know?”

“I’d say you were spying on me on Facebook.”

“These are not the kind of things you’d post on Facebook, Em.”

“Ok, listen, I think I’m done. I’m asking you only once – please leave the premises.”

“No, you listen, I know you had a threesome with a couple of of gay guys when you were in college.”

She was appalled. She was going to hit me.

“Those fuckers, I’m going to kill them!”

She hit me.

“Ouch! Seriously, Em, nobody talked. You’ll tell me this yourself. In like…eight years or something.”

“Just leave me alone, you crazy bitch!” – she reached for her phone.

“Ok, forget it! Forget what I told you. Can you please explain to me, from a theoretical point-of-view, how something like this could happen? What would be the most likely, scientifically probable, realistically possible scenario?

She threw a magazine at me and asked for security. Great. Things were going great. I got escorted out of the building, bleeding lip and all. I had just remembered that Emily was taking kickbox lessons as her regular workout.

Originally, this day was supposed to be the time we first met, me and Emily. She’d ask to sit next to me at the campus cafeteria, we’d start talking and later we’d become friends. Best friends. This time around, a couple of small differences – I wasn’t working at the University.

I had decided it would be redundant to attend the same courses again. Not that I didn’t like what I had done before. I already had a degree in Psychology. I saw no point in doing it again. Plus, I had the kids to take care of at home. I took some online classes in IT, studied a bit of programming, a bit of automation, a bit of everything, just to keep my mind in shape.

Coming back to Emily, you can imagine that I didn’t have the patience to play through the whole ordeal again, stalking her at the cafeteria and hoping history would repeat and she’d sit next to me again. Also, I wasn’t going to indulge the overcharging they did at the cafeteria if you weren’t a faculty member, which I no longer was.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

The truth is, my patience had diminished. Having two small kids at home will do that to you. They are the loves of my life, but they also irreparably changed the cool young woman I had been. I was still pretty cool. But a cool mom, not a cool single girl. I thought myself uncapable of building the exact same friendship with Emily. It was impossible, after everything I went through. So, I was impatient. I had waited for roughly the same period that I had originally met her (in an attempt to not mess up the universe more than necessary), hoping that my past knowledge of her and the universe will do the rest and kind of reunite us. The universe did not give a damn about my efforts. Neither was she impressed by me knowing intimate things about her. All I was paid for my efforts was a punch to the face.

Outside the campus, the sun was shining. It was getting hotter. I had to squint in order to read something in that light. I had no sunglasses. It wasn’t the best of days.

Holding a tissue over my mouth, I started looking over at the magazine she threw at me. There was a ten-page article written on theories related to time-travel.

I read through it twice. I didn’t know what I expected, but this was not the illuminating moment that I wanted – when everything made sense and it explained all that had happened to me and Jamie.

There was only one thing in that article that made some kind of sense in connection to us. I grabbed my phone and without giving it a second thought, I called Jamie.

His voice sounded deeper than I remembered. I wondered if it was deeper than four years ago, or deeper than it was before the ‘thing’.

“Here’s someone I didn’t expect to get a call from, today,” he said.

“How are you, Jamie?”

“It’s just…weird to hear from you. Did something happen?”

“Well, I’m in town and I thought I could get in touch.”

He sounded genuinely surprised by me saying that as he stayed quiet for a moment. Then he countered:

“How was Hawaii?”

“It was good. How about I tell you all about it at a cup of coffee?”

Too much? He didn’t seem to think so. He said yes. We met at a coffee shop not far from the campus.

He hesitated when he saw me, but I gave him a hug and a quick peck on the cheek. He looked good. More mature than last time, of course. Healthy, but stressed out. This wasn’t easy for him.

“What happened to your lip?”

It was starting to swell.

“Oh, you know, domestic violence.”

He looked petrified. I just shook my head:

“I’m just kidding. I’ve taken up kickboxing.”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah, but I still need a couple of lessons.”

We took a sip of our drinks, just measuring each other up. His eyes were questioning me like they’d want to ask: “why are we here?” I had to break the silence:

“A couple of new grey hairs in the beard, there, guy?”

Hearing me using his pet-name startled him. I cringed. It just slipped. I began wondering if this was a bad idea and I was causing him harm. He did seem to recompose himself after a minute and smiled. There it was, that killer smile!

“Nothing you haven’t seen before,” he replied.

I chuckled.

“How are things?”

“Things are good, I guess,“ he said. “I get by. Been travelling a lot these past years.”

“I gather you went on with your ‘investments’? I asked, doing the thing with my fingers.

“What was that?” he asked, frowning.

“What?”

“The air quotes,” he said, imitating me.

I blinked. I wasn’t sure if he was making fun of me or actually getting angry. I had to make a call and stick with it.

“You know, it’s just a thing that you do,” I said, doing it again.

“Just, stop it, it’s silly,” he replied, trying hard to hold back a smile.

I still had it!

“What, this?” I asked, again doing the air quotes.

“Yes, that!”

“But why, does it annoy you? Or am I just embarrassing you?”

“Unbelievable!” he burst out giggling.

I grabbed his hand and cried:

“I missed you!”

He paused. Looked at me carefully.

“How’s the family?”

The family was good. I had two beautiful children, Kara and Mike, and a loving partner in Theo. I decided not to take up on his marriage proposal, but instead to give a chance to our baby and see what happens next. And that’s pretty much what ended up happening. I made sure the accident I had suffered originally, never happened. So, I was able to welcome Kara into the world. Rediscovering Theo was also a treat and he did the best he could to make me happy. And he was...is, actually, a great dad. Things went on so well that I got pregnant again. A while later we had Mike. A happy family for the most part.

I had managed to get what I wanted from this experience. Prevent the accident and be able to have children. I was beyond happy. And it wasn’t just that. I had managed to save Kara. Kara was supposed to be born the first time around, when the accident had happened. I could have remained with Jamie instead and have our own kids, right? That would have been easy. But the day my father passed, I realized that I needed to save her, specifically. I needed to save Kara. She was getting a second chance from me. And she could only exist as the child of Nat and Theo.

Where was Jamie in my heart and head this whole time? I was still in love with him. I’m not going to lie, having the kids made it all worth it. Having Theo by my side made it bearable, as well. But I couldn’t help but feel that I was not being 100% dedicated to him when Jamie was always somewhere in my thoughts, like a faraway prize that I was going to get later.

So that was my crazy plan that I had agreed upon with Jamie (reluctantly, in his case) at my father’s grave. I wanted to correct certain mistakes of my past, make my life better while also trying to not completely disrupt what I knew of the world. Could we have prevented wars, pandemics, unnecessary deaths and other tragedies? Perhaps. But, at least speaking for myself, I was too selfish and I had only one burning desire with everything else a nice bonus – save Kara, get to raise her and enjoy being a mom, as I should have been from the start.

I honestly believed that, at some point, me and Jamie will end up back together, whether it was going to be 2018 or 2024 or whenever.

I went through some of this stuff with Jamie that day.

“So, for how long are you staying?”

“Just a couple more days,” I replied.

“Are you in town with business?”

“Our business, Jamie.”

“You mean…?”

“I spoke with Emily.”

“Emily?”

“Yes, remember her? She was going to become a physician. Well, she is one, now.”

He didn’t know what to say. I realized that he was expecting something else from me. Did I crush his heart?

“Are you two – friends again?”

“Unfortunately, not,” I said, biting my lip by habit and wincing from the pain. I did try to talk to her about what happened to the two of us. She thought I was insane, obviously. She gave me this, though.”

I handed him the magazine.

“I managed to get one useful thing from it. It suggests that whatever phenomenon took place and affected the two of us, might still linger there, at the point of origin. It’s all theoretical, of course.”

“Point of origin? You mean, the house? Our house?”

“Yep. Have you ever been back there?”

“No. I bought a fancier house downtown.”

“Impressive!”

“Yeah, all possible because of this,” he gesticulated, making the air quotes. I smiled. “So, what are you expecting to find there?” he asked.

“I have no idea.”

“What did Emily say?”

“We…uhm…never reached that point in our conversation.”

“You didn’t actually start taking kickboxing lessons, did you?”

“I might, if I run into Emily again.”

“Do you want to go and check out the area, together?”

“Why not? Let’s do it.”

We got into his car, his obnoxiously pretty car and started towards our old home.

“My guy, how much money do you have?”

“Enough to get by,” he answered. “You know, I did a bit of research myself – on what happened to us.”

“Please do share,” I replied.

“All theoretical, of course.” I rolled my eyes. “We might have experienced a collision between our dimension and this one. So it’s not that we travelled through time, but we just got transported into another version of our world.”

“Where did you read this, The Ultimate Marvel comic book collection?”

“I’m serious. It’s more plausible that we’ve been transported to a similar universe than actual time travel.”

“But it’s not similar. It’s the same. Everything happens in the same way, right?”

“Except that it doesn’t. Us being aware of the whole thing already makes a change on how things unfold. It’s already different from what we initially lived through. Not to mention all the changes we’ve made.”

“That’s just paradoxical nonsense,” I said. “Given the chance, would you go back? Go back to that day in 2024 and forget everything you’ve done here?” I asked.

He knew what my answer would be. He sat there, driving and thinking.

“Probably not,” he said.

“How so?”

“If the theory I read is correct, we didn’t time travel as much as we transported to somewhere else, which means that we’re no longer there, in our original world. So, I wouldn’t return, no.”

“Because you wouldn’t have the money and this fancy ass car?”

“No, because you wouldn’t be there anymore.”