It feels strange to be this close and not touch her. I lean forward onto my thighs and smile at her. “I think it’s coming out fine.” She slides her hand down but keeps her mouth covered. Still, I can tell from her eyes that she’s smiling too.
“Go on.… You were saying something about being fascinated.” I scoot a little closer to her, but she keeps her feet planted in the snow and starts fidgeting with her headphone wires, wrapping and unwrapping the cord around her finger.
And suddenly, she stops moving and looks straight at me. “I’m in love with everything about you.”
Her words make me suck in my breath, and when I look into her eyes, I see something I haven’t noticed in a while—this look of pure understanding that reminds me why I told her my secret in the first place. That sense of wonder, how she looked at me like she couldn’t know me well enough.
I can’t take the distance any longer. I scoot over on the bench and the snow collects on my jeans. “Come here.” I pull her closer, parting my legs so she can stand in between them, and she rests her forearms on my shoulders and looks down at me.
“I shouldn’t have pushed you so hard to do things over again. I mean, I’m glad Emma’s okay and I’ll always be grateful to you for making that happen, but…it was wrong of me to force you to do it.”
“You weren’t wrong and you certainly didn’t force me to do anything.” My fingers settle on her hips. “I was as curious as you were, and I knew what I was doing. I never should have blamed you. I was just angry.”
“At me?” she asks.
“No. At myself.”
I grip her hips a little bit tighter and let my head fall forward until it rests against her stomach. “You know what I’ve been thinking lately?”
“Hmm?” Her fingers find my hair and I close my eyes. I’ve missed the way she touches me.
“I wish I could fly.”
Her stomach rises when she laughs. “You want to fly now too?”
“No,” I clarify. “Not in addition to, instead of.”
“Why would you want to fly?”
I keep my eyes focused on the ground as my thumbs trace slow circles at her waist. “No one ever said, ‘You really shouldn’t fly’ or ‘Think of all the problems you could cause if you could fly,’ right? You cruise around, check out the view, and come back down. Great power, none of the responsibility.”
“I have a feeling you’d be bored just flying around all the time.” I’m still looking down at our feet, but I can hear the smile in her voice.
“Maybe. But I also wouldn’t have to worry about inadvertently changing the past. Or accidentally bumping into another me and sending the younger one back where he belongs.”
She combs her fingers through my hair again. “You liked it, didn’t you?” she asks. “The do-overs.”
I pull my head away so I can see her face, and her hands settle on my shoulders again. They feel good there too. She takes another small step closer.
“Yeah…I did. I liked what you said about second chances. For a while there, it almost felt like I was supposed to do it, you know? It felt…almost…right.” I shake my head. “I’d do it again. I’d go back for Emma and those kids. If I could have helped your dad, I would have.”
Anna lifts my chin up and forces me to look at her. “You did help.”
I don’t say anything.
“Is he the real reason you don’t think you should come back here anymore?”
I nod, even though he’s only part of it. “I don’t think this is right.”
“For you or for me?”
“For everyone.” I try to block out the vision of her in the driveway ten years from now, looking up at a guy who isn’t me but makes her smile the same way I do. “But, I guess, especially for you.”
She lets out a heavy sigh. “You seem to think you’re somehow responsible for my future.” I start to respond but she puts her finger to my lips. “Listen to me. Please, don’t say anything. You are not responsible for my future, Bennett.”
Sure I am. It would be totally different if I’d never come here.
“It’s mine.”
Yes, and you deserve a simpler one.
“And I want you in it.”
You shouldn’t even know me.
She looks over my shoulder, staring into the distance. “I don’t know what you saw when you went forward, and I have a feeling you’re never going to tell me. And that’s fine.” Now she looks right into my eyes. “Stop coming here if you think it’s wrong for you, or for, I don’t know, the space-time continuum or something, but don’t stop because of me. From the beginning, you’ve made this all about how you were affecting my future. But I’m affecting yours, too. This time it’s your choice. What do you want?”
I say the first thing that pops into my head. “You.”
Her eyes light up. “I’m glad to hear that.”
“But it’s not that simple.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not.”
She brushes my hair off my forehead and plants a kiss there. “I want you to be part of my life. When you weren’t in it, I went to great lengths to get you back. So here we are.” She spreads her arms out to her sides and looks around the track. “But who’s to say what happens next? Maybe a year from now, we’ll both be off at college and we won’t want this anymore. Or after five years of this, we’ll get tired of all the distance or the uncertainty…you’ll get tired of zapping back and forth, or I’ll get tired of waiting for you, or maybe the whole thing will become too much to handle. But right now, we both want to be together. Don’t you think we should be?”
I stare at her. “I told you, it’s not that simple.”
“Sure it is.” She runs her thumb across my cheek. “In fact, let’s make it even simpler. I don’t need a calendar. I don’t care if you’re here for big events or how long you stay each time. I just need to know that you’re coming back.”
I reach up for one of her curls and wrap it around my finger, thinking about how easy this all seemed back at the beginning of the school year. I remember that day we sat on my bed, surrounded by my new posters in a room that was starting to feel a lot like home, and built a schedule. God, how cocky I was, thinking I had it all figured out and that nothing would stand in the way of us being together as long as that’s what both of us wanted.
“Will you think about it?” she asks.
I look away from her and nod.
“Don’t do that,” Anna says.
“What?”
“I can always tell when you’re lying. You don’t look at me.”
I lock my eyes on hers. “I’ll think about it,” I say. And I will.
But I know I won’t change my mind.
35
Physically, I’m here in San Francisco. But all morning I’ve been mentally absent, my thoughts constantly wandering to Christmas 1995. Ever since I saw Anna at the track, I’ve been trying to bring myself to go back there, but I just couldn’t. Now that it’s Christmas here, the whole thing feels unavoidable.
Dad reaches under the tree and makes a big production of reading the tag on the last gift. “To Brooke from Bennett,” he says, tossing it high in the air.
Brooke catches it with both hands and shakes it hard for clues. She’s already grinning as she rips off the paper, but a huge smile spreads across her face when she peeks inside. “No way.” She looks up at me and starts pulling out each of the ten “vintage” concert tees, one at a time. In case my parents are getting suspicious as they watch her, I describe how I found them online, but when Brooke looks at me, I shoot her a wink.