by Crane, Megan
As she came closer, he saw the frown wedged between her brows, as usual. She worried her lower lip between her teeth, and looked as if she was debating nuclear disarmament with herself. How had he managed to fall so hard for such a serious woman? It was a mystery. But he felt absurdly light-hearted as he watched her worry and frown and march with such force down the city street. She might be serious and strange, but she was his.
He saw the moment she spied him there, waiting for her. Her face went blank with surprise, and then she beamed. Tommy felt the power of that smile all the way to his toes. He smiled back as she picked up her pace and hurried towards him.
‘How long have you been here?’ she asked, closing the distance between them and climbing the stoop. ‘You look like you’re freezing to death.’
‘I’m fine,’ he said, and then helped himself to her mouth. It was like a punch to the gut, heady and sweet. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her, so he kissed her again, and then again. He couldn’t explain it to himself, and maybe he didn’t want to explain it. He wanted to sink into her and forget anything else existed.
When he pulled back, her eyes had gone starry and she smiled up at him, dazed. He watched her take a breath, then collect herself.
‘Wow,’ she murmured. She reached for him, and frowned when he yanked his hand out of her grasp with a hiss of pain. ‘What happened?’ she demanded.
‘It’s a long story,’ he said, as she carefully took his hands in hers and looked at the scrapes, her frown deepening.
Jenna made a clucking noise, and then hurried him inside the building. Tommy’s hands stung, and he was cold, but there was no denying the warmth that spread through him as he surrendered himself to her. It felt strange and good to have someone fuss over him. To have someone who took his pain personally.
Inside her tiny studio, which Tommy loved despite himself, because it was so normal and so bright – so happy – Jenna, tore off her coat and threw it and her bag in the direction of the futon. The bag slid off the couch, tipped over, and spilled its contents everywhere. Tommy stood in the archway between the kitchen and the living room and watched as the usual female things slid out across the hardwood floor.
‘Someone pushed me into traffic,’ he said, looking away from the bag. Jenna stepped out of the bathroom to stare at him, her eyes wide. ‘Obviously, I’m fine,’ he said. ‘But my head was this close to a bus.’
When he showed her the space between his two fingers, he suspected he was as pale as she looked. He tried to shake it off.
‘Thank God you’re okay,’ she said, her voice low. She disappeared into the bathroom again, then reappeared with an armful of first-aid items and a determined set to her jaw.
Tommy let her lead him to the futon, and sank down on it. She kicked her spilled purse out of the way with complete disregard for her own belongings, and knelt in front of him, making more adorable clucking noises as she looked at his palms. He was tempted to hurt himself more often.
‘Are you hurt anywhere else?’ she asked.
‘I don’t think so.’ Tommy took a quick inventory. ‘My knee aches a little bit, but I took the brunt of it on my hands.’
‘Did you see who did it?’ she asked. Her gaze was serious.
‘Just their foot,’ Tommy said. He frowned. ‘Definitely a male shoe. I’m pretty sure.’
She leaned back, sitting on her haunches with her hands on her thighs. ‘What time did this happen?’
‘Maybe two hours ago?’ He didn’t have any sense of time. He’d only known he had to get to her. ‘A little more?’
Jenna blew out a breath. ‘I had already decided that it couldn’t be Duncan and Eugenia,’ she told him. ‘But I didn’t have any proof.’ She told him what she’d been up to that evening, and what she’d reluctantly concluded. ‘Eugenia, at least, was there for hours. It definitely wasn’t her.’
‘I don’t think it was Duncan, either,’ Tommy said. He shook his head, and then winced when she touched one of his raw palms, probing the scrape for bits of the New York street. ‘Duncan would never be satisfied with simply pushing someone into traffic. He’s too much of an egomaniac. He’d want me to know he was the one doing this.’
Jenna nodded as she poured something foul and stinging across Tommy’s hands. He hissed his reaction, and she slanted an amused look his way.
‘There, there,’ she murmured, as if he was a baby. ‘It only hurts for a second.’
‘Easy for you to say, isn’t it?’
She smiled. ‘I’ve had scrapes before, I promise.’
‘I think it’s Nick,’ Tommy said. His voice cracked slightly as he said it, which he hated. It was the first time he’d said it out loud. It made him want to weep, or hit the walls.
‘Nick?’ Jenna repeated. She looked stunned. She sat back again. ‘But you and he have been friends forever.’
‘It’s about money,’ Tommy said bitterly. ‘Right? Isn’t it always? Or fame. It’s the band. It’s always about the band.’ Never the music. Always the fucking band.
‘Do you really think so?’ Jenna whispered. ‘I know he’s mad at you—’
‘More than mad.’ He tilted his head back. ‘I don’t want to believe it, but he’s been the angriest. Consistently. The most vocal about me leaving. He was furious about it earlier tonight at our band meeting.’
‘You’re the one who knows him,’ Jenna said carefully. She looked down at her own hands. ‘Do you think he’s capable of something like this?’
‘I don’t know how to answer that.’ Tommy’s voice was hoarse. ‘I want to tell you there’s no way. But Nick and I aren’t who we were back then. He’s not the guy I knew.’ He blew out a breath. ‘So I think he could be capable of anything.’
‘He’s certainly angry enough,’ Jenna said, making a face. He didn’t know which temper tantrum of Nick’s she was thinking of, but wasn’t that the point? That there were so many to choose from? Going all the way back to when Nick would mouth off in high school and get himself thrown out of classes, over and over again.
‘He’s always had that temper,’ Tommy agreed. ‘Fight first, talk later, that was always Nick.’
‘Okay, so, now we know to watch him.’ Jenna’s frown was back. Tommy reached over and smoothed it out with his thumb. She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. ‘That’s good. It’s like a heads up.’
‘Sure,’ Tommy said. He was professionally trapped and his oldest friend wanted him dead, but in that moment he felt better than he should have. It was the way she wore her concern for him like a cloak around her, and how seriously she listened when he spoke. It was the way she’d patched him up.
He knew what it was. Maybe it had been inevitable, ever since that first kiss when she’d pulled away and in so doing, confused the hell out of him. I’m not like that, she’d told him, horrified. And she’d been telling him the truth. She wasn’t like that at all. He wasn’t sure how he’d confused the issue.
He watched the sway of her hips as she rose to her feet, and took her bandages and iodine away. He wanted her naked, under him, over him, he didn’t care. Just as long as they were skin to skin. Just as long as he could feel her with his hands. Just as long as he could keep believing in her.
He sat forward, and picked up her empty purse. It was giant and very, very blue, and was exactly the kind of thing that made him think women were a different species. He shovelled her things back into it – lipstick, stockings, for some bizarre reason, a wallet. But his attention was caught by the notebook that had fallen open in front of him, the pages cramped with writing. Was Jenna a writer? He wondered why she’d never mentioned that to him. Then again, they’d really only known each other a very short time. There were all kinds of things she probably hadn’t mentioned. All kinds of secrets and passions he had yet to discover. He couldn’t wait.
Tommy picked up the notebook, meaning to close it properly, and saw his name.
He looked closer, thinking that maybe he’d found Jenna’s diary, or somethin
g equally private. He was delighted – and definitely not too mature to put it away.
October 3 – Tommy almost hit by car, rushed to hospital – FIRST ATTEMPT?
That did not read like the girlie diary entry he’d been expecting. So he read on.
And wished he hadn’t.
Because it got worse, and then much worse.
TOMMY DIES, of course, was the worst part. It had a page to itself, and a date that was under a week away. She had it circled in red and written in block capitals.
Tommy felt frozen through to his core.
Jenna walked back into the room, her hair around her like a cloud, and stopped when he looked up at her. He watched her notice what he held in front of him, and he watched her swallow.
‘What is this?’ he asked, and he sounded so calm, so quiet, when all he could hear inside his own head was the screaming.
‘I can explain,’ she said, her voice quivering. ‘Really.’
‘“Tommy dies”,’ he read. His eyebrows shot up. ‘I can think of only one reason for this, Jenna. Only one, and it makes you a fucking psycho, among other things. So by all means, explain it to me. Please.’
24
God, the way he was looking at her.
It made her stomach muscles clench and her knees go weak. Jenna remembered his weary cynicism that first night, when she’d realized to her horror that he wasn’t emotionally or even physically involved, not at all. That he was going along with it because he wanted something from her, but not because he wanted her.
This was much, much worse than that.
He sat there on the futon, the same futon where he’d put his mouth and his hands on every inch of her skin, where she’d cried out his name and made him growl with desire, except now he was looking at her with that arrested expression, like he’d never seen her before. It was horrible. The green in his eyes had gone glacial. Frigid. He was holding himself so still. So rigid.
She knew on some deep level of intuition that it didn’t matter what she said. He’d already convicted her of whatever crimes he believed she’d committed. Judge, jury, executioner. She could feel it in her bones, see it in the way he looked at her, like she was a stranger. Worse than a stranger. A monster.
There was nothing to be done about it except tell him the truth. She’d known it would have to come to this, eventually. She’d simply been too cowardly to bring the topic up of her own volition. Too afraid of … exactly this.
Jenna took a deep breath, held her hands together in front of her like she was giving a speech, and dove in.
‘I’m going to tell you something,’ she said, through her suddenly parched mouth, ‘and you’re going to think it sounds absolutely crazy. Believe me, I know how crazy it sounds. I know how crazy it is.’ She paused, and discovered that she’d started sweating. Terrific. ‘And I probably should have told you a long time ago, but I didn’t know how. I still don’t know how.’
Tommy said nothing. He didn’t move. He didn’t seem to breathe. It was as if he’d turned to stone.
I couldn’t get so lucky.
‘The thing is,’ she said, plunging on, ‘I’ve known since before I met you that you’re going to die in a few days. I’ve always known. And the reason I’ve always known …’ She wasn’t sure she could do it. She had to do it. ‘… is because this is not the first time I’ve lived through 1987.’
Tommy didn’t so much as blink.
‘I came back in time,’ Jenna said. She sounded so bright and cheery. So matter-of-fact. It was ridiculous. She felt ridiculous. She moistened her lips with her tongue. ‘And I can hear what I sound like when I say that. But if you can just trust me on the part that sounds crazy … I know it might be hard, but if you can, I don’t know, suspend disbelief for a few days? The key thing to remember is that someone is trying to kill you. And I know that they were successful once before.’ She wanted to faint. She could hear herself, and she sounded like a crazy person. An unhinged lunatic.
‘You came back in time,’ Tommy said after an endless moment of him merely watching her like she was an exhibit in a zoo. He stretched his legs out in front of him, and suddenly he almost looked relaxed. If Jenna didn’t look too closely at the harsh glitter in his eyes, or the hard cast to his jaw.
‘Yes,’ she said simply, because what else was there to say?
‘From where?’ He smirked. ‘Excuse me. I guess I mean, from when?’
She ignored the smirk, and told him the year.
‘The twenty-first century,’ Tommy said. He nodded. ‘Not so far off. Things must be pretty much the same.’
Jenna thought of the Internet. Facebook and IM. Email. Cellphones and Blu-ray. Starbucks and iTunes. Voice-activated cars. Smart houses. Her beloved TiVo.
‘Some things,’ she said.
‘So much for the theory that the world will blow up in the year 2000,’ he said in that same conversational tone, as if they were discussing one of the PBS shows he liked to watch. She knew better than to believe it. ‘Look at you. Living proof that we survive the millennium.’
He thought she was a maniac. She could feel the edge in his voice as it cut into her. But she didn’t know what else to do, what might ease the pounding of her heart or that sick feeling in her gut, so she kept talking.
‘The millennium was really no big deal,’ she shared with him. He cocked his head slightly to the side, as if fascinated. She knew that she was digging her own grave, as far as he was concerned. But she couldn’t seem to stop. ‘The world didn’t end, the computers didn’t explode, and the Four Horsemen didn’t appear. It was kind of a letdown.’
‘I’ll keep that in mind.’ His hands tensed over the notebook, then he set it down beside him on the futon. Like it was alive, and had teeth. ‘And what’s it like in … how do you say it? Aught two? Aught ten?’
‘You say two thousand,’ Jenna said. Teacher to student. As if this was a normal conversation. ‘Two thousand eleven. Or twenty. Twenty twelve. Like that.’
It was almost as if he was interested in these details, but Jenna knew he wasn’t. She could feel the tension in him, emanating out in waves. Slicing into her like the wind through the concrete canyons.
‘I can’t tell you how fascinating this is,’ he said after a moment, and when he looked at her, Jenna saw a complete stranger.
‘Tommy, please,’ she said desperately. ‘I know this is impossible to hear. I know you don’t want to believe me – that you can’t. But you have to know that I would never tell you something like this if it wasn’t true. Why would I?’
‘Why would you?’ he echoed softly, and pulled himself to his feet. She saw a hint of despair cross his face, but then his mask came down and it was as if he was made of steel. Blank. Unyielding. ‘I can think of a few reasons,’ he said shortly. ‘But first and foremost, you’re obviously out of your fucking mind.’
‘I understand—’
‘It’s all in that book, isn’t it?’ he demanded, cutting her off. ‘Your whole plan of attack. I have to hand it to you, I really do. It’s certainly the most creative approach I’ve ever seen.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking—’
‘Bullshit.’ His voice cracked like a whip, and Jenna flinched. ‘You know exactly what I’m talking about. Make me think I’m being stalked, then save me from the stalker. What a hero you are. How could I do anything but fall in love with you?’
‘You think I—’ Jenna held up her hands, palms out. ‘That doesn’t make sense. How could I drive the car that almost hit you – and me?’
‘How did you know it was going to hit me?’ he fired back.
‘Because I knew,’ she said fiercely. ‘Because it already happened. And why would I endanger myself – with the car, the fire – if the plan was to lure you in somehow?’
‘I don’t know why,’ he snapped. ‘But we’re talking about someone who thinks she was sent back in time, so I’m not exactly looking for rational explanations at this point. You’re lucky I don’t call the
cops.’
‘The cops.’ She couldn’t believe it was this bad. Her heart was hammering against her ribs. ‘Why on earth would you call the cops?’
‘Because that’s what you do when you find out you have a crazy stalker with absolutely no grip on reality,’ Tommy threw at her. He jabbed a finger in the direction of her notebook. ‘Especially one with a detailed plan leading up to your death.’
Jenna put her trembling fingers to her temples.
‘Tommy,’ she said, fighting to stay calm, ‘you can think I’m crazy. You can think I’m a stalker. I don’t blame you. But you have to believe me – someone is trying to kill you.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. His gaze bored into her. ‘I’m looking at her.’
‘It’s not me!’ she yelled. ‘For God’s sake!’
‘Stay away from me, Jenna.’ His voice came out in a hiss, and his eyes narrowed to slits. He looked dangerous. She felt fear skate down the back of her neck.
‘You have to be careful—’ she tried again.
‘Stay the fuck away from me, or I really will have your ass thrown in jail,’ he told her in that low, ominous voice. ‘Unless, of course, you can go back to the future like Michael J. fucking Fox.’
He brushed past her, not even trying to avoid it, and that slight bit of contact rocked her.
‘Tommy …’ But she only whispered it, and anyway, the door slammed hard behind him.
He was gone.
* * *
Tommy spent a long time walking the streets before he calmed down enough to notice where he was. Even when he recognized that he was near the Midtown Tunnel, which was nowhere near anywhere he’d want to go, he didn’t care.
She’s fucking crazy, he told himself over and over. It was like a song in his head. She’s a fucking crazy lunatic.
His heart had broken. He’d actually felt it happen. Every word she’d said cracked it into pieces, smaller and smaller. Until there was nothing left but rage and despair, because he’d thought he’d found someone. Finally. He’d thought he wasn’t alone.