by Brona Mills
David closes his eyes like he doesn’t want me to know he knows exactly how I got it. ‘I hope one day, you’ll trust me enough to tell me everything.’
I relax, because one day I just might.
‘So the next one’s kind of cool,’ he tells me. ‘If you could wake up tomorrow, having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?’
‘I’m not sure,’ I lie. ‘Why don’t you go first?’
‘Right now, I’d want to wake up with the ability to prove my research. We have some pretty interesting things going on right now, but it’s far-fetched. I know there are a couple of people relying on the outcome—well, one person really, but it might save her life if I can figure it out. It would be pretty cool to know what I’m doing.’
My heart beats faster. God, does he know more about me than he’s letting on? Why wouldn’t he tell me if I’m in danger again? ‘That’s a good one.’ I try to keep it casual. ‘I guess mine would be some variation of knowing I could keep Max safe. Have some sort of ability to be able to protect him . . . from everything.’
‘That’s like a supermom power.’
I nudge him in the ribs. ‘Or Mighty Mouse power.’
He chuckles. ‘Yeah, it is.’
David delivers the next set of questions rapid fire, and I’m amazed that I’m able to answer honestly, knowing he’d never make fun of me or use the information against me.
‘What’s your most treasured memory?’
My heart sinks when I know it’s a memory I can’t share with him.
‘You need to answer quickly, remember?’
‘When I gave birth to Max, I was scared. I met someone in the hospital who helped me. It sort of restored my faith in humanity.’
‘That’s a good memory.’
I search his eyes for any recognition, or understanding of what I told him, but he moves on.
‘Flip side. What is your most terrible memory?’
I answer without hesitation. ‘I was the one who found my dad.’
He closes his eyes and swallows hard.
The pain of the memory pushes tight against the inside of my throat, my nose, my eyes, trying its hardest to escape, but I won’t crumble. I purse my lips together and push the tears down. ‘You?’
He shakes his head. ‘I haven’t had any tragedies in my life.’
‘That wasn’t the question. It doesn’t matter what you’ve experienced. It’s your most terrible memory.’
He takes a deep breath and leans closer, lowering his head. ‘My parents are both intelligent. They made most of their money from developing software and microchips for an English company. The rest of their money came from investing in future developments and start-up projects that took off. One night they were having a dinner party with a potential buyer, and the conversation turned to their children. I’d snuck downstairs to get something from the kitchen—I can’t remember what, but I heard my name. They were all light-heartedly discussing what careers they thought their children would have. My mum joked if I didn’t turn out as smart as them, she’d have to get a DNA test to see who my real father was.’
‘Oh, David.’
He puts his hand up. ‘It was a tongue-in-cheek comment, I know, but when I was ten, I was terrified that if I wasn’t smart like my dad, he might not want me as his kid anymore, and I’d get sent away to live with whomever they found out was my real dad.’
‘You know, it sounds like, despite knowing the questions, you never practiced your answers.’
‘I didn’t.’ He kisses my hair. After another round about ourselves and our families, David stumbles into a sort of epiphany that hits us both. ‘We’re both partially resentful of our parents’ success and the impact it had on our relationships, although still following in their footsteps and trying our hardest to be as successful as they were.’
I place my hands over my face and moan. ‘God, when you say it like that, it puts it all in perspective, doesn’t it?’
‘They wanted to create a good life for their kids, just like you do, just like I will when I have kids.’
He kisses me softly on the lips. I think he’s done, but at the last minute he comes back for more and nibbles my lip on retreat. ‘Next question. If you were going to become a close friend with me, what would be important for me to know?’
I drop my eyes. ‘I still feel a little broken.’ My voice wavers. ‘I’d need you to prove to me, every day, for the rest of my life, that there really are good guys out there.’
‘I’m trying.’
‘I know you are. I just find it hard to trust people, and I think I’m falling for you, and that scares me.’
‘Why does it scare you?’
‘’Cause if it turned out I was wrong to trust you, I’m not sure I could come back from that one. I’m terrified what that would do to Max, having a mom who’s that broken.’
He places my hand over his heart and squeezes it tight. ‘I promise I won’t lie to you, and you can trust me. I won’t break your heart.’
‘Sometimes it’s not intentional.’
‘That’s scary for everyone. It’s important that you know I invest a lot of time in my work, because it’s not a job to me. It’s part of my life. I’ll put you and Max first— little league games and parent-teacher conferences and date nights—but there are days I don’t clock out at five. I’ve never been in love before, so it was never an issue for me. After a few weeks of trying to make a relationship work, I chose university work or studying instead. I don’t want to put my work first anymore. I’ve already chosen you. But it’s still new to me, so let me know if I get it wrong. Tell me if something upsets you. Let’s not allow the little things to brew into big things.’
I launch myself at him. It’s as honest as I could have hoped him to be. I move to the side of his neck to tease him while he continues to ask me questions. ‘Tell me what you like about me. Be honest, say things you might not normally say.’
‘On top of being a great guy I might be in love with, you’re totally hot and sometimes I really want you to fuck me, but I like that you’re waiting.’
‘Holy shit,’ David breathes. ‘That’s a good one.’ He kisses me chastely on the lips and sits back, keeping hold of my hands. ‘Tell me an embarrassing moment in your life.’
‘Oh, god. There are a few.’ I think back, mostly to the teenage years. Getting fired from The Gap on purpose was more embarrassing than I thought it would be. Telling my parents I was pregnant and realising they knew I wasn’t a virgin was pretty embarrassing. Knowing my mom knew I was a battered girlfriend was embarrassing, but not in a funny way. But I have to tell him the one that beats them all. ‘Showing up to the hospital to give birth on my own was a pretty embarrassing moment. When I checked in at reception, and the woman looked over my shoulder and asked if my birthing partner was with me, I couldn’t tell her I was already a single mom, and my own mother was MIA, most likely in a bar.’
‘Stella,’ David soothes.
‘It’s okay. I’m over the stigma now. Well, mostly. I know it’s more my issue than anyone else’s. I’m working on it.’
‘I got locked out of a hotel room naked,’ he blurts. ‘When did you last—’
‘Oh, no,’ I cut him off. ‘You are going to have to give me details. I just bared my shameful soul to you. I need humorous embarrassment to cheer me up.’
He hides his face behind one hand. ‘It’s bad,’ he warns me. ‘I was with a girl in college, and we had only been together a couple weeks.’
I nod at him to continue.
‘We went to London for a concert and stayed overnight. In the middle of, you know . . .’
‘Sex?’ I mock whisper. ‘Are you telling me you’re not a virgin?’
He rolls his eyes and gains his confidence back. ‘In the middle of sex, I accidently called her the wrong name.’
‘Oh . . . my god. How the hell did you forget her name if you’d been dating for a couple of weeks?’
He blows out a long
breath. ‘I didn’t forget as much as perhaps I was imagining someone else.’
I gasp. ‘David. That’s awful.’
‘In my defence, she was with me purely for sex too.’
‘How the hell do you know?’
‘’Cause our dates didn’t consist of much. I tried to get to know her, and she never wanted to talk. We always met in places that revolved around drinking and ending up in bed. The night away was my last attempt at getting to know each other, but we didn’t spend much time talking.’
‘So it would seem. How did that lead to getting locked out naked?’
‘She didn’t take it well and ended up screaming and throwing punches at me. I kept backing up to stop her from decking me and ended up at the door. She opened it and shoved me outside the room. Want to know the punch line?’
‘It gets worse?’
‘It was her flatmate’s name.’
I pick up a cushion and hit his arm three times in support of all scorned women.
‘Hey, stop. I don’t want to end up in the hallway naked again.’ He chuckles.
I shake my head.
‘You know how I knew she was just with me for the sex?’
‘How?’ I ask, not sure I want the answer.
‘’Cause two nights later, I got a booty call. She only finally dumped me after she got jealous when she saw me talking to said flatmate at a party in our house.’
‘Did you sleep with her friend?’
‘No. But I did like her at the time. She talked to me all the time when I was at their place, and she never hit on me. I think that’s why I liked her. She wasn’t looking to hook up and do the dirt on her roommate. I know it’s a dick move, but I did kind of wish I was dating her instead of Amy.’
‘Where’s the roommate now?’ I’m panicked. What if that was the girl he was supposed to marry.
‘Jessica? I may have been selfish when I was getting laid in college, but I’m not a dickhead. I didn’t chase after her that night. Mike ended up dating her for a while. They kind of hit it off at his birthday party, the same one Amy dumped me at.’
I take a deep breath and regain myself. ‘Just how embarrassing was the nakedness?’
He chews on his lip, and I want to bite it along with him, but I refrain to hear his story.
‘I had to take the elevator to the lobby, hands covering my junk, and catch the attention of the front desk. It was late and the old guy on the desk was reading a book. I walked round and asked him to let me back in my room to get clothes. Actually, I asked him for a robe, but he was not amused and said no. He did ride the elevator back upstairs with me and let me into the room. He also waited outside while I grabbed my clothes, one shoe of which Amy threw at me on the way out. He offered me a ten-percent discount for a second room.’
I laugh. ‘That was generous of him.’
‘Hey, I took it and left early the next morning for the train station. Next question: when did you last cry in front of another person and also by yourself?’
‘Sometimes I cry in front of Max, but I lie and tell him I have sore eyes. By myself?’ I sigh. ‘I’m not sure. A lot of things freak me out, and I tend to over think things, especially at night when I’m alone and Max is sleeping. I worry about the future and what will happen to us. Probably last week I was crying.’
‘Last week? We live together, Stella. If you need to cry, I’d much rather you came to me. I don’t even need to know what’s going on. I’d just want to be able to hold you in my arms while you let it all out.’
I force a smile. I might burst into tears at the comfort those words give me.
We only make it one more question before the doorknob rattles.
‘Shit, is Mike home already?’ I pick up my phone and stand. ‘I haven’t even thought about what to say to him.’
The door doesn’t open, so David gets up and glances through the peephole.
‘He’s not alone.’ David sniggers. ‘Come on.’ He grabs my hand. ‘I don’t want to get stuck out here with small talk. It’ll be totally awkward.’ He pulls me to my room as the front door opens, and Mike and his date tumble in.
I move Max over to the far side of the bed and pull the covers down to get in next to him. ‘We done?’ I ask through a yawn.
David takes a second to think. ‘No, we have a few more rough ones left.’
I let out a long moan and pat the bed next to me. ‘There’s not much room, but if you lie down I can lean on you.’
He kicks off his shoes and joins us in the bed, moaning as he stretches his back.
‘Get going with the questions. I want to be asleep before midnight.’
‘If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone and why haven’t you told them yet?’
I tense, trying to think how to frame this without giving too much away. I want to be honest with him. I’ve fallen too hard for him to start lying now. I drum my fingers on his chest, stalling. ‘I know some things about Max’s dad, and I’d regret not doing the right thing with it. I never told anyone because I was scared.’
‘What things?’ he asks against my hair.
‘Can’t tell you, but it was a big deal for me to tell you there is something. I’m not being dramatic, and it’s not something you can help with.’
He nods and runs his hand up and down my arms, like it could keep me safer. ‘If I died this evening, I’d regret not telling you I love you. I want to wait until I know you believe me, and I know it won’t scare you off. You don’t have to say it back, you don’t even have to feel it. I just want to wait until you’re ready to accept that. But we’re in this game deep, and if I really died tonight, that would be my biggest regret.’
A few questions later, I’m holding tight onto the tears trying to break through.
‘Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing and why?’
‘I need two. The first one is Max. It’s not something I like to think about, but ask any parent, and they’ll tell you the “what if” has crossed their minds. Even stories of soldiers going to war scare me. What if Max grows up and chooses a dangerous profession? I’ll spend the rest of my life terrified I’d get that call. But the other death that scares me just as much is my own. I’d be terrified about what would happen to Max.’
Tears run down both my cheeks, and I have to wipe them away. ‘I know my mom and Cici would take him, but then I worry, what if they’re already dead? And I worry about what it would do to him emotionally. Would he be frightened? Would he think I left him? Most of all, I worry that if I die, his dad would take him and raise him to be like himself. ’Cause I don’t want my little boy to be anything like him. He’d destroy Max to spite me.’
I sob into David’s chest and clutch at his shirt, trying hard not to wake Max as my tremors shake the bed. I allow myself to cry for a while, because it’s the first time I’ve ever said those things out loud.
David isn’t judging me. He isn’t telling me to stop worrying or to stop over thinking life. He’s just holding me, like he said he would.
My tears reduce and I sit up and reach for the box of tissues on the nightstand. I dry my eyes and finally look David in the eye.
‘I think we can change the when was the last time you cried in front of someone answer,’ he says.
‘Um, yeah. What number was that?’
‘I forget. Don’t worry, we can start again.’
I nudge his side and laugh. ‘That’s not funny. I have a headache now.’
‘Last one,’ he tells me.
I stay sitting, starting down at him. ‘Hit me with it.’
‘Share a personal problem and ask my advice on how I might handle it. Then, I’ve to reflect back to you, how you seem to be feeling about the problem. Then we’ll switch.’
We talk about how Max is asking questions about why he doesn’t have a daddy, and David gives me advice on how much details to share. He promises to get some
books from the university library on family counselling and help me with the stages Max is going to grow through.
‘Thank you.’ I squeeze his hand. ‘Now you go.’
‘I have some information that’s critical to my work. It’s a source of data that no one has ever had before, but I can’t expose it to anyone else at the university. It needs to be guarded, but I worry I’m too busy trying to protect it that I might actually be endangering it.’
‘Jeez, David, you know science isn’t really my thing. But if you take the science out of the problem, are your fears justified? Or has it more to do with who works on the project and gets the funding and the glory?’
‘The fears are real. The issue of protecting the data, and it not being destroyed while it’s being figured out, is real.’
Is he talking about his own experiences in time travel? Is he in danger if he exposes himself? ‘Then my maternal instincts say protect it. Keep it safe the best you can. If your intentions are pure, it’s not a bad thing. Your information or source or whatever it is, might be in danger if you can’t help it—but it’s definitely in danger if you pass it on to the wrong people. Think about lying on your death bed. Which scenario would you regret the most? Or toss a coin. Often the decision will hit you when the coin is in mid-air. You start wishing or hoping that it goes one way.’
‘Thanks. That actually makes me feel peaceful about the decision we made in the beginning.’
‘We?’
‘Me and Mike. He knows about the specifics of my work. It’s the other reason we came together—for me to work more in-depth on this, and for him to make us rich and famous.’ He grins.
‘You never did tell me who you know in England that told you guys about me.’
‘It was someone Mike met.’ He sits up. ‘You need to tell me what you think I feel about my problem, then, I’ll let you sleep.’
‘I think you’re confident you’ve already made the right decision, but you want others to believe it too. That perhaps if the shoe was on the other foot, you’d be outraged anyone could withhold that kind of information source. You’re worried your morals took over the decision-making process in something that’s normally so scientifically black and white to you. Maybe your experiences here have changed you, and you’re not sure if you’re happy with those changes.’