Eyes open. Ceiling coming into focus. Wood slats. Not her apartment. The sound of snoring.
Nev turned her head as carefully as she could. Jared was curled up at the edge of the mattress, hugging the blankets, with his back to her. She inched away, attempting not to shake the mattress or disturb him.
Had she spent futurepast night with Jared? Or if he woke up and found her there, would he be shocked, like the last time she’d woken up in his bed? Either way, she didn’t want to find out. She couldn’t deal with his sloppy affection or his sloppy anger. Better to sneak out before he woke up and, if necessary, make excuses later.
Nev slid out from the ultra-high thread count sheets, one socked foot hitting the floor, then the next. Interesting. She appeared to be fully dressed. But she didn’t feel her viz nested into its place above her left ear. So wherever she had reset, she’d probably still been awake, but making herself comfortable.
Jared snored loudly and rolled over, throwing one arm and leg heavily in Nev’s direction. She dropped down to the floor and held her breath.
Was that a pile of magazines under his bed? Nev squinted to read the spines. Of course, Jared would think it was cool to have a collection of original hard copies of turn-of-the-century porn mags. A snort of derision escaped her before she could clamp her lips shut.
The mattress squeaked loudly, and Nev held her breath. She sensed movement overhead and rolled under the bed just before a hairy foot hit the ground, soon followed by another. A loud rumbling had Nev reaching up to pinch her nose before the smell wafted down to find her. The bed sank down, then sprang up again as Jared plodded to the bathroom. More farts and a long, loud stream of piss hitting the toilet.
He hadn’t yet called for her, which meant he probably wasn’t expecting her to be there. Nev felt a surge of gratitude that she wasn’t going to spend her next night in Jared’s company. All she had to do was be patient and wait for Jared to take a shower, so she could make her escape. Come on, come on. She waited for the sound of the tap to turn on. Instead, heavy footsteps thudded back her way, topped by the naked smack of flat soles on polyurethane. Dirty bastard, you didn’t even wash your hands. I can’t believe I ever let them touch me. Nev held her breath, trying not to move a single muscle, praying that he wouldn’t catch sight of her under the bed. The mattress crunched down overhead, Jared’s feet disappearing from view.
Hand down, rooting around under the bed.
“Where are you?” Jared’s voice asked.
He had seen her! Humiliation burned Nev’s cheeks as she wondered how to explain herself. She was just about to slide out from her hiding place when Jared’s fingers hit the stack of dirty magazines, grabbing the issue at the top.
“Got you.”
Fuck me, Nev thought, as she heard glossy pages flipping and the beginning of a slow but all too-familiar thwapping. In fact, she supposed he had fucked her the first time she lived through this day. Jared could always be counted on for a morning tune-up when she stayed over the night before. It was one of his best qualities. Perhaps his very best quality. Nev ricocheted between mortification and resentment as the page flipping came to an end and the thwapping began to pick up speed. It had been close to two weeks since her encounter with Levi. And since then, nada. No tune-ups from Jared. She hadn’t even taken any time to tune herself up. She’d been a little busy worrying about the existential threat she was facing. Nev, Nev. Only you could land in a magical, consequence-free temporal vortex, and still be more stressed than ever. Why wasn’t she living free and easy, hooking up in a hotel suite with a different guy each night?
The bed was creaking above her, panting sounds mixed in with the increasingly rapid thwapping. From the sound of it, he was about to close the deal. Good thing, because Nev wasn’t sure how much longer she could wait it out. She was starting to feel a little hot and bothered herself. She tried to picture Jared’s snot-streaked face during their last breakup to cool herself down, but instead, unbidden, Airin’s face took shape before her eyes. Airin’s long fingers. She wondered how they’d feel touching… Stop it, Nev. The bed was shaking vigorously now. How much longer could this go on? Quite a bit longer, she knew. Jared did have his good qualities.
“Unnnnhhhh!”
Thank the Heavens, as Mama would say.
Minutes later, her footsteps masked by the white noise of Jared’s high-pressure shower nozzle and his enthusiastic but painfully arhythmic rendition of the OBAMA! musical soundtrack, Nev crept out from her hiding place, stole a pair of Under Armour slides from the shoe rack, and made her escape into the crisp San Francisco morning.
Hiding herself in a crowd of tourists, Nev jumped on the back of the Powell Street cablecar, heading south. She counted the blocks as the campily retro ticket collector (black peaked cap and hot pants held up by suspenders) struggled through the thick bodies, jammed in shoulder-to-shoulder for the short trip to Market. The last thing she needed was to get arrested for fare evasion, but, ‘no viz/no dollaz,’ as the MC CG lyrics went. Nev jumped out at Geary, making eye contact with the collector as she stepped off the car, which had stopped for cross traffic.
Access to her own apartment was thankfully biometrics-activated—no viz required. Nev checked all her usual spots for the device. Not on the bedside table—which wasn’t a surprise, since she’d still been dressed when she reset. Not on the coffee table by the couch. Not in the bathroom. Not in the bowl by the front door. She gave her apartment a suspicious sniff. No traces of dinner smell lingered behind. She was getting the suspicion that she hadn’t been at home when the clock turned 11:33:43 futurepast night. Where, then? Where else would she have been comfortable enough to take off her shoes and viz?
Unfortunately, the answer to that question would have to wait. According to the clock on the auto-Chemex, it was 9:30 already, and Airin had told her yestermorrow that she arrived at their place today at 10:04. She had barely enough time to change her clothes, slip on her boots, and hail a Dryverless on her gamestation, if she wanted to make it there on time. And what if she didn’t? How would that change what came next, the days that she had already lived through but Airin hadn’t? It was something to talk about with them, but Nev certainly wasn’t going to risk disrupting the timeline that she herself had apparently designed.