There’s something peaceful about holding Blake’s hand, stroking his knuckles with my fingers, and riding in silence as we listen to the radio.
By the time we arrive at my house, it’s 10:50 p.m., giving us ten minutes to spare before my curfew.
“Do you want to stay?” he asks, half a minute or so after we’ve stopped, as the engine cools. “I mean, you can go if you want. I’ll see you at my place for your training, but…”
“Nah,” I reply, squeezing his hand. “I’ll stay.”
“Because, you know, you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
“I want to.”
The lights are on upstairs in my parents’ room, which faces the street. Mom’s car is still gone. I’m sure Isobel has been blowing up my phone, but she can wait.
Right now, and it sounds so cheesy that it makes me sick, there’s only Blake and me. And that feels like how it should be.
“You don’t find this weird?” I suddenly ask, still resting my head against the window.
“Should I?”
“I mean, I have your brother’s liver. That… Doesn’t that make us, in some weird way, related?”
I can tell he’s thinking, letting the words roll over him.
“I don’t think so. I think, as my dad says, it makes you part of the family, but not exactly family. You aren’t Dave… And I miss him.” Blake pauses and closes his eyes.
“The zoo was his favorite place. Always was. Every birthday we would go there, even when he was in college. He still wanted to visit the zoo. So when I thought about where to take you, the zoo just came to mind first.” He opens his eyes and glances sideways at me.
“I think…I didn’t take enough of my brother’s advice. Who does, really? We think we have so much time with the people we care for. But I admired him, you know? He had a lot of good ideas, and despite how easily things came to him, he never took that for granted. Dave was a good person, the best version of Mom and Dad. I…never told him, but I wanted to be like him. Not because he got Mom and Dad’s love or anything, but because he was the type of person you look up to. The one person you want to emulate.
“And I miss him,” he says, almost a whisper. “I really freakin’ miss him.”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Blake show as much emotion as he does in that one simple sentence. I don’t think, deep down, that I thought he had…that much depth. But looking at him, seeing him actually try to fight tears as his eyes turn glossy? It softens any previous thoughts I had about him.
Blake, deep down, is suffering like anyone who has lost of a loved one would. No matter how strong a facade he puts up.
“Does that weird you out? That I took you on a date to a place my brother loved, and you have his liver, and I just spilled my guts to you like that?” He laughs, trying to lighten the moment.
It probably should. I think for any sane, average person it would. But I’m not sure that I, Andre Cobb from Boston, Massachusetts, can call myself sane or normal anymore.
“I think if he were here, he would have told you that it was a great date idea. And I would agree with him.”
Blake grins and squeezes my hand again. “So what that means, I don’t know. It’s unprecedented, sure, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t take advantage of what we’ve been given?”
“And what have we been given?” I ask, pushing off the window, looking at him.
I don’t expect an answer—or maybe I do. Maybe I hope Blake will put this all together for me. The time travel. Him. The secrets. Michael. His parents. His mother’s “experiments.” My life is almost entirely different than it was six months ago. That should be a good thing. Change is good, in science, in life, in everything. I should be comfortable with the unknown. That, according to my parents, is where the best things happen.
But right now, I just want someone to tell me what direction to take. What path to walk, which road to venture down.
“I’d like to think we’ve been given a chance,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper, like he’s not sure he believes it himself. “A chance to see what this is between us.”
“You think there’s something?”
“Don’t you?”
Do I? This night was great; there’s no denying it. But every time I think back on it, on every spark of joy Blake gives me, I wonder, would that spark be a roaring flame if I were with Michael?
“Are you out?” I ask. It’s a sharp left turn in the conversation but also a worthy distraction.
He shakes his head. “I’m just not super out, you know? The right people know, and I let people know when I want them to know.”
“Are your parents cool with it? I’d imagine having a gay kid when you’re members of Boston’s high society could be…”
“My dad and I don’t talk about that,” he says quickly. “My mom and I do, but it’s like clockwork. The same three questions all the time: Am I being safe, am I having sex, is this just a phase?” He chuckles, but I can tell it’s a forced laugh, to keep the space from being too quiet. To keep him from really confronting how much that hurts him. “They mean well, but… Well, you’ve met my parents.”
I squeeze his hand this time. “Listen…”
“We absolutely don’t need to talk about it, Dre,” he says gently but with a firm edge to it, making it clear where he stands on the topic. “I’m fine with it, really. College is soon. I’ll flourish there. It gets better and all that.”
The clock reaches 10:55, and I see the shadow of Dad moving in the window. I sigh, giving his hand another squeeze.
“Bonus. At least you got me home on time. My dad’s going to love you for that. I swear, sometimes I think he wishes he had a daughter.”
Blake laughs and leans across my body as he looks out my window at my house. I can smell the faint scent of his cologne.
He smells the best in this moment, the way the air smells right after a thunderstorm, while Michael smells of faint cologne and a light musk that comes from too many days focused on one thing and forgetting everything else. Blake is different from Michael, in so many ways, but not a bad type of different.
Finally, he pulls back, but only enough so that our faces are close together.
“Can I kiss you?” he whispers.
I hesitate for a second, which turns into two, and then into five, and then ten. Far longer than anyone should pause when asked by a hot guy, whose voice is nothing more than a low, hungry whisper. But it’s not for the reason he thinks.
It’s because the memory of Michael’s lips against my own feels as real as if it’s happening right here. Every smell, every touch, every thought that was going through my head with him in 1970 feels as real as if it were happening right now.
Except it’s not. I’m not with Michael.
I’m with Blake, and by the time I can process this, he has already pulled back, clearing his throat.
“I’m sorry,” I say, clearing my throat too. “It’s not…”
Blake waves me off. “It’s fine, really.”
“I don’t want you to think I’m not…” I pause, thinking over the right word. “Not interested?”
“Is that a question or a statement?”
“Statement.”
Blake adjusts his jacket, fiddling with the collar before folding it and opening his door. He signals for me to wait, walks around the car, and opens my door for me. It’s a simple gesture, but it makes the inside of my chest turn warm and my cheeks burn.
“Then what is it?”
My mouth suddenly grows dry. Blake deserves to know the truth, doesn’t he? Of course he does. Everyone deserves the truth. How did I feel when Claire lied to me? Blake doesn’t deserve that. No one does.
So I take a deep breath and explain.
“There’s someone else,” I say, speaking quickly enough that he doesn’t have time to interrupt me. “In nineteen seventy. Michael, I’ve told you about him. He’s the one I’m tethered to.”
“Uh-huh…”
“And…I don’t know,” I mutter. “I just… We’ve been talking a lot. He’s a musician, and he challenges me. He helped me understand that maybe I don’t want to be a doctor, and that’s huge, you know? And—”
“And you like him.” Blake cuts me off before I have to say it. “Except it’s a total fantasy, because you guys could never really be together.”
“That’s not fair,” I say slowly.
“Not fair? You’re the one who’s not being fair.” Blake lets out a hurried breath and steps back, pacing. “You know what the funny thing is?” he asks, his voice getting louder. “I thought we were connecting. I thought I challenged you. But actually, I was just training you to get to him faster.”
Our block isn’t the quietest block on this street. It’s firmly middle class, and there are always people outside, late arrivals, music playing when there shouldn’t be—but arguing in the street this late at night will attract attention.
There’s more distance between us now, physically and metaphorically, than ever before. Blake stands several feet away, clenching and unclenching his hands.
“I was going to kiss you tonight. I was going to kiss you so good that you would forget about time travel, about college, about everything.
“But now I see that it wouldn’t be good enough for you to forget him,” he says, moving past me and walking around to the other side of the car. I stand there, listening to the sharp sounds of the door opening and slamming shut. He rolls his window down, looking at me with hurt, dark eyes.
“I’ll see you at my house for training.”
“You still want to train me after this?”
“Unlike you, I can separate my feelings and do the right thing. You need a trainer. We work well together. I’m going to keep doing it. If you have a problem with that, talk to my mom.”
Blake doesn’t pull away immediately. He sits there, his hand on the console, staring at me. “You know you can’t be with him, right?” he asks. “He’s in the past, fifty-one years in the past. There’s no future there.”
“I know,” I whisper.
“And you know there’s a future with me, right? I’m right here, Dre.”
Logically, I know that. Deep down, I know that. The safe answer—and the easy answer—is Blake.
So why can’t I say so?
He shakes his head, pulls back, and starts the car. “You know what, never mind. Good night.”
I step back just in time as he peels off, driving rapidly away. My body feels heavy, rooted in place, forcing me to watch as his taillights disappear and the street falls silent, the only sound the thumping in my head.
By the time I step into the house, he’s halfway down the street, and Dad’s halfway finished with his first question.
“Absolutely not,” I reply.
“But—”
“No.”
“Andre, I’m your father.”
“Right, and not my PO,” I remind him, heading up the stairs two at a time. “I’m not talking about my date with my dad.”
“So, it was a date!”
“You knew that!”
“Right, but him thinking it’s a date and you thinking it’s a date are two very different things.”
Standing at the top of the steps, I scoff at him, audibly. “I’m going to call Isobel.”
“Oh, so you want to talk—”
“Yes, I do,” I say, closing the door and leaning against it, like putting my weight on it will keep him out if he decides to enter.
But Isobel isn’t the person I want to talk to.
“Michael,” I whisper.
I look down at my hands, the front sides and the back. There’s nothing different about them. No blurring at the corner of my eyes, just a vibration that makes me feel like I’m a living, breathing tuning fork.
It doesn’t scare me. If anything, it’s welcome. The faint sound of the CNN report Dad’s watching downstairs blends with sounds of the 1970s and echoes in my ears. It feels like I’m walking from one room to the next but stopping at the doorway, waiting to decide if I’m going to make the jump.
And though there’s no fear, there’s pain. Sharp, warm, hot pain in the center of my gut.
“Shit,” I hiss, doubling over and falling to the floor on my knees. When they make contact, it’s like a ripple is sent out. The room morphs, shifting in phases between my room and what looks like a party in a house that’s not my own. They flicker back and forth—2021, 1970, 1969—like I can see Michael’s timeline washing over me in blurred images. The pain continues to grow, spooling out and taking over my whole body.
Focus, I tell myself. Focus on this room. Focus on Michael. Focus only on that. Push through the pain.
Seconds feel like hours before the pain, like a rubber band, snaps back and disappears. When I open my eyes, though, I’m no longer in my bedroom; I’m in Michael’s. He’s in bed, shirtless, sitting up, his hair a mess.
“Nineteen seventy,” he says, without me asking. “Only a few months later than the last time you were here.”
I nod, saying nothing, and pull the covers back, sliding into bed. I turn my back to him and hug a pillow, focusing on the cracked etchings on the wall, wondering what shape I can make out of them. Neither of us speak, but I feel him shift, spoon against me, and wrap his arms around me tightly.
And right now, that’s enough.