The smell of fried bacon drags you out of your dreams. Bacon, fresh coffee and… is that shit? The aromas meld together in a sickening swirl. So strong you can almost taste them. You groan and try to open your eyes. One lid is stuck fast with the remnants of sleep. You rub it clear with the back of your hand.
You’re wearing pyjamas, you realise. Pale blue brushed flannel with tiny pink flowers, white buttons down the front.
What the hell? Is this Carol’s idea of a joke? Dressing you in something her mum might have worn while you were too drunk to remember? Your breasts feel weird, heavy and uncomfortable, like they sometimes do before your period starts. But you’ve been on the Pill for over two years. You know when you’re due to take a break, and that isn’t any time soon.
Did I forget? Did I take it last night? Christ, my head feels rough as Hell. How much did I have to drink?
You put a palm to your breast to soothe the ache and the pyjama material goes damp.
What the…?
Your breast is leaking. How can it be leaking? You panic; are you bleeding or hurt in some way? You haul yourself upright and fumble with the buttons. You strip, but see no blood or trauma, merely pale while fluid forming droplets at your nipple, running in a thin stream towards your navel. Before you can investigate any further, he walks into the room with a tray.
You scream and scramble to cover yourself up. He yells too and almost drops what he’s carrying. Your cries are joined by a high-pitched screech from somewhere over to your left. Something small and angry and hungry.
“Jesus, Aimee! You scared the hell out of me. Are you alright?” He sets the tray on the top of a chest of drawers and crosses to the other side of the bed. You struggle with the pyjama top, your fingers shaking as you try to fasten the buttons, desperate to hide your naked skin.
He glances over and squints, confused. “I wouldn’t bother putting it back on, babe. Oscar’s ready for his breakfast too.” He bends and picks up something out of your line of sight, then turns back to the bed, his arms full. “Say ‘good morning, Mummy’,” he says, in a singsong voice, and you see he is holding an infant. He sniffs and puts the child’s bottom to his nose, then recoils and pulls a face in disgust. “I think I’d better change this little stinker first, eh? Let you get your coffee in peace.” He leaves the room still cooing to the baby, and you clamber out of the bed.
You shriek again as you see movement right in front of you but fall quiet when you realise it’s your reflection. An ornate mirror is attached to a dressing table. Dark wood, a good quality piece of furniture, nothing like the cheap, laminate flatpack drawers you have in your bedroom at home. There are perfume bottles and a makeup case, a silver brush with soft, brown bristles. A lipstick in a colour you would never wear and earrings that you could never afford. But it’s your image that takes your breath away. A shocked gasp caught in your throat. It is you for sure, there can be no doubt about that, but it’s not the face you remember.
Your shaggy purple bob and high undercut have been replaced with long, blonde waves cut in layers that fall past your shoulders. Your skin is clean and free from the acne that has plagued you since your teens. Your teeth are white and perfectly straight—the crooked incisor that you always meant to fix sits neatly with the others. But the wrinkles… Oh, the wrinkles are definitely new. Fine lines at the corners of your eyes, grooves by the sides of your lips. You put your fingers to your face and traces the skin. The woman in the mirror does the same. You can feel the terror rising inside you as the room spins and you crash to the floor.
He finds you, crying, at the end of the bed, holding your head in her hands. He kneels beside you and calls your name, an edge of genuine fear in his voice.
“Aimee?” he asks. “Can you answer me? What happened, babe? Are you okay?”
You try to speak but feel your stomach lurch and you vomit all over his chest. Your body is soaked with a sheen of sweat and you pant heavily, trying to stay calm. He doesn’t seem angry, merely shocked and concerned. He rolls the bottom of his T-shirt to contain the mess and pulls it carefully over his head.
“Come on,” he says, as he wipes your mouth with a paper tissue. “Let’s get you cleaned up and back to bed.” He puts his hands under both your armpits and hauls you to the bed; tucks you tenderly under the covers.
You try to interrupt, to say what, you’re not sure, but he shushes you and strokes your hand. His touch is like a thousand tiny stings from an army of bugs under your skin. “I’ll get a bucket, just in case you’ve got any more in there, okay? And some water. Do you want a glass of water?”
Your throat feels like you’ve been gargling with razors; you nod carefully, your head still spinning. He holds the puke-stained T-shirt aloft like a sack.
“I’m just going to take this downstairs, but I’ll be right back, okay?” He doesn’t wait for you to answer.
You sweep your hair from your face and breathe deeply. Strands of blonde stick to your cheeks, glued with streaks of sick. The baby gurgles again and your nipples tingle. You feel the wetness on her chest return.
Okay, you think. Just… keep calm. Keep calm and see if I can figure this out. This is a dream, right? Just a dream. Or a fucking nightmare!
But the room seems too real to be imaginary, the pain in your head too sharp. You can feel the thick fabric of the pyjamas, smell the breakfast that he left on the side. There are birds outside beyond the window, you can hear them tweeting through the glass.
On the floor by the bed, you see a handbag. Tan leather with a gold-lettered logo. You move slowly, sliding across the mattress so as not to make your head swirl again, grab the handles and lift it to the bed. You rummage through the contents: a leather purse, a notepad, some makeup, a tin of breath mints. All the things you might have carried around yourself. Never in a bag of this wonderful quality, though. Yours had been a black canvas rucksack. You thumb the catch on the purse and check the compartments until you find something more interesting. A photograph, a little bigger than passport-sized, of you and him squinting into the sun, both of you much younger than now. Behind you, the university building where you had once studied for your degree. Scrawled on the back in blue biro is a date, five months into the future.
What is this? That can’t be right.
You check the pockets for anything else useful and jump when an alarm sounds from the side of the bed.
A phone is plugged into a charger, but not like one you’ve seen before. You lean across and kill the noise. The baby babbles and stuffs its fist into its mouth. You hear the soft, wet sound of it sucking its skin.
You unplug the phone and stare at the blank screen. There are no buttons, nothing to turn it on. You tap the screen, and some text appears. ‘Swipe up to unlock.’
Swipe up? Swipe up how?
You move your fingers across the surface and by some miracle, the phone springs to life.
Okay… Contacts? No. Messages.
You touch the green and white icon, and a list of conversations unfolds. At the top, a circle, an image. You recognise his face.
Owen. Okay, Owen. Who the fuck are you to me?
You click through snippets of conversation; mundane, domestic and normal.
“Going to be on my way back in 15 minutes I think.”
“Oscar has slept almost all day, so he’ll probably be awake all night.”
“Do you fancy takeaway for dinner tonight? I can grab Chinese from the Golden Dragon if you like?”
“I’m in a meeting from 9:30 until 12. Don’t worry if I don’t reply. I love you.”
So… partners, you think, maybe spouses? The kid’s dad, I guess. And I’m… Oh!
You open the Photos folder, and a mosaic of images fills the screen. Of you, and Owen and the baby. You scroll through them, going further and further back in time. Here, a picture of a newborn child, the wisps of hair on the top of their scalp still sticky and stained with blood. Going backwards, a photo of you standing with Owen behind you, his arms wrapped around your massive, swollen belly. Further still, your bump smaller, your hair a little shorter, you look a little slimmer in the face. Gripped in the embrace of horrified fascination, you scroll on and on, and years pass. Weddings, parties, selfies, pets. A whole lifetime flashes before your eyes, but one which you are sure you’ve had no part in. You are almost to the end of the camera roll when you notice the dates at the top. The numbers don’t make sense.
Wait, how is that possible?
You navigate to the calendar: Fri 17.
Friday the seventeenth of what? you wonder. October, the numbered grid tells you. October, yes, that’s right. Carol’s birthday party was the Thursday before. But at the top left-hand corner, the year in red. Incorrect, surely? Unless…
Oh my God!
The device you hold in a trembling palm says you have been thrust twelve years into the future.
The baby is screaming in a ravenous rage when you finally snap out of your shock, and Owen appears at the doorway. He has re-dressed in clean trousers and a smart blue shirt; a plastic bucket held in one hand and a beaker of water in the other.
“Hey, little man,” he says as he enters. “What’s all that noise about, eh? You want your milkies don’t you, little bobbin?” He puts the bucket on the floor and hands you the water.
“How are you feeling, babe?” he asks.
You sip the water and grunt noncommittally.
“Do you feel up to giving him a feed? It might make you both feel better.” You barely have time to respond before Owen lifts the baby from his cot and puts the wriggling infant in your arms. You hold him awkwardly, your arms feel like rubber, terrified you might drop and hurt the child.
“Do you need me to hold him for you?” Owen asks, but somehow that seems worse. You give a slight shake of your head and murmur “no” as you fumble with the buttons on your top.
Oh, God. Oh, God. How do I do this? Is this kid even mine? Why don’t I remember? What do I do? I don’t know how to…
But the child knows better than you do. Instinct kicks in and he roots for the nipple and clamps his lips down hard. You feel a flash of pain and then a peculiar sensation, one you can describe only as a release. You feel the milk leave your body, coaxed by the child, and a sense of peace washes over you. You support the baby’s head with the crook of your arm, hold his body in your lap with her other. It hurts, and yet, it doesn’t. It feels alien but somehow familiar. You are bonded to this child somehow. When your breast starts to ache, you understand he has taken everything he can. You roll him gently, swapping your supporting arm, and he does the same on the other side.
You can feel he’s almost finished when he bites you. You feel a stab like you’ve been pinched and he pulls back his head, stretching your skin with his mouth. You yelp loudly and he lets go. He stares at you with tiny blue eyes, wide with shocked surprise.
“Hey, little dude,” Owen admonishes, “Don’t bite your mummy. It’s not nice. Is he finished, babe? Shall I take him?”
You give a small nod, and he takes the child from you, sits him on his knee and rubs his back. In a few moments, the infant lets out a belch so loud it seems impossible it could come from such a small thing.
“Well done, Oscar. Good burpies.” He holds him there for a moment, bouncing him gently on his knee. He watches you as you button your pyjama top, and you feel the blush burn in your cheeks. “How are you feeling?” he asks.
“I…” you begin, and your voice sounds strange. “I don’t feel very well.”
“Another migraine, you think?” he asks. “Or maybe a dicky tummy. I thought that fried chicken seemed a little off last night.”
“Fried chicken?” you parrot back to him.
“I know I should have gone to our usual, but the queue was so damn long and I just wanted to get home. I’m sorry, I hope my impatience didn’t make you sick.”
“I don’t…” you begin, and you want to tell him you don’t remember any fried chicken, that you don’t even know where the hell you are or who the hell you are. That your head feels like someone is hammering nails into your skull and the last thing you remember was being at Carol’s for her birthday party. You snuck upstairs to Carol’s parent’s room and lay on their massive, Super King-size bed. Corey Manson offered you a pill of some kind and you let him slide his hand up your skirt.
“Aimee? Aimee, are you okay?” Owen gives your arm a shake.
“Huh, what?”
“You drifted off for a moment there.”
“Sorry,” you say. “I was just trying to remember last night. What did we do?”
He laughs, but it sounds clumsy and nervous. “Oh, we had a wild night out on the town. How could you forget?” He sees your expression and is concerned once more. “Seriously? You don’t remember? I was late home because of that damned Kenmore project, and you’d been working on your presentation all day, so I brought back a bucket of chicken and we watched Twisted Souls, some weird movie from the 90s.”
“That was my favourite film when I was fifteen.”
“Yeah, you said that last night. That’s why we watched it. Look, Aimee, do you think we should get you to a doctor?”
You put your hand on the back of your neck and try to rub the tension away.
“No. No doctors. I’ll be okay. You said I was working on my presentation?”
Owen holds the infant by both hands as the child tries to stand upright in his lap. He wobbles and Owen steadies him, supporting the child’s weight and lifting him gently until his back is straight. The baby stamps one foot on Owen’s thigh and giggles in delight.
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your research, Doctor Harrow. That would be pretty bad news. The future of quantum physics needs you.” He smiles, but you can see the uncertainty lingering behind his eyes.
You laugh and say, “Of course not! Honestly, I think I just slept badly and I’m still tired. I feel like I’m still stuck in a dream.”
Owen’s smile fades. “Again?”
“Huh?”
“You said you feel like you’re stuck in a dream. You said that last night.”
“Did I?”
“Yes. You said you felt like you had a migraine coming, that it felt like you were stuck in a dream that you didn’t know how to wake up from.”
“Huh. Maybe I’m just remembering what I said,” you say. Owen doesn’t look convinced.
“I think maybe I should call the surgery. See if they can get you an appointment.”
“Honestly, umm…” you pause as you try to remember his name, “Owen, I’m fine. Really. Don’t worry.” You take a sip of water. “Could you pass me my phone, please? I think I dropped it on the floor.” He puts the baby on the bed before bending down for it. He gives it to you and grabs a teddy from the cot.
“Are you going to be okay if I head out to work?” he asks, giving the stuffed animal to the infant, who is now rolling around on his back.
“Of course I will,” you tell him. “I already feel much better than I did.” Your dishonesty comes easily, as does the fake smile. He looks unsure but seems to accept it.
“Check in with me, okay? And if you feel unwell, ring me straight away. Or Mrs Ferguson from next door. She can be with you sooner.”
He kisses you on the cheek and it feels like you’ve been scalded, but you keep smiling until he leaves the room.
You wave to him from the bedroom window as he backs the car out of the driveway into the street. Sitting upright on the bed, the baby gurgling beside you, you pick up the mobile phone once more and begin searching through the contacts.
Okay… Cameron McDonald, Candice Walker, Cassie Ferguson… Who are these people? Where’s Carol?
Your best friend’s name is missing. You keep on scrolling down the list, reading every name.
Chris Douglas, Corey Manson… Corey?
You press on the speech bubble at the top left-hand side and the phone changes the screen to your messages. The most recent message from him is from what you think of as nine years in the future, or three years in the past if the phone date is true.
“It was fantastic to see you again, even if the reason was pretty awful. Keep in touch.”
What reason? you wonder and keeping reading backwards. But there are only five texts in total, and none give you any clues. You hit cancel and go back to the contacts, hover your finger over the call button.
Screw it. He was with me last night as well. Maybe he’ll know what the hell is going on.
You hit the button and wait for the line to connect. The voice that answers sounds older than you remember and somewhat surprised.
“Hello? Aimee? Is that really you?”
“Hi Corey,” you answer. “Yeah, it’s me. How are you?”
“Umm…” there is a long pause and some scuffling noises on the other end. “I’m good. Is everything okay? It’s been a while.”
Not for me, you think.
“This is going to sound strange, Corey, but can you tell me when was the last time we saw each other?
He makes a strange noise, like a startled sneeze, and says, “Are you serious?”
“Yeah.”
Another pause and you hear what sounds like the scrape of a lighter followed by a deep inhale. “Wow. Okay. Well, it was at Carol’s funeral.”
A sudden tightness grips your chest. “Carol’s… Funeral?” you repeat and feel unexpectedly lightheaded.
“Yeah. Look…” he begins, but you interrupt.
“How did she die?”
“She… It was a skiing accident. Look, Aimee, what’s all this about?”
“I…” you begin, as the room starts to spin. You lean back on the headboard. “Can you meet me? Is that possible?”
He laughs. “Sure. Are you going to come over to Australia, or should I travel to you?”
“Australia?”
“Yeah. I’ve been here two years, remember?”
You breathe deeply and try to keep the queasiness under control, but the pain in your head feels like a pickaxe in your skull. “I don’t… I don’t remember very much at all, Corey. I think something terrible has happened. I woke up this morning and I was old. I’ve got a baby that I don’t know for certain is mine, and some guy called Owen is my partner. The last thing I remember was us being at Carol’s birthday party and you giving me something. A pill of some kind, a drug. And we… We were intimate, I think? But now…”
There is nothing but silence on the other end, and you wonder at first if he’s hung up.
“Aimee,” he says eventually. “Are you drunk? Have you taken something?”
“No, I’m not drunk!” you snap. “Look, I know how crazy this must sound, but I honestly don’t know what’s happening. Can you at least tell me what it was you gave me?”
“What I gave you?”
“Jesus Christ, Corey! The pill. What was in the pill?”
He huffs and you can almost hear him scowling on the other end. “You call me up, out of the blue, tell me you don’t remember the last time we saw each other, but you do remember us being ‘intimate’ as you put it, and you want to know what was in a pill I supposedly gave you, what? Ten years ago? The fuck is wrong with you?”
“Twelve years, actually.”
“What?”
“Twelve years,” you repeat. “I worked it out from the dates on the phone.”
“Okay, Aimee. And that makes all the difference. Anyway, great to hear from you, but I think it’s time to say goodbye now.”
“No wait!” you cry and the baby babbles, kicking your legs with his heels. “Please Corey, I need your help. I’m not well. I’ve got amnesia or something. Please, I’m just trying to figure this out.” You lower your voice a little, try to sound more composed. “Do you at least remember the night I’m talking about?”
Another pause, and then he answers, calmer now. “Yeah, I do. Of course I do. I’d fancied you for ages, so that was… Yeah. But Owen was clearly the better choice.” He laughs again, but you can hear the bitterness in his voice.
“I’m sorry, Corey,” you tell him, even though you’re not sure what for. “It’s like, there is this huge chunk of time that I’m missing. Like I’m stuck in a dream or something. I’m just trying to figure stuff out.”
“Stuck in a dream?” he replies, and you feel a chill run through you. “Huh.”
“What do you mean, ‘huh’?” you say.
“It’s nothing. I don’t even know why it stuck in my head, but you kept saying that when, well, you know. ‘This is like a dream. Like I’m stuck in a dream.’ You were high. I mean, we both were. But…” he stops.
“But what?”
“I don’t know. I always quite liked the idea that being with me was like being in a dream, you know. I’m just an idiot romantic, huh?”
You don’t feel like ‘romantic’ seems like quite the right word.
“Did we date?”
“Aimee!” He sounds genuinely upset. “No, we didn’t date. Fucking Owen turned up and… Sorry. This is really weird for me.”
“Weird for me too,” you say. The baby clambers into your lap and starts tugging on your hair. “What happened after? Did we go back to the party?”
“Well, no. I did. You fell asleep and I couldn’t wake you, so I left you in the bed and went back downstairs. I was buzzing, you know?”
“You left me?”
“You were asleep…”
Nausea kicks in tenfold now, and the pain in your head makes it feel like it might split in two. The baby giggles and plucks at your top and for a second you see something else behind him. An image overlaid and unfocused, like a superimposed frame in a film. And then a feeling, irritating and insistent, of someone pulling you down the bed. A hand on your leg that’s cold and clammy, like a tentacle draped on your skin.
“What was the pill, Corey?” you whisper into the phone. “What did you give me?”
The baby reaches up and grabs at your breast, and yet you know it’s not the infant’s hand you feel. The weight on your chest is not of a child, but a memory. Of a man in his early twenties. Close-cropped hair, blue jeans, a black shirt, and a nose ring too big for his face.
“It was just something to chill you out, Aimee. I can’t even… You wanted something to relax you.”
“Did I?” you say, but it’s not really a question. More, a sudden realisation that at some point that evening, you had made a terrible mistake. “I’m sorry, Corey. I’ve got to go. Thanks for, I don’t know. Whatever.”
You take the phone from your ear and kill the call, drop the phone on the pillows beside you. The baby has curled up on his side and is slowly falling asleep. You watch as his tiny body rises and falls with every breath. You run your fingers gently over his cheek, and a sudden sense of peacefulness folds over you. The headache fades and the sickness passes.
You can see it in your head now, everything that happened. You watch your body as you straddle past and present, pulled out of yourself and split apart. A young girl with a purple bob and high undercut, naïve and unaware. You can feel the alcohol slowing you down, the taste of cigarettes in your mouth. He offers you the pill and at first, you’re not sure, you don’t do that kind of thing. You smoke and you drink and sometimes you get high on joints passed around at parties, but that’s all. He assures you it’s fine, it’s safe, it’s good. And you believe him because he’s older than you, and Carol has invited him, so he must be okay…
You’re in a dream. A dream. You can’t wake up. And you said yes first but now you want to say stop, but you can’t make your mouth say the word.
You can feel yourself floating, getting further away, and the bile in your throat that you can’t contain is rising like a tidal wave. When the room turns black like the light has been cut and he leaves you lying face down on the bed, your stomach heaves and the room stinks of vomit and that chill down your back returns.
Something sour uncoils in the pit of your belly and slithers its way to your mind. Two words, so sharp you can almost taste them, and you know what they say is true.
I died.
You know this, and yet you don’t feel afraid. You feel shocked, certainly, but somehow it makes sense. You died and yet you are here in the future, with a whole new life you cannot remember.
How can I be here? you wonder, and jump when the phone starts to ring. You snatch it from the bed and check the screen. Incoming call from Owen.
“Hey,” you say as the line connects.
“Hey babe, how are you feeling now?”
“Weirdly, a little better,” you answer honestly.
“And is Oscar okay?”
You look at the baby snuggled into your side, making suckling noises in his sleep.
“He’s fine. He’s curled up beside me right now. Dreaming by the looks of things.”
“That’s great, babe. Look, don’t be trying to do a load of work today, hey? Just go easy. Rest a bit. Watch a film in bed on your laptop. The conference isn’t for another three months. You got this.”
Work? The conference? You have no idea what Owen is talking about. He said something about research. A presentation. About quantum physics needing you. What the hell is quantum physics anyway? You were studying psychology at university.
“Owen?”
“Yeah?”
“Where is my laptop, do you know?”
“It was on your desk this morning. But listen, no working, just resting. You promise me?”
“I promise,” you lie cheerily.
He tells you he’ll check in with you after lunch and tells you that he loves you. Your reply slips out before you realise it, and you tell him you love him too. You are surprised by how natural it is to say, how comforting the words make you feel.
You end the call and slide from the bed, making sure you don’t wake the baby. You wonder if you should put him in his cot; if he is safe to leave alone like this. You slide your hands underneath him and he moans and babbles in his sleep. You lean over him, getting as close as you can, and lift him to your chest. He feels warm and soft. He feels… familiar.
You’re aware of a feeling like fluttering butterflies in your tummy, the memory of him being inside you. You carried this child for almost forty-two weeks; he didn’t want to leave your womb. You remember the pain, the utter exhaustion. Needles in the backs of your hands. Tubes and wires connecting you to a wall of wailing machines. The midwife’s palms pressing firmly on your bump, working with you with every contraction, as you pushed and groaned and willed him to come out. And then, at last, he did.
You remember the blood streaked in his hair as they placed him on your chest. The scent of him when you touched your forehead to his, like nothing you’d experienced before.
All this you know because you’ve lived it. Or at least some part of you has.
“Hey, Oscar,” you say softly. “Hey, little man. Let’s put you in your own bed.” You lower him down onto the hard foam mattress and cover him with a blanket. You take the teddy from the bed and tuck it in with him. It feels surprisingly normal yet completely bizarre, as you grapple with a memory you cannot have and yet somehow you do.
Your laptop is indeed on a desk, in a room made up as an office, next door to the bedroom. You sit down and open it, the screen springs to life, a box asks you for a password.
Your fingers know what is needed, and you type in a word without thinking about it. Your background image is of Owen and Oscar, sitting on a tartan picnic blanket. A grey stone bridge spans the lake behind them, and the sunlight leaves diamonds on the water. You know this place, it’s close to the university. You’ve brought your books and studied in this exact spot by the lake, what seems like a hundred times.
You’re not in the photo because you took it, and you remember this moment, although you weren’t there, it hasn’t happened yet. You feel a quick stab of pain behind your eyes, and you shift your focus on the folders on the desktop.
You know what to do, and what you’re looking for, but you don’t know how and why. You scan through files and documents, pulling up note after note.
Electrical stimulation to the hippocampus triggers a response in specific visuospatial regions… Strand component processing disrupts the lithium isotopes… Biochemical feedback loops… Quantum superposition… Synoptical connections via remapped protein chains… Molecular neural signalling and episodic memory…
Multiple-phase chronesthesia.
These are words and phrases that should mean nothing to you, and yet you understand it all. You have studied and researched this your entire adult life. What it means, and the prospects it offers. A complex amalgam of physics and psychology, or more simply, the power to move through time.
You died.
I’m still here.
You died in a dream. In a dream… In a dream…
But this isn’t simply a dream, is it?
Everything that was and is and will be, tumbles into place. You are pulled and stretched in every direction, your muscles and sinews ripped apart, pieced back together and remade. Your eyeballs bulge and contract under pressure, exploding in your skull. You are split and stitched, flayed and collapsed. Your skin is torn and cleaved from your bones and every pore is turned inside out. There is nothing you can do but shriek and scream as your mind folds inside of itself.
And then—
—a hand on your shoulder and a familiar voice.
“Aimee? Are you alright?”
The room slides into focus and your vision pulls back like a camera zoom, macro to wide lens. A lounge filled with people and cigarette smoke. The heavy bass of a rock song blaring over the conversation. Sweat and beer and garlic, maybe, from a homemade dip. And then—
“Carol?”
“Aimee, what’s wrong?”
Her concerned face is mere inches from yours. You grab her and pull her even closer.
“Oh my God, Carol, you’re not dead! I’m not dead! Wait, am I dead?”
“No Aimee, you’re not dead. You’re just really, really drunk.”
Corey is leaning against the frame of the doorway; he sees you and gives you a wink. You flip him your middle finger. His face falls and he looks away quickly, obviously confused.
“What’s that about?” Carol asks you. “I thought you two were… You know.”
“We’re not,” you tell her, an edge to your tone that warns her not to ask any more questions.
“Okay,” she says, pulling a ‘whatever’ face. “None of my business anyway.”
You hug her again and say, “I’m so sorry, Carol, I really need to go home.”
“You’re not feeling well?”
“I just don’t want to die tonight.”
“Wait, what?” she tries to grab your arm to stop you, but you’re already halfway to the door.
“I love you,” you call over the deafening music. “Happy Birthday. And don’t go skiing, okay?”
“Why would I…?” she begins, as Corey steps out in front of you.
“Hey, Aimee, what’s up? I’ve been waiting for you.”
“You stay away from me,” you hiss at him furiously. “Don’t come anywhere near me.” You try to dodge around him, but he moves to block your path.
“What’s wrong with you? What have I done?”
You square up to him and yell in his face. “It’s what you would have done, you bastard!”
He lifts a hand, but you don’t get to find out why, as a shadow moves between the two of you.
“Everything okay here?” a familiar voice says. You look up and something inside you shifts, like old memories falling back into place.
“Everything’s fine now,” you tell them, as Corey storms out of the room. “Hey, you’re Owen, right?”