Find Me – Chapter 155

Find Me

Chapter 155

Kayla pushed her toast around in the warm, gooey egg yolk that was fast disappearing from her plate and shoved the last, huge bite into her mouth.  She didn’t know when this body had last eaten, but her awareness needed breakfast, and the combination of those two things was that she woke up starving.  One of the first things she’d done when she entered Steve’s apartment was look in the fridge; it was always a telltale sign of how he’d been living and if there’d been any joy in his life.  In this instance, it was a mixed bag.  All the basics, but not too much more. 

“This is so good,” Kayla fairly blithered as she ate it up.  “I feel like I haven’t eaten in a day.”

“You had something to eat when we woke up,” Steve insisted arrogantly.

Kayla chuckled at her husband’s naughty wit.  “Yes, but it’s a little more substantial when you cook for me.”

“Sweetness, I am 28 years old, I haven’t been this substantial since 1979.”

Kayla put a sexy look on her face.  She lifted her foot and not so gingerly shoved it into Steve’s crotch from across the square card table in the tiny room and kneaded him with her toes.  “I stand corrected, Mr. Johnson, you are really quite substantial.”

Steve very much liked how quickly from his last release he could stiffen up.  It had literally been less than an hour. And now Kayla’s foot was bringing him right back into ready mode.  The effect on his brain was just as zero-to-60 as it was on his penis.  “Baby, if this wasn’t a flimsy card table I’d throw you down on it and …”  Steve trailed off with hesitation.

“And … ?  And what?”

“… and I’d … fuck your brains out right now,” he finished as if it was a secret.  He shifted uncomfortably in his seat before lewdly grinning at his now empty plate.

Kayla cocked her head to the side and silently questioned the hesitation in his words.  “What?” she prompted when all he did was look up and lay his own unreadable look on her.

“I haven’t said that kind of thing to you in a couple years.”

“Did you think in the time since I’d last seen you that I wouldn’t like it when you talk dirty to me anymore?”

“No.  Maybe?  I don’t know, it’s been a long time.”  It wasn’t the first time that their difference in perspective came up.  And Kayla realized this might be something that changed for him and not her.  Now she was the one who was careful with her words.

“Do you – ah – not—like it anymore?  Were you saying that because of what I was doing to you?”  She immediately removed her foot.

Oh shit, he thought when he saw the worry replace the desire on Kayla’s face.  “No!  Baby, no, I,” he fairly chortled, “I love talkin’ dirty to you.  I have dreams about talkin’ dirty to you.  And I loved what your foot was doing.”

“Ok, good,” she exhaled with some relief.  “Because it’s just the next day for me, and I like it just as much today as I did yesterday.”  Steve smiled broadly.  “So you can fuck me all you want.”  Then she surveyed the table and shook her head.  “But, yeah, not on this table.”

“It wouldn’t survive.”

“Not the way we do it.”

They laughed and let the moment pass as Kayla sighed.  “This is gonna keep being weird for a while, isn’t it?”  He knew what she meant and felt every bit of the weird she was referencing as he plowed a hand through his hair.  “Do you feel like we have to get used to each other again?  So that the two minutes can catch up with the two years?”

Steve knew there was a conversation coming that wasn’t going to be easy, so he treaded very lightly right now, making sure no one was misread before diving them into it.  And, actually, this was just more evidence that the conversation had to happen now before another jump.

“I would like to think we don’t.  Do you feel like we need to do that?”

“You’re different,” Kayla said quietly.

Steve swallowed with nervous tension.  He wasn’t expecting that.  And also didn’t like it.  “Different how?”

She lifted a shoulder.  “Not quite right still.  Quieter.  A little … scared, I think.”

Steve nodded.  “I’m not a little scared.  I’m a lot scared.  Jumping through time and losing you in it has made me that way.”  Kayla’s face fell.  “But every day I’m with you, letting you love me, fixes me.  You taught me that a real long time ago, Sweetness, if I just let you love me, the broken parts of me heal. 

“Like last night,” she offered.

“Like last night,” he smiled.  “And like just looking at you.  Here with me.  Knowing you know me.”  Steve caressed Kayla’s cheek and rubbed his thumb across her lips.  “I love lookin’ at you.”

“I’m here,” Kayla implored, again, “And, I don’t want things to be weird.  So you can look at me – and fuck me – any time you want.” 

Their kiss was deep and needy and felt not the least bit weird.  Steve held her close, her small body disappearing into his embrace.  Then he whispered into her ear.  “I hope you still feel that way after I show all this to you.”

Kayla snapped open her eyes and unconsciously held him a little tighter.  “Why would that change?”

“Because we have to talk, it’s not gonna be any better than the last one you remember back in Copenhagen, and it can’t wait, it has to happen right now.”

“Ok,” she insisted.  “I can take whatever you have to dish out.”

Steve moved the dishes to the sink and replaced the papers that usually covered the table back to it from the counter.  And there were a lot of them. 

Kayla’s porcelain skin didn’t have a single line in it.  It was smooth and flawless unless she was scrunching up her nose or knitting her brow together in contemplation, which is exactly what she was doing right now as Steve looked over her shoulder. 

“When you say you’ve been taking notes, you are not kidding,” she said with some surprise to her voice. 

“I’ve had some time on my hands.”

She looked up at him from the page she was holding and turned the corners of her mouth up in a sad smile.  She grazed her hand lovingly down Steve’s arm.  Touch was Kayla’s love language, and this small gesture meant everything to him whenever touch was given.

Kayla drew her eye back across the scene on the card table in front of her inside Steve’s tiny studio apartment.  It may have looked to a disinterested party like just a clutter of randomly stacked papers.  But to Kayla they were anything but random clutter.  She took one of the looseleaf pages and scanned it carefully.  Then she did the same with another, and then a third. 

“He’s so brilliant,” she murmured to herself, “he’s right about all this.”

Steve smiled broadly with pride watching his wife appreciate his work.  He sat back down across from her in the other of the two folding chairs he’d acquired for himself and watched Kayla take it in.

Unlike Kayla’s very large binder of every single jump and the meta that went with each of them that she’d compile whenever a jump lasted long enough, Steve’s version was more of a study in the road not taken.  Those last revelations with Rolf had stayed with him and driven everything on those pages.  He didn’t need any convincing that the slipstream was broken and that they were the ones who broke it; that was abundantly clear.  But he also didn’t need anyone to reassure him that none of that was their fault, because Rolf is the one who broke Time.  It took years for that man to reveal himself to them and confirm that they weren’t in some kind of private follie a deux.  By the time he did, the damage was already done.  They’d had no idea what their actions were doing and what they would mean.  And moreover, it didn’t, actually, matter.  They’d been there done that on living inauthentic lives in here.  Kayla had said, “they’d tried to be good,” and rather than fix things, all that did was almost break them while at the same time not fixing the slipstream.  Jump destinations got more extreme, not less.  The jump effect got worse for them, not better.  It became more unpredictable.  And he was just as convinced now as he was the day he jumped from Copenhagen that the guarantee of returning home did not exist in any scenario. Not if they were good, not if they stayed here all 16 years, and not if they even tried dying.  And Steve was done letting Rolf drive this car. 

So, Steve started writing his own manual.  He already knew where all their left turns from the timeline were when they were supposed to go right, and where the resulting ripples were; Kayla had compiled that countless times,  now, the most recent one being on their little houseboat.  Steve’s new contribution was about the fastest way to increased instability.  This organized chaos living its best life on the card table wasn’t a jump-to-jump briefing; it was an arc-to-arc strategy.  A guidepost with very specific intent: How to end the ride.

When they made love last night in the exact same desperate need that drove them to do so when they’d first jumped here, Steve knew it was something that belonged in that guidepost.  He knew it in his bones, and part of him felt guilty for not stopping them completely to show all of this to Kayla before they succumbed to themselves.  But, ultimately, he knew the end result would not have changed, because their intimacy was paramount to their existence.  They needed each other, and that’s all there was to it.

“You know what you’re lookin’ at, right?  Before you commit to me being all brilliant?”

Kayla looked up and nodded.  “Our way out.”

Steve nodded back.  “If we’re lucky it’s the way out.  If we’re not lucky, it’s a fast track to the end of us.  No more consciousness in any destination.”

“We actually die,” she said.

Steve nodded.  “Yes.”

Kayla held her husband’s very intense gaze and added, “Or the third option.  Forever.” 

He sat stock still and nodded again quietly.

“I don’t want to die.  I don’t want to stay here anymore, but I don’t want to die, either.  If we don’t snap back, there are worse things than spending forever with you.”

Steve took a deep breath and really began this conversation.  “Depends on what forever brings.”

“I know,” she said poignantly. 

“And what you think forever is.”

Kayla replied pointedly to him, “Forever is forever.”

Steve nodded.  “I want to play 20 Questions.”  Kayla smiled, but she slowly turned it into a frown when her husband did not smile back.  “And I want to do it here.  In this room.  Right now.”

“Why this room instead of the other room?” she asked, as if the two apartments were rooms in the same house.

“Because if it goes south, I want the bad energy to stay here and not over there.”

“Ok,” she replied in a cautious way that did not at all mean ‘ok,’ “what kind of 20 Questions, just in general; the animal, vegetable, or mineral kind?”

“When have we ever played that kind?”  Kayla pursed her lips.  “The kind that covers all the stuff about the Forever option of what’s on this table.”

“Steve, what just happened here?”

“We do good with that kind of game, and this is going to be a hard conversation.”

“Are we going to need liquid courage, ‘cause it’s a little early for shots.”

“No shots this time, Sweetness.  Just you and me and some really tough questions.”

“You know what’s not different, Steve?  How much I trust you.  How much I believe in you.  This,” she pointed to the piece of paper that was sitting right in front of her that represented one of their earliest jumps in Italy, “is brilliant.  How to instantly breakdown that timeframe if we jump back there.  Why do you think there’s anything you can say to me that’s going to make me change my mind about that once you say it?”  Steve didn’t answer her.  He wasn’t being elusive, he just didn’t really know what to say.  But Kayla meant it when she said she trusted him.   “Ok, if you want to play 20 Questions, then I’m ready.” 

“Ok, first rule, you have to answer the questions.”

“Pause!” Kayla scoffed.  “Why would I not want to answer the questions?  We’ve always answered the questions.  Wait – you have to answer the questions, too, right?!”

“Yes, Sweetness, I’m answering questions, too.” 

Kayla just looked at him.  His intensity seemed to have somehow grown tenfold, and it truly mystified her as to where this could possibly be going.  Not remotely interested in a slow burn with this one, she got to work on nipping this in the bud quickly.  “I want the first question.  Did something happen while you were waiting for me?  Is that what this is?”

“No,” Steve assured her immediately. 

“Because you built it up to something pretty awful, so I’m a little worried, here.”

“Kayla, no.  Nothing like that.”

Kayla was relieved, but also legitimately frustrated now.  “Ok, then what is the big mystery here?”

“That’s two in a row, can’t ask two in a row.”

“Steve,” she warned testily. 

He made a face of impatient annoyance.  “There’s no mystery.  It’s not like that.  Nothing happened while you were away.  I just have been waiting a long time to talk this through, and I can feel the timeline circling us from wherever it’s hiding, waiting to just hit us in the gut and take us somewhere else before we can get this all decided.  What to do.  And we probably should have talked about it before last night happened.”

“Before last night happened?  Before we made love here?” she griped, “Again?  When we weren’t supposed to?”  Steve nodded.  Kayla threw up her hands.  “We’ve been over this.”

“Not for that reason,” Steve shook his head.  “We’re not living the timelines, we already decided that.  Can we just play now, please?”

“Fine,” Kayla licked her lips, looking so much like the young adult he fell in love with, but knowing full well that a woman who’d now lived more than 50 years was inside there.  “Pretty sure it’s your turn.”

“Ok, all questions about the Forever option.  Getting stuck here instead of snapping back.” 

“What if I have other questions?”

“About what?”

“You were here two years following me around.  I remember stuff.  I’ve got questions.” 

Steve gave her a half smile at the stuff he was pretty sure she was remembering.  “Yeahp, ok.  I’m gonna go now, K?”  Kayla made a gesture to proceed.  “K.  You say you can think of worse things than spending forever with me.  What do you think forever is?  And don’t say ‘forever is forever,’ I mean really think about it, Sweetness.  Forever.”

“What do you think I think it means?” she asked puzzled.

“It’s not your turn for a question.  Please humor me, I know you know the meaning of the word.  I want to know what you think Rolf means when he says we can be stuck in the slipstream forever.  Do you think he means our entire lifetimes forever?  Or the end of time forever?  Because I think he means end of time, and I just wanna make sure we agree.”

“Well, this is—frightening,” Kayla deadpanned.  She tilted her head and focused on everything that horrible little man had ever said about this.  “He was pretty clear.  Day in and day out until the end of time.  Inside the slipstream.  Jumping over and over.  Or I guess until the computers stop working?  Or until humanity blows itself up?”

“No no.  That’s what I mean.  We can’t have any doubts about what we think it means if we’re gonna choose it.  Time doesn’t care about humanity, it was here before we feeble flesh bags, and it’ll be here after we all nuke ourselves to kingdom come.”

Kayla positively snorted in a sparkle of hilarity.  The sound was so joyous that Steve was warmed from the depth of his belly all the way out every extremity to hear her laugh at his wit.  She thought he was funny when he wasn’t even trying, and making her laugh gave Steve as much happiness as making her come. 

“Time doesn’t care about we feeble flesh bags!” Kayla continued to laugh until her eyes watered, before finally trailing off to a singsongy giggle. 

“I’m glad you think it’s so funny,” Steve smiled in mock offense.

“You are,” she smiled.  “You always say you’re not good with words, but let me tell you something.  My husband is the best, funniest, smartest wordsmith I’ve ever known.”  She wiped her eyes, the laughing fit finally passed.

“Do you know how happy I am when you laugh?  Any version of you.  Listening to your laugh.  It lights me up inside. 

“Mmp,” she whimpered, wiping her eyes again.  “now you’re gonna make me cry again.”

Steve soaked up the dopamine hit Kayla’s pleasure gave him, because he knew he was going to need it.

“Like I was saying,” he regrettably continued, “We gotta be on the same page with what forever means.”

“Yeah, but we don’t know for sure.”

“Ok, that,” Steve pointed at her.  “That’s what I need us to agree on.”

“Why?”  Kayla was genuinely confused.

“So that we’re making our decisions about whether or not we wanna break the slipstream for the same reasons.  If I think forever is one thing and you think it’s something else, then it’s like we’re gonna be speaking different languages.  If things go bad and we’re stuck here, it could feel like hundreds of years to us, ‘cause we would never stop.  It would be that immortality he’d always wanted for himself.  Literally.”

“Yeah.  That’s why it’s frightening.  But, Steve, I – can’t just ‘agree’ with you about what forever means in this experiment, because even Rolf doesn’t know, so how are we supposed to?”  Steve clicked his tongue, annoyed.  “I do think forever means end of time.  But what that’s gonna mean in here?  We can’t know for sure.”

Steve worked a muscle in his jaw.  “We don’t need to know for sure, we just have to make whatever decisions we make based on what we think forever will mean in here.”

Kayla silently thought hard about this one, blinking in thought before bobbing her head.  It wasn’t really acquiescence, but she thought she understood what he was getting at.  “I can agree that we should assume that forever is—literal.”   

Steve let out a big breath.  “Ok, good.  Not saying it definitely will be, Sweetness—”

Kayla held up a hand.  “I get it.  You’re saying we need to assume it will be.”

Steve nodded.  “Yeah.”  Satisfied with this, Steve was ready to move on.  “Ok, your turn.”

“Ya know what, I don’t want a turn.  Go again.”

Steve didn’t argue.  “Next question is a statement.  You’re gonna get sick of me.”  There was nothing flip about this statement.  He’d rarely spoken with a more serious tone.  “Forever is a long time, Kayla.  The horizon doesn’t end, and neither would we. It would be all day every day every lifetime.”

“I’m not sick of you yet.”

“It’s been 12 years, that’s a drop in forever.”

“You’ll get just as sick of me.” 

Steve chuffed slightly.  “I couldn’t get sick of you.”

“Goose,” she pointed to herself, “Gander,” she pointed to him.  “We could, and we would,” she insisted.  “We have already.  But that’s different from not wanting to be with each other.  We’ve faced things no one survives.  And we’re still here.”

“For 12 years,” he repeated, “two you weren’t even here for.  Twelve years is not forever, and when we’ve needed space, we’ve found ways to take it.  There would be more to forever than just needing space, and we need to be really sure that that’s better than being dead.”

“Ok, I changed my mind, I’m taking my turn now.  You’re my soulmate, Steve.  Am I yours?”

“You know you are!” and he was actually annoyed.  “Always, Kayla.  And forever.  And now I’ve said that word so many times it sounds like gibberish.”

Kayla laughed, because he was right, but then she got back to it.  “Then I believe we’ll be together forever no matter what our plane of existence is.  If not here in serial timelines, then in the afterlife.  I mean that, and I don’t see a difference there.  There are worse things than being with you forever in here.” she repeated.

“Sweetness, I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you.  You are the only home I ever want.  And I’m positive you would get sick of me before I get sick of you.”

“You’re a terrible salesman,” she chuckled.

“We could get pregnant again.” 

Kayla’s blood went cold.  Steve saw the pain in her eyes that he’d just inflicted on her.  This wasn’t how he had planned on saying this, but that’s how it slipped out and there was no unsaying it.  There was also no way around the fact that she had to hear it.  He’d had two solid years to contemplate their three outcomes and the way to get to there, she’d had half a day.  He had to be sure Kayla knew what trying to break the slipstream really meant.  No blinders, no euphemisms, no stalling.  And no more surprises.  There were real ramifications of choosing any of this, and Steve knew just how profound the loss of her children was to her.  To both of them, but especially how she felt about this kind of unfinal, almost undead loss, on which achieving closure was basically impossible.  Serial existence didn’t mean abandoning either Emily or Joey and Stephanie; now it would mean new children they would have a real risk of creating, too. 

“I’m sorry.  I know what that just did to you.  I’m sorry.”  His voice was so solemn.  “Forever is a very, very long time, Kayla,” he repeated, “and we’re lying to ourselves if we think it won’t happen.”

“You can’t know that.”  Her voice was breathy. 

“I think you know it as well as I do.”

“We haven’t in all these years since.”

“Because we’ve gotten lucky.” 

Kayla felt this like something physical had pulled a curtain back on a reality she didn’t know was there and didn’t want to know was there.  And now she understood what was really happening here.

Steve saw her reaction and had to muster every bit of strength he had to keep going in the unvarnished way he knew was required.  He wanted to reach for her and hold on as he did this, but his gut told him to leave her be.  He had to make her hear this without bending her toward his will in the way physical connection would.  “If we do this, there’s a 33% chance that we’re here forever.  One jump after another after another.  And getting pregnant again while we’re here isn’t possible, Sweetness, it’s probable.”

“You’re wrong, Steve,” she spat.  “No.  You’re wrong.”

“Kayla, don’t.  Don’t go into denial.  You have to think about this without ‘the end’ after a last paragraph.  It’s not an ‘until.’  It’s not being careful for four more years or 16 or 30 or 250, baby.  It’s not even a thousand years.”  His voice had gone from strong stoicism to affected vexation in the span of that one chilling sentence.  “Can you even visualize that?  ‘Cause I’ve been thinking about it for two years, and I can barely wrap my brain around it.” 

Kayla felt weak and started bobbing her knee up and down under the table. 

“It’s not science fiction.  It’s not a show I keep making apply to us.  It’s real, and we can’t pretend it’s not.” 

Kayla’s countenance was about 400 emotions splayed over her entire body.  “I never said it wasn’t real.  But that doesn’t mean we can’t avoid having more kids in the slipstream.”

“Didn’t say that.  Saying probability is way up there when there’s no end to be had.  Kayla.  If we do this.  We have to do it knowing what it all means.” 

And Kayla realized none of this was about her maybe not knowing what forever meant.  It was about her considering everything that forever meant. 

“If it means forever in here, then we’ll have to live, Steve continued.  “We’ll have to live it all, baby.  Life happens when you live.  Things in life happen.  Things unplanned.  Things accidental.  Things that are horrible.”

“And things that are beautiful, Steve.  Emily was beautiful.”

Steve’s throat constricted, but he swallowed past it.  “Of course, she was.  So beautiful, Sweetness.  Sometimes life is all of those things all at once.  And we can’t predict what or when they’ll sneak up on us.  No one knows that better than we do.  We have Emily to prove it.  So, I’m not wrong.  And you know it.”

Kayla admitted to herself that Steve was, indeed, not wrong.  She tried to be rational, but it was hard to do amidst the gut-wrenching emotions.  Her greatest pain was still fresh from just hours ago, and this felt like Steve rubbing salt in the wound.  She stayed her bobbing knee and crossed her arms in front of her, subconsciously protecting herself from it.  “Why are you doing this now?” Kayla rebuked with just enough scorn to tell Steve that this was going about as well as he’d feared it would.  She got up and started swaying back and forth in front of the sink.  “You’ve been here, but all of that in Rolf’s apartment just happened for me!”

“That’s right, I’ve been HERE!” Steve raised his voice in reaction.  “Waiting for you!  All I had was time waiting for you.  Watching the other you live!  Missing my real you and needing you so goddamned bad!”

“I’m sorry!” she whined in protest.

“It’s not your fault!  But you wanna know why now?  That’s why!  After I got my act together, I started all this,” he all out hissed at the card table of papers, “so that when you did get here we could be ready!  So, we didn’t lose – time – and now that word sounds just as stupid,” no one was laughing this time, “waiting for one or the other to get to the next place together!  Someone had to get it all straight, and I was the one that was here!” he pounded his chest.  Kayla opened her mouth, but Steve kept talking.  “And now that you’re here we could jump tomorrow, so we don’t have the luxury of ignoring this, the slipstream’s only gonna get worse!  This band-aid’s gotta come off now!  And because I won’t do it without you!  I’ve been doing it all without you for two years, and that felt like it was endless, so forever is a big goddamn decision!”

“Sounds like you’ve already made it!”

Steve’s mouth dropped open.  “Bullshit, Kayla!”  Voices had been raised, but these were the first harsh words they’d shared since she came into herself in that bar, and they happened far too quickly for either of them.  She flared her eyes in anger, but Steve stood up and went on.  And it was hard, because hearing her be upset with him after so long of needing her hurt him.  “The last time I decided without you what was best for us it almost ended us!  Remember that?  Losing Emily messed me up so bad I decided we had to be apart, and I almost ruined us!”

Kayla stopped her movements and met his eye.  “It took two,” she said in a softer tone.  She was no less upset, but she couldn’t take feeling his guilt about anything anymore.  They’d both suffered too much to let him carry that burden by himself.

They were silent for a moment before Steve went on. 

“I promised you I’d never do it again, and I meant it.  I love you, I won’t do this without you, and I need you to know.  What’ll happen.” His tone had turned from anger to begging her to understand.  Kayla locked eyes with her husband and saw the stoicism he’d marshaled for himself ebbing.  “Jesus, Kayla, you don’t know how hard this is to say.”

Kayla rubbed at her forehead, another modern-day gesture that was out of place in his wife’s early model body.  “Ok,” she managed in a tone that was in a little more control.  “So what are you saying, then?  That if I don’t want to break it we won’t?”

“Yes.  That’s exactly what I’m saying.  We’re in this together or we’re not.”

“But, how do we even have a choice?  Even if we just moved along and waited until the end of the 16 years, we might still end up never getting back.  We don’t know what will really happen, so what’s the difference? 

“Because there’s a big difference.  The difference is that we wait for it to happen, or we make the choice ourselves.  That’s the difference.”

“So, you want to make that choice now.” 

“Yes, goddammit!  Yes!  I am so fucking sick of letting Rolf make all the decisions!  We’re here because of him!  He started it, but ya know what, baby, I want to end it.  On our terms.”

“It feels like you’re pushing me to those terms.” Kayla barked. 

“I’m pushing you?  Because I’m not lettin’ you go into this without considering everything I already did.  Kayla, I’ve had a long time to think of all the risks.”

“Yes, two years, you’ve made that crystal clear!”

“And you’ve made clear that you only just got here!” he threw back at her.  Steve grabbed the frying pan off the stove and shoved it into the sink way too hard, the loud clang making Kayla jump out of her skin.

“Jesus Steve!” 

“Why do you think I put all this together, for my health?!  You think I like thinking of these things?!  I don’t! 

“You know what another risk is?  Fighting!”

“Are we fighting, here?  Is that what we’re doin’?  That didn’t take long.”

“Well, we’re not playing 20 Questions anymore, so yeah, I think so!

She got up and turned away from him toward the door.

“Running away?  That what you’re gonna do now, run out the door when your heart starts breaking?”  Kayla froze in her footsteps and slowly turned back to her husband.  She was breathing heavily and felt like she’d just run a mile.  He saw her silent denial, but it sure seemed to Steve that she was about to exit the conversation like she’d often done when her grief started to take hold, and it fed into his fear over losing her in time.  “It might be two years since the last time you ran away, but I still know you, and I think you were, Kayla.”

This was escalating, and Kayla could feel it in her reactions.  She wanted to argue.  She wanted to accuse him of pushing her some more.  It’s not that it had never crossed her mind that it could happen again, she worried about pregnancy all the time; but thinking of it in this context was not something she’d done.  And her reaction was coming from a place of trauma and, therefore, panic. Because this whole concept was an open wound, and her mind was trying to protect her heart from the truth of Steve’s words.  The trauma she had lived and the trauma she knew was still out there were in league with the amplification effect, and she felt her heart rate increase.  As a doctor, she knew what was happening to her was a PTSD she could no longer deny now existed in her.  As the person it was happening to, she felt helpless.  She felt helpless as she jumped away from Emily.  She felt helpless as Ray tried to rape her.  She felt helpless as Jack succeeded in raping her.  She felt helpless as Steve died in 1990.  She felt helpless as he almost left her when he returned.  She felt helpless as Ava taunted her from the bed she was in with her husband.  She felt helpless while stranded in a child’s body.  And she was very tired of feeling the heaviness of their lives 24/7. 

Steve needed Kayla to see this his way, and Kayla needed to tuck all this back into that safe place.  It was a rough combination.  But they were hurting each other when what they were supposed to be doing was bridging the gap Time had driven between them. 

It was Kayla who finally relented.

“You’re right,” her voice trembled.  “This is a hard conversation.  I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to hurt you.”  She went to reach for him, but he stayed her with a raised hand between them.

“You were gonna turn around and leave this apartment,” he swallowed, trying to keep his tears at bay. 

“You’re turning me away?” she squeaked, tears starting to stream down her face.  “I thought you were supposed to let me love you.  And forgive me when I say I’m sorry.”

Now he was the one who was sorry.  “You’re right,” he gave in.  “I’m sorry, too, you’re right.  Come’ere.  Please.”  Steve opened his arms, and Kayla walked into them, laying her head on his chest.  She sniffled as they held each other.  He felt her remorse, and she felt his, and both of them just wanted to start this whole conversation over again. 

“I’m sorry for reacting so badly,” Kayla said softly.   

“I’m sorry I threw the pan.  And pushin’ you.”  Kayla held him tighter.  “I been waitin’ so long that I’m afraid we’re gonna jump before we can get it figured out.  Pushed so hard I made you run away.”

“I wasn’t running away from you.”  Steve leaned his head down to kiss the top of her head.  “I was running away from how bad this hurts.  My head can hear all of this, but my heart has a really hard time.”  Steve sighed heavily but didn’t let her go.  “But you are right, we do have to talk about it.  Can we start over.  20 Questions, can we start this over again?”

“You still wanna play, or you just wanna talk?”

Kayla pulled out of her husband’s embrace and kissed him gently.  “Can we start with talk?”

“Of course, we can.”

Then she turned and went over to the couch Steve had been sleeping on so close yet so far from her for the last year and a half.  It was one of only five pieces of furniture in the entire apartment, including the table and two chairs, which barely qualified.  The flame stitching on the once white, high-backed sofa was something out of the ‘60s with two marginal throw pillows on one end and an equal number of blankets crumpled up on the other.  One of them was the brick red one that they’d see over and over.  It started out as his and had several times over then become hers.  They’d watched TV under it, made love on top of it, slept beneath it, owned it separately, and owned it together.  She picked it up and smelled the familiar piece of their lives, the action giving Steve a love-infused rush that counteracted his angst, because he knew why she was smelling it – to find him in it.  And some comfort from this conversation. 

Kayla smiled sadly then smelled the blanket again.  “This is where you sleep at night.”  It was rhetorical, so Steve stayed quiet.  “Alone.”  Kayla sat on the end of the couch and hugged the blanket to herself, knowing Steve was watching her closely.  “I hate that you’ve been alone.”  Kayla’s eyes started to water again, but she held back and wouldn’t let herself indulge in the tears.  “I don’t want to die.  And, I don’t want to stay here anymore.  And, I also don’t want …” she forced herself to finish the sentence, “… to abandon any more children.”  She rubbed her hand back and forth over the couch’s textured stitching, all the tactile contact a form of coping as she spoke. 

Steve crossed the small room and knelt beside his wife.  He took her hands in his over the arm of the couch and gentled his voice.  “I know.  All I’m asking is that you face what’s possible.”

Kayla took a deep breath and was determined to stay rational instead of emotional.  “Steve I can face a lot.  We’ve already survived more than anyone we know.  But we’ve done everything to avoid jumping away from another child.  Everything.”

“Exactly, and you know why?”  Steve got up, sat beside her on the couch, and Kayla tucked her leg under herself to face him.  “‘Cause we’re human,” he explained.  “We’re imperfect humans.  We’ve done everything we can.  If we were perfect, there would have been no last night.”  Kayla wanted to protest, but she knew she had to listen to this, so she let him continue.  “But we needed each other, so there was one, and I’m not sorry.  “Am I worried?  No.  The point is that we don’t know for sure what that will result in, and I am.not.sorry.”

“I’m not either.”

“I’m not sorry for the first time here, either.  Yes, you’re on the pill here, and we’ll use birth control in lots of other theres.  But the other you was in charge of taking them here, and neither of us knows for sure that you did.  Now apply that to all the other there’s of never-ending jumps.  It’ll happen again.  We’re pretty fertile people, we got pregnant with Joe without trying too hard.  Or we could jump into bodies that just made love and we didn’t know it and then get pregnant that way, too.”  Again, Kayla wanted to react to this, but she forced her head to be the one in charge.  “Baby, life is going to happen.  We’re gonna live it.  There’s gonna be a time we’re not careful enough or it just won’t matter, like it did with our littlest girl.  If we have to stop being with each other, we won’t make it in here for forever.  And, Kayla, it’s not about needing the sex.  It’s about needing your soul.”

“I know it is,” Kayla said tenderly.  Steve bent to kiss her knuckle, her hands still in his.  “I know.”

“So, we gotta face that if we end up jumping forever that life is probably gonna bring us kids we tried not to have.  That we’re gonna love.”  Steve’s voice broke, “And that we’re gonna have to leave.”

When Steve’s voice finally faltered, more tears filled up Kayla’s eyes.  She leaned forward and nodded as she smoothed out imaginary wrinkles down the front of her husband’s soft, v-neck tee shirt he’d put on after they walk over here.  “You’re right,” she cried softly.  “You are.  If we’re going to choose to risk breaking this thing, then we need to go into it eyes wide open.  Even if what we see in front of us hurts.  So … what are the scenarios we need to consider before we really decide?  I promise not to run.”

“Well, you can, Sweetness … but I’ll follow you.  Lots of practice.”

Kayla huffed out a tension-driven chuckle.  “Actually—” she looked over Steve’s shoulder at the door, “—if we keep your apartment, then we have two rooms to be in so we don’t get all in each other’s hair all the time while we’re here.  See, I just mitigated our forever-driven risk of getting tired or each other.”

Now, Steve let out a serious guffaw.  “’Mitigated our forever-driven risk?’  Baby, who talks like that?”

“I do, thank you very much, she sniffled a real laugh to match her husband’s, “and I’d like a little credit for it, please.”

Steve smiled.  “When my baby starts joking, it’s a sign that the fight is ending.”

“The fight is over,” Kayla confirmed.  She stroked his face in her palms and met his very intense green glare.  “I snapped.  I know I did, I have to do better with it.”

“Better with what?”

“Please forgive me, I’m sorry.”

Steve took Kayla’s hands from his face.  “There’s nothing to forgive.  I’m sorry, too for laying that on you out of nowhere.  I was gonna do it with the 20 questions, thought that would be better, but it just came out.  Now, better with what?” he repeated.  Kayla opened her mouth but nothing came out.  “If you’re gonna hold out on me we’re already fucked.”

“The trauma,” she barely whispered. 

There was something about that word that squeezed Steve’s heart more than any of its synonyms.  And he realized, that’s why euphemisms exist.  To ease the difficult.  Pain was difficult.  And hearing Kayla describe hers with that word was somehow more difficult for him than anything else they’d said to each other about the suffering that existed in their lives. 

“Oh Sweetness.”  Steve held her face in his hands and kissed her gently.  “Sweetness.”

“Forever is going to mean more of it.  That’s what this is about right now.  Isn’t it?”

Steve nodded.  “Our good times are so good that I can’t see anything that’s not tinted by your rose-colored glasses you’ve been wearing since the day you were born.  You got me seein’ through ‘em, too.  And if we’re in here forever, then I’m gonna give that to you.  We’re gonna give it to each other.  “But we’ve had more than our share of the bad, and the new ones we haven’t had yet are gonna hurt just as much and just keep hurtin’ us.”

“Leaving Emily was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.  But having her was the one of the four best.”

Steve smiled at the memories of his children’s beautiful faces.  “The best time, baby.  Loving all of our babies has been the very best times.”  Then he shook his head, confused. “Four?”

“Marrying you.”

The tears she shed were both happy and sad, And she realized that the dichotomy was an exact reflection of what life was, no matter how long it lasted.  “That’s the problem with happiness,” she said with a shrug.  “it’s why you can end up so sad.  When it gets ripped away from you.  But I don’t wish it never happened.  So, I’m not sorry.” 

Steve nodded.  “That’s right,” he rasped.  “It feels like we don’t have a choice, but we do, Sweetness.  We do.  We’ve lived through what he did to us.  Can you live through it if we do it to ourselves?  If you can’t, we wait.  If you can, then we break it and see what happens.  Live with what happens.”

Kayla took a shuddering breath.  “You want to break it.”

Steve nodded, cupped his wife’s face, and wiped at her tears with his thumb.  “Yes.  I do.”

“If I don’t, then what?”

“Then we don’t.”

“So then it’s … me deciding.  That’s the same as you deciding.”

“I don’t think it is.”

“What?  How is that not the same?”

“I dunno what the philosophical is on all this, baby, that’s a little above my intelligence level, but I don’t think it is.”

Kayla blew out a pfft. 

“Thinkin’ better of me being brilliant?” Steve sassed.

“No, you’ve always been brilliant,” she replied. 

They still sat side by side, opposite knees up on the cushions so they could face each other.  “I think yes is a decision; no feels like … just status quo … I dunno.  Maybe it’s a tie goes the runner thing.”  While that statement made zero sense, it was the best Steve could do, and Kayla actually understood what he was trying to say. “I’m no scientist.  But I know what free will is, and I want us to use ours.”  He bent his face to hers and kissed her very gently.  He knew she would kiss him back, because she always kissed him back, but he still felt soothed when her lips received his and returned the kiss.  “Whatever decision we make,” he caressed his palm down her face, “break it, don’t break it, I want us to makethat decision.  Together.  And I don’t want to face – what I said – either.  But I’m not lettin’ us make that decision one way or the other without knowin’ it could be out there.”

Kayla couldn’t deny what Steve was saying.  He was right.  She tilted her head down and started at her lap.  “What if we did try dying?” she whispered.

She expected him to explode into an immediately negative reaction like he had at Rolf’s.  Instead, Steve tilted her chin back up to look at him.  “If you jump, I jump, Sweetness.”

Kayla’s heart dropped into her stomach.  This Titanic reference was profound to her.  He hadn’t hesitated.  Hadn’t flinched.  And she was moved, once again, at his devotion. 

“No!” she shook her head quickly, “I don’t—forget I said that!”

“Shh.”  Steve put the side of his hand up to his lips.  “Shh.  I’ve had a long time to think about this, and—”

Kayla threw her arms around Steve’s neck like she’d done last night, only now she was trembling.  “You’re right about all of this.  I-I-I-I don’t know what to do.”

Steve rubbed his hand up and down his wife’s back.  “We don’t have to decide right now.”

“I thought we did!”

“To die.  I wanna decide today if we’re breaking it, but we don’t have to decide to die right now.  We can always do that.  There’s sleeping pills to take, trains to jump in front of.  Every timeline has ‘em.  And if you jump, Kayla, I’m jumping, too.” 

Kayla buried her face in Steve’s shoulder, and they just held each other.  She’d stopped crying now and felt herself absorbing what Steve had said.  And far faster than she’d have guessed ten minutes ago when she was fighting it, she realized that that third option of living forever in the slipstream really did have more to consider than spending eternity with your soulmate.  She couldn’t imagine living through this trauma again.  Her knee-jerk reaction was that it would break them all over again.  But they were very savvy now, and part of her was confident that actually it would not.

Kayla pulled out of Steve’s embrace and patted his chest, smoothing out more of the imaginary wrinkles.  “Ok, listen,” she sniffled, “I hear you.  I’m ok.  Let’s—let’s talk about it.  What forever means.  And decide.”

Steve felt the anachronism of Kayla’s matured 2009 voice come out of her very young 1984 body.  It had been a very long time since that happened, but the misplaced chronology of this one really hit him, making him gasp.

“Your voice,” Steve said when she gave him a questioning look.  “God, I have never had words for what it’s like hearing your voice in this kind of you.”

“Well, if you can handle hearing more of it, I want to go back to 20 Questions now.”

Steve smiled warmly.  “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure?”  His gaze was intense.

Kayla scooted back and rearranged herself with her back against the arm of the couch.  “Even the tough ones.  We need to be eyes wide open.  I’m ready.  Whose turn is it?” she asked.

Steve captured his wife’s lips in a passionate kiss that lingered for a long time.  His tongue glided across hers with loving strokes, while Kayla’s plump lips returned every one of her husband’s smacks.  Neither of them wanted to stop kissing each other any time soon.  Steve was the first one to pull out of the moment.  “Yours,” he whispered, the double meaning floating in the air between them. 

Kayla took his hand and placed it against her cheek.  “Mine,” she replied.  “Forever.”  Steve nodded and matched her position, facing her on the roomy couch, then she spread the red blanket over their legs that overlapped to their ankles.  Settled in, Kayla swallowed hard and asked what might have been the hardest question of their entire lives.

“If we do get pregnant again, what do you want to do?” 

Steve was the one who started this, but now that this toughest of all the questions was upon him, he felt like someone had stolen his breath.  He met her hard swallow with one of his own.  “God, you’re so brave, baby.”  Kayla made the sign for courage, her dry eyes very determined to make peace with whatever this answer was. 

“What would you want to do?”

“I thought the first rule was that you have to answer the questions.”

Steve nodded.  “You’re right.  My answer is, it’s your body.  I don’t get a say.”

“Of course, you get a say, it’s your baby.”

“There is no baby right now, Kayla, don’t say it that way.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, it’s just – your body, it has to be your decision.”

“Ok, but no, you do get a say, and if you want me to figure out where I want to go from here, then I need to know how you feel about it.”

Steve got a very sad look in his eye.  “Sweetness, remember the night we jumped from LA?  Stephanie went out with her friend, and we went and took a pregnancy test.  I was sure you were pregnant.  I was ready for that stick to come back with two pink lines.”

“But it didn’t.”

“No, it didn’t.  But I thought it would.  I really did.  Stephanie was beggin’ us for so long for a baby brother.  Or sister.  I assumed we were gonna be givin’ her one.”

“Stephanie might not be a factor if this happens.”

She’s so smart, Steve admired.  She never lets anything get past her.

“You’re asking me if I’d want us to have an abortion.”

Kayla nodded.  “Once we make a baby, then it’s made.  We won’t be able to take it back.  Aborting won’t mean it didn’t happen.  But if I don’t carry it, and we don’t have it, then there’s no baby to love.  Then leave.”

“I’d be lying if I said I’d never considered it.  I have.” 

“I have, too.”

Steve nodded.  “I know, Sweetness.  I know you have.  I think most of me … wants to … save us both from the heartbreak.  And get the abortion.”  He’d never said it out loud.  And it felt terrible. 

“It feels selfish to have a baby now knowing what we know.”

Steve nodded.  “But …”

“But?”

“But, Kayla there’s never been a time I didn’t feel … overcome … with love for you when I knew you had a baby in you that I put there.  Never.  I think we should abort, but I’d want us not to.  I’d want us to have it.”

“What if—what if—it—broke us again?  What if jumping away from another child broke us again?”  Steve exhaled heavily.  “What if we did have an abortion.  What if that broke us instead?”

“We are never breaking again.  You might, and I might, but us.  Our marriage.  We will never break again.  When we’re not ok, we’re gonna love each other until we were better again.  No matter what.  You get the final say, and I mean that, Kayla.  If we get pregnant, and I wanna keep the baby or not, whatever you decide, I’m gonna support.  And we’re gonna never be a broken us ever again.  I promise on my life.”

And she knew it was true.

Kayla’s eyes ran over with tears, and her breathing was labored with not at all artificial emotion. 

“Are you broken right now?” Kayla asked.

“It’s not your turn,” Steve replied.

“Are you?”

He never dropped her gaze.  “I’ve been so lonely I almost jumped in front of one of those trains.  Now that you’re here, I’m better.  But, yeah, I’m a little broken right now.”

Kayla scooted all the way up to her husband and opened her arms.  Steve let himself lean into them.  She held on to him and rocked back and forth.  “I’m gonna keep fixing it like this.  Like last night.  Like I’m always going to do.  Because I promise, too.”

Steve leaned back up and adjusted his patch.  He took a cleansing breath before he continued.  “I get two now.”

“Ok, she chuckled, “You get two.”  She went back to her side of the couch.

“Related,” he said.  Kayla nodded, ready for it.

“What if we jump right back to 1987.  Can you handle living our lives without Emily in that time?  Are you going to be able to resist trying to get her back?”

Kayla gazed unfocused eyes over Steve’s shoulder and contemplated.  “I don’t know.  I really—don’t—know.”

“Pretend we’re there right now.  We just got married.  You’ve never been so beautiful in your entire life.  We’re full of passion and want to show each other all that love.  Do we make our daughter again?”

“N-No.”

It was out of her mouth before Kayla could stop it.  She clamped her hand over it as if to stuff the word back in.  The honesty of it was a shock. 

“Ohmigod.”

“It’s ok.”

“It’s not that I don’t want her back!”

“Of course, it’s not, Sweetness.  I know.”

“I don’t want any more lying to ourselves about who we could or couldn’t get pregnant with.  I want us to be honest always.  It’s why we’re doing this, right?  If we could make our exact Emily again, then yes, we do.  God, yes, Steve.  But we can’t ever be sure we’d get her.  So do we try?  Actually try?  No.”

“What if we’re on a jump a real long time.  A lifetime of long time.  What if we want kids?”

He really had thought of everything. And rather than make her more agitated over possibilities she, admittedly, hadn’t considered, it made her more upset that he’d had to do it all alone.  And that thought galvanized exactly how she felt about it.

“We have kids.  We’ll always have those three kids.  And Benjy.  And even Tyler.”

Steve smiled.  “He’s a beautiful little Pocket Man.”

“Hmmp,” she smiled her agreement.  “Are you going to want them?”

Steve shook his head.  “I reserve the right for both of us to change our minds every few thousand years, but right now, I don’t see me wanting to make babies on purpose.  We’re gonna be jumping to the ones we already made enough to scratch that itch.”

“You know, Rolf has never jumped us to Benjy or Pocket.”

“Rolf doesn’t have a thing to do with it, Sweetness, it’s all Time.  And now watch, we’ll go there.  She’s learnin’.  I’m tellin’ you, we’re gonna find ourselves jumped to one of them soon enough.  How much you wanna bet?”

“I’m not taking that bet, ‘cause I’m sure you’re right.  I think we just created a new arc with this conversation.”  Steve watched as Kayla’s face suddenly got very intense.  “We need to write that down.”  She popped up like a fire had just been lit beneath her, found an empty piece of looseleaf paper in the piles, and started a new thought on it representing this conversation.

“My project is your project, Sweetness.”

She scribbled all of the children they’d either had of their own bodies or helped raise for any given time and listed all the possible timeframes for them.  Then Steve put his own mark on it by indicating the fastest way to go off script from them all.  

“We’re going one of these places next,” Kayla said insistently, pointing to the table they’d just created.  “I feel it.”

“And if we decide to break the slipstream, these are the best ways to do it.”  Kayla nodded her agreement.

Steve got them snacks and glasses of orange juice, then Kayla led them back to the couch where they assumed their previous positions.

“I have nowhere to set this down.  You need more furniture.”

“I have everything I needed.  Table, chairs, couch, little dresser, TV.”

“Well, if we’re going to be staying here, then this living room is going to need a little decorating, plus a coffee table to set down my juice.”

“So, this is gonna be our new living room, then?”

Kayla shrugged her basic agreement.  “Yeah, I think so.  And kitchen, too.  You’ve got more in those cabinets for cooking than I do.”

“How do you know, you been in them yet?”

“’Cause I know you.  Am I wrong?”

“No,” he chuckled.  “Ok, so this room is for eating, watching TV, and hanging out playing 20 Questions.  The other one’s for sleeping or getting space to mitigate our forever-driven sick-of-each-other risk.  Got it.”

Now Kayla looked at Steve sideways.  “Time for my question.”

“M-kay.”

“Are you sure you don’t need the sex?”

“In here?  You askin’ me if I can live without it?” 

“You said it’s not about needing sex.  It’s about needing my soul.

“That’s ‘cause it is.  “Don’t get me wrong, there’s not too much I like better than sex with you, Sweetness.  Feels pretty damn good.  Bein’ inside you.  Makin’ you scream my name.”  Kayla’s smile was so sexy.  “But I’d miss you more.  I can get myself off.  I can watch you.  What I can’t do is have a you that’s lost in time.  I blamed myself for this whole mess going off course ‘cause I couldn’t stop myself from sex when we jumped here the first time.  You were always the one who said we shouldn’t if we hadn’t yet, and when I learned you were right I hated myself.”

“Why do you always insist on taking the blame for things by yourself?  I was there during every single one of those orgasms we gave each other that night.  And there were a lot.”

“You’re gonna make me hard.”

“Be serious.”

“You think I’m joking?  You said orgasms.”

“Focus, here,” she said pointing two fingers to her eyes, “You didn’t just ‘yield’ to sex,” she used air quotes, “we did.  We wanted each other, we had sex.  That sex was you and it was me.  So that was us that broke things, not you.”

Steve stared so hard into Kayla’s eyes she felt him in her soul.  “Ok.  But, Sweetness, I meant it when I said I’d give up anything not to lose you in time again.  I would, I’d give up sex.  Sex is not the problem.  Givin’ up you, Kayla?  That’s the problem.  Connecting with you?  Feeling—what I feel—when your body is on mine?  I feel how much you love me.  I really feel it.  That’s what I crave so bad.  That’s what I keep giving in to.”

“Intimacy,” she whispered.  Love bubbled up from every pour on Kayla’s body.  And Steve loved seeing her reaction whenever he poured his heart out like this to her. 

“Yeah, baby,” he nodded.  “And that’s how we show our intimacy.  I can’t live without it.  I don’t want to.”

“I don’t either.” 

“Ok, so far so good on ways to break the slipstream.  No shortage of that.”

“I wanna go again,” Kayla said.

“That’s cheating.”

“Come on, I gave you two in a row.”

“You’ve had a ton of questions I gave you as freebies, baby, come on now.”  Kayla crossed her arms and stuck out her chin, and Steve relented.  “Ok, fine.  Go ahead.  Last freebie,” he poked the air pointedly on each word.”

“Did you watch me on the several dates I had here?”

Steve got an arrogant look on his face.  “Remember that, do you?”

“I told you I remember stuff.  Did you watch me?”

“That question is not in scope for this game.”

“Excuse me, you said I could ask other questions.  Did you watch me?”

“Did I say yes?  I don’t think I said yes.”

“You did, too, now did you or did you not watch me, Steve Johnson?”

“Like a peeping tom.”

Kayla’s eyes became saucers.  “You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“You—watched—me?”

“Watched you what?  What do you think you did?”  Kayla turned a few shades of red. “Oh-oh.  Now I think someone really is finally mad that I followed her like a stalker.”

“Stop saying that.”

“You are, look at your face.  You’re mad.”

“I’m slightly miffed … I did stuff!”

“You didn’t have sex with anyone.”

“I made out with them!  You watched me make out with other guys.”

“I looked away.”

Kayla looked skeptical.  “Really?”

“Yeah.  I tried makin’ like you were in a play, like in LA when you were faking it with Shane.  What was I supposed to do, bust in through the fire escape—”

“That’s where you were?”

“Yeah, and once in a movie theater.  What was I supposed to do, bust in and say, ‘hey, hands off my wife?’  You would have had me arrested.  You went on a few dates the first time through, I bit my tongue and dealt with it this time, too.  But I made really fucking sure I was nearby if you jumped in.  I didn’t want you to arrive like that and I wasn’t there to get you out of there.”

“So you didn’t watch watch, you just watched out for me.”

“Kinda made me sick seeing those guys kiss you, feel you up.  So, yeah, couldn’t watch watch.  Wouldn’t be right, either.  Happy?”

“Did it make you horny?”

“IT IS NOT YOUR TURN, BABY.”

“It did.”

“I’m takin’ my turn now.  Do you want me to say it did?”

She shrugged.  “Watching me get it on with another guy is creepy.  But there’s also something exciting about it.”

“Say what?”

“You love me.  You pine for me.  You can’t have me.  You see other men with me.  You get jealous.”

“Oh, I see.  And we’ve already established when you were drunk as shit in our safehouse hotel room that you like me to be a little jealous.”

“We have definitely established that,” she agreed.  “A little goes a long way, though.  You didn’t beat these guys up or pull them off of me, I assume?”

“No.”

“Ok, then it might be ok if it turned you on.”

“Pfft.  I knew you didn’t sleep with them.  If it was Kosichek or something I don’t know if I could have dealt with that.  I might have had to go stop that.  These were just dates.  So I lurked and waited for you, and while I was waiting I didn’t watch them be all over you.”

“My turn.  What did you do about how turned on you were?”

“I never said I was turned on.  You said I was turned on.”  Kayla gave him the haughtiest look, so Steve just gave up. “Yes, I came home and jerked off.  Right on this couch.  Thinking of you.”  Then he added less sexily, “Missing you so bad I couldn’t see straight.”

Kayla rubbed her feet against his.  “Wish I could have watched.”

“Wish I could have just had you for real.”  Then he perked up.  “Make no mistake, we’re doing it on this couch.”

“Can’t wait.”  Steve started his next question, but then Kayla interrupted.  “Steve, if you’d jumped to when I was with Chris, and I wasn’t me yet … I—I don’t know—that—I want to erase my first time.”  Steve stared uncomfortably, unsure how to react to this.  “If I’m already me, I’m not going to live that.  I’m saying if I’m still Destination me.  Don’t … undo it.”  After a few more beats, “Would you want me to stop you from your first time?”

“I’ve never liked him,” Steve said reluctantly.  “But I won’t take that away from you.”

“Thank you.  You know, giving you my virginity in 1979 is one of my favorite moments of all this.  It was so meaningful.  So beautiful.”

“Sweetness, I told you this then.  Other than our kids, it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever done for me.  Give me your virginity.  I don’t think I ever felt so close to you.”

“I felt cherished.  I felt like nothing could touch us.”

“Nothing can.  Nothing will.”

“Well, if we’re going to be here forever, you’ll definitely be getting it again.”

Ya know, there have been good times in here,” Steve said.  “A lot of gifts.”  They set their glasses on the floor, scooched back to their positions against the couch arms, and Kayla straightened the blanket.  “More good than bad.” Kayla agreed.  “What’s your favorite place we’ve been, Sweetness?”

“My favorite jump?  Is that your next question?” 

“Mm-hmm.  Not including getting married in ’87 and our lives on that jump.  I think that one’s the obvious winner.  Something else.”

“Hmm,” Kayla played her fingers at her lips.  “Spending those five months in 1979.  It was one of the most amazing experiences.  Getting to spend all that time with a version of you when you were still happy, and best friends with Bo.”

“We made love all over that house.”

“Yes, we did,” Kayla laughed.  “And when we sent my parents on vacation, oh my God.  That was some second level stuff we got away with.  I really felt like naughty teenagers.”

“Bo, too, he was happier than a pig in shit.”

“Bo!  Look what you did for him, Steve!  Talk about a gift.”

They laughed and reminisced for quite some time about 1979 before Kayla asked him for his favorite.

“There’s no question in my mind.  Back in LA.  I got four years with my Little Sweetness.  I got to raise her.  I got to watch you become a doctor.  I got to do so much.  I know it didn’t really happen but—”

“Yes it did.  Yes, it absolutely did.  When we get home, it won’t mean this stuff never happened.  It won’t exist in our timeline, but it happened.”

It was the first time that Kayla had referenced their lives in 2009 as her real home in a very, very long time.   And something about the way she said it sent relief through Steve that she’d come to terms with that.  Kayla sensed this and just gave him a serious look. 

“Yes, ma’am, Dr. Mrs. Johnson.  So, that’s my answer.  Living in LA with you and Steph.  Didn’t love how I arrived there.”  Kayla stifled a shudder at the visual of Ava naked on top of her husband.  “But getting that jump, I …”

Kayla cocked her head.  “You’d go through it all again, wouldn’t you?”

Steve nodded cautiously.  “Yeah, baby.  I would.”

“I would, too.  I still hate that man for doing this to us.  But I cried so many happy tears watching you be happy on that jump.  I would, too.”

“It’s the only time I made love to you when you weren’t there.”

Kayla bristled.  “I know,” she said quietly, crossing her arms again.  “But you didn’t hide it from me.  The honesty hurt, but it also helped.  Reading all of your emails helped.”

“So did writing them.”

Kayla sighed heavily.  “It does feel really weird to be jealous of yourself.”

“Been there.  Jumpin’ to Chicago.  Into my own body already naked with you.  Knowing what was happening.  I didn’t handle it as good as you did.  And I had no one to beat up by myself.”

Kayla lost focus and stared glassy-eyed out the window, her fingers playing nervously at her lips.  “Baby?”

“Huh?”

Steve looked at her very squarely.  “Where were you just now?”

She didn’t want to tell him that her experience with Ray had stolen over her at Steve’s mention of Chicago.  That Destination Steve’s warnings about him had played like a tape.  That she could see Ray’s red face trying to open that window and feel the pain in her breaking wrist as she desperately tried to keep it shut.  That she could feel his body up against her as he tore at her towel.  That sometimes she had nightmares where he was calling her a dirty virgin as Steve pounded on the door trying to get in.  And that sometimes those nightmares turned into new nightmares where Jack was pushing her down on the couch and violating her all over again.

“Nowhere.”

“Don’t lie to me.  What just happened?”

This is PTSD.  Kayla knew she had PTSD, but tonight in this conversation was the first time she’d truly put it into the specific for herself.  From Ray’s assault, from losing Emily, from their entire experience here in the slipstream, and even from her life before.  Trauma compounds, just like the effects of their changes on the slipstream had compounded, and she knew she now had it.  But she also knew that Steve surely did, too, and knowing that only increased things.  Hearing her say all this was going to hurt him; he’d feel her pain like a punishment.  And she didn’t want him to hurt anymore.  She didn’t want him to break any further.  She wanted to love him until the pain went away, not make it worse by sharing her pain with him. 

The only thing was that Steve was extremely perceptive about his wife.  He knew every knit of her brow, every dart of her eyes.  So, as it turned out, she wasn’t going to have the opportunity to obfuscate, because he’d guessed before she could.

“Kayla, I’m makin’ this my question.  And you know the rules about answering the questions.  “Are you broken, too?”  When her eyes watered, he went on, not giving her a chance to find a way to hide it.  Because he had to know.  “‘Cause you haven’t been the same since the jump to 1970.  You begged me to leave, so we left, right down the Mississippi.  But you don’t seem better.  In Copenhagen, you weren’t better.  I think you’re still not better.”

“I don’t want to make things worse for you.”

“Please tell me, baby.”

“Ok.  Yeah.  You’re right.”  The words came out despite her wish that they not.  “I’m damaged.”

Steve did not like that word.  “Kayla—”

“I’m damaged,” she repeated.  “Yes, we’ve survived so much.  But some of it has lingered inside me.”

“Like Emily.”

“Like lots of things.”

Steve narrowed his eye.  “What lots of things?”

“You won’t like it.”

“I don’t care.”

Kayla tightened her crossed arms over her chest.  “Chicago.  Ray.  Attacking me.”

Steve dragged a hand down his face.  “Fuck.”

“Jumping away from LA without getting any kind of goodbye to Steph.”

“What else?”  Steve’s brow was the exact reflection of pain that Kayla didn’t want for him, so she looked out the window again and started bobbing her knee.  “Go on, baby. I’m listening.”

“Back home in 1970.  Being there like that, alone, trapped inside that little girl.  It was terrifying and felt actually claustrophobic.  I was trapped.  No freedom of my own self.  And there was no way we could be together.  No matter who we really are inside, we were children.  You were almost grown, but I was a little girl. 

“I—”

“Ava.”  Steve sat up straighter.  She wasn’t going to tell him any of this, but now it was all falling out of her like something that had been trying to get loose for years.  “Ava in that damn bed at her compound.  In your arms.  She’s taunting me.  I felt so small.”

“I would have done anything to save your life, Kayla.”

“I know.  I’m not mad at you anymore,” she shook her head, “I’m not.  I cast that out with the shells in Hawaii.  But I still feel it sometimes.”  Steve made a whimpering sound in his throat.  “And being lost.  Stranding you here.  I was terrified every day before you finally got there two months later on that 1970 jump.  So after two years, I can’t imagine how you went on.  You were terrified, too.  I feel so guilty.”  

“What else?” he insisted in a low rasp.  I can take it.  You gotta let it out.”

“There’s a lot.  I think I need a therapist for this.  She surprised herself but laughing at this, then said, “if I don’t laugh, I’ll just cry.”

Now it was Steve’s turn to love her pain away.  “Game over, Sweetness.”  He stood them up, draped the blanket around his back, then took Kayla into his arms and wrapped them both up in it.  “Let me love you until you feel better.”  Kayla laid her head against Steve’s warm chest.  The safety she felt there was elixir.  “I’ve got you, baby.    You can laugh, you can cry, and you can just lie in my arms.  As long as you need.  Even if it’s forever.”

Kayla’s breath caught in her throat.  And she knew without any doubt that the soul she and Steve shared was unlike any in the history of time.  And it didn’t matter where that time was going to take her, not take her, keep her, or cast her, Kayla wanted it to be with him.  Always.  She looked up from his strong yet gentle arms.

“I want to break it.  I’m ready for whatever happens.  Whether we live, die, or get stuck forever.  I want to break the slipstream.  I want to go home.  Any home.  As long as it’s with you.”

Steve replied by kissing the top of her head, her loose bedhead of curls soft against his lips.  Then he held her tighter.  “I love you, Sweetness.  And we’re gonna be ok.”

She didn’t know if they were really going to be ok.  But she was positive that if they weren’t, then loving him and being loved by him until they were would be enough.

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