Find Me
Chapter 168
The love locks at Salem’s Riverfront weren’t really at the river, nor were they at the front of anything. They aren’t on a map, most people in Salem don’t know they exist, and the people who do know where they are tend to give the most vague of directions when asked – like the way you’d pass along a secret: past the end of the road, where the pavement gives up, then follow the sound of the rambling river. They did this to keep the collective secret exactly that, collectively secret. Because these love locks were revered. Treasured. And a privilege to be part of. You find the place by wandering, stumbling upon it, or hearing about them through obscure urban legend. Even Kayla, who’d lived nearly her whole life there had never heard of this place.
She followed the relatively non-specific instructions that the other Steve had left in his letter to her. She went to the pier the magnificent yacht they’d traded their first vows on had been moored at all those years ago and turned this way and that looking for what he’d left her. She looked up and down the pier; she kicked over rocks; she inspected the Pier 19 sign; she went to its edge, laid on her stomach, and looked beneath the structure itself. After half an hour she began to get truly frustrated, because she couldn’t imagine what he’d meant. But she trusted that there was something, so she decided to follow the wooden fences directly across from the pier and just started walking. It was then, somewhere beyond the businesses where a small concrete culvert separated the river from a neighborhood of sleepy residences that she spotted a weathered iron fence that she’d never seen before. And that fence, even rusted and worn, somehow glittered like it was covered with twinkling stars. There was a narrow path winding through the snow-covered leaves left over from the fall that she followed to get to it. But once she reached the fence she saw them and gasped in wonder. Padlocks. Hundreds of them. Steel, brass, copper that had gone green, and bright enamel dials of every color faded by years of sun.
Today the wind was relatively still, but that didn’t stop the locks from clinking against their tethers in a soft, shimmering chorus, like whispers to each other about the people they were reverently embodying.
Kayla dumbfoundedly raked her eyes down the fence and instinctively knew this was the place. Her other Steve had left a lock here secured to the fence, and it was up to her to find it. She eagerly went to the very first of the hundreds of locks and started to take a closer look. Most locks carried some kind of identifying representation of a memorialized relationship. Love, devotion, and connection sanctified in a symbolized lock everlasting. A name, a date, a pair of initials scratched in by hand or engraved by someone who’d planned ahead. Some had no marks at all, just the lock to carry its symbolism silently. The ritual is simple. You fasten your lock to the fence, close it with a click, and throw the key into the river below. Securely in place, the lock became a promise that through every day of every season of one year to the next could not be taken back.
A handful of similar fences with similar memorials existed throughout the world. Some would have to be taken down when the weight of the locks made them too dangerous to stay standing, but this one in 1991 was Salem’s best protected secret and would still be there when they started jumping in 2009. There was a lock here for a couple who met at the grocery store. Another for a father and the daughter he drove across the country to settle her at Salem University. A very old and rusted lock was left by a couple who needed a place to put the love their families would never accept someplace it could be safely expressed. A beautiful lock in the shape of a bird was for a woman’s beloved cat who’d died at the old age of 21; now he was free to chase those birds. A lock was left here by a woman whose husband had been brutally murdered in a senseless robbery. And there was a set of four locks left by a couple for each of their babies right after they were born. An endless number of stories were held in this fence.
The sheer amount of locks that should have otherwise been daunting was quite the opposite for Kayla. She felt compelled. Galvanized. This may have been a needle in a haystack, but she knew how to find her husband, and his lock was going to call to her. So she slowly walked down the fence and listened as they sang to her. Like a collective chorus, each lock had a tone that rang figuratively in her head. Initials painted in nail polish, dates engraved with a knife, and dials that would still spin hummed. As she made her way down the fence line, Kayla paid them respect as she touched each lock.
Then her fingers touched what was, perhaps, the most unique of every lock there, and it stopped her in her tracks. It was a giant brass padlock shaped like a shield. Emerging from the face of the clearly handcrafted piece were the delicate petals of a rose, raised and chiseled with stunning detail. The entire shield was the size of her palm, and the edges of each petal were finished in yellow enamel. Still new compared to so many of those surrounding it, the lock gleamed in the sun, its steel finishing wrapped around the chain link fence. The front had nothing chiseled or carved, it was pristinely untouched. But Kayla knew. This was Steve’s lock.
Kayla gingerly fingered the raised petals and heard the lock’s tone in her head. A beautiful, reedy note that Steve played now, then, and everywhen. She closed her eyes and let the minor pitch only she could hear fill her soul. Eventually, she opened her eyes got a sense of her position. Quite possibly the largest lock secured to the fence, the lock was literally dead center of not only the length of the fence, but also its height. Kayla looked up and down the fence line and let out an awe-filled sound; Steve’s lock was at the literal center of the memorial.
“You’re so smart,” Kayla softly said out loud. “You planned all of this.”
And he did, too. People find themselves here at their lowest and their happiest. Some arrive together with their soulmate, but Steve had come alone to say a preemptive goodbye to his.
Steve had known for months that he was – for lack of a better term – temporary. He’d gone through four of the five stages of grief so many times that they were in the triple digits. His denial merged with the anger for countless conversations about how maybe she was wrong. But the somehow innate knowledge that she wasn’t turned to a serial set of scenarios where he’d bargain into ways he could stay, merge with the Steve that was coming, or threaten to refuse his admittance. The onset of the inevitable depression he’d do his best to keep to himself, but Kayla knew him, and it broke her heart every single time. Eventually he’d snap out of it, and a renaissance of normalcy settled around them. But before long, the cycle would start again.
It wasn’t until nearly Halloween, however, that Steve had moved into that final stage of grief: Acceptance. It happened without warning and just kind of found him against his will and unbidden after a particularly heated exchange at, of all places, Shenanigans. It was the Saturday after the bomb had gone off that had failed to kill Steve but this time around did maim Bo. The Riverfront was packed with families taking their kids to trick or treat at the local businesses. Stephanie had had quite alot of day and was now cranky. Steve was feeling guilt over Bo’s injury that he felt was meant for him, and Kayla was exhausted from stay-at-home parenting an eight-month-old, who was now fussing in the restaurant. Chris had come over to ask if everything was ok and made the mistake of calling Kayla “Blue Eyes.” Steve was immediately and irreversibly set off.
“Keep your fucking nicknames to yourself, Kosichek,” Steve spat too loudly for the crowded restaurant.
“Steve!” Kayla admonished while looking embarrassedly around to the neighboring tables.
“What? It’s bad enough competing with myself, I am not gonna compete with him, too.”
“Whoa,” Chris replied with his hands up between them. “You’re reaching there, don’t ya think?”
“Bullshit.” Kayla shot him a look of disgust at his refusal to back off.
“Seriously, Johnson, take it down a notch in my restaurant.”
“Seriously, Kosichek, take it down a notch with my wife.”
Kayla stood up, picked up her fussy, pumpkin-dressed daughter from the restaurant high chair, and bounced with her. “You both need to take it down a notch with my … whatever the hell this is.”
“Sweetness–“
“Just stop, Steve, let it go.” Steve huffed in anger, but before Chris got the sense that he might have been the one in the right here, Kayla turned to him. “Chris, you’re our friend, no matter how Steve picks at you—”
“He picks at me!”
“I sure do not,” Chris smarmed.
“Ya know what, Chris? You kind of do. How do you expect Steve to react when you call me that right in front of him?”
Chris opened his mouth to reply but ultimately crossed his arms and looked at his feet. Then he looked up with far less arrogance, nodded, and said, “Yeah. Ok.” Then he looked to Steve who was matching Chris’s stance with his own crossed arms. Chris didn’t apologize but he did hold out his hand. “Didn’t mean anything by it.”
Steve looked at Chris’s outstretched hand. After a beat he took it. “You’re her friend,” Steve snarked, “just my lawyer.” Kayla rolled her eyes as the two men regarded each other. Then Chris huffed out a chuckle and swaggered away. Steve, meanwhile looked up at his wife bobbing their daughter. “You gonna sit back down?”
She did, holding Stephanie on her knee facing out while she took the opportunity to put another forkful of salad into her mouth. She didn’t ask what was wrong, because she knew it was the same thing that was always wrong.
“You mad at me?” he asked as he shoved a fry into his mouth.
Kayla put her fork down and reached for Steve’s hand. “You know he’s nobody.” It was a statement of fact, not a plea. “This was not about him calling me Blue Eyes.” Steve met her eye. He blinked several times and just stayed silent while he shook his head. “You are not competing with yourself.”
“Sure feels like it.”
“I love you,” Kayla said.
Steve exhaled a sigh.
“Do you believe that I love you?” she asked meaningfully.
Steve nodded sadly. “But he’s the one you’re waiting for.”
This conversation was no different than the others they’d had about the impending end to his awareness. But Kayla said something this time that she’d never said before. “You’re right. I am waiting for him. Because I’ve been at this a really long time, Steve, and I know you’re coming. But when that other you gets here, it’s not that you will be replaced. It’s that you’ll be lost.” As the tears sprung into the corners of Kayla’s eyes, Steve felt a very small but very profound shift in his reality. And that shift was the final acceptance stage of his grief. “It’s going to be like when you came back to me without your memory. Only your memory came back to you, but this one won’t. I’ll never be able to get our life – yours and ine since I got here – back into you. Our life will not live in you when he gets here. I’m going to lose you. And he is also going to lose you. Because those memories will be mine alone.
It wasn’t the last time they’d have a conversation like this, but it was the last time that Steve let it chip away at his sanity. Instead, it redirected him to ensure that Kayla had something to help her hold on to the memory of this brief portion of their lives. He knew about the love locks, because he knew every back alley, rocky path, and watery tunnel in this town of theirs. So he set about memorializing them, not only for her, but for the other him, too. So that he could live on in her if not in himself.
There was no Etsy in 1991. There was no eCommerce. There was no online shopping. But there were master craftsmen who created custom padlocks. The locksmithing company in the warehouse district right next to Allied knew exactly where to send Steve. He got this lock the old fashioned way – he got on the phone and asked for a catalogue. He found exactly what he wanted when he saw the padlocks with animals, flowers, and knightly figures bursting forth. When he found the rose, he waited a week for delivery and prayed he’d still be here when it arrived. Which he was, then wasted no time in immediately bringing it to the jeweler and paid extra for the engraving to be completed while he waited. Then that very early November day as the sun slipped below the horizon, Steve found the exact middle of the fence, kissed the back of the lock, and clicked it into place. It was utterly profound for him. He felt like he’d left part of his soul in the lock. And it gave him a small sense of peace. He’d never be entirely at peace – he was never going to be ok with being imprinted with his future awareness. He continued to feel loss, helplessness, a need to empower his own destiny, and a deep sense of sadness in his reality. But there was acceptance. And a deep satisfaction in this everlasting symbol he’d left his wife.
“I love you, Kayla,” Steve whispered into the lock against his lips. He let out a brief sob, but then a resolve fell over him as a single tear fell over his lashes. “I’ll never stop loving you. No matter who I am. No matter when we are. I’ll never stop loin’ you.”
The next day he wrote the letters that he knew Kayla would find in his nightstand. He still held hope until the very moment that he felt himself truly slip away that he wouldn’t need them. But it wasn’t to be, and he was, indeed, lost.
Now Kayla stood in the center of the fence, the concrete culvert behind her and the river in front of her. She kneeled down and inspected the magnificent lock at eye level. It was absolutely beautiful. There was no real indication it was Steve’s, but when she flipped it up, she was rewarded with written confirmation is the most beautifully crafted, small script.
Kayla.
This lock will only exist here, but you and me will exist everywhere.
You will carry our memories across time when I no longer can, and I will carry your soul long after I’m gone.
Loving you today was worth sacrificing my tomorrow.
Every version of me in every timeline loved, loves, and will forever love you.
Thank you for my life, Sweetness. For loving me. And making me feel like I was enough.
I’ll never stop loving you.
Steve.
Steve knelt quietly for a while before finally leaving the lock, and he’d never visited it again. Now it was Kayla kneeling where her Destination Steve had. She read his words over and over again, rubbed her thumbs over them, and placed the cold brass against her cheek. She didn’t cry, because her awe was too profound to create sadness. But tears did fall down her cheeks and onto the same ground that Steve’s had. And she felt him there in every way he’d intended.
“My god, Steve.”
Kayla took the letter Steve had left her out of her coat pocket and read it again. “I’m your husband, the man who loves you, same man as the one that’s going to keep loving you.”
Kayla folded it back up and placed it back in her pocket. Then she looked out over the quiet river as its freezing water streamed over the rocks, and she knew that every word he’d written and etched was true. The other Steve loved her. Her rightful Steve loved her. And they were both separate and the same. Thank you for my life, they both had read.
“No, baby,” Kayla said out loud. “Thank you.”
Steve sat on the bed staring at the envelope with his name on it in his own handwriting. When Kayla told him that his destination self left him a letter, he wasn’t sure he wanted anything to do with it. And he was also still in a bit of a dark place. His existence here was still new, he hurt for the struggle Kayla had gone through without him, was jealous of the man that previously inhabited this body, and ashamed of himself for feeling any of it. But as Kayla had said so many times now, they both needed a bit of therapy they weren’t going to get.
Steve picked up the letter and turned it over. It was sealed, and on the back were four words. Don’t be an asshole. Steve laughed out loud at this. “Well, at least I know myself.”
It had only been 24 hours since he arrived. Less than 12 hours since he’d read Kayla’s journals. He knew the sacrifice his destination self had made. He rationally understood with the wisdom he’d earned that this is what his life was and he needed to get with the opening. And he unwillingly felt every emotion tugging at his psyche like an unwanted Chinese finger puzzle: pulled, pushed, stuck, and annoyed.
Very early that morning Steve had woken up disoriented to the pitch dark of winter’s wee hour. Kayla was asleep beside him, and he could tell from the set of her face that it wasn’t a peaceful sleep. He was overwhelmingly relieved that he’d arrived right to her, but that bittersweet happiness felt heavy. Stephanie wasn’t awake, but he felt compelled to check on her. He smiled as he looked down into her crib, yet was already feeling the loss of her for when the inevitable jump away happened. He let the room feel the irony in a sleepy exhale as he thought about his baby boy at a home so far away now. The serial existence of out-of-sync existence followed by happiness followed by sorrow followed by the ache for their children had to end. He was right last night; they had to get out, and that fact never felt more true.
Steve went back to the bed that was last slept in by the other him and felt an instant stilling from the chaotic emotions he was suffering when Kayla rolled over to nestle her head into the crook of his neck. He slept peacefully, but then woke up less so. He’d knitted his brows together with deep feelings of homesick emptiness, but again felt some succor when he felt Kayla gently kiss his head. Steve opened his eyes, smelled his wife’s hair, and heard the white noise of the baby monitor. “You still with me?” Steve said sleepily.
“I’m still here if you are,” she replied softly.
“Can’t be a hundred percent sure, baby, but I think so.”
Kayla palmed the substantial rod of morning wood pressing against her husband’s underwear and smiled when he inhaled sharply with the pleasure. “I’m 100% sure. All there.” When Kayla then rolled on top of her husband and lowered herself onto his erection, Steve moaned hotly.
“What did I do to deserve this?” Steve gasped as she grabbed the headboard and immediately began riding him hard and fast.
“You came home to me,” she said between sexy moans. “Now come again. Home. To me.”
Steve felt the his orgasm approaching very quickly and never wanted it to end. “Mmf. Sweetness. Baby. That’s – so good.” He held her by the small of her back and moved her back and forth of his shaft. The grunting whimpers he made when he was ready to come drove Kayla mad. She wanted to come, and she wanted Steve to watch every second of it.
“Not yet, baby.” Steve said. He quickly flipped them over, raised her leg over his shoulder, and gave her peaked nipple a very hard lick. Kaya cried out, so he did it again. Steve was ready to come but controlled himself as Kayla’s pants quickened. “That’s it, baby!” He licked her nipple again, then switched to the other and sucked at it hard. She stilled for the briefest of moments, then dropped her leg and bucked against him with the climax her husband gave her.
Steve captured Kayla’s mouth with his as he came. Their connection was so complete both physically and emotionally, all they could do was pant and moan as they became slick with each other’s essence. They caught their breath while saying how much they loved each other, and eventually fell into a contented silence.
“I’ve been here less than a day and we’ve already made love twice.”
“Complaining?” Kayla asked with a smile as she caressed his chest and belly with her fingertips. Steve captured them in his soft hands.
“Not even a little.”
“Hmmp. Good.”
Just after they’d both showered, Stephanie had woken up, and Kayla went in to get her up for the day. Steve meanwhile stared at himself in the bathroom mirror. He’d gotten used to this face that was staring back at him. It was very different from the face that was lying motionless in a bed, empty of its soul 18 years from now. This face had hardly a wrinkle. It was filled out, heavier, bolder, had thicker hair, and was part of a body that looked so much younger than the rightful one in his 50’s. He liked this face so much more than the one in 2009 because it was the last one he’d really lived in properly. Before Lawrence Alamain had taken him away, trafficked him to two other crime families, and stolen 16 years of his life from him. Sixteen years. It was just about equal to the number of years they’d been jumping through time. He stroked his chin and let his fingers feel the whiskers the other him had grown on his cheeks. More than a five o’clock shadow, less than a beard. One of Kayla’s revelations he read in her diary set upon him.
This FEELS like the right timeline. Dr. Rolf says the pivot point is laying with you and me in our bed overnight in 2009, but I don’t feel like it is … this just feels like our real pivot point … we’ve been living a timeline that split off when it shouldn’t have, an that this right now with you set to live past October is the right timeline.
“What are you thinking about?”
Steve didn’t startle, he’d heard his wife approach. Stephanie snoozed sleepily against her mother’s shoulder. He met Kayla’s eyes in the mirror but continued to stroke his scruff. “I hated this face for a long time,” he said quietly.
“I’ve loved this face from the moment I laid eyes on it.” Steve raised a doubtful eyebrow at her through the mirror. “Ok, maybe not the first moment, but definitely by like the 4th moment I laid eyes on it.”
Steve smiled in mirth as Kayla rubbed her hand down his right shoulder. “I hated this face until you loved me, and then I decided I liked it, too. Because anything you loved had to be good.” He turned around and leaned against the sink. It all went to hell after my eye got fixed. Everything that happened. That’s when I really started hating the new face and liking this one. The one that was Kayla’s. That was the me that felt right, not the one when all of this mess I caused happened. And now there’s this way older dude waiting to wake up in 2009, and I don’t really know him any better than the guy that had two eyes a year ago. I know this guy,” he pointed to his face. “This face right here that belongs to you and Stephanie is the last one before our wrong timeline split off.”
Kayla tilted her head. She realized the introspection she’d walked in on Steve having wasn’t about how he felt about himself, but about where he felt he belonged in time. “You agree? About the pivot point?”
Steve made a non-committal gesture. “I dunno if it is or it’s not, baby, but you made me think when I read that. Time travel was nothin’ but science fiction storytelling. Then suddenly we weren’t in Kansas anymore. Everything from that point has been living fiction for us, ’cause Rolf made it happen. But what I’m tryin’ to say is that even though I know that – being here in this place feels like the right place to be. In a face I like ’cause it’s the life that still feels like the right one. The old guy in 2009 feels … like the fiction, Kayla.” Steve placed her palm to his cheek. “I feel real here.”
Kayla looked puzzled. This was quite the role reversal, because to this point it had been Kayla feeling this way, and Steve always reminding her that no matter how good some of these jumps felt, none of them were their home. “Are you saying you don’t think we should go back now?”
Steve shook his head. “If the slipstream was stable maybe. But, no. Like I said last night, we have to go back. We have to get out.”
“Then … what are you saying?”
“What I’m saying is that I don’t know that guy in 2009. I don’t know the guy with that old face. I know this guy here,” he thumped his chest lightly but meaningfully. “I know this one. And I don’t know if I’m gonna know how to be that guy when we get back.”
Kayla understood now. She palmed Steve’s right cheek in her palm as he stroked his sleepy daughter’s brown hair. “Steve, you are going to be the exact man when we get back that you are right now. You don’t need any image in any mirror, you just need the truth of the soul inside you. I know that soul. And it knows mine and your little Sweetness and your baby boy. Your soul knows your mom, Adrienne … and your brother, too. It knows the people that adore you and love you. Your soul will always know who you are. So trust it, because it won’t ever steer you wrong.
Steve was amazed that Kayla continued to find ways to profoundly move him. He was always far more emotional than his image would let on, but one of the effects of the years and years of this impossible existence was how easily those emotions now burst forth from him. His eye watered with the intensity that soul of his was feeling her words.
“You’re so beautiful,” his voice cracked in a whisper.
Stephanie raised her head and looked at her father. “Puh-puh,” she sighed as she held out her arms to him. Steve smiled as he went to take her, then she looked him square in the face and said, “Mama!” with equal contentment while still leaning toward him. Steve giggled. “Stephanie, I don’t look a thing like your mama, you had it right the first time.” Steve’s giggle made Stephanie giggle, and all three of them were lost in a moment of pure humor as Steve swooped her up. “Little Sweetness, you always make your papa happy, ya know that?” That’s when he got a whiff of something he remembered well. “Then again, I think it’s your mama’s turn here.”
“Nope,” Kayla said as she turned on her heel and sailed out the door toward the back stairs like a doppler.
“Aw, c’mon, baby, I just got here!”
Kayla doubled back and stuck her head back into the bathroom. “Toddler poop.” then she scrunched up her nose and sniffed before confirming with a nod. “Have fun.” then she headed downstairs to make breakfast.
Steve pointed a finger at his daughter in his arms. “You and me gotta talk toilets.” She grabbed his finger and squirmed. “Then again, I think we might be a little early.” Steve changed Stephanie’s diaper and took the opportunity to get re-acquainted with her room. “That’s ok, Little Sweetness,” he said as he got ready for a new day ahead, “I like takin’ care of ya.”
They headed down the stairs for breakfast, and Steve immediately began stuffing his face. Stephanie immediately began mimicking him. When Steve gobbled up a large forkful of scrambled eggs, she grabbed the fork Kayla already had on the way to her daughter’s mouth and pulled it fast into her own. Steve was completely amused, repeated the move, and this time Stephanie grabbed a handful of scrambled eggs out of her dish and shoved them into her mouth, no fork required.
“Suddenly Stephanie looked around and stopped. Then she picked up a Cheerio from her high chair tray and shoved it at her papa, who had no Cheerios.
“Thank you, Little Sweetness. Papa would love a Cheerio.” Then he ate it from her fingers and smacked his lips.
The sun streamed in the window and gleamed against Kayla’s golden hair as she smiled warmly at her family. “I love you both so much,” she said. “I’ve missed you terribly.”
Steve took Kayla’s hand. “That ring on your finger. I want the paperwork to go with it. So, let’s go to the courthouse.”
“Sorry to tell you, we have to wait till tomorrow; it’s Sunday.”
Steve grimaced. “Fine. Tomorrow. First thing.”
“Actually, scratch that, you work.”
“Well then I’ll call in sick!” he snapped. Kayla pursed her lips and tutted her tongue when Stephanie startled at her father’s sudden tone. “Sorry,” he looked down. “I just – sorry, Little Sweetness – I dunno why I did that.”
Kayla did. “Because you’re still not really quite right yet. Because neither of us are. And because you want to feel like this is your marriage and not his.”
Now Steve looked back up and nodded. “I’ll bet the other me was real upset that you wouldn’t marry him.”
Kayla took Steve’s left hand, played her fingers into his, and nodded. “I waited for all of you to get here,” she said meaningfully. “It made the other you a little heartbroken. Like he was second best. Which made me heartbroken. But I waited. Because some things are only for us.”
The chirp of the phone came as she finished that sentence, the content of which sent a spike of happiness through him. Stephanie instantly started to fuss. Kayla got up and simultaneously poured milk into a sippy cup with one hand while answering the phone with the other. This act, innocuous on any other day, bothered Steve and sent his pendulum back from whence it had just came.
“Steve?” it was the third time Kayla had called his name while he stewed in this unreasonable sullenness.
“What?” he snapped for the second time in as many minutes.
Kayla narrowed her eyes while she covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “Jo is calling to check on you,” she said testily. Then more quietly, “Do you think you can manage not to bite her head off, too?” Steve was somewhere between protesting and apologizing when Kayla made the choice for him. “Jo, he’ll call you back … no, no, he’s alot better. Fine, actually … just – he went to change Stephanie … ok, just a few minutes.” Kayla clicked the end call button, put the handset down on the counter, and crossed her arms. When Steve crossed his and looked down to the ground, Kayla said,
“What’s going on?” simultaineously signing with a wave of her hand between them.
“You just got right into the routine like I didn’t just get here yesterday.” He had no idea he was going to say that, but when it instinctually came out, he felt a measure of relief that it was out instead of festering. “I just – you answered right away.”
“Did you want to answer it instead?”
“No, that’s not the point. Just … Do I feel like me? Or do I feel like him? ‘Cause you feel like you, but I feel like I’m an imposter in the other guy’s house.”
Kayla did not like this at all. They’d made love twice. Steve had read into her very soul through the journals she’d kept for him. They were emotionally intimate from the word go. Was she this upset after her own late arrivals? Or was he just not able to get past the fact that she’d slept with him?
“You’re mad at me. For sleeping with him. You say you’re not, but you are.”
“No! I said I’m not and I’m not.”
“Because there was no him and you. There’s only you.”
“Then why didn’t you marry him?” That stopped Kayla cold. “Me – why didn’t you get married?” When Kayla continued not replying, he drove it home. “Why didn’t you tell him the answer to the Stockholm question? Why didn’t you tell him the whole story about Ava and not completely whitewash it?”
“I …”
“Because some things are just between you and me. That’s what you said. That’s what you said, and that’s what you meant. Because that’s what you know is true. He is not me. And you are not her. I think we both know that now. There’s not just one Steve, there’s him and there’s me. He knew this routine. I don’t.”
“That doesn’t mean he wasn’t you!”
“Ya know what, I think it does!” Steve’s raised voice was bothering Stephanie. “I think I can read a page a day about it and I still won’t ever be the one that lived here for the last year. I’m not mad at you for it,” he softened when Kayla started to bristle, “but that’s how I feel. Maybe he’s not a completely different person – maybe he’s more like a versio of me – but he’s not me.”
“So what did you expect me to do? Up and leave? Hole up at my folks until you got here?”
“No, that’s not what I’m sayign at all. I just think we should be real about the whole, ‘he is me’ thing.”
Kayla rubbed at her temple then leaned back against the sink. “Have you looked in your nightstand yet?”
Steve was confused. “Huh?”
“Your nightstand,” she looked back up. “Have you opened the drawer yet?”
Steve turned his head left and right as if he was looking for an answer to this non-sequitur. “I been here 12 hours, Kayla. No, I can’t say I’ve had a looksie yet.”
“There’s a letter in there for you. I’m going to – run an errand. While I’m gone, I want you to read it.”
Now Steve was getting genuinely angry. “What kind of errand? Fridge looks full. No one’s gotta be anywhere. Courts ain’t open. I don’t want to separate right now.”
“We’ve already separated since you’ve jumped in. We’ll be fine, we’re not jumping today.”
“And you know that how?”
“Don’t start with me, Steve. Read the letter.”
“I—who’s it from? Is it from you?”
“No, it’s from you.”
Now Steve was fussing as much as his daughter. “I wrote myself a letter.”
“Yes, and you wrote one to me, too.”
“Ok, I get it now. The other Steve has lots to say to us about how much he loves you and doesn’t wanna go, and he’s gonna tell me to be a good boy and take care of his body or some kind of crap, right?”
Now Kayla got very protective of this sacrifice the other him had left so that her – real – Steve could go on with their family. “Stop it,” she seethed. “He gave up everything so I could have you. My real husband that he knew I was pining for! Put yourself in his shoes, and don’t you ever badmouth him ever again!”
“Kayla!” he spat back defensively.
“Now, I’m going to change and then I’m going to go. You’re going to read the letter he left you, and I’ll be back. First call your mother.”
With that, Kayla turned on her heel and went up the back stairs to get dressed. When she came back down, Stephanie was in her pack and play, and Steve was on the couch having just hung up with his mother.
“Good call?” Kayla asked carefully.
“Yeahp. Assured her I’m just fine. Got an earful about everybody’s business.” There was implied mirth, but his tone was tight.
Kayla went to him and bent her lips to his for a quick kiss. “I love you,” she said quietly.
Steve nodded. “I love you, too.”
She headed for the front door, opened it, and turned back when Steve called for her with a slightly desperate tone. Before she could turn all the way around, he had her engulfed in his arms. “Please don’t jump before you get back.”
Kayla melted into him and held him tightly. “I won’t.”
“How do you know?”
Kayla shrugged. “I just do.” They shared another quick kiss, then Kayla pulled out of his embrace. “Read the letter.” Steve nodded. “I love you.” Then Kayla left the house.
An hour later Stephanie was down for her morning nap, and Steve was sitting on the bed staring down at the envelope in his hand telling him not to be an asshole. “I dunno, maybe he’s me, after all.” Steve looked at the clock. He didn’t know how long he had before Stephanie woke up. What he did know was that whatever errand Kayla was running, it was about whatever the other him had put into his letter to her. “You are an asshole,” he said to himself. “You really are a jealous asshole.” He was not proud of how he felt. Kayla forgave him and never let his having made love to the other her come between them. Yet here he was unable to just process. “Maybe it’s the slipstream doin’ this to me.”
Steve closed the drawer and sat back against the headboard. Then he finally turned the envelope back over, opened it up, and began reading. He was shocked that it was two pages. It was very strange to read this letter, in his own hand, to himself, that he had no memory of writing. “Life is so fuckin’ weird.”
At that moment in 2009, Rolf shot up out of his chair and ran to the other side of the room where the wall of computer screens were crawling with code. One line after another scrolled so fast up the screens that Rolf couldn’t keep up Not just one of the screens, but all of them were starting to fill with lines of scrolling code. Only minutes had passed since the last time they’d done whatever they’d done, and now they’d clearly done yet something else. And it had to be something monumental. For those two computer terminals plus the 14 others lining the far wall were the infrastructure that was the slipstream. And whatever they’d done this time had pushed it to its first actual manifestations of failure.
“Was zur ficken Holle host due getan?!”
What they’d done was make a crack in the slipstream a chasm, because Steve was interacting with his other self directly. It wasn’t live and in person, but it was the two versions, self-aware, talking to each other. Steve didn’t have any cognitive idea that this was a problem, but when he became this level of self-aware, Time didn’t like it, because it didn’t know what to do with that state of irony.
Steve,
Well. I must be gone now. Handover’s done. I’m gone, and you’re back in the driver’s seat of my Bluesmobile. Only it’s never really been mine, has it? It’s always been yours. I’ve spent the last year trying to fill your shoes. And I resent the fuck out of you for it.
“I’m the asshole?” he spat. “Great. I’m so glad I’m reading this.”
Calm down before you fly off the handle. Cause, look, I didn’t ask for any of this. And God knows I didn’t want to get erased so you could take over. But I’ve made my peace with it. Because I love Kayla and Stephanie more than anything in the world. More than myself. I’d die for them. And I know you know it, cause you’d die for them too. So, I’ve been helping her. Not for just you to jump in here, but for all the next jumps, too. We planned it out. I’m going to tell her what happens when you imprint me. And then you’re going to take that on the next jumps with you. So you can get home to Joe.
Steve inhaled sharply at the mention of his baby boy that this other version of him never even met but that he was about to sacrifice himself for.
So believe me when I tell you, I don’t like it. But I accept it. What I won’t accept is you coming out of this bitter. Mad at her. Being pissed off that she didn’t wait for you. You know what I’m saying. I know you because you were once me, and I know how I’d be feeling. You’re going to look back at the year I spent with Kayla. The nights. The mornings after those nights. Being her husband. And being Stephanie’s papa. And you’re going to feel like something got stolen from you that didn’t belong to me. But it did. Part of it did belong to me. I built a life with her while she waited for all of you to show up. I loved her, and she loved me. Feeling angry?
“No, I’m feeling peachy.”
Stop right there, man. Don’t you dare hold a second of it against her. Kayla didn’t step out on you. She was drowning. Carrying the weight of a broken timeline on her back, and she did what she had to do to survive. Loving me wasn’t a betrayal. It was loving you. It was loving us. She says we’re the same person. Truth is I think she’s wrong, but I can’t say we’re exactly separate people, either. I can’t put into words what me as Steve and you as Steve actually are. But I can tell you that it tore her up. She was scared every day that we’d be separated. That you wouldn’t really get here before she jumped away. I hoped you’d never get here, and I am sure I fought like hell to stop you from imprinting me. But you’re here now, aren’t you? Well, that’s just fine, then. I kept her safe and held her together until you could finally cross the finish line.
Now Steve felt less jealousy and more guilt. The next paragraph didn’t help.
We’re a jealous man, Steven Earl Johnson. We’re sometimes a piece of shit. We don’t deserve Kayla. I’m as mad about you being here now as you are about me being here before. Being jealous of myself is seriously fucked.
“Tell me about it.”
But I want you to know. You’re the one Kayla needs. I know she loves me. But I love her enough to let her go and make us ready for you. Make the timeline ready for you to jump again. And I’m at peace. Next time you’re ready to unleash that green monster that lives in us remember – I never got to meet my son. I never got to meet Emily.
Pain so sharp and searing stabbed through Steve’s heart that he thought he was going to fall over and die. It passed very quickly, but it hurt, and it made the numbers fly momentarily faster across Rolf’s computer screens.
They are miracles. And I will die for them so you can live. I’m begging you. Don’t make Kayla feel guilty for surviving with me. Don’t make her apologize for needing me when you weren’t here. Don’t be mad at her for loving me and making me feel like I was nenough.
“I won’t.” Steve didn’t know when he started crying. “I promise I won’t.”
I know you’re going to go love her like I would. Cause you and me are the same whether you’re me or not. I did my part. Now go finish the job. And get home.
Steve.
Steve stared at the two pages of his own handwriting through blurry tears. His destinateion self was spot on. In every way. And the emotions assailed him. The validation was too much. The accuracy was too much. The arrogance was too much. And the meaning of what the other Steve gave up for a life he was giving to someone else was too much. Steve felt painfully vulnerable. Like he had when he finally let himself cry for Emily. Like he had when his mother left him at the orphanage. He wanted to wrap his arms around his boyhood self and his grieving self and tell them both that he was going to be ok. That he was going to be loved. He felt like he was existing in every moment of his life all at once as homesickness ached in his belly. “Kayla,” he sobbed softly aloud.
“I’m here,” she said softly from the bedroom doorway.
Steve snapped his head up from the pages in his hand. For a moment he was frozen to his spot. Then he shot up and threw himself into his wife’s arms as she threw herself into his. “Sweetness!” he unabashedly cried. “God, Sweetness!”
Kayla was just as emotional as her husband was. The devotion of Destination Steve lived in her, and with it came the knowledge that her primary Steve would have done the very same. She knew all Steves loved her, but being shown so materially was overwhelming. She breathed her husband’s name as they fell to the floor where they stood and cried with him, both of them releasing the demons that jump had caused in them. And they truly were being released. It was a gift to both of them from the Steve that wasn’t here anymore. Did he know he was giving them that gift of release? Maybe. Probably.
Kayla kissed the tears off of her husband’s face, and Steve did the same for her. He gingerly kissed every inch of her skin as he held her face between his palms. Kayla rubbed the remaining moisture from his face with her fingertips, and before they knew it Steve was inside her. Their gentle lovemaking was tender and healing. When Kayla’s orgasm flooded through her, it was one of the most intimate moments they’d ever experienced. Steve came softly while Kayla was still pulsing around him. It felt like a golden light had surrounded them in a bubble of safety. They kissed lovingly while their reoveries settled upon them. They hadn’t moved from their spot on the floor.
“Are you ok?” Kayla asked softly.
Steve shrugged a nod. “I am now.”
Kayla moved the hair that had fallen into his eye. “Are you really?”
Steve kissed her. “I really think I am now. Something came over me as I read his letter. But I’m better now.” Then he fondled his wife’s breast lovingly. “Are you?”
Kayla nodded as she enjoyed her husband’s warm palm on her skin. “Yeah. It was emotional. But I am.”
“Wherever you went – if there are some things that are only between you and me, then maybe that should be just between you and him”
Kayla kissed his patch and shook her head. “I want to tell you if you want to know.”
Steve sat up and took the pages that had fallen beside them into his hands. Then Steve got them both up, and they continued this very important discussion in their warm bed. Steve set the pages on his wife’s lap and asked her, “Do you want read his letter to me?”
Kayla took a moment to think about this but did not pick up the letter. “The other you left me a love lock.” Steve swallowed but did not react badly. “You know about the love locks?”
“I do know about the love locks.”
“I didn’t know they were there. He told me where to look, and I wandered into them.”
Steve smiled bittersweetly. “I get you something big and engraved.”
Kayla nodded. “You sure did.”
“Wait, I did?”
Kayla nodded. “Yes, you did. And – if you want me to, I’ll tell you what the other you engraved on the back.”
Steve eyed her. Then he smiled genuinely and shook his head. “I’m glad you told me, Sweetness. I’m glad it’s not a secret. I don’t want us to have secrets. But what he said on the lock. I want that – to be just between him and you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You’re gonna marry me tomorrow. And you’re never gonna tell any other me’s the answer to the Stockholm question. Those are not for him. That love lock is not for me.” Kayla didn’t quite feel right about that and started to protest, but Steve stopped her. “No, baby. He sacrificed everything for you. He sacrificed his whole existence so you could have a future with me. I’m the one spending the rest of my life getting to love you. We gotta honor that. I’m glad I know about it. But this life isn’t for him. And that lock isn’t for me.”
Kayla’s eyes watered with such reverence for all versions of her husband.
“He told me not to be mad at you. He said not to be an asshole.” Kayla laughed. “Several times; apparently it bore repeating.” Kayla laughed some more, and Steve’s heart liked it. “He said not to make you feel guilty for surviving with him and for loving him. He said it alot of ways alot of times, but the whole letter said it over and over. That you didn’t do anything wrong an that everything you did, you did while waiting for me.” Kayla let the tears fall over her lashes. “Is that true, Sweetness?” He cupped her cheek and caressed it with his thumb. “Is that what you were doin’?”
In a final release of the man that had been loving her for the past year, Kayla nodded. “Yes. I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t love the other you, because I did. Passionately. But, yes. It filled me with guilt. But every day was me waiting for the rest of you to get here. And he knew it.”
“He took care of you both. I owe him a debt I can’t repay.”
“I thihk you already have.” She kissed him gingerly. “I don’t need to read the letter. Thank you for telling me about it.”
Steve and Kayla felt the heavy weight of this jump lift from them. It was a burden that they were so grateful to have lifted with their emotional purge. They knew this was all going to mean terrible things for the slipstream, and that made them very happy. Scared, but happy. Now that Steve had arrived, they could really actively do all the things they needed to do here to break Time and either go home or end it all. And they did do those things. They got married. They switched roles and made Steve the stay at home parent while Kayla went back to work at the Emergency Center. And Steve was much happier this way. They made massive sports bets, won, and gave away the money. They stopped plots before they started. They called in tips. They saved Shane and Kimberly’s marriage. And they watched as Marcus met and married someone they’d never met in any other timeline, and he did so fast, because sometimes you just know when someone’s the one.
They figured they’d jump fast, but they did not.
They figured they’d jump by Christmas, but that didn’t happen either.
On February 19th, Stephanie turned two years old. Steve was not dead, the house did not belong to Mickey and Maggie, and Steve and Kayla were still here. In 1992.
Rolf, however, was still staring at the monitors filling with endless lines of code.
And then the code abruptly stopped.
Chapter 168 Coming Soon