Kayla’s heart sank into the pit of her stomach. The realization that this was not her Steve, that she really did jump alone, set upon her with a cold chill.
This man was Steve, it was definitely Steve, the man she would love, marry, and have children with. But it wasn’t the one that belonged to her in 2009 with all the knowledge of their shared lives within him. This Steve stared at her with an eye she now looked away from with a shy reservation that she hadn’t felt in decades. It was square one with this Steve, she didn’t know what to say or do, and she couldn’t begin to figure out where to go from here.
“I … I’m sorry. I … you, ah …” The heat of embarrassment rushed up her neck, and every hair stood on edge as she fought to grasp that she was here, but he was not. What was she supposed to do, explain it to this Steve? Considering that she could barely string two words together, that was not likely to happen. Was she supposed to pretend that she was 20th century Kayla? She didn’t even know for sure who was President right now, her mind was swimming.
The Steve of this time had his own stricken look on his face as he watched her stammer. Kayla watched him cast that deep green eye upon her as she struggled to stay focused, and she registered a distinct confusion there. She stole a glance at him and saw that he was looking down at her wound, the blood from which now having seeped through her camisole and into her shirt.
“Baby, you’re really bleedin’, here,” Steve said, the wariness gone in favor of a concern he just couldn’t hide. “What do I do here, now, just tell me what to do!” he said just below a shout.
She detected his growing panic, but the sting was creeping back, and she tried to focus on it clinically so that she wouldn’t start crying. “Clean … clean it. We need to … uh … gauze … somewhere.”
Kayla looked in Steve’s eye and heard his voice, and it was like stepping through time. A different kind of time than all their previous jumps, though. All those times, their awarenesses were present in these bodies. Steve had the character and inflection that made him the man she was married to in 2009 even if it was coming out of a younger body. But this Steve wasn’t him. This was a Steve still fighting against the ebb and flow of the feelings he’d developed for her all while succumbing to the fact that he couldn’t stay away from her. This was a very early model Steve in body and in substance. This was a Steve she hadn’t seen in a very long time. It was like visiting a moment in her life captured on film. The moment left her with a profound sense of melancholy.
It was, however, just that one moment, because just then Kayla saw Steve start to look distinctly nauseous with a very strange look on his face. She watched as his expression went blank and his grip on her shirt froze. Alarmed, Kayla put a hand on his shoulder. Then just as quickly he inhaled sharply, his eye focused, and his whole stance changed.
He jumped! Somehow she just knew it to be true. It’s him! There was no question in Kayla’s mind that this was her Steve again. That she’d just witnessed his arrival into … whatever year this was. Her eyes went wide with the wonder of it as her lips parted. Is that what we look like when we jump into ourselves? she wondered.
Her Steve had arrived, met with the usual dizziness, nausea, and apprehensiveness always present in those first seconds. Of course this one came with a bit of a new wrinkle, as well.
“Kayla!” he yelled as his eye rolled with the disorientation.
It was only a moment of hesitation as the relief flooded through her with such force that she felt it down to her toes. But when she didn’t answer him right away Steve instinctively grabbed her by the shirt tails the body he’d arrived in was holding. This brought the pain that had been on the edge of her consciousness to the surface, making her cry out. Steve immediately let go of her like he’d just picked up something hot, his eye going wide; but the confusion seemed to hang like a thick cloud this time.
“What? What is it? Where are we?” he gasped as he darted his head around.
“Emergency Center!” Kayla gasped as she reached for his hand and brought it to her face.
“Baby?” Steve said, still looking confused. “You ok?”
Kayla nodded as she remembered to breathe again. “I’m here. And you made it, too.” She closed her eyes to the feel of his hand against her cheek.
“That’s when he spotted the blood on his hand. And just like that the cloud evaporated. “Kayla whose blood is this?” he asked with alarm. Shit, I just got her well, are we gonna have to be at this again?! He didn’t think he could take it.
“It’s mine,” Kayla said as he wiped at the smudge that had transferred from her shirt to his hand and then to her cheek. “We’re at the Emergency Center. Do you remember?”
Not really. “What – what year? Are you hurt? He gently put his hands on her as he tried to check her.
“198 … 6. I think. We’re not married yet. There was a junkie with a knife. It’s my side here.” The words came rolling out of her in a manic run-on sentence. Steve looked down and saw blood seeping through her shirt and remembered when Max had come at him in a mad rush to come help Kayla. “It’s really nothing,” she continued, starting to get short of breath. “It’s just a cut, I didn’t even need stitches, we just have to clean it, like last time, you cleaned it up last time, there’s gauze and tape and it was ok, it’s not serious.” The words came out in a staccato rush.
“Shh, baby, slow down,” Steve said as he looked at her with concern.
She saw her husband there. It was definitely him there, and it made her heart beat even faster. She was getting dizzy. “Steve, it’s ok, really. It just stings is all. Looks worse than it really is,” she laughed without humor. Her breaths were labored, and she broke out into a cold sweat. She was having a panic attack, and she knew it.
And so did Steve. “Kayla, look at me,” he very calmly demanded, and she did. “Calm down.” Kayla nodded and took a deep breath as he held her face firmly in his hands. “I’m here now. We’re both here. Now you look in my eye and you calm down right now.” She did as she was told, and Steve took a deep breath through his mouth, silently directing her to do the same, which she did as best she could.
Steve and Kayla sat there in a charged silence. She tried to get a grip on herself, and he tried to calm her down with gentle strokes of her face. They both knew something had gone terribly wrong with that last jump, but neither knew what to say.
Kayla was so tired of crying. So, she took another deep breath and closed her eyes. She felt his hands on her face and calmed a bit.
“That’s it, Sweetness, I’ve got you.” She opened her eyes. “Let’s get you patched up, here, ok?” Then he chuckled. “Funny choice of words, huh, Sweetness?” Steve got up and started looking for the supplies. “I remember that junkie, now, baby. Is he that guy I gave a real pounding to before he ran off?”
“That’s the one,” Kayla said softly and breathing easier.
Steve found antiseptic, gauze, and some tape in a medical bag on the table and gently unbuttoned Kayla’s shirt. “I remember the first time I did this,” he said. “I was afraid to touch you.”
Kayla had almost completely calmed down now. “I remember,” she said. “You were a gentleman.”
“Guess I got over that, didn’t I?” he said with the leer that Kayla loved. When he was finished with her wound he took one of the gauze pads and gently removed the smudge of blood from her face. “It’s not that big a cut, baby, but it sure did bleed a lot,” Steve said, finishing up the bandage and pulling her camisole back down. He saw the look in her eyes and knew she wanted to talk about the jump. But he didn’t know what to say because he was just as freaked out as she was.
Steve kissed her gently and then put his forehead against hers. “I was only a few seconds behind you, Sweetness. I don’t know what happened, but I wasn’t far behind.” His kept his voice deep and soothing.
“But we’ve never done that before.” Kayla’s agitation was apparent. “Are you sure you didn’t feel it coming when I did?”
Steve shook his head. “No, I didn’t feel a thing till after you were–“ He looked away and adjusted his patch uncomfortably. “—gone, I guess. You screamed my name, and then finally, the jump started for me, too. You looked like you were kind of gone in there, and that’s the last thing I saw before I jumped.”
Kayla took his hand and held it to her heart, then he guided her by the back of her head to lay it on his shoulder. They just held each other like that for a few moments, each silently wondering where to go from here. Their silence was broken by an angry voice behind them.
“Get the hell off my sister, Johnson!”
Kayla pulled away quickly to see John and Abe with astonished looks on their faces. Actually, Abe looked somewhat amused, but John was positively irate.
“Sis, what the hell are you doing?!”
Kayla was startled and completely unprepared for them to walk in. “Joh—“
“Roman!” Steve interjected. Look, Kayla, it’s Roman! Came to pay your sister a visit?”
Kayla realized her mistake. This was when they all thought he was Roman. It was so hard to keep straight. Her head was so messed up she didn’t know which way was up.”
“The, uh, suspect was caught down on the pier,” Abe said. We came for your statements.”
Luckily, Kayla didn’t have a lot of time to process Abe and her on-again-off-again brother, because the tug in her belly hit her hard.
“Not again! Steve, it’s happening already, do you feel lit?” she asked, her heart kicking back up again.
“Feel what?” John spat. “Sis, did he hurt you?!” Neither he nor Abe noticed that they were being ignored like extraneous extras.
Steve wasn’t feeling the jump yet, and she could see it in his eye. “I’m right behind you, baby, I am! You’ll see, I’ll be there, Sweetness!” Steve kissed her quickly and held her tight.
“What do you think you two are doing, get off of her!” John yelled.
It was the last thing Kayla heard as the jump took her.
“I love you,” Steve whispered,” but his Kayla had leaped away before she could hear it. Steve felt her suddenly tense up and knew she was gone. I’ll be there, baby! He prayed that was true, felt John roughly drag him out of Kayla’s frozen embrace, and breathed a sigh of relief as the tug started in his own belly.
“Nice seein’ ya up and around again, man,” Steve said.
“Johnson, what the fu—,” John replied as the room fell away.
The minute she arrived, Kayla knew she was in the loft. Steve was saying something to her, but she couldn’t make out what it was. Within moments, he had grasped her by the shoulders and was holding her against him. He felt good, but she didn’t smile. Because she knew that she’d jumped without him again. This time the emotion she was feeling most wasn’t fear or panic or even longing. This time the emotion she was feeling before she’d even taken a breath in this body was anger. She didn’t know why she jumped without him again, not to mention so quickly, but she was so very tired of this and fit to be tied.
“… hearing me?”
“Yeah …,” she said, breathing deeply, not quite able to keep the affect out of her voice.
Steve looked at her with a questioning eye. “You sure, baby? You looked like you were on another planet for a second there.”
Not my Steve. Not that she thought it would be. She’d hoped it was, but she could plainly tell that it wasn’t and was again met with the challenge of what to do next.
“Sorry,” she said a bit awkwardly. “Ah … what were you saying?” She tried very hard not to show how upset she was while she tried to focus on what to do.
He smiled cautiously. “I said I was thinking maybe we could pick up where we left off the other night.”
“Right … the other night,” When was this? She just didn’t know. She couldn’t help softening, though. He looked so handsome and so very male in his long hair and brown leather jacket with the oatmeal colored button down shirt she used to love peeking through; she could almost feel it. And she knew that look on his face and what he was suggesting they “pick up.” They were together here, but when? It was summer our first time … has to be before.
“That is, if you want to …”
She could tell her sudden behavior shift was throwing him, but Kayla never got a chance to figure out what to do about it, because right then he seemed to tense up and sway. “Steve?” Then his eye focused, and he took in a lungful of air. She knew he’d arrived, she could hear it in his breathing. “Steve?” She took his hands and waited for him to right himself. “Steve!”
“Right here, Kayla,” he said as he immediately went to adjust his patch. His tone of voice wasn’t quite what she was expecting. Almost put upon. Doubt nagged at her. Did he arrive? What if he didn’t? She had to be sure.
“Steve, do you remember Stockholm? The last time we were there, I mean?
The Steve that was her husband had, indeed, arrived, and he understood what was happening. Again. She got here first.
“What is this, 20 Questions,” Steve said reaching for her, “I’m here, now, it’s me.”
Kayla let out the breath she was holding and walked into his arms. She smelled the leather and his unmistakable scent and closed her eyes to the feel of him. Then she popped her eyes open as a thought burst out. “Wait, how do you know it’s me?”
Steve chuckled, but he wasn’t feeling any humor. “I know you, Sweetness, that’s how I know. Your little Stockholm question was also a dead giveaway, wasn’t that the point?”
“Right,” she said feeling a bit silly. “I’m not thinking.” He could hardly blame her, these last two jumps with no time to recover right after their awful time during her poisoning was taking its toll on them both. “It happened again, Steve. Why is this happening?”
“I dunno, baby, it was the same as last time. You checked out first, then I felt it just as Roman was hitting me with some choice words.”
“Roman.” She looked up at Steve and felt her heart constrict at bit. “He sure felt like Roman back then, didn’t he?”
“Baby, I still have a hard time lookin’ at that other guy. That all happened while I was away, so I still think of John as your brother.”
“He always did give you a hard time back then, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, he got over it,” he smiled down at her. And for the first time he really looked at her. She was beautiful. The color of her sweater was the color of a warm summer sunset, and her hair smelled so good.
“What are you looking at me like that for?”
Steve touched her face and ran his thumb across her bottom lip. “So pretty.”
Kayla looked into his eye and was so happy he was there with her, she was afraid to let him go. She slid her index finger down his patch. “So handsome,” she smiled.
Then a voice spoke from behind them, startling them so much that they both jumped. “Kayla, do you have a needle and thread? There seems to be a button loose on my –“ For just a moment, Steve forgot exactly where and when he was as he stared into the impossibly young and innocent face of his sister.