There were things in Steve’s past that he remembered from just the smell in the air. The loft. The Emergency Center. His bedroom in the big, old house, his bed in the orphanage. There were outfits Kayla wore or sometimes she’d get a look on her face that would instantly transport him to their origin. This destination was not one of them, however. Since the slipstream seemed to be in anarchy, and since it was pretty much thanks to him anyway, he didn’t have very high hopes that he’d have the opportunity to get up close and personal with this new body or any other bodies in this destination. Therefore, he didn’t try too hard to open his eyes. What was the goddamn point?
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Kayla was right beside him. Not his Kayla. Not the Kayla he knew he had to protect from ever going through this nightmare another day as long as she lived. Not the Kayla whose sobs over the loss of their child just saturated him in the storm drain and broke him in the process. Not the Kayla for whom he would die a thousand deaths before he’d let anything happen to like he was now letting all of this happen to. And not the Kayla whom he let himself have all those years ago and as a result has never seen a day of peace since. No, this was not his Kayla, this was the other Kayla, the one who hadn’t been through any of that yet – because he was pretty good at this now, so he didn’t need to get a look at her to know that they were not together here.
When he did tentatively open his eye to a narrow slit, he had to close it right back up again. He briefly saw that he was still in a bed, only he’d switched sides and was now leaned up on his right elbow instead of sitting upright; but little changes in orientation like that contributed to the jump sickness. He drew his free, left hand over his eyes and let out a low grunt as he waited for the nausea to pass. Kayla was right, though, he wasn’t nearly as sick and dizzy this time.
“I said what are you doing?” Kayla asked even more haughtily than the first time.
Once again, he guessed sight unseen that this was 1986. When the jump effect ebbed he exhaled heavily, opened his eye, and saw that he was right. It didn’t take long for him to find the plot of this one, either. It might not have lived as close to the surface as so many of his other memories, but he knew where they were and why they were there. Wearing handcuffs is exactly like riding a bike, you never forget what one feels like around your wrist. He leaned up off his right arm and lifted his forearm to inspect the standard issue handcuffs, dragging Kayla’s matching forearm with it. “Great,” he said. Then he dropped his arm and glanced away.
“Well?”
“If I remember correctly I think I was yankin’ your chain about goin’ to bed.”
“No way, you sleep in the chair,” she demanded with a point of her finger.
“The chair, huh?” he said flatly. Since the gap between his arrival and Kayla’s seemed to have narrowed considerably, he waited for his wife to arrive or the jump effect to re-engage, so there was no point in trying to navigate this. Kayla, however, made a noise that affirmed a hell yes to the chair in no uncertain terms.
Steve just wanted to stop jumping. He didn’t even think in terms of going home – either home – because he was just desperate to get his bearings. He got no preparation, no warning, and no goodbye (not that he would have know what to do with any of those things). He got plenty of the slipstream on crack, but none of the other stuff. It did not help that this destination body was wet, really hungry, and didn’t smell so good. Honestly, he just wanted to retreat back inside himself and sleep.
More than a minute had to have gone by. Still no jump. Still no Kayla. Still no Emily. He shook his head hard. He looked back to the destination Kayla beside him. She was glaring at him.
“Look, I know you don’t trust me right now, but you don’t have anything to worry about, ok? I’m just gonna close my eyes here, and you close yours, and when you wake up you’ll be on pause and I’ll be outta your hair.”
Then he turned so that he couldn’t see her and forced himself not to feel. A moment later she spoke again.
“Steve, please? Just … sleep in the chair tonight? Alright?” Her voice had that sweet quality it always took on when she was faking her way through something she had to be brave for when she wanted it badly enough.
He closed his eye and tried to ignore her. None of this was real, anyway, and despite the signal this body was giving him that his stomach was empty, he was surely going to be ready to vomit any second anyway. But then Kayla’s hand moved when she shifted slightly, and Steve instinctively laced her fingers into his own. It wasn’t a conscious action, it was a base level gesture for Steve to take his wife’s hand into his. Kayla laid a protest on him and wriggled it away as best she could while still attached, but Steve was frustrated. Holding her hand and being close to her in 1986 was not going to help them. It was going to do more of this to them. Speaking of which, was the next jump coming to kick his ass here or not? Meanwhile, Kayla gave an exasperated glare, clearly expecting him to get the hell out of this bed. Steve sat up.
“You feelin’ sick?”
“Sick?”
“Dizzy?
“Come on, would you stop it?”
“Kayla, I’m just asking, do you feel weird?”
“I think you’re weird,” she rolled her eyes. Any other single day Steve would have laughed at that, because it was funny. But he had nothing to laugh at right now. “Alright, fine, I’ll sleep in the chair,” Kayla said. “Just get up.”
“Relax, Sweetness, I’ll go to the chair.” He swung his legs over the side and went to move into the big, padded chair right beside the bed, but Kayla hadn’t moved yet, so his forward motion stopped right there.
“You will?” she asked still unmoved from her position.
“Yeah,” he said. He stood up, but she didn’t move, and he had to sit back down. “I’m not gonna give ya a hard time, here, ok? Now I can’t go there if you don’t do your part. So, just move over, and I’ll get in the chair.” Still she stayed put. “What?!” he finally turned to her, his patience very thin.
“Thank you.” Back then, Steve would have thought she looked shocked that he could keep her guessing by being nice to her. But he knew better what was going on behind those penetrating blue eyes of hers, and she was just slightly disappointed and drawn to him.
God, I need you. But he looked away. Don’t invest, he reminded himself. “’Welcome. Now, are ya comin’ or not?” She nodded and moved over to his warm spot as he transferred into the cold chair. It was actually very comfortable. Which bothered him, he didn’t want to be comfortable. They didn’t speak for the next solid minute, and Steve started to accept that maybe he’d be there long enough to catch his bearings.
“You are irritating and obnoxious,” Kayla said in a soft voice that somehow found a way to gently float through the air. Steve raised his head and let himself look at her. She was a bit of a mess. And very pretty. Even back then before he gave her any real reason to, she was already believing in him. She’d already lied to people she thought were the police to protect him. She was already seeing good in him and wouldn’t be stopping for another twenty-something years. Guilt crept through him and hung in icicles off of his nerves at what all that belief in him would cost her.
“You probably said that to me the first time, too,” he said under his breath. Then for her to hear, “Don’t worry, I’ll stay in the chair.”
“I believe you.” Then more softly, “I believe you about Britta, too.” That got Steve’s attention. Even though he knew when this was, he hadn’t heard that name in a long time. “I know you didn’t kill her.”
Steve didn’t know what to say. The wall around his heart he was trying to build was already starting to come down by this version of her that didn’t even know she loved him yet. How was he going to be able to protect them if she was going to say things that made him want to crawl into her arms and be held by her when it wasn’t time? Steve saw it when she registered the love in his eye and quickly layed his head against the back of the chair, closing his eye to her. Why now? Why did they have to jump somewhere they weren’t together now when he needed her so much? “Go to sleep,” he said.
Not another word was spoken. It was only when Steve could hear the measured breathing he knew so well that he looked at her again. Emily looked so much like her. The long lashes, the curls framing her face, the porcelain cheeks, and the very determined set to her chin that even now made Steve unconsciously smile. She had so many of her mother’s features except for, as Kayla liked to point out, her eyes, which Steve admitted were his. The pain of loss began burning its way through him again, and he couldn’t help it when the tears started to flow. He was very silent, but they flowed, and the pain was so very deep. He wanted nothing more than to feel his wife’s arms around him. He needed her comfort and her safety. But Steve was grateful, in whatever capacity he had left to feel that emotion, that she wasn’t there. It was his need for her – their need for each other, he was well-aware that she loved as much as he did – that brought them this pain. To be loved like that right now would make things worse. He leaned toward her and very gently took a lock of her hair in his fingers before running the back of his hand down her cheek. Then he let his wife sleep, and he cried alone.
Kayla woke up to a very dark room in clothes that were still damp. She was completely disoriented. She tried to roll over into Steve like she always did, but her snoozy motion was stopped by something tugging at her left arm. She let out a sleepy sound. Something wasn’t right here in the woozy existence of not being awake. Then she realized with a start that the white noise of the baby monitor was missing. She hated that feeling, it always freaked her out before she’d realize that everything was alright. Only this time as she opened her eyes and sat up quickly, she realized it was not going to be alright. Oh no. Reality came back to her all at once. She was a little too shocked to cry, because she had no idea how she got here. She was just jumping, but it didn’t feel like an arrival. This definitely wasn’t the plane, but it wasn’t the least bit familiar. Where was the jump sickness? Finally the cold steel around her wrist registered with her, and she slowly trailed her gaze from her left wrist to the wrist it was attached to, up Steve’s arm, and to his face. It was deeply troubled, even in sleep. There was only one time they’d ever been handcuffed together, so this had to be after Britta had been murdered. They hadn’t been able to get the cuffs off at this point and had to hole up here and hide from those fake cops that had tethered them together.
Details were sketchy in her mind, but she remembered that he’d had a whole lot of fun messing with her while they were stuck in this bed. Which was why she was now looking at him with concern right beside her in the chair. How long had he been there without her? She realized now that she must have jumped in while she was sleeping, because she didn’t feel the least bit sick, so the jump effect must have come and gone already. But she didn’t understand, why was he over there? Didn’t they sleep together in the bed all the way through morning until that woman from downstairs had brought them breakfast in bed thinking they were newlyweds? Maybe they were somewhere else. It was during this whole thought process that the the grief crept back upon Kayla, and she needed her husband to hold her in his safe, loving arms.
She slowly swung her legs down off the bed and squeezed his right hand that was hanging off the chair. As soon as she had made contact with it, Steve jumped. He was awake instantly. He looked so different. His messy hair fell over his face, his t-shirt was filthy, and she could smell the wet leather. But the look in his eye was no different than the last time she saw him. Devastated and lost.
Steve turned to face her more fully, assessing her demeanor for familiarity. When he didn’t speak right away, Kayla went into what Marcus would have called their secret code.
“Do you remember Stockholm?” she asked softly.
Steve blinked and let out a small breath. “What is this, 20 questions?” he said back to her. The corners of Kayla’s mouth went up almost imperceptibly, but Steve didn’t say anything more.
“Is it … is it over?” she asked, her voice soft but surprisingly steady.
“Looks like it.” By contrast, Steve’s voice was dull, but he briefly stroked his thumb over Kayla’s hand a couple times.
“What the hell was that?”
“Unstable timeline. He said something like this might happen.”
“Time didn’t know what to do with us?”
Steve shrugged. “Something like that.”
She held out her arm and examined the sleeve of her blazer before running her hand through her hair to assess its length. Then she looked back over to her husband. “You know when this is?” he asked dully.
Kayla nodded. “Britta just died,” she said.
Steve’s face immediately twisted from expressionless to deeply pained. “Yeah, Britta,” he rasped, clearly not meaning Britta at all. “Died.”
“Steve …,” but he looked away and swallowed down a sob he was desperately trying to control. Because he had to get control.
“How long have you been waiting for me?”
Steve looked over at the clock and saw that it was the middle of the night. “Maybe four hours.”
“Why are you sleeping in the chair?” She reached over and brushed the hair out of his eye. The contact with him felt reassuring at first, but after a few strokes of her fingers he reared his head back out of her reach slightly.
“I’m filthy,” he protested.
Kayla wished she could be alarmed, but his distance did not surprise her. But she needed to touch him. She tilted her head ever so slightly and tried again. This time he closed his eye to her touch and let her have another pointless go at moving his messy hair out of his face. Then she repeated her question.
“Steve, why are you sleeping over there?”
“The other you didn’t want me in the bed, so I moved.”
Kayla treaded very carefully, because she sensed that her husband was in a world of internal trouble. “Are you mad at me? Here I mean, did I get you mad?”
“No.”
“Someplace else, then? The plane?” Her voice was breathy with anxiety. “Or …”
The love in his eye was unmistakeable when he shook his head no. Now Steve did take her hand. He couldn’t cause her any more pain, and he knew that he was making her think insecure thoughts already. “No, baby, I’m not mad at you. I just … you weren’t here.”
“Well, I was—”
“Not a you that would understand.”
“I’m here now,” Kayla said into the dark stillness. “I want you in the bed with me now.” He hated the plea he heard in her voice. “Can we hold each other?”
Steve nodded and squeezed her hand. Kayla scooted backwards, and Steve got back into his original position as Kayla nestled up against him. She felt good. Her presence with him, her hand tightly gathering his shirt into her hand. They were a comfort to him. But he was a giant open wound, and he was afraid. Being with her made him afraid. If she got too close to his pain, he didn’t know if he would be able to come back from the emotional insanity that he could literally feel licking at his right mind like a lurking backdraft.
They said nothing for quite some time. There was nothing to say.
Kayla was aware that Steve wasn’t right. She didn’t wonder why or wonder what happened. She knew why. She knew what happened. It was the broken heart. Neither of them would feel whole again, but Kayla realized almost instantly that she was processing, and Steve wasn’t. She just knew that it would be this way almost from the beginning – almost from the time she knealt on that bed in their loft and told Steve that she was pregnant, she knew that when this day came that Steve would not weather it like Kayla would. Maybe it was because he’d never experienced this kind of loss. She had, though. When she thought Steve died it was the worst kind of pain, and the only reason it didn’t swallow her whole was because of Stepanie. Her daughter needed a mother because she no longer had a father, and that need was more important to Kayla than giving up. Thank God for her beautiful Stephanie, giving her a reason to go on. Then there was the death of Kayla’s father. Right in front of her. But she had Steve back by then, Stephanie was there with Joe on the way, all of them loving her through it. Steve, on the other hand, had never lost someone he loved like he loved Emily. The pain was very much like when his mother gave him away, but at least she was alive, and there was hope she’d come back for him. This was like death. The first loss Steve truly had to endure.
“Are you awake?” she asked as she rubbed her cheek against his blue t-shirt covered chest. Her fingers played anxiously at her lips.
“Yeah,” Steve replied with that same detached tone.
“She knew.” The hair prickled the back of Steve’s neck. “She knew something wasn’t right. How did she know?”
Da-dee.
“Real smart baby,” he replied. And that was positively the last thing he was going to be able to say about their daughter. Kayla sensed it, and respected that right now his need to not talk about her was stronger than her need to do the opposite. She went a different direction, because at the very least, she did need to fill the silence.
“Where did we jump to after the pub?”
Steve was surprised she had forgotten any jump, no matter how brief. That wasn’t like her at all. “You don’t remember?”
“I never saw it. The vertigo was so bad I almost passed out. I felt like I was gone before I’d even arrived.”
Steve thought that was a good way to describe it. “Emergency Center. I dunno when, but you didn’t like me yet then, either. Don’t ask me about the next place, I got knocked out.”
“What do you mean?”
“Arrived behind the wheel. Got into a car wreck.”
“What?!” She sat up very quickly and looked back at him. “You were driving? You arrived while driving?! Were you hurt? Oh God, Steve, are you ok?!
“Think about what you’re saying, Kayla, I’m right here.”
“I …” she blinked several times. “Right … I’m sorry, I … panicked. I don’t know what I’m saying.” Steve sat up with her.
“I know,” he said.
“I don’t know where I was, it was just long enough to see a calendar on my desk that said 1984, then I jumped again. I wonder where you were?”
“1984? Coulda been anywhere. Wasn’t gettin’ steady work then. But I know it was the bluesmobile, I’d had her a while by then.” He paused. “She’s a wreck now, though.” He sounded so different. Even as she was calming down from her completely irrational thoughts, she was struck by the tone in his voice. Not just grieving – absent. Like he was phoning it in. “Hit something, broke my nose, next thing I knew I was on the plane.” Part of his essence peeked through the dullness of his manner when he mentioned the plane and looked at her very apologetically. “I’m an asshole.”
Kayla put her arms around her husband’s neck and wrapped her fingers into his dirty hair, rainwater still dampening it in the back. “I love you, too,” she breathed into his ear. Steve closed his eye and used every bit of strength he had to let himself be near her like this and not lose his will to stay strong. He would not allow himself to weaken into a puddle. If he did, they surely would stay together no matter when they were, and court more disaster from the slipstream. He would never ever put his wife through this again. He simply would not. He couldn’t handle it for her, and he couldn’t handle it for himself, either. But he held her back in this moment, and he loved her.
Kayla pulled back and wiped the tears that had fallen down her cheeks. Then she slid a finger down his patch and took a very deep breath. “So, what should we do?”
What should they do? Steve had no idea. Most of him just wanted to lie there and let the fake cops kill him, put him out of his misery. Because at this point if there was something he didn’t want to do anymore it was strategize what to do with themselves in their past on top of everything else.
They spent some time trying to piece together what was happening right now and what would be happening in the next day, but it was almost impossible. Not just because it was so long ago, but because their heads were completely in their other life – and not the real one, but the one they just got ripped from. All that preparation with the jump project and the memorization of where they were in any given year was never going to be able to overcome their frame of mind. Maybe if the last jump (or five of them ago) had never happened it wouldn’t have been this hard, but they spent more than two years there. Two years. That was almost exactly as long as they’d spent married the first time. Almost as long as Steve had been back from the dead before they began jumping. It was a very long time, and their routines didn’t disappear when their destination did. That daily routine was second nature to them, and it was going to be a very hard habit to break. Their minds were wrapped up in what a year-and-a-half-year-old girl needs and what a leaky pipe in the basement needs. The foremost thing on Steve’s mind was the load of laundry he’d left in the dryer, and Kayla couldn’t get past wanting to go to Walgreens for Children’s Tylenol for her daughter’s latest erupting teeth.
Kayla started recounting every step of the way as best she could, but she quickly got herself very upset when she realized that she just didn’t remember them all anymore. And even if she did, the exact chronology was nebulous at best. Was that chronology important? What if it was? How were they supposed to replicate these things if they couldn’t remember them? Steve told her to calm down and reminded her that Rolf said it was only the big things not the little things. But Kayla wasn’t convinced, because how were they to know where time drew the line? That didn’t help Steve in the least, and now he was unsure again. Where did time draw the line? He decided that they didn’t have the luxury of finding out and wrestled with the fact in his head that he was going to have to separate from his wife where the jumps called for it if they were to fix the slipstream and avoid another go-round of this nightmare.
You’re trading one nightmare for another, he told himself. Then he sneered as if someone else had suggested it. But it was true. Separating from Kayla, his anchor, his lifeline, might save them so they could get home, but he might be looking at 14 more years of misery in the process. Steve loved his wife when they got married in 1988. He loved her when he was taken from her in 1990. He loved her when he got his memories back three years ago, and his soul had continued loving her all those years in between even if his brain had forgotten. But since they started jumping they’d never been closer. There was a connection to her that was so strong, so fundamental that the thought of not being with her was soul-crushing. Nothing was worse than losing a child, but not being connected to Kayla was close. He could take it for a day or a week or a year or some static amount of time he could tick down. But this fixing of the slipstream was indefinite, and who knew where the jumps would take them. What if they took them to a string of times when they weren’t together? This line of thinking had an emotional snowball effect, and he started to shut down.
When Kayla said she wanted to just call Hope to come and get them, cut through all the stuff in the leaky barn and the farner with his gun, Steve disagreed and begged her to play it by the book on this.
“Why wait? Hope was in on this from the beginning, what’s the point in staying here, we can call her and get a good night’s sleep, then you go to Roman tomorrow or the next day, whenever we get our plan together.”
“’Cause that’s not how it went. We didn’t sleep there, we slept here. If we wait for the farmer, we know we’re getting it all right.”
“So, you’re trying to do everything like we did it before. Is that it?”
“Yeah.”
Kayla swallowed and said softly, “Then why were you sleeping in the chair when I arrived here?” Steve instantly paled as a wave of clarity rippled over his spine. “Because I remember very clearly that that was not how it happened the first time. And I remember that you didn’t exactly have to tie me down to convince me to sleep in that bed with you, either.”
Steve tensed with the catch in his contradiction. “I hadn’t thought it all the way through yet.”
A lie. Kayla knew it was a lie. What she didn’t know was that Steve was breaking. He just couldn’t face that his daughter was gone. Kayla saw this shadow pass over Steve’s face, and the fear for her husband that began in the storm drain renewed itself.
“Steve … don’t shut me out … please, I’m here for you.”
Steve’s head was so messed up that he was just taking this one sentence at a time. And when she opened up her own broken heart so she could be there for him, he wanted nothing more than to let her, because his need for his wife compelled him. But all it really succeeded in doing was bring on more guilt, because there was only one anchor in this room right now, and it wasn’t him. Already he was failing her, because they needed each other, but only Kayla was able to think straight right now.
“I’m not,” Steve said with no conviction. “Please, baby. There’s no reason not to play along this time.”
There were lots of reasons not to. But she was too scared of being wrong to argue, so she relented. They’d wait for the woman downstairs to bring them their breakfast, pretend that they were pretending, then navigate around the fake cops and head to the barn and try to figure out what to do from there.
As they tried to sleep, they couldn’t help but hold each other close because of the handcuffs connecting them. Those same handcuffs prevented them from getting out of their damp clothes or doing much to clean themselves up, so they laid closely against each other. Even so, Kayla felt like her husband was very far away. He wasn’t cold, and he didn’t turn away from her, but he was checking out. She could feel his mental withdrawal happening right there between them. She tried to comfort him with her physical touch, her fingers lacing with his, and her unconscious habit of burrowing into him. At the same time, Kayla’s head was filled with little impulses about things that she had to do around the house – which was a house they didn’t live in anymore and would never again need any more to-do’ing. The constant stream of her mental checklist was cruel and relentless, and remembering each one of them made her eyes wet more than they were dry.
Steve’s head was filled with anger and fear, which succeeded in building spectacular walls that were galvanized by walls surrounding them, which were fortified with further walls erected around those. But he was a different man now than he was in 1986 when he had a hate/hate relationship with the immediate world, and it was much harder for him to maintain the separation. When Kayla burrowed into him, those walls crumbled without a shred of effort. He desperately loved it when she did that, making him feel so good and so comforted. It was impossible for him not to feel how much she loved him, and it only made him need her more. She needed his love back, though, and he knew that the only way to give it to her so it meant anything at all was to protect her from themselves. And this, what they were doing right now, was not the way to do that. They did not sleep in each other’s arms last time they did this, and he reasoned that they probably shouldn’t be doing it now. They did not whisper words of comfort and love last time, and so he refrained from whispering them to her now. How he wanted to kiss her, hold her, give her the comfort she so desperately needed back … like she was giving him. But if there was a definition of doing something against the timeline, it was acting married right now.
That, and more to the point (if he were being completely honest with himself), he also instinctively knew that he’d lose his mind if let his pain out.
So, he didn’t return her gesture.
Kayla felt Steve react when she buried herself into him and dug her head deeply against Steve’s chest. But he didn’t give her anything in return, and it gave her tremendous pause, because that had never happened before. She rubbed her hand across his chest lightly in search of his left hand so that she could bring it to her lips and kiss it, but just when she’d found it he went for his patch and let his fingers linger on the strap at his brow. Ok … ok, maybe it was a coincidence. But she needed to feel more than his stiff body laying next to hers, she needed her husband.
He held on tight to his resolve when she leaned her face to his and kissed his cheek. Steve closed his eye, but Kayla’s were wide open, gauging his reaction.
Steve was hanging on by a thread. He wanted to cry in her shoulder and scream his grief. He wanted her comfort. But he was afraid of losing himself to real insanity. Real and true mental unwellness that letting his grief out that way would surely bring him. He had to hide it away inside of him. Lock it up tight so he’d never ever find it. He had to be strong so that he could make it through the jumps where they couldn’t be together. Where they had to live apart. Like this one.
“Steve,” she begged, “please talk to me. Tell me how you’re feeling. I’m your anchor, remember? I don’t need the charms around my neck.”
And what about her? Steve longed to feel her shell around his neck. But it, like his beautiful daughter and the way their lives were supposed to have unfolded in the first place was lost in a timeline that had ceased to exist. Steve shook his head but said nothing. He wasn’t stupid, he knew his stoicism was hurting her right now, but he had no other way of protecting her but than to be strong and unselfish for her. “I’m gonna be your anchor, too, Sweetness.” It was the first time he’d used her pet name for her to hear since they left 1989. “You can count on me to never do this to us again.”
Dread passed over Kayla. What did that mean?
“I love you,” she said, her voice clearly needing to hear him say the same, but it was not to be. For, he pressed his lips to her temple, but before he could tell her he loved her, too, he stiffened. The pull at his diaphragm wasn’t nearly as forceful this time, but it wasn’t gentle, either. He didn’t now if the duration of this stay was a successful break from the chaos or more like an after shock of it. Either way, their respite was over.
“I’m goin’ again,” Steve breathed, “and we’re never goin’ through this again if I have anything to say about it.” The red flags went up before Kayla’s eyes, because she didn’t know exactly what he meant. She couldn’t ask him now, though, because Steve started to lose his focus on her. And for a change, Kayla was actually relieved. This was a terrible jump, and she just wanted out.
Steve put aside his fear and pulled his wife into his arms. He was about to crush his lips to hers, but she had to make him hear her.
“I love you, Steve,” she assured him as she dug her head into Steve’s neck. It felt so good. “I’m here for you, and I always will be. I love you!” He wanted her comfort so badly, even amidst the emotional distance he’d somehow managed to achieve. Still, he couldn’t go without telling her he loved her. He just couldn’t. “Sweetness,” he said as the room spun. “I—” The rest of the sentence was lost to the jump effect, and Kayla just held on and waited her turn.
Steve could actually hear the harmonica riff this version of himself had just blown through the delicate reeds of his favorite 10-hole harmonica echo through the alley as he arrived into himself. It was a long, bluesy chord, and it died on the vine when his awareness kicked the rightful one out.
… love you, he finished the thought to himself that he’d started to say out loud before he jumped. It was cold out there in the alley, but at least now he was dry. Steve was hunched up with his lips around the harmonica when Kayla’s voice cut across the echo.
“You ok?” she asked.
Steve closed his eye. He knew he went first. Again. So this Kayla wasn’t his. Again. Which meant he had to navigate without her. Again. While he had the amplification effect plus a full house of crazy messing with his emotions. Still.
He briefly looked down at himself. Black leather jacket that wasn’t one of his favorites, boots, jeans, cold, his apartment right over there. Nothing to narrow this down much other than being obvious that they weren’t married yet. Maybe I’m wrong, he hoped. One way to find out.
“Uh, yeah. Fine. Seems I’m just playin’ my harp here.” He turned around to look at her, and when he saw her beautiful face looking at him and her hair blowing in the cold, reality sapped the hopefulness right out of him. Not married, maybe not together, probably not even dating. They were going to have to separate. “On second thought not so fine.”
“Ya know, I made a decision a while a go,” Kayla said with more conviction behind her than Steve felt in his whole being right now he was so messed up. “I could either fight for you. Or I could walk away and forget you. I decided to fight.”
Steve let out a laugh
“What’s so funny?” she asked, rhetorically.
“Baby, I dunno how many times we did this kind of thing here in this alley, so I don’t know which one –”
“I ask you again,” Kayla interrupted and not to be deterred from her mission, “who is Adrienne?”
“Adrienne? Who is Adrienne? So, you don’t know yet.” Great. He was able to narrow it down pretty quick now. But this was a complicated set of weeks, here, so it didn’t make him feel any better. “One thing I know is that I don’t tell you myself. Ya know why? ‘Cause you’ve always been the smart one. From day one, you were always the smart one.” Steve turned away from her and gripped his harmonica. The harder he held on, the longer he was able to keep himself from giving up and dooming them to a forever in the slipstream. “You were always the best one,” he whispered under his breath, very upset that they hadn’t jumped somewhere he could be with her.
“I’m smart enough to know she makes you hurt. Why are you in so much pain, Steve?”
It was the exact wrong thing to say to Steve, who was trying to hide this pain that his younger version of himself had, been, apparently, also not hiding very well. Fate or time or Rolf or God – whomever it was – they were cruel. And he had to get himself together. He turned back to Kayla and got very serious.
“This isn’t something you’re gonna understand in a day. Now you just walk away. Please.”
But his voice broke.
“Steve …” She placed the gentlest hand on his arm “Don’t push me away.”
He didn’t want to. The first time through this day that he didn’t really remember all that well, it could have been any number of these conversations, Steve had started to pace so that he wouldn’t break down in front of her. This time was no different.
“You just gotta leave me alone Kayla, come on now.
“No, I think you’ve been alone enough.” If only she’d known how all alone he really was. “If you don’t want to talk about it you don’t have to. But just for one moment, why don’t you give youself a break,” she pleaded.
The sob that escaped his throat had no hope of staying put.
“Come here,” she coaxed him with both hands on his folded up arms now. Steve shook his head.
“Don’t Kayla,” he rasped out.
“It’s ok.”
It’s not ok. Oh Sweetness, it’s not ok. “No,” he tried to resist her, but he couldn’t help the tears that now started to pour down his face. He couldn’t stop them, they had more control than he did.
“Just come here, please?” she turned him toward her. He let her as he let out another pained sob.
This Kayla hadn’t seen him so vulnerable but one other time, when she’d seen beneath his patch. Now he was letting her in again, and the gratitude splayed across her face was … beautiful.
“I’ts ok,” she repeated so tenderly it was like a kiss upon his fingertips.
“Kayla,” he cried.
She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him into the safety of her arms. “I’m here,” she soothed.
The sobs wracked his body and shook it in her arms. He cried so hard in each of those sobs that he didn’t know how Kayla was holding him up. But she was holding him up. And she was continuing to speak with so much love and understanding, one of which he knew she had while the oher she really didn’t. But it didn’t matter.
“It’s ok,” she shushed him in the same loving voice that she’d used on their daughter’s inconsolable cries just a few short hours ago. This beautiful woman who’d born him three children that he hadn’t once successfully raised past the age of 16-months old. Meanwhile, the Kayla holding him smiled as he wept. She smiled because she was so happy that she could provide him the succor that he’d been clearly needing for his entire life.
“Kayla …,” he cried her name over and over as he held onto her.
“Ya know, love doesn’t always have to hurt.” The words resonated in his head with the memory of the first time she’d said them. He realilzed which one of these back-alley conversations this was now. “I promise you. Love doesn’t always hurt.” Steve nodded, because she was right. He’d learned that from her, that love, like hers, didn’t have to hurt. This one, however, the kind that is followed by loss, did, though. Very deeply.
Kayla held him in that alley for what seemed like a long time while Steve cried. Finally, his cries subsided, and he was able to pull himself out of her arms. He sniffled and wiped his hand across one side of his face and then the other, then he met her eyes. “Bet you’re real proud of yourself, aren’t ya?” he said without a hint of amusement.
“Oh, I’m proud. But not of myself.”
Steve cupped her face with both hands and kissed her lips very gently. These lips were already giving away all her kisses to him at this time. So, he allowed himself to take one more from her here. A very chaste, loving kiss that conveyed his appreciation for her as much as his love. But she felt the pain there, too. Because it was still there. And no one felt it more than Steve did. He was right about letting Kayla in. He didn’t count on a destination Kayla doing it, so he was caught off guard, but it was exactly as he knew it would be. His wife got close to him, and his emotions took over. He didn’t want to feel this awful pain anymore.
Right now, however, Kayla walked him up the stairs of his apartment, and he let her. He opened his door with the keys that he knew he had on him and found by rote. “Will I see you tomorrow?” she asked.
“You’re not coming in?” Kayla’s eyes lit up, and Steve realized he’d made a critical error.
“You want me to come in? Yes, I’d be happy to come in.”
His head suddenly cleared. “No!” he said too loudly then lowered his voice. “I mean, I just think I need to be alone right now.” Kayla looked disappointed, but she nodded her head in understanding. This was a curse and an opportunity at the same time, because she wasn’t her yet. He loved her all the same, this was Kayla as surely as he was Steve. But her awareness wasn’t there, so he was faced with this decision to stay together or not on his own. It was clear to him when he got there that they would separate, but now, after what had just happened, he needed her so badly, and he wanted her there with him when she jumped into her body and not by herself. He didn’t know what to do and knew full well that his head was not on straight. But they had to separate. They did, didn’t they? He had a handle on where all the players were on this chessboard, and he couldn’t fail her. He couldn’t fail their relationship, Stephanie, and Joey by making the choice that would end them all. He also couldn’t have another break like that. Letting that misery out again would only land him with therapy he didn’t want.
No, love didn’t have to hurt. But as he watched Kayla walk away – a Kayla that did’t know they were married in their hearts and wouldn’t ever stop being so – and leave him in his apartment as she went to hers, love was going to hurt very badly, indeed.