Steve’s eye was so dark with anger that it wasn’t green anymore
Kayla’s heart raced, both with relief that her husband had arrived and that she didn’t have to do this impossible thing with the other Steve – the impossible thing saying no. It also raced with dread at the conversation that lay ahead. Based on past situations and more than a few discussions about this very thing, Kayla expected him to be mad. Because if the roles were reversed and she’d jumped into her Steve about to make love to her destination body without the benefit of her being in it, she’d be mad, too. “Steve … Steve, I know this looks bad.”
“Ya think?”
Kayla was still leaned back on her elbows, and Steve was still naked on top of her. And that really didn’t help matters. He’d never jumped into an aroused body before. The sensation within him was sexually desperate, and not in a good way. He didn’t have the benefit of enjoying the sweet build, he was forced to feel it all at once like an on switch defaulted to the highest setting, and it made his penis ache so painfully that he just wanted to pound into Kayla. She was right there beneath him almost naked, it would take almost nothing to do it. But the anger that she was there knowingly participating in sex with him before he got there balanced that desperation enough to hold him back. Barely.
“I know, but, please …” Kayla worried that he wasn’t going to give her the chance, like when he found her on the pier with Shane. A chill ran down her spine, quelling the heat that had just been there. “… I need you to let me explain,” she pleaded out a whisper. Steve blinked but held her gaze, the silence he offered ominous.
Steve very slowly backed all the way off of her, putting space between them and settling a few feet away from her. She was naked except for the sheer pink underwear. He could see her trim curls clearly through the fine mesh fabric and knew she’d been wet … but not for him. That her pert breasts had been touched and tasted, that she’d been aroused into the frenzy he saw on her face when he’d arrived … all by the other him. He was so jealous that he felt the green fire in the pit of his stomach and wanted to beat the sh!t out of … out of … out of who? Who was he supposed to beat the sh!t out of, himself? Now he only got more furious, because this was still him he was talking about. It was a paradox so goddamned unnatural and unfair that he couldn’t see straight.
Kayla’s emotions were all over the map. She was relieved that Steve had arrived, and she felt sad that he didn’t get to experience the beautiful proposal he’d deserved to give her as much as she’d deserved to get it. She was still feeling such joy, but it was tempered by the sadness that the memory would not be in him, too. There was guilt there for letting it get as far as it did, but more than anything she was confused about what she was supposed to have done in the first place. Kayla hated the look in Steve’s eye, though, and put herself on the defensive.
“Steve, I know you’re mad, but I want you to let me explain!”
Steve softened. “Do you see me stoppin’ you?”
“N … No …” He handed her the very same blanket from the end of the couch that they’d just snuggled under in the last jump, and she put it around her shoulders. Steve put his blue shirt on but didn’t button it.
“So, explain.”
Kayla was mildly surprised that he didn’t erupt, but she didn’t linger and immediately began explaining.
“Do you know what day it is?”
“I told you I don’t wanna play 20 questions, Kayla,” he snapped. The sexual desperation wasn’t dissipating fast enough, and it added to the shortness of his fuse.
Now it was Kayla’s turn to get angry. “Why do you have to do that? Why do you have to say mean things to me when you’re upset before I even have a chance to explain to you? That’s not fair, Steve!”
Steve looked away from her. “Sorry,” he offered with a whole lot of frustration. Then he looked back at her and felt a little remorseful. He knew he was a hothead. “No, I don’t know what day it is,” his tone calmer.
“It’s August, I forget which day. 1987.”
“Yeah …?” he prompted.
“You and … Shane … came back from Washington this morning.” Kayla could see something start to dawn on him. “Steve, there’s nothing about this day I don’t remember. I know every single detail, every word you said to me, every moment. Because it’s all I thought about for months afterward.” Steve’s heart skipped a beat, and Kayla saw the realization on his face. “You came here tonight to—”
“Stop.”
“—ask me to—”
“I said stop!” Steve got up and angrily turned from her.
“No! This is the day you came over to ask me to marry you!”
Steve flinched, he couldn’t help it. Not the biggest mistake of his life, but the act of giving her away that this night led him to was in the Steve book of world record wrongest moves in America. Then it dawned on him that he didn’t remember the part of this night that included making love in front of the fireplace.
“This isn’t how that night went!” he said with accusatory confusion. “We never had sex, Kayla, that … that never happened.” She got up and went to him, the blanket covering some but not all of her. And he knew with sudden clarity before she said another word what was happening. Exactly what was happening. Oh, Sweetness. “You changed it,” he said with a bit of wonder in his voice, the jealousy boiling within him no match for the reverence he had for that act. Kayla, you—changed it, didn’t you?”
She nodded. “I didn’t want to go through it again. It just wasn’t in me to let you. I stopped you from leaving.” He was so happy for her but angry that he wasn’t there to get this, too.
“Which time?” Kayla saw how he tried to control himself, but he wasn’t doing a great job. She was surprised that he remembered that he’d left and come back and then left with her again to go to the hospital to see Jack. Steve saw that surprise on her face and got a whole different kind of angry. “Yes, Kayla, I remember that night, too, why so shocked? You think I don’t remember leaving you anxious and scared like that? Now just tell me, which time?”
“The first time. You never went to see Harper. And Angelica hasn’t called about Jack yet.”
It didn’t really matter what the answer was, he was going to feel the same way. Steve felt the tremors begin in his face as the anger overtook him. Kayla thought the anger was directed at her, but it wasn’t anymore. His anger was at this impossible, unfair, absurd situation they found themselves in. She arrived to a man that she knew wanted to marry her, and he knew – he painfully knew – how much Kayla wished for all those years that she’d had that proposal he’d all but promised her instead of what she really ended up with. Rejection. Months of pain and confusion. Rape. All because he chose to give her away. He knew it, because he’d wished it, too. Now here she was again, and this version of him hadn’t been corrupted by his own stupidity yet. Somehow he found the rationality to put himself in her shoes. What was she supposed to do, let him do this to her again? To them again? No. So, she changed it. And he knew he would have done the same thing, there was no question in his mind that he wouldn’t have taken that same ill-conceived road. But he asked the next question, anyway.
“Did I propose?” he asked, with far less ire but with no fewer lines creasing his brow.
Kayla nodded. “Yes.” She went to him and took his hand in hers. He let her. He wanted to feel her warmth, so when she reached her other hand up and curled her fingers into the side of his face where a beard would one day grow, he leaned his face into her hand. “And you were so happy.” He closed his eyes, heavy with regret. “The look on your face was so amazing, Steve. I wanted you to be here to experience this joy, I was so upset you weren’t here. But I was here. There was no way for me not to be, I was here. And the other you … was still you. And you loved me so much and said beautiful things to me and kissed me. And I got caught up.”
Of course, you did.
“I’m sorry.”
Steve sighed heavily, then he brought her into his embrace. “You see now, don’t you?”
“See?” She was, frankly, shocked that he wasn’t more angry.
“How hard it is.” He kissed her forehead. “Felt just like me didn’t it?”
Now she was kind of angry that he wasn’t more angry. He’d just layed into her and now all was forgiven? Kayla nodded and looked up at him. She was edgy, and Steve realized he caused that unease in her. “You’re not mad, then?” she asked.
“No, I’m mad. And jealous, and I’m ready to beat someone to a bloody pulp. I’m just not mad at you.” She pulled away from him and gave him a look of disgust. “You were ready to bite my head off for almost sleeping with the other you and now you’re not mad anymore?”
Steve was now perplexed on top of everything else, and his temper flared again. “You want me to be mad?!”
“I don’t know what I want! We just had the most beautiful moment up on the roof that you cheated me out of—”
Steve held his heart and opened his mouth. How could she have said that to him? “Baby, you really know how to twist the knife.”
She felt remorse the moment she said it. “Steve, I’m sorry,” she said softly.
“Yeah, well, you’re not wrong, are you, baby,” he said testily.
“But this time you didn’t. And it was so beautiful. That’s what you jumped into, the beautiful night that was supposed to happen but didn’t. That we both wanted so badly. What you were going to do you actually did … and that man over there,” she turned and pointed emphatically at the fireplace, “that man was you! All I felt was you!”
“Then what’s the problem?!” Kayla was pacing, and it was agitating Steve.
“I knew it in my head that it wasn’t all of you, and I wasn’t going to make love to him—you—argh! Dammit! It felt right, Steve, it felt so right!” Then she remembered what it felt like right before he jumped in. And she realized it didn’t feel nearly as right. “Until … it started to feel like … like …” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word.
“I know what it felt like.”
Now she wanted to cry and turned back toward the fireplace.
“No, don’t cry, Kayla,” he commanded, so she didn’t. He covered the few steps to her and grabbed her forearms that she’d put up as if to stop him from coming to her. She was hurt and confused now and feeling guilt, and she didn’t even know who or what to be mad at as she shrugged out of his hold.
“It was so right,”she said. “I didn’t feel like I was visiting or stalling or like it was a memory, like it usually does when I’m waiting for you. I was in control, I knew what I was doing, and when you said you’d stay … and then you put that ring on my finger …,” she closed her eye to the memory – that only she had – then opened it again. “I couldn’t just turn off the love and how much I wanted to feel that love back.” Steve’s anger didn’t abate, but his heart understood so well. “I didn’t let you kiss me and touch me, it wasn’t like I was choosing to go just so far, it’s something we just did because we are who we are. It only changed when … I felt you.” She shrugged as she gestured to Steve’s penis partially obscured by his shirttail. “Against me. And I wanted you inside of me, Steve,” she whispered almost longingly. “Only now it felt wrong.”
Steve wouldn’t let her stay out of his grasp and held her shoulders. “I’ve been there, baby, I get it!” He burned his gaze into hers, his voice gravely. Kayla’s heart raced, forcing her to breathe hard. “I waited for you for eleven days, remember?” Kayla’s heart turned over. She hadn’t waited eleven seconds. “I wanted you so bad. I never felt like the girl I was kissing wasn’t you, because she was. But then something in me knows when I’ve gone too far. When it starts to feel like cheating.”
Now it was Kayla’s turn to flinch. The sound of that word as any part of their relationship drove her to the brink. Kayla’s eyes flared, and she turned away from him out of his grasp.
“That’s how it felt, didn’t it, baby? Like cheating?
“Stop saying that word! “I’d never cheat on you!”
“Baby, I’m not saying you would!”
Kayla started to shake. “That’s not what I was doing, that’s not what I did! I’d never cheat on you, HE WAS YOU, DAMMIT!”
“I KNOW! I’m trying to tell you why I’m not mad at you, Sweetness, because I understand, I’ve been there, too!”
Kayla was growing a storm inside of her. Steve could see it happening and lost his patience. Wasn’t he the one who should be pissed off here? Why was she the one who was about to explode? “What?!”
“Why couldn’t I stop?! You barely touched me in 1979, but I was practically naked just now! How could I let myself get so caught up?! You waited eleven days!”
Now Steve really understood. She wasn’t mad at him, she was mad at herself. He got a dangerous look in his eye. This was unfair. There was no other way to explain it, it was grossly unfair.
“I barely touched you because the version of you I had didn’t know me. Not like we know each other in this time. You had history to fight against, I didn’t. You said you loved me, and I believed that was true, because I could feel it.” His voice was low and deceptively calm, because Kayla knew him very well, and the storm brewing in her was now brewing in him, too. “I knew that if it got too far I wouldn’t be able to stop, so I stopped it before it could start. But you didn’t get that luxury, did you, baby? We were too far gone here in this time, and I had just asked you to marry me!” He spat the words, so jealous and spiteful that he’d never ever have it.
“I wasn’t going to make love to you. I would have stopped.”
Steve nodded. “Stop feeling guilty. This isn’t our fault.” His voice was menacing, and when he looked at Kayla and saw the insecurity in her eyes, he exploded. “You didn’t cheat, and neither did I! Ok, yeah, I was mad at you when I first got here, but this body was on fire when I jumped into it, and all I knew was that you were hot and wet and I’m not the one that got you that way! But I’m not mad at you, baby, I’m mad at THEM! The people doing this to us!”
Kayla was beside herself, charged, ready to run, ready to scream, and felt the bitterness. At the center of it, however, was the beautiful proposal up on that roof an hour ago, and she cherished it. When she looked at Steve, he looked back at her with all of those same feelings, only at the center of his, she could see the bitterness that he didn’t have that same moment to cherish.
“I’m tired of this sh*t!” Steve said. “Is there a rule somewhere about what to do if you find yourself naked with your wife without her consciousness? I didn’t read that rule, did you read that rule? That in the f*cking handbook, baby?”
No part of Kayla wanted to tell her husband to calm down this time, because she was as angry as he was. She folded her arms and smirked.
“And what the hell were you supposed to do, huh?!” he boomed. “What, tell me, what?!” he screamed at the ceiling. “You’re my wife! I’m your husband! What if I didn’t get here? If things had gone the way I’d planned, then, of course, we would have ended up making love! And if you had said no?!”
“I would have said no! I was not going to make love to you without all of you being here!”
“But that me didn’t know you were jumping through time! That me was just doing this all for the first time, and putting myself back there, I know what I wanted! I remember this night, too, ya know, I know it with nothing but regret, I didn’t get to fix it! And I’m telling you, if you’d said no to me like you were just about to, with the way I was feeling when I got here?” The thought that’s she would have said no then at that moment was ridiculous to both of them, It wasn’t arrogance, it was just the truth for them both. She wanted him just as much as he always wanted her. Steve laughed at the scenario in his head. It was a humorless, angry laugh. “Baby, I would have been thrown for a loop. I wouldn’t have understood at all.” Now that Kayla didn’t agree with. “I would have known something was wrong. And what if it was weeks or months before I got here, you’d be stuck in a timeline like that, constantly dodging me, and I would have been …” A cold chill ran down his spine “I dunno what I would have been.” He backed off quickly, but Kayla saw the look in his eye.
“You would have been understanding,” she told him in no uncertain terms, because she knew what was going through his mind now.
“You sure about that?” He hated himself for knowing that he would have questioned why she was withholding sex from them given the context of their real-time lives. But not having known that, he wasn’t sure what this time’s version of himself might have thought. And he was reminded with another dose of self-hatred that it was his actions on this very night that led to her rape in the first place.
Kayla walked up to her husband and held his chin with her hand and his eye with her own. “Yes! I’m very sure about that! Don’t you ever doubt that again, Steve Johnson. You know how I know?” He shook his head. “That night at the cabin. Jack had just raped me. You didn’t know, but I did. You wanted to make love the minute we got there, and I stalled. You knew that was not like me. That what I was really doing was telling you no, even if I didn’t actually say those words. I stalled. I dodged you,” she used his word. “And do you know what you were? Sweet. Tender. You were understanding and went on a walk with me instead. And loved me even though I said no to sex. And you married me in the snow. And not once did you push me for sex or make me feel bad. I knew something you didn’t, and you trusted me and loved me. That’s how I know that over there in front of that fireplace, when I was going to stop you right where we were, you would have done the same thing.”
Steve loved her so much he almost couldn’t take it. He let the peace of that truth wash through him, and he held her close. But it didn’t diminish his anger at whomever was doing this to them, putting them in these no-win situations. He looked down upon his wife and saw her fair skin peeking through the blanket. “Do you know how bad I always want you?”
Kayla nodded. “As bad as I always want you.”
Steve’s penis had straightened to steel again, the anger and lust fueling him. He took off the blue shirt and then pulled the blanket from around Kayla’s shoulders. She was so beautiful. He crushed her to him and held her tight. “Dammit, Kayla! Dammit, dammit!” They came together in a fierce kiss full of raw, angsty possessiveness. “I don’t want this for us! I don’t want us making memories without each other!”
“Neither do I!”
“I don’t want other versions of me making you wet when I’m not there!” He walked her backwards back toward the fireplace. “I don’t want you coming for anyone but me! When I’m there to make it happen and feel it and see your face!”
“And I don’t want you groping me and having dates with me and rubbing yourself up against my ass at the Cheatin’ Heart without me there to remember it!” She knealt down in front of him, his penis looming stiffly before her. Steve looked down at her hungrily. The events of the previous jump were separated by only hours. They’d been sated. Not anymore. This heated exchange and the state their bodies were in were making them feel desperate for release. “I don’t want other women touching you! Even if they’re me!” Then Kayla took her husband’s hard cock into her mouth and sucked him hard from hilt to tip, taking the cum that had leaked from him with it. He let out a throaty grunt as his ache finally found succor. “You’re mine!” she growled, then sucked him like that again. “I want to be there for every single time you’re touched, Steve. Every time!” Her words worked him into a frenzy as much as her amazing mouth and lips and tongue did. Then she filled her hands with his ass and held him firmly as she continued to suck and lick, and Steve cried out his raw his sexual need for her.
Steve never wanted her to stop, but he abruptly pulled out of her and remembered how he’d arrived. He looked down at his wife as she wiped her mouth with the heel of her hand. “What about me?” he rasped. “You think I want anyone else touching you? Touching what’s mine?” Kayla shook her head as she looked up at him with her eyes closed to half. He fell to his knees and sucked hard at her breast, flicking his tongue over her nipple. “Is that what I did? Did I lick those beautiful tits of yours?”
Kayla nodded seductively. Then she brought his hand to her other breast, as he had before he’d jumped in. “Don’t forget this part,” she said.
“I wouldn’t forget, baby. I know what you like.” Steve squeezed just enough while rolling her nipple in his fingers to bring her the pleasure he wanted to give her. His anger seethed that she got to be touched in a way he wouldn’t remember because they were being held hostage by these jumps. They were still on their knees when Steve reached his hand into the front of Kayla’s panties and felt how very wet she was. “What about this?” he whispered raggedly. Steve slid his finger inside of her. His eye flared with jealousy. “Did I feel how wet I made you?” He was shocked when his wife shook her head.
“No.” Steve stopped his movements. “When my husband fingers me, I want him to remember it.”
“Sweetness,” Steve cried out. Then he ravaged her. Steve plunged his tongue deep into her mouth, their kiss ruthless and hot as she sucked his tongue in equal encouragement. He held her face in his hands as their passion refused to let their kiss end.
They fell into a heap on the rug in front of the fireplace, and Kayla felt positively wicked. She was angry, too. She was jealous and desperate with her own need, and she was soon raking her nails down Steve’s back. The wetness that continued to drench her hot folds only increased with his touch upon her skin. His fingers on her breasts and round curve of her ass as she ground her center against his thigh made her moan. Every lick of his tongue along the sensitive curve of her neck made her want to mount and ride him.
“Off! I need these off!” Steve yelled as he moved her underwear aside to continue fingering her.
Kayla pulled on his steeled penis, wanting it inside her, and stroked it, milking silky cum. “That’s the second time you’ve said that tonight,” Kayla huffed out sexily as she stroked him much harder and faster. “Now that you’re here to remember saying it, I think it’s time you took what you wanted! Take it, Steve! Take what’s yours!”
Steve bit aggressively at her shoulder, tugged savagely at her panties, and roared as he slammed into her hard and deep. The feel of his painfully steeled cock sliding into her hot sheath twisted his face into coital ecstasy. He panted sounds of the most exquisite combination of painful pleasure that Kayla had ever heard. She gasped at how much he filled her. He was so thick and hard inside of her, and she was desperate to feel him pump.
Kayla wrapped her legs around him, and his hard, hot dick withdrew from her, and then impaled her again just as deeply. She felt how his anger drove his need to possess her, and she loved it. When Kayla felt him push against her g-spot, she was no longer in control of her actions. She needed him to take her hot and rough. She wanted to turn over and have him take her from behind. And she wanted to push him down on his back and ride him fast. And she wanted to feel his cock stimulate her g-spot until she came so hard that she left her body. That’s what she wanted. But first, Steve was thrusting in and out of her hard and fast, forcing her breath from her in hot gasps.
He covered her with the length of his body and pumped his pelvis into her. He swallowed up the sounds of her sexual moans with more hot kisses. Then he bit at her jaw, working his way back to her shoulder again, his desperation to mark her overtaking all thought. She cried out her passion, encouraging him by holding his head firmly against her neck as he did it.
“Mine!” Steve grunted. “Miiiiiine!”
Kayla smiled. She was his. She was definitely his. And he was hers. She pushed up on his chest to stay his motions. He swore, but he complied, turning over so that she could straddle him. She guided him inside of her with a slick, erotic sound, then leaned down and bit at the the tender flesh of Steve’s pectoral muscle. Now she was the one leaving her mark on him. “Mine!” she whispered in his ear when she was done. “Only mine.” Then she straightened and reared back to fondle his tightened balls while she moved in constant rhythm over him.
“Sweetness … oh baby, only yours.”
Kayla leaned forward again, gripping his chest as he supported her by her breasts in his hands. She moved her hips hard over his shaft just once in this position, then without warning, Kayla came violently, squeezing his cock with her vaginal muscles as her nails dug into his chest. The throaty sounds of sex coming from her made him want to be inside her forever, giving her nothing but mind-blowing orgasms every minute of every day. Because he could. And because she was all there with all of him. For them both to remember. Before they were taken away from each other again.
“That’s it, baby, you come hard. Jesus, you feel so good. You feel so good.”
“Steve …” she moaned, “oh, Steve …”
He gave her time to recover as she fell on top of him, but he didn’t stop his marauding mouth upon her skin. Every nerve ending was on fire, and that’s what he wanted. He wanted her to burn as hot for him as he was for her. He suckled her breast, the rosy tips so sensitive between his lips. Then she took his face in her hands and purred up at him. “Take me again.” She dropped her hands and rolled over onto her knees. She looked back at him over her shoulder with bedroom eyes. “Take me again, Steve. Come for me.”
Steve took two handfuls of her round ass and pulled her to him. He slipped inside of her and pulled her against him as he thrusted. Over and over he continued to grunt and groan. He felt his orgasm ready to crest, so he reached around to find Kayla’s clitoris and rubbed it hard with his thumb like he’d done hours before – countless other times before – knowing it would drive her to ecstasy. And it did. “I want you to come again, Kayla. Again!” The excitement was too much for him, and he exploded his hot cum into her, pulsing fiercely as he continued to rub her clitoris. Finally she cried out her second climax as wave after wave forced her hips to buck against this spurting cock. Her aftershocks made them both gasp with overstimulated sensitivity, but he refused to leave her body, and she refused to let him.
Finally, after the very last tremor, Steve fell boneless on top of her; they were both completely spent. He kissed Kayla tenderly between her shoulder blades as he tucked her into his lap in their favorite position. Their combined fluid was evidenced on both of their thighs, but they layed there holding each other tightly, words not coming to either of them in their recovery. Kayla held tightly to his arms embracing her, and he continued to kiss her lovingly. Suddenly, Steve’s blood ran cold when he heard her start to cry. Oh my God, I hurt her!
“Sweetness? Oh, God, baby, what is it?”
“Just hold me,” she cried. “I just want you to hold me.”
Steve realized she wasn’t hurt. Physically. It was emotional release. “I’ll hold you forever, Kayla. Don’t cry, please, baby.”
But she did cry. As she finally allowed the reality of it all to assail her, she couldn’t help but cry. “I don’t know how we can avoid … being … with each other.” Steve didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to face this. That’s why he was so angry in the first place. Because facing this was going to kill him. “It’s not just sex. What if it was our wedding. And I had to marry you again without you? I don’t want to have that without you.” Steve shoved his head into Kayla’s shoulder blades. The thought upset him so much. Having these moments without each other. She was right, it wasn’t just sex, it was the deep emotional bonds that were forged in each one of these important experiences. “If I jump into you pouring your heart out to me with all our family and friends watching, then how do I stand on that boat and not marry you? How do I do that?” She sniffed as the tears continued to fall. “How do you not show your love to me on our honeymoon? Maybe on the plane … how do you not make love to me if you jump onto that private plane with me? When I need you? How, Steve? How do we not be with each other?”
Steve knew the answer. And he hated it.
Kayla turned toward him, tears stil leaking from her eyes. He kissed her, and it was so incredibly tender. Then he said the words that he knew to be true the moment he’d leapt into this body – the words he’d been fighting against that he could no longer deny. “We don’t, Sweetness.” Tears now reached his eye, as well.
“What?”
“We don’t fight it anymore. We do what we think we need to do. If you’re marrying me, then you keep marrying me. If we’re making love, then—”
“No!”
“—eventually we do, Kayla, yes.” She started to sob. “Steve sat up and brought her up with him. “Baby, listen to me. Who knows how long the next wait will be? Who knows if one of us is so far behind the other that months go by? We have to live the lives we jump into. Even if the other one isn’t there yet.” He barely got out the last words. They hurt so much, this truth. God, how they hurt. “It’s a no-win situation, Sweetness. He’s still me, and you’re still you. That’s all we can do.”
They were devastated.
Kayla collapsed into her husband’s arms and cried. She held him back and he cried, too.
Eventually, they lay silent in their thoughts. Then Steve broke their silent misery. “How did I do it?”
Kayla looked up at him. “How did you do what?”
“Propose.”
Kayla smiled. She couldn’t help it. “It was beautiful, Steve. You were so wonderful. You took me to the roof.”
“That’s what I had planned. Right where we’d made love for the first time. The real first time,” he grinned.
“Hmmp,” she grinned back. “That’s exactly what you did. Got down on one knee and everything.”
Steve took her left hand in his his and brushed his thumb over the diamond, brand shiny new upon her finger. “I remember buyin’ this ring in DC. I was so happy picking it out. It had your name on it, baby, from the minute I laid eyes upon it, it had your name on it. Couldn’t wait to give it to you.”
“Couldn’t wait to get it.” Steve stopped smiling, and Kayla regretted what she’d just said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s ok, I know.”
Kayla sat up and turned to face him. “Steve, that day I found the ring after the poisoning, and you told me about it … it’s one of the memories that I’d never give away for anything. It might not have been the proposal you wanted to give me, but I cherish it and always will.”
“Yeah?”
Kayla nodded. “Yeah.” Steve loved her so much. He knew what she was doing, and he so loved her for it.
“Baby, I’m glad you got me to do this one right this time. I’m glad you changed it. I wish I had it, too, I won’t deny that, I wish so much that I had it. But I’ll never resent that you got it. I want you to have it inside you, hold on to it, and remember how much I loved you that night. Every night, but you remember that night. I told you how much I loved you when I asked you to marry me up there?” he asked. She nodded. “’Cause I did. Don’t forget it.”
Just then the phone rang. A real ring with the bell built into the phones of 1987, not the electronic chirp of 2009’s phones. It startled them for a moment, but then they looked at each other knowing exactly who that was. Neither of them reached for the phone. When the answering machine picked it up, they each, wordlessly, came to the same conclusion. They knew what had to come next. Angelica began speaking, and Kayla gave Steve a resigned look. He squeezed her hand and nodded, and she took a cleansing breath.
Kayla stood up and went to the console table behind the couch and picked up the phone.
“Hello, Angelica,” Kayla said softly.
“Kayla, thank god you’re there.” Kayla stared sadly at her husband, who stared sadly back at her. “Jack collapsed, he’s worse than ever.” Kayla didn’t respond. Just continued looking at this wonderful man that loved her. That she never wanted to spend a day not loving back. “Kayla, are you there?”
“Yes,” she responded in an unenthusiastic monotone.
“Well, he’s asking for you, and I can’t take any more time on the phone,” she insisted impatiently. “Please, just get here.”
“Ok,” she replied. “We’ll be right there.”