Hourglass (8 page)

Chapter 15

I
don’t think it will make a difference if you destroy it.”

I’d pulled a table umbrella from its stand and was using it, rather ineffectively, to knock the camera off the side of the building.

“Really, I’m sure the footage is stored in a computer somewhere.” He had two fingers over his lips, making every effort to hide his burgeoning smile.

Slamming the umbrella to the ground, I fisted my hands on my hips and glared at him.

He let go with a deep belly laugh. It would’ve been contagious if I weren’t so furious. My senses were reeling. I felt
denied
.

“Sweetheart, listen.” The term of endearment stopped me cold. Nothing else would have. I could not explain away the affection in his eyes because I felt it, too. “We’re in dangerous territory here.”

“Right now the only thing that’s dangerous is me, especially when I get my hands on Thomas.”

“Emerson—”

I tilted my head to one side. “I think you have nickname clearance now.”

I tried to appreciate his smile without focusing on his lips.

“Em, it was a good thing you saw that camera when you did.” Michael sounded as if he were trying to convince himself. “We could have had a major disaster on our hands.”

“Right now the earth could fall off its axis, and I wouldn’t give a rat’s behind.”

Michael’s gaze skimmed over my bare shoulders, and he reached out to gently pull my jacket around them. “I’ve known since before we met how it would be between us. But knowing didn’t prepare me for you. I’m sorry.”

“I wish I could say
I
was sorry.”

“The rules about … fraternization … are in place for a reason.” He gestured to the fence and then closed his eyes. “This can’t happen again.”

I’d never had a real relationship. Back before my world went pear shaped, I indulged in the occasional fantasy involving a movie star or pop singer like any other normal teenage girl, but the last few years had been spent in an on-again, off-again with Joe Pharmaceutical. I had no idea how normal relationships worked to begin with, and Michael and I were far from normal. Talk about going from zero to sixty in eight seconds or less. I should contact the
Guinness Book of World Records
, category: “making up for lost time.”

Michael ran his hands over his face again. “We don’t need to be confused when there’s a bigger purpose.”

“I’m not confused at all.” Just worked up. “And what bigger purpose? It’s not like we’re saving the world.”

He said nothing.

“Michael?”

I considered flipping him over my shoulder again to make myself feel better. I told him as much.

“I think it’s time you explain that particular trick.”

Michael and I sat on the flat section of roof outside our bedroom windows. We’d reconnected after going back to our respective lofts; it was late after all, and I didn’t want my brother to ask any questions. Considering Thomas and his spying habit, I was already going to be in for it due to the evidence captured by the security camera. I hoped he would believe nothing happened.

Not that it did. Of this I was painfully aware.

We kept a safe amount of distance between us. No matter how far away Michael sat, I still felt an insatiable pull toward him. It grew stronger all the time, as if our centers were connected. Made it hard to concentrate.

“How did you become a teenage ninja?” He didn’t bother to hide the teasing in his voice.

“I took martial arts as my physical education elective at school. I was the best in the class. Once the semester was over I pursued my black belt at a private studio. I passed the test for brown right before I came home.” I sensed his doubtful look rather than seeing it. The streetlights didn’t quite shine high enough to light our perch above them, and the moon was a waxing crescent. “I know. It was a shock to me, too, but it was a healthy way to take out my frustrations.”

“It’s not been very healthy for me,” he said, his chuckle quiet in the night air.

“I’ve gone easy on you. Tell me, will my ass-kicking abilities come in handy when I’m ‘saving the world’?”

“It’s not the whole world, exactly.”

“Just the contingent forty-eight states?”

He sighed. “I’m not talking geography.”

“Details, please.”

Michael pulled his legs up, resting his forearms on his knees, his long fingers intertwined. “I’m trying to keep you out of trouble, Emerson. And that involves my keeping quiet for now. It’s not easy for me, but this is the way it has to be.”

“Not easy for you?” I scoffed. “How about you spill the information, and I’ll take care of myself?”

He looked up at the sliver of moon hanging in the sky. So did I.

“Michael, you need to understand I’ve been asking questions for the past four years. In my head, out loud, every way you can think of. And I’ve never gotten any answers until you came along.”

“We can’t cover four years in one night.” He slid his hand across the roof toward me, palm down.

I slid my hand toward his, palm up, the shingles rough on the back of my hand. Our fingers barely met, yet every inch of my skin responded. The desire to close the distance so more of me could touch more of him was overwhelming. My breath caught in my chest, and I looked at him.

He pulled away without looking back.

I left my hand open to the night sky. “How long before you tell me everything?”

“Not long, I promise. Can you wait?”

“Do I have a choice?”

He didn’t answer.

“You have no idea how frustrated I am.” About so many things.

“Give me until tomorrow. Tomorrow, I promise. I just want to make sure we do this the right way. Trust me?”

“Yes,” I answered, breaking my own rule.

Chapter 16

Y
ou want a ride to work?” Thomas asked as I grabbed my backpack. I was wearing my trusty pink rain jacket because it was raining. Again.

“No, it’s not that far.” My hair was already wet anyway. I’d had some difficulty motivating myself to wake up and shower and hadn’t had time to dry it. After I’d climbed in my window last night I could still sense Michael, could almost hear him breathing on the other side of the wall. It took sleep a long time to pull me under, my thoughts racing too fast for my brain to keep up.

As I walked to Murphy’s Law, I wondered why I had never seen Michael in a car. How did he get around? Probably he snapped and appeared places at will. Or maybe he time traveled where he wanted to go.

Or maybe he was delusional, and I was one small step away from buying it.

I snorted out loud, not even bothering to be embarrassed as a man in a Confederate soldier uniform looked at me strangely. He probably wasn’t really there anyway. I’d have liked to kick him just to see, but I didn’t want to take the chance.

Time travel? Saving the world? Had I fallen into a straight-to-DVD release? How could I believe Michael was telling me the truth? It was all so crazy. If I had learned about rips before I experienced one, I wouldn’t have believed it. Lots of unbelievable things happened. Every day. Things like gravity.

But time travel? Saving the world? At seventeen?

I pushed open the door to the coffee shop so hard I almost knocked the welcome bell from the doorframe. “Morning,” I mumbled to Lily as I walked past her, reaching greedily for the espresso machine.

She leaned over to peer into my eyes before saying with a hint of disgust, “You look like something I’d scrape off the bottom of my shoe.”

“Great, thanks. Not all of us can be naturally gorgeous. I bet you can’t even tell when you have sleepless nights.”

She shoved me out of the way and took over. “Let’s keep you away from heavy machinery until you get your groove on. Why no sleep?”

“The list is way too long.” And if I gave it to her, she’d call for the men in white coats. “Let’s just say I’m facing a challenge.”

“Does it have anything to do with Michael?”

I grabbed the cup of espresso she offered and threw it back in one scalding, exhilarating moment. After I could feel my tongue again, I held out my cup for a refill and said, “Sort of.”

“Sort of.”

“I’m not ready to talk about it.”

“Hmph.” Lily turned to start another espresso, and as if the day weren’t already off to a rip-roaring start, an image began to take shape behind her.

Just beyond the register sat a table full of teenagers in poodle skirts and letter sweaters. I knew they had to be ripples, because Murphy’s Law had slick, modern furniture instead of the leather booth with the Formica table where the couples were seated. They joked with a waitress in a pink nylon dress, a gingham-checked apron tied around her waist.

Pretty sure that wasn’t the standard uniform.

“Em? Emerson?” Lily snapped to get my attention. “Where did you go?”

“The nineteen fifties, if those shoes are any indication.” Saddle oxfords. Really.

“What?”

Crap. I’d said that out loud. “Nothing. Just a movie I watched last night. Thinking about it. Sandy and Danny. Beauty School Drop Out. Greased Lightning.”

“Okay.” Lily looked at me strangely as I sang “Shama Lama Ding Dong” under my breath. “I’m going to go pull some piecrusts out of the freezer. You’ll be all right out here by yourself?”

I was busy staring at a dude with enough grease in his hair to cook a pan of biscuits.

“Em?”

“Yes. Yes. Go ahead.” I nodded serenely as she walked into the kitchen.

The second she was gone I scrambled to look under the counter. I had to find something long enough to reach the rips so I could make them disappear. No way could I work a whole shift with the entire cast of
Grease
two feet away from me.

“Jackpot.”

I popped up, threw my body across the counter, and proceeded to stick a long-handled rolling pin into all the rips I could reach. It wasn’t easy—they started running once Biscuit Boy went down. Busy rip jousting like Don Quixote fencing windmills, I was too distracted to notice Lily backing into the swinging door from the kitchen while balancing a wide metal tray of piecrusts. A millisecond before she turned around I popped the last rip, slid back across the counter, and chucked the rolling pin over my shoulder.

“What was that?” Lily almost dropped the doughy circles as she whipped her head toward the noise.

“Rats. I think you have rats. Really big ones.” I held my hands two feet apart as an example and then leaned against the counter, trying to catch my breath. “Huge. You should probably have Abuela check that out.”

Lily raised one eyebrow, put the tray down, and wiped her hands on a dish towel. “You’re obviously not okay. Are you going to talk to me or am I going to have to drag it out of you?”

Avoidance. I let out a sigh. “I can’t have feelings for him.”

“Why?”

So many reasons. “Number one: I’m not the girlfriend/boyfriend type. I’m the crazy girl at the lunch table in the cafeteria type.”

“Em, that was a long time ago. That doesn’t have anything to do with who you are now.”

It had everything to do with who I was now.

“Number two: He might be his own brand of crazy.”

“Crazy like he’s a serial killer, or crazy like he attends Star Trek conventions in full costume?”

“That’s only crazy if you dress like a Klingon,” I pointed out.

Lily rolled her eyes.

“Neither one of those.” I pushed myself away from the counter, retrieved my espresso cup, and took a slow sip. “Maybe he has a secret, and maybe it’s too outrageous to believe. But everyone has secrets, right?”

“Not everyone.” Her body tensed, and she twisted the dish towel in her hands. “I don’t have any secrets. My life is an open book. Do you have a number three?”

“Um … yes.” I picked up the sugar dispenser and dumped a couple of tablespoons’ worth into my cup, looking at Lily with my peripheral vision. “Number three: Thomas has his ‘no fraternization’ rule, and Michael seems perfectly willing to enforce it.”

She lowered her shoulders and chewed on her bottom lip for a few seconds before responding. “That could be a good thing. It gives you time to get to know him before you decide how you feel.”

“I guess.”

“Take advantage of it. You don’t have to rush things. If he’s worth it now, he’ll still be worth it in a month. Or you could just take advantage of all that pent-up frustration and roll out those piecrusts for me.” Lily walked around the counter and headed for the corner of the café, scooping up the rolling pin from where I’d sent it flying moments before. She rinsed it off in the sink, dried it, and patted it down with flour.

I watched her with my mouth hanging open. “How did you know where that was?”

“What? Um … that’s where I keep it.” A slow flush spread up her neck to her cheeks. “Why do you ask?”

We stared at each other for a seemingly endless moment.

“No reason.”

She held out the pin.

I pushed up my sleeves, took it, and started rolling.

When Lily and I walked out together at the end of our shift, the sun was shining through the disappearing gray clouds, reflecting off the puddles gathered on the asphalt. The humidity was stifling, making my hair feel heavy.

I shoved my jacket into my backpack and grabbed a ponytail elastic out of a side pocket. Stopping above the last step to the sidewalk, I held my bag between my knees and the elastic band in my mouth, twisting up my hair with my hands while I tried to keep my balance.

I froze midtwist when I saw Michael across the street. He was leaning back against a sleek black convertible with the top down, two fingers covering his lips to keep from laughing. He did that a lot. I wondered if it was a habit before he met me.

Lily let out a grunt of appreciation. “Mmm. Santa came early, and look at the deliciousness he brought with him.” She smoothed down her hair and rooted around in her purse, pulling out a breath mint. “Adios.”

“Hold it.” I reached out to grab the strap on her bag, pulling her back. “That deliciousness isn’t available for sampling.”

She turned to face me, eyes wide. “Is
that
the challenge you were talking about?”

“The challenge that’s off-limits. And occasionally a pain in the ass.” And possibly insane.

“Oh, girl.” Lily shook her head, looking back at Michael with obvious admiration. “I am so sorry.”

“What are you doing anyway? You never approach guys. I realize he’s exceptional, but really?” He might be a pain, but he was
my
pain. Sort of.

Lily looked at me and shrugged. “Exceptional is an understatement.”

“Later,” I murmured as I jumped the last step and ran toward him, barely looking as I crossed the street.

“Hey.” The breathless thing was happening again, but I didn’t care.

“Hey,” he replied. I wanted to put my hands on him as a test, to see if the connection existed on a busy street in the middle of the afternoon. I reached a finger out to boldly touch the curve below his smile.

He reached up to grab my arm. “Are you trying to get me fired? Or kill me?”

“You would be of no use to me dead.” Although I couldn’t breathe when he touched me, so I guess it all depended on who kicked the bucket first. He still held my wrist, and my whole arm was vibrating.

I almost wished he were telling the truth about the whole time-travel thing. He was way too pretty to be delusional.

“Get in.” Michael let go of my arm, grabbed my backpack, and opened my car door. I slid into the leather seat. As he shut the door and walked around the car, I looked back toward the front of the coffee shop.

Lily, her mouth hanging open, still stood in the exact same spot.