The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance (72 page)

“But you didn’t.”

“But who’s to say I didn’t in that future?” Ella pointed out.

“But in order for you to meet Mr Future Date and live happily ever after with him, you didn’t have kids with anyone other than him, so that negates the possibility that you’re his great-great-great grandmother or whatever from an alternate future. I think. Stop it. You’re making my head hurt. The real point is they do a background check on everyone, which is good, because that way you know you’re not dating a convicted sex offender or something. They just dress it up in silly sci-fi nonsense.”

“I don’t know, Serena,” Ella said. “Who would sign up for something like this?”

“Someone else who gets the joke and just wants to have fun and meet someone new. They probably just connect people out of different time zones or something. That’s the ‘future’ bit.” Serena was already clicking the “Sign Up Now!” button.

“I don’t know if I want a long-distance relationship.”

“Oh, relax. They’re not asking you to travel into the future for him. He comes to you.” Serena winked. “Now, you were born in Warren, right?”

“No, absolutely not.” Ella shook her head. “I’m not doing this. I’m not getting set up on another blind date, this one is practically guaranteed to be bad.”

“You don’t know that . . .”

“It’s a website that’s set up like a bad science-fiction movie. And I’m not that into science fiction. And there’s always the possibility I’ll get someone who’s serious about it and really believes they are a time travel er . . . No.” She shook her head again for emphasis. “I’m not doing it.”

Serena pouted. “Fine, be that way. Don’t meet the future hunk of your dreams.”

“If you’re that into it, you do it.”

“Maybe I will .”

“And on that note, I’m going home.” Ella stood up and put her coat on. “I’ll see you at schooltomorrow.”

“When your mom call s, tell her I said hi.”

“I’ll tell her you tried to set me up with H.G. Wells.” And with that parting note, Ella shut the door behind her and stepped back out into the cold evening.

Going over to her car, she glanced down as she was putting her key into the lock and groaned. She must have run over some glass or something because her front tyre was flat. Swearing under her breath, she kicked the tyre in frustration. “The end to a perfect day.”

“Something wrong?” A voice asked from the kerb.

She turned to see a man in a heavy jacket and baseball cap standing there. She couldn’t make out the details of his face in the dark, but he didn’t seem like an axe murderer. Then again, do axe murderers ever seem like axe murderers?

“Oh, just a flat tyre,” she said, gesturing to the car. “I was going to call someone.”

“Don’t you have a spare?”

“In the trunk, but the jack always sticks . . . It’s OK, really. I’m just going to call someone.” She got out her cell phone to illustrate that point so he would go away.

“No, don’t do that. I’ll change it for you, no problem.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I told you, it’s no problem. Look, I know you don’t know me -I’m some random guy that just walked up on the street. So just get out the tyre and the jack and put them on the ground and then I’ll come over there and change it and you stand over here. That way I’m never too close to you.”

Ella’s face coloured. “I didn’t mean to imply I thought you were some sort of maniac.”

“You’re just being cautious. I understand. Can’t trust Good Samaritans these days. Ready?”

She did as he requested and, within a few minutes, he had the old tyre off and the new one on again.

“Thanks for this,” she said, stepping a bit closer to him. She could see a hint of smile and a glimmer of blue eyes before he ducked his head.

“Like I said, no problem. I’ll see you around.” He turned and abruptly walked off in the opposite direction, leaving her to get in the car and leave the incident behind her.

Three

Ella had forgotten all about the evening at Serena’s by the end of the week, caught up in preparing for the kindergarten class play and the day-to-day drama that was teaching a bunch of five – and six-year-olds how to read, write and count. All thoughts of dating, let alone dating men who purported to be from the future, went completely out of her head until Serena walked up to her after dismissal one day and said, “You’re going to hate me.”

Ella finished saying goodbye to her last student and made sure the little girl made it safely on to the bus to go home for the day before turning to her friend. “What did you get me into now? It’s not the PTO carnival, is it? Did you volunteer me to run the cotton candy booth again?”

“Would I do that?”

“Yes, and I’ll come home covered in sticky glop like last time! Why can’t you volunteer me to do something easy, like the fishing game?”

“Well , it’s not cotton candy and it’s not the fishing game. It’s nothing to do with the carnivalor school at all .”

“Oh, God . . .”

“Remember that dating website we were checking out?”

“
You
were checking it out, not
me
,” Ella retorted and then her face fell . “Oh, no.”

Serena nodded.

“You didn’t!”

“I did. I signed you up.”

“After I told you not to!” Ella smacked her on the arm with the clipboard she was carrying.

“Ow! I’m tell ing the principal!”

“You do that and I’ll tell him you’re impersonating me online for the purposes of dating. I won’t even get detention monitor duty.” Ella sighed. “Why’d you do that?”

“There were some pretty hot guys on that website. I was checking out some of the profiles.”

“Serena, that’s just the bait they use to hook you in. Take my name off the site right now, there’s no way I’m paying for that.”

“You don’t have to pay, it’s a free site. It’s like a social networking site, just dating.”

“With people supposedly from the future.”

“That too. But you’ve already got a bunch of potential matches and some of them have already sent you invitations to chat. There are some pretty hot ones on your list. I’m half tempted to sign up myself.”

“You should have.” Ella shook her head. “And ‘chats’?”

“Yeah, they send you a list of people you would be compatible with and then you can read their profiles. If you think they’re someone you’d like to get to know better, you can request a chat. If they accept, you can instant message each other on the website. And if they’re not interested, you can’t message them again. It’s a good system actually, so you don’t keep getting requests from losers you’re not interested in. I’ve already picked out some of the better prospects for you.”

“You’re too kind.”

Curiosity was working its way into Ella despite her many reservations. “Hot guys, huh?”

Serena nodded with a smile. “Really hot.”

“And they requested to talk to me?”

“Sure did.”

“You didn’t put up someone else’s picture on my profile or claim I’m a celebrity or something?”

“Nope. You’re a school teacher who would enjoy a quiet evening at home with a special someone, and the collected works of William Shakespeare.”

“And the future guys?”

“Actually, none of them seem to be buying into the site’s sci-fistuff, either. They’re just talking about being law professors or enjoying writing poetry. The usual dating website stuff. No one’s talking about fighting the glow-worms from planet Neptune or anything crazy like that.” Serena grinned at her. “Come on. You know you want to at least take a peek at who’s interested.”

They snuck back to Serena’s classroom and fired up her computer.

“The firewall better let me through . . . ah, success!” Serena crowed as she got back to the website and entered Ella’s info on the log-in page. “I set you up a separate email address so all of your Future Date emails go through there. I didn’t figure you wanted to use the school’s address for that.”

“And you figured I wouldn’t find out as fast.”

“That too. Now, I wrote down your log-in information. You know, in case you were interested.” She gave Ella an innocent smile and passed her a slip of paper. “You can access your information either through the links the website sends you in the emails or on the actual site.” She clicked a page labelled “Requests”. “And here are the guys that are interested.” She moved so Ella could sit down and scroll through.

Ella clicked through the requests, each with the picture of a smiling, handsome man next to it. If you clicked on the picture, it brought up each man’s profile page. Ella followed the links. There was a college professor, an artist, a professional athlete, a dentist, a therapist, a car salesman, a banker, a mechanic, a ranch hand, a police officer and a journalist interested in her. They all ranged in age from twenty-five to forty, single and divorced, with hometowns listed all over the country.

“A lot better fish than any usual website, huh?” Serena said, pointing out a few of her favourites. “And your profile’s been up less than a week. Their system’s still computing matches.”

“Why are all of these hot guys single? And wanting to talk to me?” Ella shook her head. “It’s got to be a scam. It’s probably to get money out of desperate women looking for love.”

“So don’t send them money. Just talk to him. Or him.” Serena pointed at two different profiles. “Or him.”

“No, if I’d talk to anyone on this crazy website, it’d be . . .” Ella scrolled over and clicked on one of the profiles. “Him.” It was a picture of a man with close-cropped dark hair and serious blue eyes, with what looked like a park in the background of the photo.

Serena gave the picture a second glance. “Him? Why?”

“I like his smile. It’s honest. He’s not smirking like he knows he’s all that and he’s not trying to do the shy thing. He just . . . is. He didn’t take the picture at home off of a web cam or cellphone or something and he didn’t pose for the picture like a prima donna. It looks like it’s one snapped by a friend or something.” She scrolled down to read more of the profile. “He’s thirty-one, he’s a journalist, he has a pet dog named Bandit, a niece and a nephew he loves to spoil and he’s looking for a serious relationship. He also enjoys reading classic literature but isn’t above going to see the latest blockbuster movie or reading a best-selling mystery. He’s also been known to read a torrid romance or two.”

“It says ‘torrid’?”

“It says torrid.”

“He sounds perfect!” Serena looked over her shoulder. “Oh wait. No, he’s not. He’s got a major flaw.”

“What’s that, other than being on this website?”

“His name is Herman.”

Ella laughed. “So his name’s Herman, so what?”

“That sounds like a grandfather’s name, Herman. That’s so old-fashioned.”

“Maybe the name’s come back in vogue in the future,” Ella said with mirth.

“Maybe. But I can’t see you walking down the aisle in your gorgeous wedding dress carrying a bouquet of a dozen long-stemmed roses, that you hand off to me as you take his hands in your trembling ones, and then breathlessly say, ‘I, Ella, take you, Herman.’”

Ella laughed again. “Well, maybe it’s a family name.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe he has a nickname he goes by.”

“Maybe you should accept his request and find out.”

Ella looked back at the screen at the photo of a man with a smile that made her feelsafe for some reason. He just looked like a nice guy, one who called his mother every week, didn’t move too fast on a date, and was kind to animals and children.

“Maybe I should,” she said, and clicked accept before she could think twice.

Four

Ella’s curiosity continued to get the better of her. She stayed away from the computer long enough to watch a few television programmes while she sat on her couch, eating a microwave frozen dinner. But the siren song of the computer, and whether or not the good-looking man with the nice smile had replied to her yet, made her finally dig out her laptop and fire it up. While it was loading, she noticed her hands were shaking and her stomach had butterflies.

“What is wrong with you?” she muttered, mad at herself for acting like a teenager instead of a grown woman. She went to the homepage of the website, logged in and was immediately met with a chat bar and one message.

Glad you decided to accept my request. It’s nice to meet you, Ella
.

She bit her lip and typed,
It’s nice to meet you, too, Herman. Or do you have a nickname you go by?

She didn’t expect an immediate reply and was surprised to see one.

No, just Herman. I know, Herman’s not a popular name, but I’m bringing it back in style!

She laughed at that.
My name didn’t get popular until well after I was out of high school, so I’ve lived with an unusualname too. I don’t usually do internet chats, so I’m probably bad at it
.

You’re fine
, he replied.
Just like making small talk anywhere else. I just finished up covering a city councilmeeting, so trust me, anything you say will be the most wildly interesting thing I’ve heard all day.