The Time Traveler's Boyfriend (10 page)

“Oh, my parents were all about the magic,” Adam says. “When I was six, I firmly believed in Santa and not even a sexy teacher could have convinced me otherwise.”

I ignore his comment about the “sexy teacher” and say, “I bet you were an adorable six-year-old.”

“Well, yeah,” Adam says, shrugging. “What six-year-old isn’t adorable? I wasn’t like some mutant kid.”

I laugh again. I study Adam’s young face, and realize that no matter how much he looks like my boyfriend, he’s not. Not exactly, anyway. Which means I can say things to him that I can’t say to Adam in 2013 because I don’t need to worry about scaring him off. If I ask him his ideas about relationships, it won’t sound like I’m pressuring him. “Do you want kids?”

“I do,” he says. “Just got to meet the girl, you know?”

I feel a touch of bitterness. I want to yell at him that he’s
going
to meet the girl, and he’s not going to want to marry her. But that would probably just confuse him. I can’t very well scold him for something he hasn’t done yet.

Adam’s eyes flit down at my left hand. “Are you married?”

I shake my head. “No, never.”

“Are you in a relationship?” he asks.

I hesitate. I don’t think I’ve ever been asked such a complicated question. “Sort of. He’s … very far away right now.”

“He’s an idiot then,” Adam says, his eyes on my face.

The way he’s looking at me is making me kind of breathless. This is kind of weird. Adam is supposed to be falling in love with my twenty-two-year-old self. That’s why I came here in the first place. He’s not supposed to be undressing thirty-six-year-old me with his eyes. I’m old enough to be his mother. (I am! There are twelve-year-olds who are capable of having kids.)

The tension is broken when the waiter comes to take our orders. I take an extra-long time ordering my food, hoping that the moment will be completely ended and Adam will stop looking at me that way. We need to get back on track here.

“So what do you do?” I ask him, trying to steer the conversation away from anything romantic.

“Don’t you know?” he asks. “Aren’t you psychic?”

“You’re a computer programmer,” I say.

He nods, not looking at all surprised that I know.

“And in your free time, you invent stuff,” I add.

Adam looks at me and laughs. “I do? Wow, you have to work on your psychic skills, lady. Who do you think I am—Thomas Edison?”

“So you don’t invent stuff?” I ask. I had assumed that was something Adam always did, but I guess that must have started later.

“No, that would be
really
nerdy,” he says. “Like, over the top. It’s not like I don’t already have trouble meeting women.”

“I wish you’d give Claudia another chance,” I can’t help but say.

Adam is quiet for a minute, then he says, “I don’t want to talk about Claudia anymore, okay?”

The truth is
, I don’t want to talk about her, either.

***

Adam and I have a really good time at dinner. I love thirty-eight-year-old Adam, but I really like twenty-four-year-old Adam. He’s sweet, he’s funny, and he’s smart. I keep thinking to myself that I wish I had met him when I was younger, then I realize that I
did
meet him when I was younger. And I snuck out of the restaurant.

When the check comes, I try to reach for it, but Adam is much too quick for me. He snatches it up with lightning speed. “You should let me pay,” I say. “I was the one who bulldozed you into this terrible dinner.”

“Not a chance in hell,” he says.

So I let him pay, although I’m worried about going down some slippery slope here. He needs to recognize that I am way too old for him and our relationship can’t be anything but platonic. At least for another fourteen years.

“So, I was thinking,” Adam says. “Claudia told me you don’t know many people in the city. Is that true?”

“Yes …”

“Great,” he says. “Would you like to keep me company tomorrow night for New Year’s? We can watch the ball drop on TV.”

My stomach turns to butterflies. “Don’t you have a party to go to?”

Adam shrugs. “Nothing I really feel like going to, you know?”

I spent last New Year’s with Adam. We went out to dinner with some friends,
then came back to his house, where we kissed at midnight. 2013 felt like such a perfect new year. I was certain that I’d met the love of my life and we were going to be together forever. Now … I’m not certain of anything anymore.

“Okay,” I say.

“Yeah?” Adam’s eyes light up. “That’s great. How about ten o’clock?”

“Sounds good,” I nod. I remember the address Adam wrote down for me the first time I time traveled. “Apartment 14F, right?”

Adam gives me a sideways look. “Eventually are you going to tell me how you know so much about me?”

“Of course,” I say vaguely.

He doesn’t look like he entirely believes me, rightfully so, but then he gets distracted when he notices that the red rose he brought for Claudia is still lying on the table. He picks it up and twirls it between his thumb and his forefinger. “I guess your cousin isn’t into roses, huh?”

“I guess not,” I mumble. It’s nicer than saying that she
is
into roses—she’s just not into him. “Hey, you should be careful. You’re going to cut your hand on a thorn.”

Adam grins crookedly. “Not with these callouses I’m not.” He holds out his palms for me to examine, but I’m not impressed. These callouses are nothing compared to what he’ll have fourteen years from now, but I can’t very well say that.

“You may as well take it,” he says, holding the rose out to me.

Against my better judgment, I reach for the flower. For just a second, my fingers brush against his ever so slightly. I’ve touched Adam’s bare skin thousands of times in the past (well, the future), which is why I’m so surprised by the tingling that shoots through my entire arm. I can feel my cheeks starting to turn red as the rose, and I lower my eyes, hoping he doesn’t notice. Even though he’d have to be blind not to.

“I’ll give it to Claudia,” I mumble, even though I have no intention of doing any such thing.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I still remember when I first fell in love with Adam in 2012.

When we had been dating about four months, his father died. Adam is the youngest of his siblings, so his father was at least seventy, but it was still very sudden. Apparently, the elderly Mr. Schaffer was walking out to the mailbox to pick up their daily mail and dropped dead of a massive heart attack. By the time Adam’s mother found him out there, it was too late to even call an ambulance, but she did anyway and the EMTs pronounced him dead at the scene.

It’s interesting, I guess, that it never seemed to occur to Adam to use his time machine to try to save his dad’s life. Then again, it sounded like Mr. Schaffer had already been told by every member of his family to go see a doctor. Going back in time wasn’t going to fix the clogged arteries in his father’s heart.

The night he died, Adam and I were supposed to see a movie together.
The Avengers
. I heard the phone ringing while I was in the shower, and I made a naked run for it, dripping water all over the carpeting of my studio, screaming, “Wait! Wait!” I saw Adam’s name on my phone and smiled instinctively, picking up the line seconds before it went to voicemail. “Hey,” I said breathlessly. “What’s going on?”

“I can’t make it tonight,” he said. I felt that twinge of annoyance that I get when someone cancels plans on me at the last minute. Adam always seemed much too considerate to pull a move like that. Then he added, “My dad died.”

“Adam,” I gasped. “I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah,” he said and I heard him swallow. He wasn’t crying but he sounded miserable. “I’m going to see if I could get a flight to Cleveland tonight.”

“Can I come?” I asked.

“You want to come?” Adam sounded surprised but not particularly displeased.

“Well, my dinner plans cancelled,” I said. Then I felt bad for making a joke at a time like this.

“I’ll see if I can get two tickets,” Adam said. Then he added, “Thanks, Claudia.”

He managed to get a flight out of LaGuardia and met me at my apartment in a taxi. When I climbed into the taxi, I inspected Adam’s face for swollen eyes or a red nose and I didn’t see it. He looked fairly composed, considering everything. I tried to remember Adam ever saying much about his dad, and I couldn’t. I hadn’t even met his parents yet.

“Were you close to your dad?” I asked him when we got on the FDR drive. The cabbie was driving like a maniac and I was holding onto the seat for dear life.

“Not recently, I guess,” he said. “He was kind of pissed off when I went to NYU instead of going to Ohio State or something like that. He thinks New York is a waste. He wanted me to come home after my injury, like, permanently, but I just hated the idea of moving back in with my parents. On top of everything else, it would have been so depressing.”

“He must be proud of you, though.”

Adam frowned at me. “Proud of what?”

“Well, because you’re a good guy,” I say.

Adam just shook his head. Apparently, in his head, that wasn’t worth his father being proud of him for. Although I think it ought to be.

When we got to the airport, I learned about some of the realities of traveling with a wheelchair. At the security check-in, the guards had to frisk Adam then do a search of his
wheelchair as well. I was worried they were going to make him check his wheelchair with the bags, but they let him hang onto it till we got to the gate and were getting close to boarding.

At the gate of the place, I got introduced to the “aisle chair”—an extra-narrow wheelchair that would fit down the aisle in the plane. A steward brought it out to him and offered him help getting into it, which he refused since he was able to make the transfer on his own. A seatbelt went across Adam’s chest like an X. “Do you want us to secure your legs?” they asked him as his legs flopped out of the confines of the narrow chair. He nodded and a second belt was secured just below his knees.

“I hate this part,” Adam confided in me as he rescued his seat cushion off his wheelchair just before they hauled it off.

The good news was that we were allowed to get on the plane ahead of everyone else. The one bonus on top of all the hassle. When I pointed that out to him, he said, “Yeah, but it means we get off last.”

By the time we arrived in Ohio, we were both exhausted and not looking forward to the hassle of picking up the rental car and then driving to our hotel in Akron. And we definitely weren’t ready for the revelation that Adam’s wheelchair had been accidentally sent to Chicago. “You’re kidding me,” he said, staring at the apologetic stewardess.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “But we can get it back by tomorrow morning. In the meantime, do you need a loaner?”

“Yes,” he said tightly. “I do.”

I wouldn’t have blamed Adam if he had burst into tears right then and there, but he obligingly climbed into the bulky, hospital-grade wheelchair they brought him. Like the aisle chair, it had large handles in the back, and instead of his single footplate, there were two awkwardly connected footrests that were at different heights.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, when we got to the rental car place, they told us that they had a great Ford Focus waiting for us. “With hand controls,” Adam clarified.

“Oh, I’m so sorry about that,” the rental car lady said. “We couldn’t get that on such short notice. Can you manage?”

Adam looked up at me and I nodded. “Sure, I can drive.”

Let me tell you something about girls from Manhattan: we’re not great drivers. The public transportation system in the city is so
amazing, there was no reason to get behind the wheel until I was eighteen years old. They don’t even
offer
driving tests in Manhattan—I had to go out to Brooklyn to take the test, and it took me five tries to pass it, and only then because I got a very sympathetic male examiner. (Seriously, it was the worst parking job in the history of the world. We had to hail a taxi to get back to the curb.) But I have my license, I understand which one is the gas pedal and which is the brake—it’s not rocket science, for God’s sake. It’s easier than inventing a time machine.

So I got behind the wheel of the Ford and followed the GPS directions to the hotel. By about halfway through our journey to the hotel, Adam was hanging on to the dashboard and staring at me in terror. I thought it was a little bit of an overreaction.

When we got to the hotel, we were completely exhausted and absolutely ready to just crash (not literally, although just barely). We got to the reception desk, and Adam told the clerk his name, and she gave him the keys to room 203. “Thanks,” he said. “Where’s the elevator?”

“There’s no elevator,” the clerk said, as if it was completely ridiculous to expect something like that.

Adam looked over at the long flight of stairs to get to the second floor. He shook his head and turned back to the clerk. “Can you please give us a room on the first floor, then?”

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “There’s a big wedding this weekend, and we’re completely booked.”

Adam stared up at the clerk in disbelief. “I told you on the phone that I needed accommodations and you said it was fine. How am I supposed to get up there?”

She flashed him a toothy smile. “I’m so sorry, sir. We can definitely accommodate you by storing your wheelchair for you during your visit.”

Adam just shook his head again and canceled our reservation.

We called every hotel in the area and everything was booked up with the stupid wedding. I suggested expanding to a larger radius, but Adam was too scared of me getting back on the highway. Finally, he sighed and said, “Let’s just go to my parents’ house.”

I hated the fact that I had to meet Adam’s mother under these circumstances. She greeted us at the back door to her two-story house with the puffy eyes that Adam was lacking. Her gray hair was completely disheveled, and she was clutching her robe together with her fist. “I’m so glad to meet you, Claudia,” she said in a strained voice. I could tell she was trying to be nice, but she just didn’t have it in her right then.

She made up the den for us, which had a fold-out couch. As she led us to the room, she said to me, “Claudia, do you want to sleep in my sewing room?”

“It’s okay, Mom,” Adam said quickly. “Claudia will stay with me.”

I felt a little embarrassed, but then again, Adam was thirty-seven and I was thirty-five. Pretending like we were virgin teenagers would have been a little ridiculous. Of course, my parents still act like I haven’t had sex yet, that I’m saving myself for marriage. As if.

The fold-out couch was surprisingly comfortable. We were both so tired and the second my head hit the pillow and I snuggled up in the down comforter, I was down for the count.

I thought Adam was as tired as I was, but I woke up at about two a.m., and saw him in the moonlight, clearly wide awake. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I could see tears running down his cheeks. I reached out and put my hand on his chest. “Adam?”

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I’m sorry,” he managed. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Are you okay?” I asked. Stupid question. I mean, his father just died.

“This has just been the worst day ever,” he said as a fresh wave of tears spilled from his eyes. He took a few deep breaths, trying to get himself under control. “They lost my fucking wheelchair, we couldn’t get a car or a hotel room that I could use … and … and my dad died.”

This time he didn’t even try to hold back the tears. He sobbed into my oversized T-shirt, soaking the sleeve with saltwater. I held him, just letting him have this release. I’d never seen him lose control of
himself this way before. Well, except during sexy time.

“I’m really glad you’re here with me,” he whispered to me, after the tears had mostly subsided.

“I’m glad I’m here too.”

He looked at me and I could see even in the dark that his eyes were bloodshot. “I love you, Claudia.”

Truthfully, I had known he felt that way for a while. A girl can tell. I didn’t feel the same way, and I was relieved that he knew better than to say it to me. But at this moment, I realized that for the first time, I
did
feel the same way. I loved him and I wanted him to know it.

“I love you, too,” I said.

***

Claudia doesn’t seem the least bit sorry about running out on the date last night. I catch her curled up on the couch in a tank top and underwear, eating the leftover Rocky Road ice cream when I get home. She’s watching
Sex and the City
on television, and she doesn’t even acknowledge what she did to me. “I don’t get this show,” Claudia says. “Carrie isn’t even pretty. Why do all these guys like her?”

“I don’t get it either,” I say.

“If I were thirty-four and single, I would just get married,” Claudia says, as if it’s just that simple.

“I always thought Carrie should have married Aidan,” I say.

Claudia looks up at me. “Who?”

Oh, right.
Sex and the City
has only been on a year or two. Carrie Bradshaw hasn’t met Aidan Shaw yet. “Never mind,” I say.

Claudia shoves a spoonful of ice cream into her mouth. “So are you going to scream at me for ditching you?”

“No,” I say, “but it was a pretty shitty thing to do.”

“You deserved it,” she says. “You should have told me he was disabled. How could you not tell me that?”

“I didn’t want you to be prejudiced against him before you even met him.”

Claudia rolls her eyes. “Look, I’m sure he’s a real nice guy, but I am just not interested in dating someone like that. Nobody is.”

“
Nobody
is?”

“Nobody normal, anyway,” she says.

Was I really like this when I was twenty-two? Was my mind seriously that closed?

In any case, I know it’s a lost cause to invite Claudia to Adam’s apartment tomorrow night. Even if I managed to trick her into going, I’d have to hogtie her to get her to stay. She has zero interest in Adam. My plan, the whole reason I came back to 1999, is a complete and utter failure.

Which means I need a new plan.