Parallel

by O'Roark, Elizabeth

  He laughs. “Good to know how you’d handle the situation.”

  I smile at him in the darkness. “I’m not saying I would. But you know I’m right. If she needs me out of the picture and wants to take my spark or whatever, she could do so pretty damn easily. What good would changing my timeline do anyway?”

  His voice is soft when he finally replies. “It might keep you from meeting me.”

  We both fall silent, and the sudden absence of sound underscores something I’m increasingly certain is true—I was meant to meet him. To remain with him. It’s happened before, it may be happening now…and someone is going out of her way to prevent it.

  “I wish Rose had been able to change things,” he says quietly.

  I wish she was too. When it all comes down to it, time traveling seems to have way more negatives than positives. You can’t keep anyone from dying, but you’re way more likely to wind up dead yourself. “I’m sorry she couldn’t help you…with your brother.”

  “That isn’t why I was asking her about going back to save someone,” he says. Our gaze holds, locks, for half a second, my pulse racing. I wish for so many things right now. I want to live, I want to solve this. But mostly I want to cross over and slide into bed beside him, if only to press my head against his bare chest, feel his legs tangle with mine.

  I close my eyes, desperate to stop my thoughts, and when I open them, he’s rolled to his back and is gazing at the ceiling. “It’s so weird that you know about Ryan. I don’t talk about him to anyone. Even my parents don’t talk about it anymore.”

  For some reason, the topic of his brother opens up this chasm inside me. Fear. I don’t want to ask about him, don’t want to know, yet it feels like the monster under the bed: I’m never going to rest easy until I’ve seen what’s there. “How did he die?” I ask.

  “He got in a car with this drunk idiot. I still have no idea why he did it. He knew better. But if I’d gone to the party, it never would have happened.” His voice is heavy, quiet with guilt.

  “You can’t blame yourself for that,” I say softly.

  “We were bickering about everything back then—competing,” he says. “I don’t even know what the hell we were competing about. It’s like adolescence kicked in and suddenly we were at each other’s throats. But anyway, I knew he was making bad decisions, but I was sick of his shit. That’s why I didn’t offer to be designated driver.”

  A memory of some past conversation with him pushes inside my brain. From London, right after we met. His hands on my face, his eyes so earnest. How can I possibly deserve this, he said, when Ryan got nothing?

  A puzzle piece snaps into place somewhere in my brain. I can almost hear it click. “That’s why you’re with Meg,” I whisper. The words surprise me. I’m not even sure I meant to say them aloud.

  His eyes flicker toward me, luminous in the moonlight. “What do you mean?”

  I barrel on, saying things I have no right to say but in the dark it feels safer for some reason. “I’ve been trying to figure out why you’re with her when you’re obviously not in love with her. And I think it’s because you feel like you don’t deserve more, you don’t deserve to be happy when Ryan can’t be.”

  He’s silent just long enough to leave me wondering if I’ve pissed him off. “Maybe,” he finally says. “So that’s my excuse, but what’s yours? Why don’t you think you deserve more than Jeff? And please don’t bother trying to tell me he’s everything you ever dreamed of. He obviously isn’t.”

  I guess I brought the question on myself, as much as I dislike it. “Jeff isn’t perfect,” I reply firmly, “but I’m not either. I love him for who he is, and I forgive him for what he’s not.”

  “And what is he?” Nick asks. The words echo with scorn, but they shouldn’t, because there’s plenty to love about Jeff. Qualities I’ve given short shrift to ever since Nick came into the picture, which is so unfair.

  “He’s a good person. He’s kind to children. He stops to greet every single dog he passes. And he’s tried harder than any person I know to make D.C. work for him no matter how many times it knocks him down.” I could keep going, but I get the feeling there’s nothing I could say that would leave Nick convinced. “I know the two of you were at odds the other day and you seem to think less of him for being at work so much, but you’ve seen him at his worst. We wouldn’t have gotten through my father’s death as well as we did without him.”

  “My boy scout leader was a good person too,” he growls. “Doesn’t mean I need to marry him. And it’s great if he helped your family but that was what—seven or eight years ago? What’s he done for you since then? Because he seems pretty fucking self-centered from where I stand.”

  “He’s not. He gave up what he loved most to follow me to D.C. And he’s stuck it out no matter how hard it’s been, all for me.”

  “Give me a break. He followed you because he wanted to. He didn’t give up what he loved most…you’re what he loves most. He did that for himself. Tell him you’re going back to school. Let’s see how selfless he is then.”

  I flip on my back and pull the covers up to my neck. “You’re making all this sound so terrible, but it’s easy to take one aspect of a relationship and make it seem defective. All couples argue and all couples want different things. I’m not going to fault him for having opinions of his own.”

  He presses his eyes shut and when they open, I see an apology there. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I just feel like you should have more than that.”

  No, I think. I have exactly what I want. Even though I now remember something better. Even though I can feel in my chest what it was like to be in love with Nick, the kind of love that expands inside you until you’re so full it almost hurts. Because a sort of terror consumes me when I imagine having that now. I can’t begin to explain what it is, but as I lie here I know that it’s related, somehow, to Ryan. The mere thought of him makes dread seep into my bones.

  “I’m sorry about your brother,” I finally whisper, as I drift off to sleep.

  “It was a long time ago,” he replies.

  Except I wasn’t apologizing for his loss. I was apologizing because I think it might have been my fault.

  * * *

  The Homecoming Committee has done their best with the whole “Midnight in Paris” theme, but the truth is, a bunch of balloons and drawings of the Eiffel Tower aren’t enough to transform our gymnasium into anything other than…a gymnasium with balloons and handmade drawings.

  “So, this is what I’ve been missing being homeschooled,” I say, taking it all in. Nick and I exchange a smile. “I feel like I don’t even need to go to Europe now.”

  Nick laughs and brushes a lock of hair back from my face, his eyes flickering over my mouth with a longing I feel down to my core. “So I don’t need to worry about you taking off for London and leaving me behind anymore,” he says. “Mission accomplished.”

  “You could always come with me,” I suggest. I don’t know why my heart beats so hard as I say the words. We’re talking about something that’s years and years from now. “You could do your residency there.”

  He moves closer, close enough that his mouth is nearly on mine. “We could get an apartment together. But I should probably marry you before any of that.”

  He has only the ghost of a smile on his face. I have one on mine as well. But our eyes are serious. We phrase these things as jokes, but we mean every word. “Yes, you should probably marry me.”

  He releases a tiny huff of air, as if desire is displacing the oxygen in his chest. “God, I want to kiss you right now.”

  All he has to do is use that low voice on me and I’m weak-kneed. I blow him a kiss and back away an inch. “This is my first homecoming. I’m not spending it being mauled in the back seat of your parents’ Volvo.”

  He closes the distance between us again. “You love being mauled in the back seat of my parents’ Volvo.”

  I do. I like it way, way too much. But it’s too early in
the evening for me to be thinking about how badly I want him to do it again. “Come on,” I say, pulling him by the hand, forcing him to mingle and pour me a glass of punch, just because it’s so ridiculously old-fashioned. He’s a good sport about the whole thing, but after an hour he is itching to leave.

  “We have to at least wait to see if you’re Homecoming King,” I chide.

  He glances away. “I won’t be. I told them to throw out any votes for me.” His eyes remain on the floor between us. “I just… Things are tense enough without that.”

  What he means is that they are tense with Ryan. Because of me.

  “Let’s dance,” he says, trying to distract me—something he accomplishes with ease, because no one alive is more distracting than Nick, whether we’re standing in the middle of a crowded gym or alone in the treehouse, though my mother’s now forbidden that last bit.

  He twines his fingers through mine and leads me onto the dance floor. Some sappy ballad is playing. “I don’t think we can swing dance to this one.”

  Our eyes meet. He tried to teach me to swing dance once, in the treehouse. It was one of the rare times we found ourselves alone, without any adults around. Needless to say, the lesson devolved quickly into something else entirely.

  “I’m not sure I got enough of a lesson to do it right,” I reply, wrapping my arms around his neck. Even in my heels, he towers over me. His face is boyish, but there’s nothing boyish about the rest of him. All his hours of training in the pool have left him with the ripped body of a grown man. I feel heat at the base of my spine, just picturing him climbing out of the water. I made a promise to my mother that I intend to keep, but it’s getting harder by the day for us both. Every time he kisses me, I want to climb him like scaffolding.

  He leans toward my ear. “Remind me to give you another lesson sometime.”

  I’m about to reply when he turns me, and I find myself looking directly at Ryan, who is watching us with that look on his face, the one he wears far too often of late. He’s here with Lisette Durand, a French exchange student almost every guy in the school wants to date, yet our eyes meet and his expression—already grim—turns into a scowl. Why can’t he just let this go?

  “You okay?” Nick asks as I stiffen.

  “Yeah,” I reply. “But I’m ready to leave whenever you are.”

  “I’m ready now,” he says, pulling my hand. I’ve promised my mother we’ll wait until we’re out of high school to have sex, but when we are alone, it’s a struggle to remember that. And the look in his eyes right now says it’ll be extra hard to remember tonight.

  We head toward the auditorium’s exit, but Ryan has beaten us there. He stands hand in hand with an irritated Lisette, blocking the door, legs spread like he’s ready for a fight.

  “Where are you going?” he asks Nick, never glancing at me once, because I no longer exist to him. Not the way I used to.

  Nick straightens and his chin goes up. “I don’t answer to you.”

  “No, but you answer to Mom and Dad,” Ryan says, his eyes shifting to me, “and you made them a promise.”

  “I know that,” Nick growls. “And I don’t need a reminder from you.”

  “Well, since we now know that keeping agreements is a struggle for you, I thought I’d better mention it.” Their mother told them they couldn’t ask me out until I turned sixteen, an agreement Nick broke when he kissed me that day in the woods. I was always going to choose Nick. But Ryan doesn’t seem to believe it.

  “Get out of my way, Ry,” Nick says. He has a slow temper, but there’s steel in his voice when he’s on the cusp of losing it, and even Ryan knows not to mess with him when it’s present.

  “Don’t fucking forget,” Ryan says, as Lisette pulls him away.

  We go out to his car, but guilt weighs me down the entire way. I hate that I’m the reason things have gone wrong. I stand still by the passenger door, staring at the gym.

  “Come on,” Nick whispers, the words coming so close I can feel them against my lips. “Let’s go before one of the teachers comes out here.” He smiles, leaning closer. Anticipation crests in my stomach, making me breathless.

  I am not normally the aggressor, but tonight, I am. I ignore his words and pull his mouth to mine, letting the slow sweep of my lips and my tongue do the work for me. I will make us both forget how much Ryan hates us now.

  23

  NICK

  I am certain I won’t be able to fall asleep. Not with Quinn a few feet from me, presumably wearing next to nothing. I try to focus on anything other than her, lest she wake up to find me dry humping the mattress in my sleep, but I can’t seem to stop. I’m remembering her face after we left Grosbaum’s office, relaxed and happier than I’ve ever seen it. Remembering the moment she walked into the room for Darcy’s birthday party, looking so fucking ethereal she hardly seemed real.

  And then I’m thinking of the lake, and when I fall asleep that’s where I go. Quinn is in that red bikini, floating away on the Sunfish, shouting at me to come help her, panicked and laughing at the same time. I swim to her, pulling myself up, and her body presses to mine. She is taut and sun-warmed, and as our mouths join, I want to groan with the relief of it—decades, centuries of separation finally behind us. I pull her on top of me and she comes willingly, sliding against my skin. Her top is gone, though I don’t remember undressing her. My palms go to her breasts—how could I have forgotten how perfect they are?—and then to her nipples, pressing pebble-hard against my chest. She gasps then, and I lose that last ounce of restraint I was clinging to.

  I roll her under me, my hands gripping her hips, my mouth hungry for every inch of skin. I’m hard as nails and just the friction, being pressed to her stomach, has me close to coming. I slide her bottoms off to the side. She’s drenched, ready.

  Except…there’s something wrong here. I want to plunge inside her more than I’ve ever wanted anything, but how did we get here? How is it that her bikini is gone and beneath us it is soft, nothing at all like the Sunfish’s fiberglass bottom?

  I open my eyes.

  I’m not in a boat. I’m no longer in high school. And Quinn is beneath me, in the hotel room we rented. I have no idea how she wound up in my bed, but she is quite obviously sound asleep, despite the fact that she’s arching against me and my hand is…fuck…between her legs. I’m so hard my dick has pushed through the slit in my boxers. With a suppressed, reluctant groan, I remove my hand and go the bathroom to take care of an issue I probably should have dealt with earlier. The obsession with her has to end… It was one thing to have a painful crush, but this has gone too far. I could lose my fucking medical license over what just happened.

  I stand beneath the hot spray, one hand pressed to the wall to support myself. I think about the feel of her beneath me and the way her body arched toward mine, begging for more. I think about what would have come next, how I would have thrust into her and fucked her hard and fast, with the kind of desperation that comes from years of denial.

  I come in five seconds flat.

  24

  QUINN

  I open my eyes to daylight streaming in and sit straight up with a gasp. I went to sleep in the bed next to the window. I know I went to sleep in the bed next to the window.

  I am no longer in that bed. I clutch the top sheet to my chest and turn toward Nick, who is slowly blinking awake. “Good morning, roomie,” he says with a yawn.

  “Why am I in your bed?” I grit out.

  “Maybe you time traveled there.”

  His smile is teasing, but I barely even register it. My heart feels like it’s going to explode. I knew we shouldn’t have shared a room. Practicality and sleep deprivation made the decision for me, but I knew better. “I seriously need to know why the fuck I’m in your bed.”

  “I think you must have been sleepwalking,” he says. “I woke up and you were there, so I just switched over to your bed.”

  My stomach takes a nosedive. He’s making light of it, but the fact remains t
hat I climbed into bed with him, wearing nothing but a thong. Even if nothing more happened, that’s sort of enough, right there. “Oh my God.”

  “Quinn,” he says, pausing long enough that I’m forced to look over at him. “It’s not a big deal.”

  “I’m pretty sure Jeff wouldn’t agree with that,” I whisper.

  He lifts himself up on one arm. The sheet is down at his waist, so I get to watch a thousand muscles blink into life at the movement. For a moment I’m so spellbound I forget what I just said. “Please tell me you’re not going to feel guilty about something that minor, especially given that it happened when you were asleep.”

  “I guess,” I say with a sigh. “It’s still…” Awful, wrong, humiliating, inappropriate. There are so many ways to end that sentence. “Bad.”

  “Hey, come on,” he says with a grin, “you and I are apparently married in some alternate universe, remember? Technically, I think that means you’re cheating on me when you’re with Jeff.”

  I laugh reluctantly. “Is that how it works?”

  He looks over at me from where he lies, his smile fading. There are words there, right on the tip of the tongue, but they never emerge. He pushes the sheet away and walks to the bathroom instead, and I remain behind, drinking in the sight of him—that swimmer’s back, boxers clinging to his tight, perfect ass. As horrified as I am by what might have happened last night, I sort of wish I could remember every single second of it, whatever it was.

  * * *

  We arrive at the diner far earlier than necessary, the two of us rumpled and walk-of-shame-esque in yesterday’s clothes. He’s in no rush since someone is covering his morning rounds, so we order breakfast and nurse cups of coffee while we wait. There’s nothing magical about it. The diner isn’t particularly clean and the coffee isn’t especially good. But I’m happy. Not that lukewarm, milquetoast version of happy I normally am, but something so much better. For the first time, my soul is full. All I want in the world right now is more of him. More time, more knowledge. “What’s your favorite color?” I ask.