The Time Traveler's Guide to Modern Romance

by Madeline J. Reynolds

  Tension was eating away at Elias, his nerves manifesting in a violent tremble that he tried to mask by wringing his hands. Any number of things could go wrong. The watch could get lost. Elias could get lost. Previously, he hadn’t been concentrating on a specific time or place. What if he tried to do so and he could not get it to work the way it was meant to? Then he would not be able to go home or come back here. Or what if this time he did alter something drastically and impacted the future in such a way that Tyler never ended up being born?

  Now as they sat across from each other, the possibility that they might not ever see each other again was all too real.

  “So, do you even know how to work this thing? Intentionally, I mean,” Tyler asked, nodding toward the watch.

  Elias shook his head. “When I came here before it was completely by accident. If I did something significant to incite the event, I don’t know what it was.”

  Tyler frowned. “Are you sure it will even work in reverse? Do you know if the watch can send people backward in addition to forward?”

  Elias frowned as he thought about it but then nodded, albeit hesitantly. “My grandfather used the watch for traveling long before he ever gifted it to me. No matter how long he was away, he always made it back home to us.”

  “And what if you get stuck?”

  “What?”

  “While transporting or traveling or whatever you wanna call it. What if you get caught in the middle somewhere and can’t get out, to any time?”

  Elias had not considered that. It had all happened so quickly. He closed his eyes in one era and opened them in another. There was no in between for him to stop and notice. But what if Tyler was right? What if something went wrong and he wound up trapped in some sort of awful purgatory for the rest of his days?

  The thought distressed him enough that he suddenly reached for the pocket watch, but Tyler grabbed his wrists before he could grasp it.

  “Wait!” Tyler cried.

  They both sat there, the music of David Bowie still playing in the background. It was the song about the spaceman. Well, that wasn’t very specific. Elias supposed that Mr. Bowie had a great many songs about men in space. This one predominantly featured a gentleman by the name of Tom. It seemed a rather melancholy song to Elias and so it adequately fit the odd mood that hung heavily in the room.

  “If I do not go now—if I don’t force myself—I may never go,” Elias said.

  “But I…”

  “You what?” Elias felt like they were at a breaking point. Like whatever words Tyler was now holding back were the most important words and would change both of them forever.

  Tyler’s cheeks reddened in the most adorable way. “I just…before letting you leave…I just had to let you know that—I owe it to you to say.”

  Tyler shook his head, swallowing back whatever confession was about to escape his lips. He would be left to wonder.

  The song had gotten to the point where Major Tom was requesting that Ground Control inform his wife that he loves her very much.

  It was almost eerie how apt the lyrics felt in the moment. So sad, so…final. He took his free hand and placed it on top of Tyler’s, gently removing it from his wrist. Elias then took both of his hands and placed them upon each of Tyler’s cheeks, pulling his face in for a long kiss. The kiss warmed him and sent a tingle that sparked through his skin and down his spine. For a moment he felt as light as air, but this lightness came crashing back down to earth. His heart ached and his stomach twisted and churned with the knowledge that this would never happen again.

  For so long, love had never been a concern of his. He always anticipated that it would be something he would see and long for from afar but never actually experience for himself. Even if he fell, he knew it would never be reciprocated. Where he’d been brought up, being who he was had been sinful, frowned upon, wrong, deviant. But here, he was Elias. Here, he was someone. Tyler’s someone.

  When they pulled their lips away, Elias pressed his forehead against Tyler’s and said quietly, “You’ve given me so much. I hope you know that. This truly has been the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.”

  Though he didn’t want to, he pulled away from Tyler entirely and scooped up the pocket watch. His thumb traced the line of the engraved image of the hourglass.

  “But you still don’t know how to work it,” Tyler protested.

  “My grandfather told me that all you need to do to get it to function is to focus on the time and place you wish to go to. Now that I have a definite destination in mind, it should work properly.”

  Should was the word giving Elias the most anxiety with that statement.

  Tyler didn’t look convinced. “Let’s hope you’re right.”

  “Indeed,” Elias agreed, equally uncertain, but still he forced a smile for Tyler.

  He pressed his fingers down, enclosing the bronze watch. He took a deep breath, allowed himself one last look at Tyler, and then closed his eyes, filling his mind with images of London in 1886. He pictured the faces of his mother and father, not in anger or in scorn like he had left them but with smiles on their faces during more simple times when he’d been younger. He thought of Samantha giggling and teasing him. He even thought of Peter and his paintings, which Elias had to admit, were bloody brilliant. He made a mental map of London and traced through all the old street corners and alleyways in his mind.

  Elias opened one eye, but nothing seemed to be happening or changing. He squeezed more tightly, his fingers pressing even more firmly against the watch.

  Focus. Focus. Focus.

  He opened both eyes this time, and once again, everything appeared unchanged. He opened his mouth to speak but at that same moment, the lines of his vision began to blur. The images all around him became soft and hazy as they started to grow dark. He could tell Tyler was still standing there only due to his head of bright red hair, which pierced through the dimness. The sounds of David Bowie singing grew hollow; the music had a strange echo to it, and it started to sound more and more distant.

  This was so peculiar. The first time he had traveled through time and space it had been nearly instantaneous. He closed his eyes in the nineteenth and opened them in the twenty-first. It had been a seamless transition, and he hadn’t even realized it had happened until he was already there. But this was different. It was gradual, easing him out of this world before taking him wherever the magic so chose. It gave him time to think.

  Time to reconsider.

  It was only after he had already started to feel himself fading away that he changed his mind. He realized he wasn’t ready to leave it all behind quite yet. He didn’t want to think that this was the last time he would ever lay eyes on Tyler Forrester. He needed more time. But these thoughts set him off into an even deeper panic. What if second-guessing himself threw everything off and he wound up stuck or somewhere he had not originally intended? This sudden lack of concentration could be dangerous, but he could not fight against the pain as the sights and sounds of Tyler’s room grew even further away.

  “I want to stay!” he screamed, hot tears wetting his cheeks. “Please! Do you hear me? I’ve changed my mind!”

  He wasn’t sure why he had said you, as if the force that was making all this happen could somehow be personified. He also was not certain if Tyler could hear his screams of protest. His words felt muffled as they hit the air in front of him, and he could barely hear, let alone recognize, his own voice. All he could hear was the voice of Mr. Bowie as everything faded gradually to black.

  …

  When Elias opened his eyes, he was disoriented. He wasn’t in his bedroom and he was not in his grandfather’s room or his father’s study. But it was a room he recognized.

  It was the ballroom in the Illingsworth estate. The very spot where he had spilled the wine over Peter’s masterpiece that would one day hang in museums. Only currently, the space was empty. In terms of actual time that had passed by, it had not been that long since Elias had been in that room
for the party, but it felt like an eternity. And though their families had been so close, as he stood in the vast room, he felt like a stranger. An intruder, even.

  In this instance, he was intruding. He wiped his cheeks, which were still wet from the tears after changing his mind, and crept through the corridors, keeping as quiet as possible and looking all around him before crossing into a new hall. As much as the sudden absence of Tyler was causing him to ache, there was no point in turning back now. He just needed to make it out unseen and back to his parents’ home. But as he neared the exit, he was distracted by the sound of a familiar voice, humming.

  Through an open door was the parlor room, which had been converted into a studio for Peter. Inside was the artist, himself, hovering over the canvas with a pallet of oil paints.

  He should have simply kept going. Peter would not have noticed him at all. But the knowledge of the events that had transpired after his original disappearance—the alternate reality that was being altered in those very moments—made it feel like an eternity since he’d seen him. Words felt necessary. “Hello, Peter.”

  Peter whirled, his shoulders suddenly tense and eyes wide. “Elias. You startled me. What are you doing here unannounced?”

  “I just…” Elias searched for a reasonable excuse for his being there. “I wanted to come by and see how you were doing.”

  Peter frowned and started to rotate his easel so that it was facing away from the open doorway. “You know I do not allow anyone to view works in progress.”

  Before the canvas was angled away entirely, Elias caught sight of the near-finished piece. It was the lovers in Verona.

  “Working on another Romeo and Juliet scene?” Elias asked, trying his best to mask his guilt about having to make Peter recreate the painting after his little mishap.

  Peter flashed Elias a look of genuine befuddlement. “I’ve yet to paint a Shakespearean scene in my life. This is the first and only of its kind, at least by me. We will be hosting a gala for the unveiling. Your family is of course invited. Just do your best to act surprised when you see the finished piece that night and please, try to behave yourself, Caldwell.”

  Had the circumstances been different and if Elias had not just been through everything he had been through, he would have been bothered by the degree of condescension in Peter’s tone, but in this moment, he was elated. Not only had he successfully travelled to his intended destination with the watch, but he also went back just a bit further, now giving him the opportunity to alter events and make amends. A surge of joy sparked within him at the possibilities this might bring. He had been able to successfully travel to the place and year he’d intended to go. All those things that Tyler had told him right before he left about how they could use the watch to their advantage—how they could travel back to ensure the video was never released—it was actually possible. If Elias were to go back to Tyler after giving his family a proper goodbye and closure, who was to say that he could not simply show up before the mess with the video and all would be well?

  His sudden spark of joy was just as quickly doused by the simultaneous realization that even though he had made it to his approximate destination, he had not intended to end up in the Illingsworth’s home. He had also originally planned on arriving back at about the same time he had first disappeared but that didn’t happen, either. He showed up prior. This meant that, although he was able to execute the act of traveling, he still did not have complete control over the end result. This could prove even more problematic than travels being entirely random. What if Elias showed up at Briar Grove but a bit too early, and Tyler didn’t recognize him? They would have to start over entirely. Or, on the other end, what if he showed up far too late and Tyler was older and had decided to move on, made a name for himself as a filmmaker, and…perhaps…had found someone new? The thought was too much to bear.

  “Caldwell? Hello? Are you even listening to me?”

  Elias blinked. Peter was waving the hand that was not holding a brush in front of Elias’s face.

  “I beg your pardon. What were you saying?”

  Peter sighed, shaking his head. “I was telling you that you better not create a scene at my unveiling. Your invite is still a tentative one after what happened at the holiday party last year.”

  Elias looked at Peter, looked to the canvas that he had seen so many years in the future, decorating the wall of a museum, and then back to Peter. He felt guilty, and not just about the wine he’d spilt on this painting in another life, but for all the times Elias had embarrassed Peter or blatantly ignored Peter’s words of advice because he didn’t like being made to feel less than. He thought back to the plaque in the museum and the story of how Peter had dedicated the painting in his memory and worked to help Elias’s grieving family try to find him. After all, the strain their friendship had been through and all the indignation, he could finally see that Peter had always been coming from a good place. It had taken all of that for him to finally realize it. He may not have loved him in the way that Elias had wanted—in the way that Tyler had come to—but in his own way, he really did care about Elias and his family.

  Elias wished only that he had been able to realize this sooner. Maybe then he wouldn’t have acted so boorish around him in the past.

  “I promise, I shall be on my very best behavior,” Elias said.

  Peter scoffed. “Whatever you say, Caldwell.”

  “I mean it,” Elias insisted, hoping that he sounded as earnest as he felt. “I also want to let you know that I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For everything.”

  Peter opened his mouth to reply but closed it just as quickly. It was clear the apology had caught him off guard, as he struggled to put together a response. Eventually he just nodded. “Yes…well…very good.”

  Elias nodded to the painting. “You really do have tremendous talent. I see big things for you, Peter. Mark my words, one day your paintings will be gracing the finest museums all across the globe.”

  Peter smiled and let out a slight laugh. “Not that I do not appreciate the flattery, but I have work to do.”

  “Right, right. Well I can’t wait to see it once it’s complete.”

  Upon departing the Illingsworth manor, he practically sprinted all the way home. As he passed through the market and the square, people flashed him strange looks, but he did not give it a second thought. His reconciliation made him feel lighter, unburdened—well not entirely unburdened. But a weight had certainly been removed from his shoulders. But more weight started to pile on in its place as his mind wandered back to Tyler. Already he was feeling empty being so far away from him. He was so sure he’d already made up his mind that he would be staying away for Tyler’s benefit. Even if he did end up changing his mind…even if he did try to go back to Tyler in the future, things were still uncertain, to say the least.

  He tried to shake the heavy thoughts from his mind. One worry at a time, he told himself. Once he entered his parents’ home, he paced the halls until he spotted his little sister in the den.

  “Samantha, my dear, sweet girl.” He wanted to cry, especially with the dreadful stories from that book lingering in his mind, but he restrained. “How are you, love? I have missed you!”

  “What do you mean?” she asked in her high-pitched voice.

  Elias ignored the question and went to pick her up, spinning her around in the air. As he did, she giggled and squealed, and the sound of her delight brought so much joy to Elias.

  “Elias?”

  He turned, Samantha still cradled in one arm, balancing against his hip. Their mother stood in the doorway. During his last encounter with her she had been shrill and cold, and Elias was so certain that he hated her because that was how she felt about him. But now he looked at her with different eyes. There was a softness now as he thought, not of the woman who wanted to send him away to a German reformatory, but instead of the woman who, in a different life, had thought she lost her only son and given up eve
rything looking for him and trying to get him back.

  Even now, there was a certain sense of concern as she said, “Where have you been? I have been looking for you all morning.”

  “I was just over at the Illingsworth’s to see Peter. He is almost finished with his new painting. He would not show it to me, but I believe this one is going to be rather spectacular.”

  His mother looked surprised to hear Elias giving Peter any sort of praise. “Well,” she said, “I am certain that it will be. Though I wish you had told me you were going over there. Mildred made some extra sweet rolls and I had been planning on bringing them over to Evelyn.”

  “I can bring them tomorrow,” Elias offered.

  Once again, his mother was shocked. “Yes…well…indeed.” And she left down the hall.

  Elias set Samantha down, placing a light kiss on her head then quickly made for the next stop on his list.

  He knocked on the door and waited until he heard Walter Caldwell’s voice say, “Come in!”

  Elias opened the door and rushed to his grandfather, hugging him as tightly as was acceptable.

  “My boy,” Walter said, warm laughter punctuating his words. “What is the cause for such a warm greeting?”

  “Grandfather, it worked. It…it really worked.”

  “What did?”

  Elias took a step back and pulled the pocket watch from his old coat. He then held it up, presenting the object to its original owner.

  His grandfather’s eyes grew wide. “How did you…” He went over to his nightstand and pulled open the drawer. His jaw dropped when he found it to be empty, “Elias, have you been rifling through my belongings?”

  “You gave it to me,” Elias said. “Although technically, for you now, that hasn’t happened yet.” Elias’s head hurt from the bizarre statement.

  It took Walter a moment, but once what his grandson was saying appeared to sink in, he simply laughed. “Ah yes, time is a tricky thing, isn’t it? The first few times I travelled, while I was still learning how to work that old thing, I certainly overshot—or perhaps undershot—my target. Anyway, that is beside the point now. How was your journey, my dear boy?”