“That was Travis in there? The Travis Brandon? Texas State’s star quarterback? I wasn’t hallucinating?”
He nodded. “We’ve been seeing each other since the beginning of the semester.”
“Wait a minute. You told me that Travis liked me.”
He brushed a hand through his wet hair nervously.
“Yeah, well, uh . . . he does like you.”
“I’m confused. He’s been with you all this time. But I’ve seen him with lots of other girls. And then with me. He was all over me on our date. You even encouraged me to date him and—”
My breath caught as realization hit me. The strained smile at Club Vortex, the obvious display of public groping, it was all a show and now I knew why.
“You set me up.”
Greg looked at me sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to. Travis was freaking out that people were going to find out about us. He wanted to break it off. I couldn’t let him go.”
“Ugh! I can’t believe you did that to me.” I whacked his damp chest.
“Watch it with the cold hands, woman. I was going to tell you. Today. Honest. I knew you weren’t into Travis, and you’re the only person I could trust.”
“You should’ve told me.”
“I know. I wasn’t thinking straight. I love him, Nicole. I’d do anything to keep him with me.”
His blue eyes pleaded for forgiveness. As much as I wanted to stay mad at him, for the first time in my life, I actually understood what it felt like to do anything for love.
“I guess I can understand. But no more secrets. Not from me anyway.”
He ducked his head and pecked my cheek. “You’re the best. So what’s the crazy stuff you wanted to tell me?”
I took a long drink of water wondering how I was going to explain everything to him. If it was going to make any sense at all, I’d have to start from the beginning. And preferably with him wearing clothes.
“Maybe you should put on something.”
“Why? I like to air dry.”
I chuckled. That was my Greg.
“Well, after Travis ditched me to run after his car—by the way, I’m not letting him off the hook easily on that one, love of your life or not—Cooper brought me home.”
“He didn’t.” His baby blues widened.
“He did. And after I went to bed the strangest thing happened. I woke up and—”
“Nicole, Greg, you’re up,” Rainbow said as she stepped into the kitchen carrying a duffle bag. “Oh, my. You’re really up.”
She gazed down at the tent shaped dishtowel, her eyebrows arched looking impressed. She cleared her throat and placed the duffle bag on the floor. “I’m glad you’re both here. You can finally meet my life partner, Meadow. She just drove up a few minutes ago. Meadow, this is my niece . . . Nicole? Nicole!”
The bottled water slipped out of my hand onto the floor. Blood slowly drained from my face as I gawked at a woman with a large traveling backpack standing behind my aunt. For some strange reason her body and the backpack were tilting sideways and so was the room. Rainbow and Greg must’ve noticed too because they were yelling out my name seconds before my head hit the kitchen floor. Before I blacked out, I called out a name too.
Charlie.
Chapter Three
I wasn’t a fainter. Really, I wasn’t. At least, I didn’t think I was . . . until today.
With all the crazy that happened within the last few hours, could anyone blame me for taking a nosedive to the floor when I spotted Charlie standing in the kitchen doorway? With all the head banging, I was surprised I hadn’t gone into a coma. Now my head was throbbing from the front and the back.
Moaning, I opened my eyes and gazed up at a fully dressed Greg. My head laid on his lap as he sat on a beanbag. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“It was him, wasn’t it, the guy in your dreams? It was Cooper all this time.”
My throat constricted. I was finally hearing it said out loud for the first time. Going back in time, falling in love with a young Cooper, it was real. The dreams were no longer dreams. They were memories. The emptiness I’d felt for almost my entire life disappeared the moment I’d fallen in love with Jax, and now I didn’t know if I could get him back.
“Charlie told you?”
Smiling, he brushed my bangs back and pecked my forehead.
“You just had to go and outdo my drama, didn’t you? I thought I’d win for sure when I fell for the reputed manwhore star quarterback. Then I found out that he felt the same way about me, and I wasn’t able to tell my best friend.” His voice caught as he gave me a sad smile.
He was serious. A dull ache crept into my chest. I’d missed him falling in love for the first time. I was so caught up in what I’d thought were freaky-deaky hallucinations and trying not to fall for Cooper that I didn’t catch the subtle changes in Greg, how he seemed to glow whenever he was with Travis or how they always seemed to be together. How could I have missed that?
“I meant what I said before,” I said. “No more secrets. I don’t want to miss out on any part of your life.”
Or Jax’s or Caroline’s. There was nothing I could do about that, but I could be there for Greg.
“So where’s Travis?” I asked.
“I sent him home. I told him it was your time of the month and that he should stay as far away as possible.”
“Greg! Why did you tell him that?”
I sat up way too fast, causing my head to almost explode. I moaned.
“I had to make up some explanation for why you fainted,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d want him to know the real reason. Time travel, Nicole? I’m still having a hard time believing it. It can’t be possible.”
“But it is,” Charlie said as she walked into the living room with Rainbow. Penny clucked happily, waddling between their feet. I blinked at how pretty Charlie looked. She’d grown out her hair, and it now lay in soft golden waves to her shoulders. The subtle lines around brown eyes added to her natural beauty. She always had an air of confidence, but now something was different. There was a quiet wisdom around her.
“Here you go, dear. It’s chamomile; it’ll calm you down.” Rainbow handed me a teacup. “It sounds like you’ve had a rough few weeks according to Charlie.”
You could say that again.
“Did you know about all this time travel stuff?”
“Not really,” she said. “When I met Meadow, your Charlie, years ago. She told me about a stranger she took in and how she just disappeared one day. I didn’t give it a second thought that the girl’s name was Nicole. There are lots of girls with that name.”
“And I had no idea that you were from a different time,” Charlie added as she rocked back and forth on a purple chair.
The rocking chair!
I bit down on my lip, fighting back tears as memories of holding a sleeping Caroline tightly against my chest flitted across my mind.
“Where’d that come from? It wasn’t here before,” I croaked.
“This?” She furrowed her brow, surprised by my reaction. Then slowly her lips curled into a smile. “Ah, I remember. I bought this when you lived with me. You loved rocking in this chair.”
And the person I’d cradled in it.
“Rainbow had it in her room while I was gone.”
Handing my tea to Greg, I stood up carefully, my legs wobbling. I went to Charlie’s side and placed my hand on the chair’s arm. Strawberry blond pigtails and freckles swept from my mind into my chest and nestled itself deep into my heart.
“How did I go back in time?”
I searched Charlie’s eyes for the answer. She stopped rocking and gently placed her hand over mine.
My heart sank before the words left her mouth. There was no answer.
“I don’t know. You just showed up. Do you remember how we first met?”
I shook my head. “All I remember is waking up and finding you in the kitchen.”
“I remember that. That
was the first time I’d heard of Google. I thought you were pulling words out of your ass.” She laughed.
“This is so interesting,” Greg said. “When I came in late last night, I heard you snoring. I even checked your room. You were passed out on your bed with a half-eaten fudge square in your hand.”
“Fudge?” Rainbow asked looking nervous.
“Yeah,” I said. “There was a plateful of it on the kitchen counter. I hope you don’t mind—what? What’s wrong, Charlie?”
Charlie’s eyes widened for a moment then she busted out laughing. “That wasn’t fudge. It was chicken food. It’s a special recipe for Penny.”
I groaned as Greg broke out into a fit of laughter. Penny cocked her head to the side with an accusatory glare.
Great. I was never going to hear the end of it from him, and Penny looked like she was going to attack my ankles.
“So you don’t remember anything after you ate Penny’s food?” Charlie asked between laughs.
“No.”
“Do you remember going with me to buy my moped?”
“That was your moped?”
“Yep, but you acted like it was yours, so I let you drive it.”
“That’s because I thought it was mine.” I paced the floor, frustrated that I couldn’t remember. “Why can’t I remember any of this?”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, you were in a daze for a few weeks. It wasn’t until the night of the party when you started coming out of your shell.”
“I don’t remember any party.”
“Hmm, that’s strange. I’d think you’d at least remember that. Being naked and all.”
I froze. “I was naked?”
“Only for a few minutes,” she added quickly. “I told Lou not to give you any of his mushrooms.”
“Lou.” Rainbow rolled her eyes.
“Whoa! You were naked in public? Wait a minute.” Greg plopped himself in front of Charlie. Sitting cross-legged, he propped his hand under his chin. “Okay, spill.”
“Greg,” I sighed as I sank down onto a beanbag. Part of me wanted to whack him. The other part wanted to hug him.
“Hey, you went time traveling without me. Let me have some fun here.”
“There’s not much to tell. You stripped down and got into Lou’s hot tub.”
“WHAT?” Oh my god! Lou saw me naked!
“You don’t remember that?”
“No,” I moaned. And apparently Lou didn’t either. Thank goodness for that.
“We talked about The Feminine Mystique,” she said. “You’d been reading it earlier that day.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Not even when Lou hit on you?”
Rainbow and Greg’s animated voices spoke over each other.
“Lou hit on you?”
“Man, this just keeps getting better and better.”
Somebody kill me now. I’d obviously kept that memory in the deepest recesses of my mind for a reason.
“It was just a little harmless flirting,” Charlie said.
“He hasn’t done anything since then has he, Nicole?” Rainbow asked, her brow furrowed with worry.
“No, he barely remembers my name.”
Thank goodness.
“Good. Because friend or not, if he ever . . .” Rainbow’s voice shook, her face turned a slight shade of pink. She paused, catching herself, and took a deep breath. “Well, let’s just leave it at that.”
I gave her a grateful smile. I couldn’t imagine peace-loving Rainbow ever raising a hand to anyone. But when she came over to my side, sat down, and placed a protective arm around me, I knew she’d do whatever it took to make sure I was safe.
“Okay, so it’s clear that parts of my brain are swiss cheese, and I just have no memory of how I first met you. Tell me that you remember something, Charlie.”
“I do,” she said softly. “I first saw you standing at the edge of the bridge looking down at the river.”
I sucked in a breath. It always came back to that bridge.
“You didn’t have anything with you. No suitcase, no backpack, only the clothes on your back. I thought you were going to jump. When I approached you, you just gave me a blank look. It’s the same look I’d seen with the women I’d worked with in the shelter. I thought maybe you were running from someone, so I asked if you wanted to come home with me. You didn’t say anything. You just followed me home.”
“I didn’t have anything with me? What about the clothes in the closet?”
“The people who’d rented this place before me left them there. I’d planned to clean it out, but then I ran into you, and you seemed to fit into the clothes. Like I said, you barely said a word except to talk about things you learned in a past chemistry class. I figured it would be good for you to have some structure, so I helped you enroll for a few classes.”
“Including the chemistry class I had with Jax.” I blinked back tears that threatened to spill over. “What happened when I . . . when I left.”
Charlie’s eyes grew sad, and the room became tense with silence. As if sensing how difficult this was for me, Greg crawled his way back to me and placed my hand in his. With him on one side and Rainbow on the other, I felt their strength holding me up.
“Jax went insane looking for you. We thought maybe you were injured and lying in some remote ditch. He organized a search party. He even had a bunch of student groups volunteer to look for you. We placed posters everywhere. The sheriff’s office put you out as a missing person. But when they couldn’t even find a birth certificate on you, people stopped looking. Some people even thought Jax was making it all up. There was no trace that a Nicole Applewood had ever existed.”
“Applewood?” Greg raised an eyebrow. “You named yourself after bacon?”
“Long story.” I waved my hand, shushing him. “I made up the name.”
“Jax knew you’d made it up,” Charlie said. “He kept hounding me for your real name. I told him that I didn’t know either. You never told me, and I hadn’t asked. I told Jax how I found you and suggested that maybe the person you were hiding from had found you and you disappeared to escape. He didn’t want to believe that you’d just leave like that. I could tell that it killed him to even think that you didn’t trust him enough to go to him for help. And Caroline, she was . . .” Tears welled in her eyes.
I closed my eyes, envisioning sweet Caroline crying with Ethel in her arms. After everything she’d gone through with her abusive father, and then I just vanished.
“The poor girl wouldn’t talk to anyone, not even Jax. And then Julie got sick, really sick. Jax was running himself ragged taking care of her, Caroline, and looking for you at the same time. Then one day, I went to their house to check in on Julie, and they were gone.”
While Greg patted my back and I sobbed into my hands, Charlie explained to him that Caroline was Jax’s sister and Julie was their mom.
I’d been right. Jax and Caroline did think I’d abandoned them. His mother was sick and he needed help, and I wasn’t there. Even if I could somehow convince Jax that I was Nicole, his Nicole, would he forgive me for everything I’d put him through?
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Greg said. “Why did Cooper come back to Texas State?”
“I’m not sure,” Charlie said. “I was shocked when I first ran into him. I hardly recognized his face; he was so different. Hardened. I didn’t have a chance to ask questions about why he’d returned. I left for Tibet a few days after he moved into town.”
“It was a mistake coming here,” I said. “My being here is making things worse for him.”
It was time to face the hard facts. Even though he’d been distant, Jax was an excellent professor. But the more I’d run into him around town and in class, the more he seemed to deteriorate right before my eyes. I didn’t know why then, but I knew now. It was me.
“A wise woman once told me that sometimes you have to work through the pain before you can get to the other side of healing and
happiness,” Rainbow said.
“I wonder who that was.” Charlie winked.
I looked from Charlie to Rainbow, not having a clue what they were talking about. “I’m confused.”
“Me too,” Greg said.
“You were meant to be here, Nicole.” Rainbow caressed my cheek. “Just as I was meant to be with Meadow. And as painful as it is, Jax is meant to be here too. I know why he came back.”
“Why?”
“For the same reason you were meant to go back in time. To find his heart.”
Chapter Four
Sitting on the floor of the dimly lit hall, I studied the shiny black placard on the door. The name Professor Cooper glittered in gold. I couldn’t help but be proud of what he’d accomplished in such a short period of time. I couldn’t sleep, so I spent most of the night searching for information on him. News article after news article described him as a star in his field. He’d won dozens of prestigious awards on his work on angiogenesis inhibitors. I had no idea what that was, but apparently it was a big deal because one article speculated how his patent was potentially worth millions.
It was so early I had to wait for the campus building maintenance to let me inside. There was no way Jax would be in his office this early, but I’d wanted to be near him, and sitting across the hall from his office was the closest I could get.
Closing my eyes, I leaned back against the wall, letting memories of our time together filter through my mind: his dimpled grin; his constant teasing and laughter; and the way he held my hand as we laid in the park, forgetting the world as the clouds rolled across the deep blue sky.
It was hard to believe that it hadn’t even been forty-eight hours since I’d seen that Jax and been kissed and loved by him. I believed Rainbow when she said Jax was here to find his heart, because I’d found my heart in him. Within Professor Cooper’s hardened exterior, I knew my Jax, my heart, was still in there. I’d seen him. The way he took care of his student’s baby at Jitters snuggling the infant against his chest. The way he held me in Club Vortex. The soft expression on his face that night when he brought me home and gazed at the Christmas lights, lost in a memory. He was still here. He had to be.
Your Gravity: Part Three Page 2
