by Alison Tyler
She wondered what Nina would say if she told her she’d come back in time from the year 2008. Wondered how Nina would deal with the situation if she found herself suddenly in 1958. She’d probably love every second of it.
‘Come on,’ Nina taunted her. ‘Do you?’
‘I wouldn’t vote him off the island,’ Dori said, and then, at the blank look on Nina’s face, realized her slip of the tongue and said quickly, ‘Well, yeah. It’s obvious, isn’t it?’
Nina’s eyes shone, but then she suddenly moved out from behind the counter. Dori looked in the mirror at the back of the store, and saw that a customer had entered. When she turned around, she understood why Nina had moved so quickly.
‘Can I help you?’ Nina twittered.
The man entering the store was over six feet tall, with long dark hair and eyelashes like a girl’s. He had dark green eyes and a strong jaw, and … Dori’s heart seemed to stop.
It wasn’t just that a man had entered the store – a rare occurrence in general, The Beauty Box was such a girly haven – that made her breathing speed up. And it wasn’t just that this was without a doubt the man who had fucked her at Rocky Horror the weekend before – something she knew instantly in her gut when she saw him again. But the real thing that twisted her stomach in knots was the fact that this man was Rowan.
Nina was all over him, fluttering her still-wet nails, trying to see how she might help him while beaming out messages with her eyes. How she’d really like to help him, silently offering him treats not for sale in the store. Dori easily understood the appeal. Rowan was as good looking as ever. Flashing green eyes, shining black hair. He was dressed casually in well-worn jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt with a barbed wire pattern across the chest and down the arms, looking more like a rock star on a casual day than an engineer. He listened as Nina began to explain the new specials the salon was offering, but he stared at Dori the entire time.
How had he gotten here? Her mind was playing tricks on her. That’s what had happened. Just as she’d finally accepted her fate of being stuck in 1988 forever, something new popped up for her to deal with.
The man wasn’t really Rowan, was he?
Heart pounding, she remained behind the counter, watching, feeling safety behind the barrier of the glass countertop and the large, old-fashioned register. She hadn’t seen him in twenty years. Not since graduation. But she knew it was him. Yet he wasn’t eighteen. He was the same age as she was.
Up until now, she’d felt as if she was dealing with the time switch in a fairly decent manner. Part of her was sure that she was either caught in some hallucinogenic dream – or that she had been in some sort of terrible accident and was in a coma. Who knew what people’s minds did when they were unconscious, right?
But now, now that Rowan had entered not only the store, but her dreams, she started to have doubts. She wouldn’t have known what he looked like in the future. She’d last seen him the summer after graduating from high school.
He listened to Nina, telling him about the newest shaving kit for men, but his eyes kept returning to Dori. She looked down, started to reorganize the display case filled with overflowing baskets of multi-colored rubber bangles, bringing the bright neon-pink ones to the front and pushing the celadon ones to the rear. Then she took a deep breath and looked back up again.
He was coming closer.
Jesus. What was he going to say?
‘I looked for you.’
Of all the things he might have said to her, she hadn’t expected that, hadn’t expected to hear the harsh tone in his voice, as if she’d disappointed him. Her stomach lurched. ‘What do you mean?’
‘At the dance. I thought we had a date.’
Her eyes widened. He was talking about the reunion, wasn’t he? Was he crazy? Dori wouldn’t have been the least surprised if he’d started the conversation in any of the following ways:
‘How are you here?’
‘Why are we meeting in 1988 rather than 2008?’
‘How’d you get back in time?’
But the reproach in his tone sparked her own memory of the dance – of feeling Luke’s hand on her shoulder and thinking the touch was Rowan’s, of the bitter disappointment that had flooded through her.
‘I looked for you, too,’ she said, and she felt anger swell through her and was grateful for the sensation. ‘You didn’t show up.’
‘I was late.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s all it takes for you to go and fuck someone else?’
Who talked like this? Nina was watching the two of them intently, paying careful attention to the interaction, as if trying to store up every tiny bit of information to share with Bette when her boss returned with the coffee. The buxom redhead appeared both shocked and intrigued by what Rowan had said about Dori. There was a soap opera playing out on the floor of the store and, although that wasn’t a strange concept in itself, the players were unusual. Good girl Emma had been out fucking someone other than Van? This type of gossip was pure gold in Nina’s world.
Dori turned to look at Nina. ‘I’m going to go for a walk for a minute. Tell Bette I’ll be right back.’
She headed out of the store, certain that Rowan would follow her. Now, her emotions were at war. She was still intensely curious – how in the hell was he in the 1980s, too? But she was angry, as well. How dare he talk to her like that? He’d ruined her night. Well, until Luke had shown up. God, was he right? It only took a man being a bit late in order for her to head off with someone else.
Had she fucked Luke to get back at Rowan?
She stormed down the street and he followed at her side. Neither one speaking. They both knew exactly where they were headed – the alley behind The Majestic. This was where they’d always gone, whether to make out, or make up.
Back in the graffiti-filled space, Dori leaned against one wall and looked at him. Yes, he was every last bit as attractive as she remembered, although she’d never envisioned him dressed in 1980s garb as a grown-up. She almost smiled. He looked good, not as if he were in costume, which was still how she felt – kicky black skirt, bright blue crinolines to match the spiked tips of her hair, net fingerless gloves – as if she’d plucked all the pieces from a dress-up box. She was enjoying the costume aspect of the clothing, while he appeared at home in his. He looked different.
He looked … sexy.
‘You have no idea how much time I’ve put into this,’ he said next, and as she watched him pace, she wondered what he was talking about.
‘Years,’ he said. ‘I’ve been working on this for years. A side project, you know? A wishful endeavor. And I just managed to get all of the kinks worked out – or most of the kinks, anyway – and you go along and leave with fucking Luke. Or, rather, you leave and go and fuck Luke.’
‘I don’t –’ she started finally, but he wouldn’t let her speak.
‘You did. I know you did. I saw the picture.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ she tried next. ‘I mean, all of the other stuff you’re saying. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I sent you back here, Dori. I fixed it so that we could hit the 80s together …’
‘You did this?’
Again, she wasn’t sure what to think. Should she be angry? Or flattered? Or …
Rowan came forward and wrapped his arms around her, and Dori stopped thinking about how she should think for a moment, and just started to feel instead.
‘I missed you,’ he said.
‘You already said that. You were late.’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t mean that I missed you at the dance. I mean, over the past twenty years. Didn’t you miss me? Did you ever think about me? Did you ever wonder what would have happened if we’d stayed together?’
She swallowed hard and looked up into his eyes. She could see him in two ways, same as she had with Luke – the high school kid, wise beyond his years, but always slightly insecure. And then the man, a true man, who was holding her now, lifting her
up in his embrace.
‘Yeah,’ she said honestly, looking into his beautiful eyes. ‘I missed you.’
‘Then why’d you go and fuck that egotistical bastard?’
Her eyes widened. She’d believed that now her whole gang was grown up, a hook-up like that wouldn’t matter. Damn Chelsea, with their phones. She tried to figure out what had happened. First, he must have called, to tell Dori he would be late, and Chelsea hadn’t given her the message. And then she’d gone and sent the bondage picture to him. The girl was a bitch through and through, but she’d always known that, hadn’t she?
‘Why would you do that, Dori?’
She shook her head. She didn’t know. She’d wanted a break from reality. Well, she’d gotten that all right. One she wasn’t entirely sure she’d ever recover from. But was this really what they should be focusing on? She had so many other questions.
‘What do you mean, that you sent me back?’ she started. ‘Why would you do that? I’ mean, how would you …’
But he silenced her query with his lips on hers, and she shivered, feeling as if there’d never been a break between them. As if she’d always been his. Why had they broken up in the first place? She’d gone off to one school, he’d gone to another, and in spite of their intentions to remain true to one another, the very best intentions eighteen-year-olds could make, real life had gotten in the way. They’d attempted to stay together for a little while. They’d written letters. A lot of letters in the first month, fewer in the second. She’d been consumed by how much she’d disliked school, had been embarrassed when she dropped out the first time. Along with dropping out, she’d dropped Rowan.
He was the one to break the embrace, setting her down on the ground and staring at her. ‘How could you go with someone else so quickly?’
‘What do you mean?’ Was he still talking about Luke?
‘Van … at the club.’
Her eyes lit up. She remembered. He’d been there, too. Hadn’t he? Bumped into her on the dance floor. But before she had realized that it was him, Van had pulled her off to the corner, and they’d had sex again. Sex that had blended into something else, sex with Mica …
‘I thought I was dreaming …’ She hoped he understood what she meant. She’d thought the whole damn thing was a dream. And for the first time in her life, she’d finally been able to act the way she wanted to in dreams.
He kissed her again. There was violence in the way he kissed her, but her body reacted surprisingly. She was wet. So wet. But her arousal couldn’t stop the questions from flooding her mind, from breaking free. Now that there was someone who knew what she was going through, now that there was someone who understood, she wanted to ask him every last query that had occurred to her over the past three weeks. And she started with this: ‘Why did you even bring me back?’
‘I wanted to be sure.’
‘Sure of what?’
‘Sure that I was doing the right thing. You make one change, everything else can be affected. That’s why I couldn’t just snatch you back out. You’d already seen people, talked to them, been involved. The more I pulled you around, the more of a mess we might have made.’
He kissed her again.
‘A mess,’ she repeated, trying to stay on track, but having a difficult time. The way his lips felt against hers was too good. He kissed her again, and she let the kiss melt over her. She felt the warmth of his lips on hers, and felt something else, the way his body pressed against hers, the hardness of him. She remembered that from school, as well. But aside from that one single time, they’d never been able to act on his arousal, or hers. She’d always stopped them before things got out of hand.
When he looked down at her, she saw a glint in his green eyes, saw the question there, and she sucked in her breath and nodded. Right now, nothing else mattered. Right now, all she needed was him.
He was quick, then. Pulling her fuchsia satin panties aside. Ripping open the fly of his jeans. She caught one good look at his cock before he was thrusting forward, thrusting hard.
Oh, fuck, he felt so good inside of her. He filled her up, and then he lifted her up, holding her against the wall with his strength. Keeping her positioned perfectly to receive his cock.
‘Dori,’ he said, as he thrust forward.
He knew her. That’s what turned her on so much. He was looking into her eyes, and he knew her. She wasn’t Emma, wasn’t thirty-one, wasn’t in town on vacation. She was Dori Martin, solidly thirty-eight, wrapped in the embrace of the one man she’d ever truly loved.
Rowan rocked against her, bringing his face to her shoulder, biting the ridge of her collar bone, and she understood from that gesture that he’d been the one to fuck her at The Majestic. She wondered whether he’d expected her to recognize him that night in the bathroom, whether he’d thought she would realize who he was from how he touched her.
But the experience had been too unexpected. Now, she could focus. Now, she could really feel him.
He caressed her as he fucked her, moving one hand over her body, running his fingers over her breasts, then down the flat of her belly. He slid one hand between their bodies to touch her clit, to stroke her pussy, then brought his fingertips to her mouth for her to lick clean.
She was wetter than she ever remembered, and they’d only just started. God, if he kept doing that, staring into her eyes as he fucked her, she would come in moments. She’d adored fucking Van, but there had been something missing. And she’d pushed down the feeling each time, refused to pay attention to what her heart was telling her.
What had been lacking?
Not the excitement. They had plenty of that. But definitely something. Depth? Was that it? Desire that went beyond the cravings of skin on skin. With Rowan, she felt the connection that they’d had from the start, twenty years ago. Felt as if they had never been apart, as if this were her real life and all the rest, the years that had passed since high school, those years had been a dream.
Rowan thrust against her, harder yet, and she groaned and bit into her bottom lip.
Once more, he slid one hand between their bodies, working his fingertips over her clit, and she moaned out loud. Oh, he was touching her just right. He knew precisely how to do it. Fingers making dangerous little circles. Ovals. Diamonds. Fingertips pressing perfectly around and around, not stroking her with too much force. Not yet. Not until she could take the pressure.
Her eyes focused on the graffiti on the wall behind him. TLA. And she realized something in a snap. Sure, she’d had fun with Van. She’d been on a crazy, roller coaster of a ride. But that’s what had been missing.
True Love Always.
Rowan bucked his hips harder and Dori wrapped her legs even tighter around his waist. Flat waist. Hard body. He was every bit as handsome now as he’d been in 1988. Of course, this was 1988.
Rowan skated his fingertips in a rapid motion over her clit, and she shut her eyes and let the climax take over. Let those sparking shooting stars of pleasure appear behind her tightly-shut lids. Her climax brought Rowan to his own limits, and he called out her name as he came, saying the word over and over, ‘Dori, Dori. Dori.’
She thought she would die if this turned out to be a dream. If she woke up alone in a hotel room, surrounded by beige walls and a beige life. She would jump off a ledge if this wasn’t her new reality.
If Rowan hadn’t just managed to make all her dreams come true.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Gael’s little red-haired nymphet served them coffee in the classic white porcelain cups. Dori waited until the girl had moved back behind the counter before she begged, ‘Explain everything again. You know, like when you used to help me in Trig. Because I swear, Rowan, I’m not getting this.’
Rowan smiled at her, but not as if he thought she was dense, simply because he seemed glad that she was at his side. Still his words grated on her. ‘You’re not really trying.’
‘Believe me, I am. For the past three weeks, I’ve been trying my best t
o figure this all out.’
‘In between fucking that delivery boy and shopping for sex toys?’ There was the slightest edge to his comment, an undercurrent of anger beneath the sarcasm.
She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘What did you expect me to do? Sit on my hands and wait for some knight in battered denim to come save me? I was trying to figure out what was going on, and I simply went with what life offered me.’
‘And what did you come up with?’
No, he wasn’t angry. He was teasing her, clearly enjoying himself. But she understood why. She had the same just-been-fucked feeling that he did. A pleasure that still echoed deliciously within her. For the first time since she’d slipped back in time, her predicament seemed almost comical rather than borderline tragic. Like the punch line to a joke: What’s worse than being stood up at your own reunion?
Waking up in the fucking 80s.
‘Not much,’ she said honestly. ‘I watched a bunch of movies. And I tried to remember the plot lines of the ones that weren’t out yet. But basically I was just operating under the assumption that I’d been in some kind of horrific accident. Or that this was all a hallucinogenic dream. And I’d wake up at some point and be me again.’
‘You’re you,’ he grinned. ‘You’re just you in 1988.’
‘Right. And that’s the part I don’t understand.’
He went to the counter to snag a pen from the waitress, and then returned to the table and began to draw an intricate diagram on a paper napkin. Dori watched for a minute. When she saw all of the mathematical equations he was penning, numbers tripping over each other in his hurry to explain, she reached over for the napkin and crumpled it up in her fist. ‘You know I’ve never been great with the science stuff.’
‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘I was just trying to give you the background details. I’ve been working on this for ages,’ he said, ‘ever since high school. You remember when I won the science award senior year?’
‘Yeah.’ She hadn’t understood what he’d made then, and didn’t understand any better now.
‘Well, it was a prototype for this. My first attempt at a time –’
