by Alison Tyler
He had to work to get the rhythm right, now that they were really fucking, now that the bed was truly moving beneath them. Until suddenly Rowan seemed to want something more. Something else. He lifted her up in his arms, took her off the bed, pressed her up against the wall. She groaned at the feeling of being trapped between his body and cold gold-painted plaster of her mother’s bedroom wall. Groaned as he fucked her so hard she thought she could see stars.
This was a benefit of getting older, she suddenly thought. High school kids didn’t know how to fuck like this. Because, Jesus, Rowan was hitting all the right moves. Slamming against her, letting her feel how hard he was, and then gripping her up once more, hands cradling her ass and pumping into her. Again and again and again.
Only when she felt herself teetering on the brink of a second climax did he seem ready to give in. Back they went to the bed, this time with Rowan behind her, gripping into her short blue-tipped black hair, pummeling her steadily with the force and the speed she required. Doggy-style on the waterbed took every ounce of her concentration. The rolling of the bed set her in continual motion, but the give and sway of the mattress made the sensation of being fucked so much more delicious, as if Rowan was the one constant in this equation.
At the very end, he brought one hand underneath her body, and he just tightroped his fingertips over her clit, so that she came, eyes wet from the pleasure, totally silent from the awe of it, from the feeling that she had been transported through time twenty years to experience the fuck of her life.
‘But why didn’t you get me sooner?’ Dori asked afterward. She had slid on his T-shirt and her panties, and then climbed back into bed. Rowan’s arm was thrown over her body, and she felt safe next to him, safe with the weight of him by her side.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why didn’t you bring me back earlier? Why didn’t you call me up and ask me out for a date? You know, like in 2005.’
‘I only just managed to make the device work in the last few months, and things weren’t even going so smoothly until just before the reunion …’
‘I don’t mean bring me back in time.’ She play-punched him. ‘I mean, why didn’t you call me? Talk to me. Send me an email. Let me know you were thinking of me.’ Other than the few exchanges they’d had before the reunion, she hadn’t talked to him in twenty years. She wriggled out from under his arm to get into better position. She wanted to be staring into his eyes when he answered. She wanted to both see and hear the truth.
‘You were taken. Violet said …’
‘Violet.’
‘You know we were close in school. We’ve kept in touch every so often. A phone call here. An email there. If you’d married Bryce …’
‘Yes?’
‘If you had, I’d have left you alone. I didn’t want to pull you away from someone you loved, from the life you were supposed to have.’
‘So what changed it?’
‘Violet told me the two of you broke up. And I’d just gotten the device to work. And I thought why not? We’d always talked about taking an adventure together.’
Dori’s eyes widened. ‘This is one hell of an adventure.’
‘Look, it was really difficult. I had to choose a time when neither of us would run into our younger selves. Your family is abroad. Mine is away for the summer. I had to choose a time when you would be back in town. The reunion was perfect. Because the device sends you back to the exact spot you’re standing on. If you were standing on a road that used to be a river, you’d wind up getting swept downstream. If you were on a field that had become a highway, you’d be dodging DeLoreans. This was the time to do it. To meet. To see whether or not we really were meant to be with each other.’
‘And what do you think?’ She felt tears in her eyes. Had she fucked this all up? Being with Van wasn’t something she’d usually have done. She didn’t fall into bed with people on the first date. Or the first afternoon. But she’d thought this was a dream, had been sure this wasn’t real life. And for once she’d decided to throw her insecurities away and act on her impulses.
‘I think, yes,’ he said. ‘I think true love always. How about you, Dori? How about you?’
She felt as if she were swallowing over a fist-sized lump in her throat, but as she nodded he continued to speak.
‘You showed me up, though. You fit in better than I could. You didn’t mope around. You didn’t wait for someone to help you, to save you. You just dived in. I don’t know why, but I didn’t think things would happen like that.’
‘You can’t predict people.’
Rowan smiled at her. ‘That’s what I’m learning,’ he said. ‘Although, I have an idea that certain of my predictions will come true.’
‘Yeah? Like what?’
‘Like if I do this …’ He slid down her body, kissing his way until he was at the split between her legs. ‘Really, really slowly …’ And now he pressed his mouth to her panties, and he started to kiss her gently through the filmy barrier. Dori sighed and arched her hips, lost in the way that his mouth felt on her. Loving the connection between the two of them. Rowan was amazing at making her come. She’d already learnt that in their few hours together.
‘Yes,’ she sighed, having a difficult time speaking. ‘If you do that, then what?’
‘Then you’re going to want me to do this …’ And now he started to pull her panties down, and he continued to kiss her as he slid the knickers down her thighs and over her knees, pulling the panties all the way off.
He parted her legs with his hands on her thighs, pressing his mouth against her now without any barrier between tongue and skin. She groaned and closed her eyes, shivering at the way his breath felt on her. Desperate for him to do more, to let the tip of his tongue make those perfect spirals up and over her clit. To let him take her higher with each subtle rotation.
‘Then what?’ she begged. ‘Tell me what’s next?’
‘You want to see the future?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re going to have to be patient,’ he said.
‘No …’ She put her hands out, wrapping them in his dark hair, pulling him tight against her. But when she could stand it no longer, she moved, swiveling around on the mattress so that she could return the favor with her own mouth on his cock.
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘you’re not supposed to influence the indigenous culture.’
‘How am I influencing you?’
‘Well, your mouth is hard to resist.’
She laughed, but then returned to her work, kissing and licking the tip of his cock before doing her best to swallow him down her throat. She wanted him to feel her lips meet the skin of his belly, but she wasn’t sure this trick was possible. Rowan was too big for such a move. So she used one hand in a fist around his shaft and paid careful attention to the way her tongue swirled in a circle around the head.
They were silent then, busy, consuming one another. Dori felt that for the first time in weeks, she didn’t have to think about anything. Didn’t have to worry.
She could just be.
Rowan was the one to admire her next. He hadn’t really seen her. That’s what he said. He’d been inside of her. He’d watched her fucking people, enough people to last him a lifetime, thank you very much. But he hadn’t had the time to admire her.
When he spun her around and found the tattoo, she heard him draw in his breath.
‘When’d you get this?’
She thought for a moment. ‘Thursday.’
‘Rocky Horror,’ he said in awe. ‘It meant as much to you?’
She nodded, then turned to look at him. ‘I never had so much fun again. I mean, you try to have fun when you’re a grown-up, but you just have fun when you’re a kid. There’s something different.’
‘I don’t know if that’s right,’ Rowan said. ‘I think you can still have it. If you know where to look. If you know what to do. The problem is that people get bogged down. They become the adults we all made fun of when we were k
ids.’
Dori thought about Chelsea and Dameron falling into her bedroom window. Thought about the way she and Van had been fucking everywhere: the stockroom, his truck, the Rave …
Was Rowan right?
God, she hoped so.
Chapter Twenty-Five
‘Explain the Prime Directive one more time.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I want to understand.’
‘You never were a big Trekkie fan, were you?’
‘I was way more into M*A*S*H.’ Rowan didn’t say anything, so Dori continued. ‘I thought Alan Alda was hot.’
This got no response from Rowan. He was gazing off into the corner of the room, as if he could see words printed on the wall there. ‘It’s all about the right of each species to live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution.’
‘You’ve lost me,’ she said. When she looked where he was staring, all she saw was wall.
‘Star Fleet personnel aren’t allowed to interfere with the development of alien life and culture.’
‘But we’re not dealing with aliens. We’re dealing with people in the 80s.’
‘Well, it’s not just about aliens,’ Rowan said matter-of-factly.
‘And what do you mean, interfere?’
‘On Star Trek, interference means a lot of different things. Like the introduction of superior knowledge to a world whose society can’t handle such advantages.’
‘What? Like X-Pods? Or Wifi devices?’
‘Star Fleet personnel may not violate the Prime Directive, unless they are acting to right an earlier violation.’
‘An earlier violation,’ Dori repeated. ‘That’s what you think we’ve come to fix? The fact that the theater was turned into a bookstore. That constitutes a violation in your book?’
Rowan shrugged. ‘It’s sort of why I wanted your feedback. But then, you kind of got mixed up in the … alien culture.’
‘So what? You’ve been living in a bubble since coming back?’
‘I never said I was a member of Star Fleet.’ Rowan grinned at her.
Dori considered what he’d said. ‘But what if the indigenous culture is your teenage self? Or your teenage friends?’
They looked at each other for a moment.
‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning, how much are we allowed change? What have we affected simply by being here in the first place?’
‘That’s all I meant to fix,’ he said seriously. ‘It was all about the theater to me.’
‘One-track mind,’ she teased him. ‘Like in school. Why’d you even need me?’
He took a long drag. ‘I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing. I always valued your judgment, you know. You have a clear head.’
‘Not on this,’ she said, motioning to the joint, and Rowan laughed. ‘But why didn’t you tell me first? Why didn’t you ask my opinion?’
He laughed even harder. ‘Can you imagine? We haven’t seen each other in twenty fucking years, and the first thing I do is tell you I’m going to go back in time and buy The Majestic. What would you say to that?’
‘I’d have said, “Bravo! Good idea. How can I help?”’
‘Liar.’ He blew a perfect smoke ring toward the ceiling. ‘You’d have called the nice men in white coats to take me away. I wanted to tell you, Dori. To ask you. But I wanted to show you, too. And –’
‘And what?’
‘Well, I had ulterior motives. I thought that if I brought you back, if I showed you a good time in the 80s, that we might … that you could …’
‘What?’
He put a hand out and stroked her hair away from her eyes. ‘Sometimes, when you thought about me, didn’t you wonder what might have happened if we’d never broken up?’
He’d asked the question already, but when he said the words again, she realized exactly how much she had missed Rowan over the years. The way they’d been able to finish each other’s sentences. The way she felt good sitting next to him, not speaking. Hanging out at Gael’s, or on the blanket in the field that was now a hotel. What else might they save? Could they recreate the 80s in 2008? Could they save their whole town?
Why even go back to the future?
Was the pot affecting her brain, or might they simply stay back in time?
‘No,’ Rowan said when she posed the query. ‘It wouldn’t work. It’s dangerous enough right now. There are two of us in the past now. We don’t exist in the present at all. If our teenage selves were to see us …’
‘Then what? What would happen to us?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘I don’t know. I can only go on what I’ve seen in movies. What I’ve read in books. I think you can’t see yourself. I think it fries your brain. You don’t want to do that, Dori.’
‘So what? How far can we go?’
‘The theater,’ he said. ‘That’s all. We’ll get the money. We’ll buy The Majestic. And …’
‘And what?’
‘And we’ll live happily ever after.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
Except that leaving wasn’t so easy.
Because Dori had engaged in a relationship with Van. And she had to explain both her presence to him, and her absence when she departed. She’d affected a whole slew of people. She’d broken the Prime Directive.
‘Why don’t we try again?’ she asked Rowan. ‘You take me back to the present and we go back again, and I won’t talk to anyone. I swear. I’ll be quiet as a mouse.’
He shook his head. ‘I can’t pinpoint the exact moment of return. Only close. It’s one of the reasons I missed you at the dance, and then at the Bed & Breakfast. The more we fuck around, the worse problems we’ll make. As it is, there’s a chance that you’d overlap with yourself, and that would fuck everyone’s memory up.’
‘Well, what then?’
‘We have to do the best we can. We have to tell a plausible story, explain your departure. There will be some confusion, of course. When you get back from London and go to work and people talk to you about this cousin that you never knew you had …’
‘No,’ Dori shook her head. ‘I didn’t go back to work. I went right to LA.’
‘Well, when you see Bette again. She’ll undoubtedly mention this Emma, and then what will happen?’
Dori shrugged. ‘I hardly ever came back,’ she said. ‘And the store closed my freshman year. I don’t know. I think we might be okay.’
‘You’re willing to take a risk?’
She nodded. ‘What other choice do we have?’
‘You still can’t just disappear. You have to say goodbye.’
‘Do I?’
He nodded. ‘You know you do, Dori. Don’t you? To Bette and Gael and Calvin.’
‘Who?’
‘Calvin. The boy you’ve been fucking for nearly a month.’
‘Van?’ Dori had never realized he had a real name. First, she’d thought of him as ‘Ozzy.’ Then as Van. She’d assumed the moniker came from the all-black vehicle he used to drive the instruments around. Thinking of him as someone named Calvin made her feel different towards him, but she didn’t know why.
Saying goodbye was far more difficult than she’d expected. In Dori’s daily life, she traveled from one film set to another, one magazine shoot to the next, with such ease and speed that she never thought she’d have a problem with moving on.
She’d just say goodbye. That was enough. A quick kiss on the cheek. A firm handshake. What more was required of her?
And then she looked into Van’s eyes, and her resolve began to melt.
Van didn’t understand why she wouldn’t give him her address, why she wouldn’t promise to see him when she was next back in town. He was tearful, which made her feel horrible inside. She’d never been a heartbreaker before. She’d always been the girl to end up with a broken heart.
‘It’s better like this,’ she said. ‘You’re going to go and kill in that competition. All the girls … and boys.’ She grinned at him. ‘All of them are going
to want you. You don’t need someone like me waiting in the wings.’
‘What do you mean, “like you”?’
‘You know,’ she said, ‘an old lady.’
He frowned. ‘You’re amazing,’ he said. ‘I’ve never been with anyone so sexy before.’
‘Come on,’ she smiled, flattered. ‘You’ve been with a lot of women …’
He silenced her with his mouth on hers, but she pulled back. She was with Rowan now. Kissing Van no longer felt right. He let her pull away from him, and she could see the clarity in his eyes. He wasn’t on X right now. Wasn’t fucked up.
‘Promise me something,’ she said.
Van was looking at her hard, as if trying to memorize everything about her face.
‘Don’t sleep in your van tonight. Stay at Bette’s. She said you could.’
‘Why?’
‘Just do it. Don’t put the instruments in the van until tomorrow. I have this feeling …’
He cocked his head at her, and his eyes narrowed, but before he could question what she was saying, she continued.
‘It’s all going to be okay,’ she said. ‘Go to your gig. Play your heart out. Move on. You won’t even remember me for a minute.’
‘That’s not true,’ he said, staring at her, and now she saw the understanding she’d thought she’d seen before. The realization of who she truly was. He pulled her into his arms one last time, and when he hugged her she thought she heard him say, ‘Goodbye, Dori,’ but she pulled away quick and headed out before she could be sure.
Bette was next. And Bette wasn’t going to be easy either. Was Dori the only person on earth to have always loathed that scene in The Wizard of Oz? The goodbye scene right before Dorothy leaves Oz for good. That heartrending: ‘And, Scarecrow, I think I’ll miss you most of all.’ Just the thought of saying goodbye to Bette made Dori’s chest tighten. She had learnt so much from her former boss in those few short weeks. Bette grabbed life in a way that Dori never had. She seemed to want to swallow everything whole, devour the world around her. Dori was going to do that now, she swore to herself. She wasn’t going to be a wallflower any longer.
