“I’ve seen you guys here before,” Alek said.
“Yup!” Clara cleared her throat. “Every Saturday. She loves it here.” They both looked over at her, happy amidst the lilacs. “In fact, I was just trying to talk to her about how many jobs she could do when she grows up where she could be outside. Jessica loves the outdoors.”
At the mention of her name, Jessica glanced over at them.
“You could be a park ranger,” Alek called to her.
She looked unsure. “What’s that?”
“Oh, that’s perfect!” Clara exclaimed, wondering why she hadn’t thought of it. Turning to Jessica, she explained, “Park rangers keep places like this park nice for people to visit.”
“You’re in charge of the park,” Alek added. Jessica’s face brightened a bit with interest. “And you could give tours to people and guide groups.”
Jessica turned away, withdrawing at the thought of interacting with all those people. Clara shook her head no, giving Alek the ‘cut it’ sign with her hand to her throat.
“Or,” he continued, “You could be in charge of the duck pond. Keeping it quiet and clean.”
“Yes, keeping things nice for the ducks,” Clara echoed.
Jessica looked back at them both. “That sounds cool,” she admitted, then turned her attention back to the flowers.
Clara looked to Alek with relief and appreciation, thankful he’d read her mind. Here was a real man. Not only did he have the chiseled features of a romance novel hero, he knew how to talk to a shy kid. Good thing she’d never introduced Brad to Jessica; he probably would have tried to chest bump her and offer her a beer.
Alek smiled into Clara’s eyes and—cue the music once again—she felt like she could glide seamlessly into a romantic day with the two of them enjoying the park, the sunshine, each other.
But she could almost hear Jeanie’s crisp, warning voice: not on your itinerary!
She forced herself to look down, away, off at the trees, lake and woods beyond. “There are so many trails around here I’ve never explored. I don’t know how I managed to live here for four years and do so little outdoors.”
“Busy social life,” Alek suggested.
“I guess so,” Clara agreed, for the first time not taking offense from one of his comments.
“That hasn’t held me back.” He gave a devastating, self-deprecating grin. “There are lots of amazing trails around here.”
“Do you trail run?” she asked, nearly shimmering with excitement at the prospect.
“I love trail running.” He suddenly looked happier, more relaxed.
“Wow.” Clara gazed at him, dreamily, right back in the fantasy, this time with the two of them running off through the hills together.
“Do you trail run, too?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
He met her eyes and she wondered if he were thinking the same thoughts. She cleared her throat and looked over at the fields, casting around again for something to snap her out of it.
“Seems like it’s mostly people from town who come to this part of the park. I don’t see a lot of kids from campus.”
He nodded in agreement. “Mostly moms bringing their kids to the playground, or people out walking their dogs. A couple times I’ve had to tell some Cornell students they can’t swim in the lake.”
“No swimming? That doesn’t seem fair.”
“Yeah, it would be perfect for swimming. There’s even a sandy part on the far side. But those are the rules. They’re probably scared some drunk frat boys are going to drown.”
Clara agreed, picturing Brad, Meat and Slats. “They’d polish off a keg and then dare each other to stay under water for ten minutes.” She shook her head dismissively, then gazed out at the trees by the water. “This park reminds me of a place we used to go to with my family growing up. Near Tahoe, but less people. It’s called the Desolation Wilderness.”
“Sounds… desolate.”
She smiled. “No, it’s amazing, so beautiful and wild. We’d go swimming at Fallen Leaf Lake.” She could picture the bright sunlight filtering through tall, dark evergreens onto the glacial lake thousands of feet above sea level and steep slopes of mountain ranges rising up beyond.
“That sounds good.”
“Oh, it is.” She sighed, caught up again in a strong wave of missing her family.
“I hope I get out to California one of these days. I’ve never been.”
“You’ll get there.” She couldn’t help but give him a knowing smile, picturing him giving a talk to a packed hall at UC Berkeley. Such a huge, successful future ahead of him. And here he’d spent hours and hours with her, helping her muddle through an intro Astronomy class. Seemed a shame, really. “You know you’re the reason I’m going to graduate in a few weeks,” she added. “Without your TA sessions I’d have completely failed this class.”
“You still might.”
“Really?” Her heart rate instantly picked up.
“No, I just like teasing you.”
Clara exhaled with relief, wondering why she fell for that every time. Alek’s crooked smile hinted of a whole mischievous side to him she had yet to see. It made her want to see more. “Really, thank you so much,” she stammered on. “You could have been spending your time doing such more important things. Like making big discoveries and—”
“I really don’t mind.”
She looked down at her sneakers, literally biting her tongue to stop herself from saying more. Words threatened to gush out of her like “remember that time when you gave that talk?” Curiosity bubbled out of her like a pot of water on high heat; she could think of a thousand questions, a million things she wanted to talk over with him, figure out together. What had he meant at Berkeley when he’d said that he’d had a big chip on his shoulder back in college? Some days, she definitely had seemed to bother him. Sometimes he’d seemed to lump her in with what he viewed as the coddled, lazy rich masses.
And, in a way, he was right. What kind of strife or adversity had she faced growing up? Could she shave a few seconds off of her cross-country meet time? Would that term paper take three or four hours to complete?
But wasn’t that what you wanted for your children? As a parent, shouldn’t you strive to give them a protected environment, a bubble? She’d grown up in one, she realized. In her upper-middle-class Bay Area suburb, everyone had vacationed in Tahoe; some owned their second house, some rented. Everyone had been into swimming; some had a pool in their backyard, some belonged to a private club with a pool, some both. These were not the types of distinctions that caused deep distress. Clara didn’t think she’d had a moment’s concern about money until she’d hit 30. And then she’d nearly fallen apart.
So maybe you did want to stress out your children? Raise them in a simulated prison camp, all drive and no fun? But maybe it was ultimately better to shelter kids, putting character-themed Band-Aids on every boo-boo, letting them think that molehill is a mountain? Or maybe there was something in between, somehow giving your kids incentive, passion and drive but also encouraging their creativity and innate sense of play? She wondered…
Both Alek and Jessica were watching her as she mused into the middle distance, gazing out into the lush foliage and absently twisting a strand of hair around her finger. Alek focused with the intensity of a man who clearly wouldn’t mind doing that to her hair, himself. Jessica looked like it was time to go.
Clara looked down into Jessica’s delicate, expectant face. “We should get going,” she admitted reluctantly.
Shaking himself from his own, personal reverie, Alek glanced over at Jessica as well. “How’s that cookie?” he asked.
She smiled. “Good, thanks.”
Eye contact and a smile? High praise indeed. Clara looked at Alek with even more admiration. “Are we on for tonight? Six o’clock?”
“Definitely.”
Invoking the emotional equivalent of a giant crow bar, she somehow pried herself away from the power of his dark ga
ze. Turning to leave, she valiantly fought the urge to look if not run back, vault over that counter top like an Olympic gold medalist and join him right then, for the next few hours, for eternity.
But, no. Jeanie wouldn’t allow that. This was one of the few scenarios that literally merited the weighty statement: her future hung in the balance. So, instead, she walked sedately, keeping Jessica company as they ambled along the duck pond path and made it back to the car on schedule.
Like a good girl she kept to her itinerary. She dropped Jessica off, this time with more “you can do whatever you set your mind to” messaging. They shared a big hug and Clara wiped yet another tear from her eye as they said good-bye.
Back to the dorm she primped and then she and Cat headed to the Sig Ep pig roast. There, she met up with eager young Jane Henderson, swapped some stories from back in the day and introduced her to a bunch of people. Before long, Jane became deeply engaged in conversation with a boy Clara thought she remembered as a national ping pong champion. Perfect!
This time around, Clara left the pig roast early. She wanted to go back to the dorm. She had a sudden urge to bake cookies. Chocolate chip, no nuts.
Around five o’clock, Cat burst through the door. She removed her sunglasses with the flair of a European heiress at a beach on the Riviera.
“Why did you leave early?” Cat began. “You should have seen Ashley. All Over Brad. She wants your man. What are you doing?” She came up beside Clara, suddenly confused. “What are you… mixing… something?”
“Yeah. I couldn’t find an electric mixer, so…” Clara shrugged and continued her labor with a long plastic spoon. Thankfully, she’d stopped by a small market on the way home and bought ingredients because, as she’d guessed, they had next-to-nothing in their teeny-tiny kitchenette fridge or cabinets. Surprisingly, she had been able to locate a baking sheet. Then she remembered that she and Cat had used it for sledding one late, drunk night that winter. They’d borrowed it from some better-equipped students and never given it back.
“You left the party? To come home and bake? Cookies?” Each question gathered in absurdity, as if Cat had caught Clara dressed as a bunny while playing a tuba and attempting to climb up the side of a building.
“Yeah. I just felt like it.” Clara found herself shrugging again, suddenly feeling painfully obvious, as if she’d pinned a giant sign to her chest: “I heart Alek” with some smiley faces around it and a couple rainbows for good luck.
“Who are you baking them for?” Cat’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.
Clara bent down over her bowl, really putting her back into it. “You and me,” she said brightly. “And the girls down the hall. Or maybe I could set them out in a common room.” Why oh why couldn’t she ever keep her lies simple?
“Hmm.” Cat continued to look at her as if trying to solve a puzzle. “You’re up to something, Taylor. Who are you trying to butter up?”
“No one.” Clara could feel her cheeks burning. She ducked her head down as if peering into the bowl to examine its contents. She wasn’t up to anything. She definitely wasn’t channeling all of her intense emotions into the one safe way she thought she could express them given the strict constraints of time travel. She also hadn’t just been absorbed in a fantasy featuring Alek as a wounded World War Two soldier while she, a small town nurse, perhaps French, tended to him as birds sang in the hillsides of Tuscany.
“I know.” Cat snapped her fingers. “Alek.”
“What?” Clara dropped her spoon. It clattered to the floor. Mrs. Taylor with the spoon in the kitchen.
“You’re panicking that you’re going to fail your final exam so you’re pulling out all the stops.”
“Yup, that’s it.” Clara ducked to pick up the spoon and kept her head down as she washed it in the sink. “I’m nervous about my exam.”
Cat looped her arm around Clara’s shoulders and stuck a finger into the cookie dough. Smacking her lips at the sweet taste, she declared, “Tell you what. Lock me in a closet with that guy for 20 minutes. I’ll get you an A.”
Clara delivered the fakest laughter she’d heard since the canned TV sitcoms of her youth. Resisting the urge to have an all-out big-hair, fake-nails, He’s My Man throw-down with Cat, Clara calmly folded the chocolate chips into the batter.
“Let’s stick with the cookies.”
“I like my way better, but…” Cat shrugged. “Anyway, get those things in the oven, girl. We’ve got to figure out how we’re going to dress you up tonight. That Ashley is on your Brad like white on rice. I’m thinking Bond Girl. Or, even better—” Cat clasped Clara’s shoulder, eyes gleaming. “Bond girl villain!”
With a knowing smile, Clara shook her head. “No, I’ve got it. You ready for this?” Cat rubbed her hands together in anticipation. “End of Grease. Olivia Newton John.”
Looking at each other and loving it, they simultaneously pulled imaginary cigarettes out of their mouths, flung them down and ground them out underneath their stiletto heels.
“Tell me about it, stud,” they said in unison, bursting out laughing.
“I love it!” Cat declared and began dancing around the kitchen to the Madonna song on the radio—not iPod.
Later on, post shower, Cat worked her usual magic. She dismissed the small, discrete earrings Clara had instinctively chosen, picking out big hoops and piling on some matching bangles for her wrist.
“Accessories are like candy for your body,” Cat explained, doing what she did best as she dressed up her friend like a designer working on a model.
Clara’s eyes widened. Jessica wasn’t the only one in need of some future career guidance. “Cat!” Suddenly filled with purpose, vividly picturing Future Cat’s boredom over auditing semi-conductor companies, Clara grasped her roommate’s hands. “Cat! You have to go into fashion!”
“What?”
“After graduation. I don’t know anything about fashion or how it all works in that industry or anything, but it’s what you love. And you are so good at it! You’ve got a gift; you can always see exactly what works. I don’t know if it means getting into fashion design or—”
“I’ve always dreamed about designing my own line of accessories,” Cat admitted.
“Really? Why is this the first I’m hearing about it?”
“Well, first of all, it’s not practical. I can’t blow this Ivy League degree on something I could have done straight out of high school.”
“But you’ve majored in business!” Clara protested. “You could open your own line of boutiques.”
“I’d freaking lurve that.” Cat now grasped Clara’s hands, tight. “Can you imagine?”
“You could call it Catherine’s Accessories!”
“That’s a terrible name. No, I know exactly what I’d call it. I’ve had the name picked out since I was eight years old.” Cat paused for dramatic effect. “Cat’s Candy.”
“That’s so perfect!”
“I know, right?” Rummaging once again in the closet, Cat came out with the perfect pair of red strappy high-heeled sandals. Holding them out, she asked, “How about some frosting?”
Clara strapped them on and gave them a practice walk, loving the effect if not the feel of the heels. And once more her attention turned to wondering how on earth she could ever manage to calmly navigate this evening when even now her heart beat wildly in anticipation.
CHAPTER 17
PLAYTIME
Clara balanced the plate of cookies the best she could. It was hard, what with the 3-inch heels and the excessive pounding of her heart in her chest. Clacking her way down the hallway of the science center, each step seemed to echo the thought “last time.” This was it, her last night back as a 21-year-old, the last chance she had to spend time with Alek.
She knew it was theoretically possible she that could engineer some kind-of a run-in once she got back to present day. But who was she kidding; there’d be no magic in that. Future Alek held near celebrity-status, the Hero of Solar Power, a grown man s
urrounded by admirers and on the frickin’ cover of a magazine, thank you very much. Tech companies were after him with a buzz about patenting some new technology, investors circling him like hawks. He’d be 34, no doubt married to a brilliant young swimsuit model who volunteered as a pediatric heart surgeon. She was probably a rare, exotic beauty, perfectly complimenting his dark good looks. Together their children would grow up to both grace the covers of French Vogue and graduate from the halls of the Ivy League.
Nope, tonight was it. The last time she’d have him to herself. Her moment to enjoy. As much as she could. Within boundaries. Jeanie had been clear, after all: stick to the schedule. She knew even delivering cookies was pushing it.
At the heavy double doors of the lab room, she paused and took a deep breath. She brought her free hand to her hot, flushed cheek, and that hand was definitely shaking. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this jumble of shy and silly and nervous and excited. With the start of a smile, she had to admit, it felt pretty fun.
Pushing open the door, she entered the room. Alek stood behind the desk, front and center, as usual. He looked up with that black, tousled head of hair and dark, bedroom eyes and she nearly tripped. Then felt awash in a crashing wave of embarrassment.
The cookies were a horrible mistake! He didn’t even like her; he thought she was a spoiled, lazy princess and back in college he may have even been half right. Here she was, once again nurturing a sad, misguided crush.
How could she get rid of the cookies? Stash them under a desk? Run back outside and leave them in the hallway? How had she made such a terrible error in judgment? It was stupid, ridiculous, pathetic.
Eyes downcast, she flung them onto a lab table as if disposing of some trash into a can.
“Are those cookies?”
Flinching at the interrogation, Clara denied responsibility. “It’s nothing.”
“Did you bake them?” He approached, incredulous. And maybe a little pleased.
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