“Hi,” I echo back, brushing granola-bar crumbs off my T-shirt. “Come in?” I don’t mean for it to sound like a question. Not entirely. It’s just… “I’m surprised to see you,” I blurt out.
He dips his head. “Yeah, well.” A pause of what feels like the length of a pop song goes by. “I realized after I left my apartment that I should’ve contacted you. Then, I remembered I don’t have any way to contact you, so I was going to say I was in the neighborhood. That’s what I rehearsed on the way over here, but that’s a complete and total lie, and I figured you’d know that since you claim to know me. The old me. Not the me now. What I’m trying to say is that—”
Gently, I grab his shoulders to ground him. The way he always used to do for me. I shouldn’t, not in this timeline, but it’s an impulse. “Drew,” I say, “take a breath with me, okay?”
Quick inhale. Long exhale. He relaxes, until he notices the position of my hands. I wonder if he ever succeeded, over the last seven years, at falling out of love with me. There’s that old scientific myth that every seven years your body replaces itself, old cells long gone to make way for new ones.
Science may have proven that false, but I’d also argue that science at large probably has no idea about the time-traveling crystals I had in my possession, so anything is possible.
“I’m good. I’m fine.” Drew’s tone is curt and his stance is guarded, yet he still hands me the bottle of whiskey like it’s a peace offering.
“What’s this for?” I ask.
“We’re going to need it.” He shakes the bag, and a small, compact item rumbles around beside the outline of a book. Drew’s never without a book. At least that aspect of him hasn’t changed.
Inviting him inside, I’m intensely curious about what he meant by “we’re going to need it.” Is he here to tell me to fuck off againor stage an intervention over my outrageous time travel story? Or maybe (most hopefully) he’s ready to hear me out.
I bypass a grand tour, considering even I’m still having trouble deciphering which door leads to the guest bedroom and which door leads to what I can only describe as a shrine to myself. That room is unnerving. The accolades and photos and memorabilia from tours I never took. A cardboard cutout of me lurks in there like a monster beside a picture of me posing with my wax figure. It’s uncanny valley to the highest order.
I instruct Drew to make himself comfortable even if I, myself, am still uncomfortable in this modern, maximalist place full up with items I always dreamed of having but, now that I have them, spark very little joy.
The robotic vacuum cleaner that turns on each time it senses or hears a spill never ceases to scare the shit out of me and send Milkshake into a barking, agitated tizzy. The smart mirror somehow seems to both not respond to my touch and distort my reflection, frustratingly not serving either of its intended functions. And a Grammy Award? Well, turns out a Grammy Award is just a statue that collects dust like every other item you place on a shelf for display. It’s worth is purely extrinsic.
“Sorry,” I say, self-conscious from the sensation of Drew’s eyes on me from the sofa beyond the island. “I know this must seem like I’m still doing a bit, but I swear I don’t have any idea where the glasses are in this kitchen. Truthfully, even if I was consciously in this timeline, I might not even know. Seems like there are people and robots to do everything for me.” On my tiptoes, I try to reach for a high-up cabinet in the corner.
Suddenly, Drew’s beside me. Crowding me. My nose is inundated with the scent of rosewood, blackberry, and a light hint of whiskey. Was that bottle already open? Maybe he took a swig to bolster himself before coming here. He opens the cabinet withoutincident, and of course, there are the glasses. “I believe you,” he says—finally, shakily—while pouring.
“Thanks,” I say, distracted by the brown liquid sloshing into the glasses. “Wait, what?”
“I believe you,” he repeats, arresting me with his pale-blue eyes. Eyes that have aged with such grace, yet now hold something darker in their irises.
“You do?” He nods and hands me the glass, as if the alcohol is both an apology and a justification. “What changed?”
Before he gives me a straight answer, he clinks our glasses together, drains his whiskey with a full-body shiver, and serves a second for himself, tongue seemingly more relaxed. “I couldn’t stop thinking about what you said in my shop.”
“Which part?”
He heaves out a breath. “The part about you going to find CeeCee at the Doop headquarters. I think I was so thrown off by you being there in my store so out-of-nowhere that it didn’t register that Doop had closed. The ‘new’ Nolan would know that,” he says, which explains why he isn’t being nasty. Not that the nastiness was undeserved the first time. “I tried to rationalize it by thinking it was all part of your prank show act.”
“You do know I don’t have a prank show, right?” I ask. “At least, not one that I’m aware of, anyway.”
“Yes,” he says between sips. “I looked you up.”
“I looked me up too.” I shudder again. All those lurid photos send me chugging back my own whiskey and then taking the bottle into the living room to sit. “It wasnotpretty.”
“You forgot your glass,” Drew says, shaking it in the air.
“I’m a twenty-three-year-old magically trapped in my thirty-year-old body. I’m going to drink from the bottle,” I say as he grimaces. “What? We can share. I don’t have cooties. Unless that’s adisease now, then maybe I do. I truly know nothing about myself.” Unthinkingly, I begin patting myself down with all the vigor of a TSA agent doing a full-body search.
Wow, I bet I don’t even need to take my shoes off at the airport anymore. I’m famous!
Drew’s across from me in three strides, giving me a scrupulous once-over as I explore the parts of me that were once hollow and now bulge, the spots that were once soft and are now hard.
I stop the patting as heat rises to my cheeks for thinking about hard things right now. Under Drew’s gaze, this already off-kilter world flips completely upside down. I pass back the bottle before I drop it and the automatic vacuum revs into gear.
“Your Wikipedia page doesn’t say anything about you having cooties, so I think you’re okay,” Drew says, loosened a bit from the whiskey. Milkshake makes a home on Drew’s lap, settling him even more. “Let’s get back to why I’m here.” He produces a pair of glasses, not all that unlike the ones on his face right now. Sexy-librarian style.
“What are those?” I ask.
