Chapter 27
Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming
What do you mean, since the beginning?”
My voice is shaky. My body is shaky. I feel like I might pass out. Just when I was finally adjusting to my new normal, the rug has been pulled out from under me.
“Dinner. Lobster and steak. You asked me what I would do if I died and got a second chance. Right there, right then. I was honest. I said I’d want to be as close to you as possible.”
I remember the moment with distinct clarity. I had found the words sweet at the time. I thought everything he did was so sweet.
How many times did I think he seemed different from the Alex I once knew, unmarred by the cynicism and arrogance that would come to him with age?
How stupid was I?
Before I can react, he reaches out, grabs my hand, and moves my index finger away from my thumb cuticle, which I was starting to pick at. Something I haven’t done in months.
“Don’t,” he murmurs.
His quiet seriousness jolts me—I hadn’t realized he even noticed this habit of mine. He never said anything.
He never said a lot of things.
I yank my hand out of his grasp, the movement reminding me of another time I did that.
On the night I died.
My shock clears up, and I see the situation for what it is. He played me. It doesn’t escape my notice that while I’m surprised to discover he’s from my past life, he’s not surprised at all.
“You knew,” I accuse him. “You knew about me. I had no clue, but you weren’t surprised.”
He glances up at the sky, and I immediately understand the motion—I did the same thing at my first Second Take meeting. He’s wondering what he can and cannot say. Marveling that he’s still here.
I should let him stew, but instead, I offer him a kindness. Or maybe just an impatience.
“They’re not listening. It’s fine to talk about it as long as it’s with someone who was also given a second chance. There’s a support group; they meet twice a month. I can connect you.” I force the last words out. I don’t want to give him the support group. That’s my safe space.
He blinks, processing my words. And then—
“Your book club?”
“That’s how I met Kimiko,” I admit.
Alex lets out a bitter laugh, shaking his head. “That’s why you lied. I thought you… it doesn’t matter what I thought.”
I have an urge to object, to demand an explanation—but I realize he’s right.
It doesn’t matter what he thought.
What matters is that he’s been lying to me since the beginning.
“How did you know about me?” I demand.
“My caseworker told me,” he says quietly. “I asked them to send me to you—the you that I had lost.”
I scoff. Un-fucking-believable. “You always have to be one step ahead.”
“Joey—” he starts, but I cut him off.
“Why call me Joey?”
“That’s your name.”
“You called me Josephina before.”
It’s such a tiny detail, but it causes my mistrust to grow.
Everything about him was a charade. He wasn’t just hiding the fact that he was from the future—he was masking his whole personality.
Every kind word, every sweet moment. Every time I marveled that this was the same man from my past. Of course he seemed different—he was making a conscious effort to.
I’m such a fucking fool.
“I wanted to try being the guy who calls you Joey. I wanted to be the guy you could turn to when you needed someone. And I think I did a pretty good job, didn’t I? But it wasn’t enough. You’ll always be in love with Ellie. Nothing I do will change that.”
I shake my head, not just because he’s wrong but because I’m struggling to process.
All these months, I thought Alex was getting to know me for the first time, and in that newness I felt exactly what he’s saying: I could try out any version of myself, and he would believe it.
I could become a new me, unmarred by anyone’s judgments of my past self.
And the real kicker is, I liked the person I was becoming with Alex by my side.
Except that version of me was a lie—and he knew it. And given his knowledge of it, I feel like every single bit of growth I’ve experienced in the past few months is also a lie.
I hate him for taking that from me.
So I hurl the truth in his face, and I hope it cuts deep.
“The funny thing is, I don’t love Ellie. I thought I loved you. How’s that for a punch line?”
He stills.
“You love me?” he asks, his words breathless, hopeful.
Except I don’t trust it. I can’t trust his words, his tone, anything. It’s so clear that every moment over the past few months was a carefully calculated manipulation.
And I don’t love him. I refuse.
I need to go. I need to get out of here. I need to breathe.
I turn to make my escape, but despite the fact that we’re out in the open, Alex seems to take up every inch of space around me.
“Joey, please. Would you look at me?”
I can’t look at him, knowing what he knows.
Knowing that he’s known this entire time.
Knowing that I’m going to spend days recontextualizing every moment between us through the microscope of this new information.
Moments when I thought I had control, but in fact I had nothing.
Moments I thought we were getting to know each other, but he was just pretending.
What a terrible thing, to not be able to trust your own memories.
“You said you loved me,” he murmurs softly.
“No—I thought I did, but it was all a lie. You’re not who I thought you were. How can I trust you? I know you. I know I can’t—”
“I’ve changed.”
“You haven’t. You haven’t changed at all. You’re the same man who—”
“I died at fifty-eight,” he says. “It had been twenty-six years since I’d last seen you. Please believe that I changed, because Lord knows, I spent a long time trying to.”
Somehow that makes it even worse. Did I say he always has to be one step ahead? More like twenty-six steps.
I want to throw up.
“You have been lying to me—manipulating me—for months. Fifty-eight, thirty-two, eighteen—doesn’t matter. You are the exact same man you have always been. We’re done.”
I start to walk past him, but I’m stopped short by his scoff—so different from anything I’ve heard from him the past few months, but the exact type of sound I would expect from the man I walked away from the night I died.
Maybe he hasn’t changed as much as he likes to think.
“I’m manipulating you? Joey, don’t kid yourself. You were trying to manipulate me in equal measure—you’re just mad that I’m the one who came out ahead.”
“I was not trying to manipulate you. God, do you hear yourself right now? You’re like a cartoonishly evil villain.”
“ ‘Why, yes, Alex, I think it would be wonderful if you dropped your computer science major to become a film director. That’s in no way poor life advice, nor is it at all influenced by my hatred for people with money, despite the fact that I myself had plenty of money,’ ” he mocks, his voice flat to start but crescendoing to heated vitriol by the end.
“Excuse me for encouraging you to pursue something you’re actually passionate about instead of becoming a capitalist pig who pursues wealth for wealth’s sake, knowing no amount of money will ever be enough.”
“Get off your high horse, Joey. You were a corporate fucking lawyer. That was the irony of it all—you treated me like Satan himself because I had money, but you did too. You made your life choices the same way I did. You cared about money and comfort and stability, and you pursued them relentlessly. But somehow I’m the one who’s evil because, what, I did it better? ”
“Great. Tell me more about how much you hated me, how little you thought of me. That’s making me feel a lot better, actually.”
I wonder how many times he’s had this argument with me in his head. He’s clearly put effort into taking account of my every flaw. Did he spend twenty-six years bitter that he never got to say it to my face? That I had the audacity to die before he could get the last word?
And then he died and finally got his shot.
Maybe that’s the punch line.
“I never hated you, I was in love with you,” he yells so forcefully that it pulls me up short and shocks me into silence.
“I know we spent only one night together, but it’s true.
I fell. I fell quick, and I fell hard. By the time I left your apartment that morning, I was in love with you, and you reduced me to nothing more than a ‘bad decision.’ ”
“What’s your motive?”
“What are you talking about?”
“ ‘People’s actions always have a motive, whether conscious or subconscious.’ That’s what you said the night of Ellie’s wedding. Don’t you remember? I know I could never forget. So what the fuck are you playing at? Why claim you love me now, after I’ve found out the truth? What’s the play?”
“Those were the words of a dumb, jaded kid, Joey.”
Fifty-eight years old.
I really don’t know the man in front of me, I realize. He knows me—he was there right up until my bitter end. But I have no idea what became of him. Can’t possibly know anything except what he tells me. He’s holding all the cards, and I’m supposed to just, what, trust him?
Pass.
“Were they? Or were they a warning that no matter what you do, you’re always working in your own self-interest?”
“Everyone’s always working in their own self-interest,” Alex snaps. “There’s nothing spectacularly unique about me doing it.”
“There he is. That’s the Alex I know. I’ve been wondering what happened to him.”
“Nothing happened to me. I’ve been right here.
I had my secrets—but you were keeping secrets too.
I’m here. I’ve always been here, and I’ve always been me.
I know I’m not perfect—I’ll never be perfect, but I want to try.
And I am telling you that I love you. That I have been in love with you for a very long time. ”
Whatever he reads in my expression—disdain, disbelief, maybe even disgust, who can say—causes his face to fall. He looks heartbroken, but I’m not sure I trust it. He’s already proven he’s a brilliant actor.
“You weren’t in love with me.” I shake my head. “You aren’t capable of it. The only thing you ever loved was yourself.”
“You know nothing about how I felt.”
“No, but I know how you treated me. I know how you are treating me right now. And that’s not how people treat people they love.”
“So that’s it, then? You find out the truth and write me off at a glance? It’s good to know what the past few months meant to you.”
“They meant the world, when I thought they were real. But nothing with you is real.”
He takes a step forward, reaches out to grab my arm. I step back, determined not to let that happen. His hand stays out, reaching toward me in an aborted gesture.
“This is me being real, Joey. I am in love with you. I have been in love with you for decades. And considering nothing that has happened so far has changed that—none of the insults you hurled at me, none of the years you spent avoiding me, not your death”—his voice cracks on the word—“and not the decades that came after, considering that none of that did a single thing to sway my feelings for you, I imagine I will continue to love you until the day I die. Again.”
But I don’t believe him. So, without another word, I storm off.
He doesn’t follow.