The Road Trip Rewind

Chapter 9 - Beatrix

Chapter 9

Beatrix

Wednesday, December 29, 1999

“Ihaven’t been this stiff since I took approximately one CrossFit class last year. Paid for the whole year up front, too. Such a shame.” Rocco sighs from where he stands next to Delilah’s hood, stretching his arms overhead in a graceful arc, biceps flexing as he bends and works the right shoulder, then the left.

“Well,” I say, watching from the other side of the hood, pretending not to be. “I don’t think almost-forty-year-olds are designed to sleep in the back seat of a Jetta.”

“Ha.” He stops mid-stretch, working his calves now, one leg propped up against Delilah’s bumper. “And what are you? Maybe a whole year younger, if I recall?”

Surprising that he even remembers that detail. I’m about to quip that it still makes me a good decade older than his usual type these days, but I stop myself. Because I don’t know anything about his type, not anymore. I didn’t know it back then, either. Aside from the fact that it ultimately wasn’t me.

“I feel perfectly fine,” I lie as I lean back against the hood, ignoring the swift pang of discomfort that radiates up my back.

It had seemed like the best idea yesterday, at least when ranked next to runner-up options, taking Tony up on his offer of camping on his property again. Avoiding potential run-ins with fans, acquaintances, the legion of Rocco’s previous one-night stands trolling the city streets. We’d had some narrow misses yesterday after leaving Rocco’s house, too many lingering side-eyes on our mall run to Aeropostale—still safer than executing a break-in at my place, with that herd of roommates and their frequent party line of guests. Rocco said Aeropostale was too gauche for his people—which I’m pretty sure isn’t true, his fans and hookups alike were surely gauche—but it was easier to just go along with the plan. I knew we wouldn’t run into our ’99 doppelgangers, at least, because I’d quite proudly never been one for logo tees.

Now, though, I have more logo tees than I would’ve liked to acquire in a lifetime, all with varying typographies of Aeropostale and Aero and, most heinously of all, Aero Girl. Some new flared jeans, too, which I’d made a sacred vow to myself to never wear again. But . . . when in ’99.

We did at least make a quick pit stop at the neighboring Bath and Body Works afterward. Hell yeah, White Tea and Ginger! Just as good as I remembered. Then we loaded up on buns from Cinnabon as we left the mall, because of course.

So yes, no overt run-ins, but a general sense of unease that made another night of me in Delilah, Rocco sleeping wherever the heck he wanted on the van seats or the grass or a pile of rocks, anywhere that wasn’t near me, seem appealing.

We hadn’t accounted for the rain.

It’s perhaps one of the hardest adjustments of all so far, beyond, you know, the constant presence of Rocco in my line of sight: no working smartphone at my fingertips, none of my three daily go-to weather apps to give my day direction.

Had I known the sky would open up and unleash gusting curtains of rain all night, I would have voted for a hotel. A motel. A motor inn, a by-the-hour establishment—wouldn’t matter, anything with walls and a roof. Bloodstains on the sheets, roaches in the shower, fine, all fine. I’d take anywhere else, if it meant having more than a foot of space separating me from Rocco for an entire night. Too close for any comfort. I couldn’t sleep, not while I was listening to his soft breaths in and out, watching the familiar puff of his lips, a small smile tugging at them every once in a while. Listening, watching, wondering what he was dreaming about. Who.

Wondering what and who I would dream about if I were to let myself sleep.

It had been tempting, the thought of making him set up camp outside. He’d even offered, to his credit. Said he could find a tree for cover if I preferred some privacy. But even my calloused heart wasn’t hard enough for that.

“Well,” Rocco says, “I was hoping we could spring for a hotel tonight. My treat, of course. But if you’re more comfortable here . . .” He shrugs, looking around the lot. “Maybe we could hit up a Walmart or something for camp supplies. Though . . . did Walmart exist in ’99? Huh. Weird, isn’t it, how hard it is to remember these things. Like when I traded in my beeper for my first brick phone, or when I moved on up to have the internet at my constant disposal. History is hazy like that.”

“Truly, again, you and that beeper—that was the real love affair. I’d never seen anyone so moony-eyed over tech.”

“How is it even possible,” he asks, turning back to me, “that you somehow manage to grab on to whatever possible dig there is, no matter the topic of conversation?”

“A well-honed stockpile of digs, after nearly two decades of stewing.”

Shoot. I’d tried to deny that stewing earlier. Now I sound like I cared way too much, which . . . I did. Obviously.

But Rocco doesn’t need to be privy to the great depths of my resentment.

“I know. We’re overdue for more apology talks.” He takes a few steps closer to me, stopping just in front of the hood. “How about this? We find a place to stay, somewhere discreet, and we take a long, hot shower.” His face immediately reddens, a brilliant shade of crimson, like he’s perhaps choked on a large bite of the Cinnabon stash we’d saved for this morning’s breakfast. “Separate showers, that is. Obviously. You can go first. Thenme.”

Watching him squirm is an utter delight. So I say nothing. Let him keep babbling.

“I just meant it could help to clear our heads, those showers. That we would be taking fully individually. We could even get two rooms if you’d like.”

“I would like that very much, yes. My own room. Not the team shower.”

A shower with Rocco.

The thought unleashes a very undesirable—undesirable because of how desirable it was, had been, past tense exclusively—torrent of memories. Rocco’s glass-walled shower in the house we’d visited just yesterday, the marble claw-foot tub in our hotel in New York, the mildewed plastic stall in my apartment, the one time he’d stopped by to see me there, that glorious hour we’d had the place all to ourselves, mold be damned.

Slick with hot water and lathered in suds, arms and legs and hips sliding against one another, me on tiptoes, hands bracing the sides of the stall, then me lifted into the air, legs hitched around his back, mouth filling with him, with water, with more of him, all of him . . .

“Bea?”

“Huh? What?” Fuck.

“I was just asking if you had a preference. About where we stay.”

“Nope. No. We can stay anywhere.”

“Got it.”

“As long as there are two rooms, that is.” And then, as if that’s not clear enough, I hear myself doubling down: “Two showers. Two doors. Two beds. Two TVs.”

“Two of everything. Got it. Loud and clear.”

He nods at me before turning to give one last lingering glance over his future property, then he heads for the passenger side of the car. Opens the door and slides in.

His face through the window is more unreadable than usual, more closed off. He might be an actor with a neatly curated range of expressions, but I’d always found his true emotions easy to read. It had been one of the things I’d found refreshing about him back when we’d first met. Different from the rest of Hollywood.

And right now, if I didn’t know better, I would say he’s . . . disappointed?

Though maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.

Surely Rocco Riziero isn’t used to sleeping in separate beds.

He’s not used to being unwanted.

* * *

Rocco made good on his promise, a budget-friendly inn in Burbank with two rooms, two doors, two showers, etc. He’d never been here, before or after, so as low risk as it could be for someone with such a recognizable face. I would never admit it to him out loud, but he really has aged disturbingly well. He looks like someone who can afford to take care of himself, which . . . he can, a cool million times over. Plenty of rest in his plush Palisades pad; a fridge stocked with an organic, artisanal rainbow; the time and space and money to pursue whatever fitness interest tickles his fancy. Like the single CrossFit visit for a year’s membership. Aside from a few regrettably endearing laugh lines and a smattering of grays you need to squint to see, he looks remarkably like the Rocco I knew.

Which isn’t ideal when it comes to flitting around LA, even if his star was still on the rise in ’99. He was extremely recognizable, at least to anyone under the age of twenty-five. And their parents. Aunts, uncles, grandparents, teachers.

It’s his eyes, more than anything, that give him away.

I would personally recognize those eyes anywhere. In any decade.

The solo shower is the longest, steamiest, most rewarding of my life, scrubbing off the last two days, a potent ’90s grunge. Though it’s unsettling to think I’m also losing more of my 2016 self in the purge—the last traces of soap, dirt, sweat that clung to me in the Before, evidence of another time besides the one we’re in now.

It’s a surface wash, though. Because even after an hour under the hot stream of water, too many lathers to count, my mind is just as muddled.

I tug on a terry cloth robe and step out onto the small balcony overlooking the second wing. No fancy waterfront hotel, not for us; we don’t know how long we’ll need to stretch Rocco’s funds. I’m immediately drawn into observing a man and presumably his daughter, thirteen or so, on a patio a flight below, one unit to the right. They’re in loungers reading but looking up from their respective books every page or so to talk, running commentary on something they’ve read or the perfect December day, their tally of the best tacos they’ve eaten on this trip, the new Fiona Apple album that’s playing quietly from a small boom box propped on their table, next to some Cheetos and Mountain Dew.

It’s not one specific thing they say. It’s everything. Or more importantly, it’s the way they say it to one another, their comfortable back and forth, a conversational volley that feels so completely, perfectly natural; like they could talk to one another about anything, anywhere, anytime. Like they’re family, yes, but much more than that, too. They’re friends. Best friends, even.

My dad had been my best friend for as far back as I can remember.

Other friends my age came and went, pleasant and cordial attachments, but loose, undefined; I was never a loner, but before Sylvie in my twenties, I was never the one who had a group or a person I wholly attached to, the type of friends who were inseparable, almost indistinguishable beyond their different names. (Or in some cases, not even that; my graduating class had the Melissas Squared, the Trio of Jennifer, the Tiffany Triad.)

My dad was the person for me. My mom was my mom, and I loved her for that. But my dad, he was my dad, and then he was also so much more.

I realized that—really realized the weight of it, his place in my life—when I was seven. I’d been at a birthday party for a friend I sat with at lunch sometimes, Stacey, one of the Horse Girls—the ones who mostly spent their free time talking about horses, drawing horses, reading books with horses, collecting toy horses, and perhaps, if they were lucky or well-off enough, actually riding horses on occasion. They were some of the friendliest girls, though, the most unassuming, and they didn’t seem to care much one way or another if I loved horses as much as they did, as long as I was content to soak in their horse discourse for thirty minutes while we ate our cafeteria sloppy joes and potato sticks. I’d gone to her party—at a stable, obviously—because it had felt like the nice thing to do, and because I knew even then that my mom worried about why I wasn’t on a more consistent birthday circuit, like all of her friends’ kids, moms who would complain to her about the laundry list of their kids’ social events on any given weekend, the constant runningaround. I didn’t want to ride a horse; heights had never been my thing, and horses’ legs were way too long. But I’d sucked it up for a few circles on the only pony at the party, ate a slice of Rainbow Brite cake, played a round of pin the tail on the horse. It was fine enough until gift time, always my least favorite part of any party. Sitting in a circle, watching as the birthday kid would unwrap each present, exclaiming over the best ones, feigning delight over the worst—or not even bothering in some cases, straight-faced and moving to the next. Gift time felt like a test: How well do you know the birthday kid? It was a test I rarely seemed to pass. For Stacey I’d picked out—carefully, agonizingly, spending an hour combing the aisles at Toys “R” Us—some neon-pink–striped unicorn I’d loved, who came with a brush and barrettes for her mane, crystal stickers to bedazzle her. Stacey took one look at it and declared for the rest of the partygoers to hear: “I love horses, not unicorns. Unicorns aren’t real. And even if they were, horses would still be better.”

It was stupid and mean and wow, did it flay me open, and when my dad came to pick me up, I ran straight into his arms and hugged him as hard as I could. And just like that, one good hug, and Stacey didn’t matter. I wasn’t sad anymore. Because I had him, and he was infinitely cooler than Stacey, writing books that had never once featured a single horse—and never would after that day—and that was enough for me.

He was enough.

He was always, always enough. Until he wasn’t. Until he couldn’t be. Because I let myself believe he was capable of the worst atrocity possible. I chose that.

Why?

Why couldn’t I have chosen him?

Why couldn’t I have fought the media narrative? Pushed back on the local hearsay, the ugly rumors that tore through our town? My neighbors and my classmates—their voices, they’d been so loud.

But his voice should have been the only one that mattered.

We’d always trusted one another implicitly. Always been honest. Until one day, he lied to me. And I let that one lie have the power to topple a lifetime’s worth of truths.

A knock at the door to my room startles me, and I realize I’m crying. My messy tears dripping onto the balcony railing.

“Bea?” Rocco’s muffled voice calls from out in the hallway.

I swipe at my tears, unwind the towel from my head as I turn and cross through the room to open the door.

A fresh Rocco stands on the other side, hair wet and uncombed, the edges curling up. He’s wearing a black Adidas tracksuit, the jacket unzipped, a Reebok shirt underneath.

“Mixing brands, eh? Can’t decide who to endorse?” My voice cracks as I say it, giving me away.

Rocco frowns. “You’re crying.”

“I’m fine.”

“Can I come in?”

I step back, motion him inside. It’s only now that I realize I’m still wearing nothing but an ill-fitting hotel robe. I cinch the sash around my waist more tightly, though it doesn’t magically make the robe cover more than the tippy top of my thighs. There’s also an unfortunate lack of coverage on the top, the lapels refusing to meet in the middle, my cleavage left mostly exposed.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, his eyes on mine, direct contact. No wandering gaze.

“Nothing.”

“Please. You couldn’t even make it through one of your usual jabs without breaking up. I know you’re upset.”

“It’s silly.”

“I bet it’s not.”

“How can you know that?”

He shrugs, dropping down onto the edge of my bed to sit. “You never struck me as the type to cry over silly things. Or even not silly things. Didn’t we watch Titanic together? We were both embarrassed to have never seen it. I bawled like a baby, and you . . . you just laughed at me for bawling. Like a total monster. The only tears on your cheeks were induced from your hysterical laughter over me crying.”

“Hm. That does ring a tiny bell.” I’m impressed, to be honest, that he remembers. It was a small moment, all things considered.

“I might have missed some time from then until now, but I get the sense you only cry about the really important stuff.”

I’m about to deny it, to argue for the sake of arguing, when I stop myself. I’ll give him this win. I don’t have the emotional energy supply to play pretend. “You’re right.”

“Whoa. Unexpected confession.”

“Time traveling has worn me down.” I perch on the edge of the bed next to him, careful to leave a few inches between us.

He waits, leaving the air empty so I can choose if and when to fill it.

“I was watching a dad and daughter on the balcony below mine. They seemed to be having a jolly good time. Not some forced family vacation, togetherness by proximity. It’s like they’re so much more than blood, you know?”

He nods, his eyes still never leaving mine.

“That’s what I had,” I continue, “with my dad. For my whole life.” I swallow, take a shallow breath. “Up until . . . the murder. The arrest.”

It’d been the shock of the town, even before my dad—consummate local darling, born and raised, who’d put them on the map with his bestselling mysteries—became the prime suspect. The shock of the century, really. The ugliest crime in the town’s history.

Our next-door neighbor, a single mother, beloved oncology nurse and Girl Scout leader. Marjorie. Stabbed in the basement stacks of the local library with scissors swiped from the help desk. Her twin daughters were at soccer practice when it happened. She’d been dating someone at the time, someone new, no one her friends or family knew by name. But she was by all accounts enamored of him, totally in his thrall, always talking about how smart he was, how accomplished. She had reasons, she’d told them, good ones, for why she couldn’t name him. Not yet anyway; she would, when the time was right.

That time never came, though, because Marjorie was gone before she could reveal him or explain those reasons. She was gone, and my dad had been at the library that day, too, as he often was, wandering the aisles aimlessly, hoping for ideas to strike when he’d come against a mental block. My mom and I had been in the next town over, on a mother-daughter date to the movie theater and Ruby Tuesday.

Not an alibi in sight.

I was horrified when I heard Marjorie was gone. I’d known her my whole life, in a vague but pleasant kind of way. Her daughters were a year younger than me, and we’d played outside when we were little, traipsing in and out of one another’s backyards. We’d grown up since then, grown apart, but we still smiled at one another in passing at school.

I’d never really seen my dad talking to Marjorie. At least not outside of a casual hello at the bus stop or grocery store or school function. No one had. But that didn’t matter—not as the evidence began to mount.

The eyewitnesses were the first to turn everyone’s eyes on Dad—library patrons who’d seen him enter the stacks, leave shortly after. Alone, both times. Visibly agitated.

Then the real bombshell landed, courtesy of my dad’s longtime editor in New York: leaked early pages of his latest project, a manuscript that included a suspicious amount of shared plot points with Marjorie’s case. A single mom next door, paragon of the town, with an unraveling secret dating life. Killed with kitchen shears. Not at the library, but amongst old books in the town historical society offices.

He’d always talked to me about his project ideas, usually before making a single keystroke on his typewriter. But he hadn’t told me about this one. And when I’d asked why, he didn’t have a satisfying answer. “It came in a flash,” he’d said; he’d sent the pages off in a fever-dream rush to appease a deadline.

But that wasn’t the question and answer that undid us.

I’d spent days combing through everything I knew, everything I didn’t know, until I finally approached him in his office late one night as he stared at a blank page, empty tumbler in hand. And I asked him, straight out: “Did you have any connection to Marjorie?”

He looked at me with sunken, red-rimmed eyes and said no. “Nothing, sweet Bea.”

I’d known it was a lie, even before the police revealed their call logs a day later. Felt it in deep in my bones, a sickening ache, that he was keeping something bad from me. And if I was being honest with myself, he had been off recently. Distracted, moodier. I’d chalked it up to that deadline, writer’s block, the sky-high sales expectations.

As it turned out, Marjorie had called our house a handful of times in the weeks leading up to her death—all during work and school hours, when only Dad was home. There were returned calls, too. When pressed about it by the police, Dad said she’d been interested in writing advice, picking his brain for how-to tips. But no one else in her life had heard about her new hobby. There were no pages, no files to be found anywhere.

By then the local—and national, global even—opinion was unanimous, even with no DNA found at the scene, nothing linking my dad biologically. It was the ’90s; forensics weren’t what they are now. Because who else was more likely to kill Marjorie than the eccentric writer next door who spent his whole life dwelling in murders and mysteries? A man who so perfectly fit the bill of her secret lover?

Between the eyewitnesses and the manuscript and those call logs, there was enough evidence for the police to make an arrest.

And so I made my decision, too.

Because he’d lied. To me.

And if he could tell one lie, who knew what else he was capable of?

Rocco—he knows all this from the script. But it’s clear right now, the way he’s looking at me, it’s not about research for him. It’s about me.

“Most days,” I say, because now that I’ve started, I’m not ready to stop, “I’m okay, or okay enough to fight through it. To not cry because, as you so acutely pointed out, I pride myself on keeping it together.”

In a normal world, I’d never unload like this, especially to Rocco. But nothing about this—him and me in a hotel room together, my most treasured bits nearly exposed by my robe, living in another fucking decade—is normal. I’m not sure what, if any, rules still apply. Maybe nothing matters anymore; maybe none of it’s real.

Or maybe it somehow, inexplicably, is all very real.

And the only way to ever get out, to return to our modern world where Rocco is nothing but a temporary on-set itch, is to be open and honest, to break the pattern and the system in some way. To alter our path, whatever mistakes might have been made.

Rocco nudges me, elbow on elbow. Just for a second, though the warmth of him cuts through the thin robe. “It doesn’t have to be a badge of honor, you know. It’s okay. To cry. To let those emotions of yours hang loose.”

“It’s been so long, though.”

“I don’t think grief works like that. I’m no expert, but I would say there’s no built-in stopwatch, ticking down to a time where it all disappears.”

I laugh, just as a fresh wave of tears pricks at the corners of my eyes. “I wish it was just grief. Grief feels so simple, at least in comparison. No, this feeling? Pure guilt. I couldn’t have saved him from the arrest or the time in jail; I was a teenager, not a defense attorney. But I could’ve made his life better with my support. They say his cancer might’ve spread so quickly because of the stress.”

My dad had suspected his illness early on—it was the reason he’d started calling Marjorie. Asking for her professional take on symptoms he’d been having. Too afraid to go to the doctor and have it confirmed. And more than that, too afraid to tell me anything was wrong.

So he lied.

The first and only lie he ever told me.

Rocco knows this, too; it’s all there, in Murder in the Books.

But even still, I can see how hard it’s hitting now. How real it’s become for him.

I watch as he shakes his head, his eyes looking so deeply sad, a bottomless well of concern. If he were any other actor, I’d think it was for effect. A dazzling display of empathy. But somehow, with Rocco, I feel certain it’s genuine.

“Bea,” he breathes. “You must realize you weren’t the sole cause of that stress. There was the highly public arrest for murder; the time he spent behind bars awaiting trial, before they landed on the real killer. That all must have taken a heavy toll.”

“The arrest crushed him, sure, and his time trapped in a cell. The way the whole town turned on him. His publisher. Readers all across the world. But none of that’s what really broke him.” My heart’s racing, and I taste bile at the back of my throat. I pause, take a moment to collect myself. Because I want to continue. Against all odds, I want to tell him.

Rocco’s hand edges slowly across the comforter, stopping when his pinky brushes up against mine. I don’t move away. Instead, I slip my hand under his palm, twine my fingers through his. He squeezes. I squeeze back.

And then I continue: “I cried at the time. For Marjorie, when I heard the news. My god, I couldn’t stop crying, even though I barely knew her. She left a tin of gingerbread cookies on our porch every December, and she liked to wear neon tracksuits to the grocery store; that was pretty much the extent of what I knew. It was just so awful, so sad, to think it could happen like that, to a mom, in our own peaceful little suburban town. But when my father was arrested? Taken away from us? Nothing. He’d been my best friend, and I let the public opinion—and that lie, that one fucking lie—make my decision for me. He wrote me so many letters from jail, even after I moved to LA, tried calling so many times. I never wrote back, never picked up. And then it all happened so fast—the official diagnosis, the new lead, the actual boyfriend tracked down, good old Mr. H. My married eighth-grade lit teacher.” I shudder, recalling how he used to be so buddy-buddy with me in class, tossing out A-pluses I didn’t deserve, trying to get in my dad’s good graces. “I knew things were very bad, stage four, aggressive. He’d put it on the back burner for too long, and medical attention in thejail had been a joke. My mom was barely talking to me by then, but she kept me updated on his condition. The day he wasofficially cleared, it should have been a celebration—the whole town should have thrown him a weeklong apology parade. But he was too sick. Went straight to the hospital in Tucson, just my mom at his side. I should have been there, too. But I wasn’t.”

I don’t need to remind Rocco where I was instead.

What and who was keeping me so busy at the time.

He opens his mouth, probably preparing for another round of apologies, but I cut him off. “It’s on me, Rocco—I chose to stay in LA with you, to go to clubs and parties and have sex in that damn glass-tunnel shower of yours. I picked that because it was easy. Safe. Going home to see my dad, finding the right words to apologize? To say goodbye?” I shake my head. “No way was I that brave.”

“I’m sorry, Bea,” he says softly. A softness that makes my chest ache, the full weight of his empathy pressing against me. “Sorry you had to make those tough choices. I get it, why you did what you did. I’ve never been great with conflict either. To put it mildly.”

We sit there in silence for a little while. Still holding hands.

I’m not sure what else to say, if there’s anything left.

My truth might not have set us free—because we’re still here, the splotch of neon orange comforter between us a reminder that we are squarely in the wrong decade.

But maybe we’re closer, at least in some minute, ineffable way.

Or maybe not. Maybe there’s nothing to be done. This world, this place, it’s it for us. Whyever that is, whatever it may mean.

Rocco speaks again first. “Do you think we’re . . . here to change something about our past together? To make sure we—they—do something differently this time around?”

I laugh, leaning into him instead of away, my shoulder pushed up against his.

“What? Was that funny?” He doesn’t shift to shake me off. Instead, he doubles down, hitching a leg over so the only thing separating us is our hands, tightly held in the middle.

“No. I was just wondering the same thing. It’s maybe the first time we’ve been on the same page.”

“Really?” He furrows his brows, tilting his head so we’re looking at one another straight on, just a few inches apart. So few. “I’m not so sure about that. I don’t think we’re nearly as different as you might like to believe. I know you’ve enjoyed the mortal enemies fantasy, though, so don’t let me intrude on that.”

“Mm.” Not giving him that win, correct or not. Though maybe there is something to that fantasy.

“So what do you think? Are we supposed to unlock some kind of puzzle in the time-space continuum? Rewrite world history? Just ours? Nothing at all? Enjoy our shared fever dream, shared afterlife, whatever this is, break all the laws, drink all the booze, eat cake for dinner, have lots of sex?”

I can feel my cheeks flush, against my will.

He coughs. “I wasn’t implying with one another.”

“Oh?”

“Not that I’d necessarily be opposed to it either.”

My breath hitches. It shouldn’t; I would be opposed. Should be. Maybe.

Damn.

“I just wasn’t er . . . propositioning you,” he says, those cool blue eyes drilling straight into mine. “Especially not right now. We just had a serious breakthrough conversation, and I’m trying to be a respectable human being.”

“Okay.” I nod, trying frantically to think about anything other than his palm against mine, that sturdy shoulder, those stupidly beautiful eyes, the fact that he wouldn’t be opposed. “So . . . cake for dinner? That’s what you would do if nothing mattered? That’s the big dream?”

He grins widely, the smile that won me over so completely back then. So boyish and charming, wild and free. It knocks down all the years between us. Like it really is us, back then; not two doppelgangers from the future, loaded down with more wrinkles, more regrets. “Okay then. You choose. What would you do? A night back in the ’90s, no limits, no consequences. Well, within reason, given our situation.”

I close my eyes. His face makes it too hard to think. But even still, eyes shut, I feel him there. Feel the heat radiating between our bodies, an annoying tug below my belly button. I open my eyes to find him studying me. “Honestly?” I sigh. “I have no clue.”

He nods, drops my hand as he pulls away to stand. The room immediately feels ten degrees cooler. “You get dressed. Put on your Aero Girl best. And then come meet me next door. We’ll splurge on the ‘complimentary’ tiny bottles of vanilla vodka in my room, and then? We’re going out.”

“Out where?”

“No idea.” He smiles, the very good one again. “But one way or another, we’re going to have ourselves one epic ’90s night.”