Chapter 7 Jules “Alright” #4
“Now,” she breathes, “now, yes, yes!” she cries out, as she startles the birds from the trees.
***
I come to back in the shed with a gasp, like someone’s just poured ice down my back. My pulse is racing, my cheeks burn. I can’t believe I’ve been spat back out into the present when I was in the middle of such a whopping orgasm.
I spring out of my chair. My knees are literally trembling.
“So?” Adam asks.
I fill up my wineglass and take a long slug. I can’t get my head around the fact that I was there. Just seconds ago.
“It was, um, it was a Sunday. We were on a walk. In Stanmer Park,” I mumble.
“Right,” he says. “Just like you made a note of here in your diary. And you didn’t change anything?”
“Uh-uh,” I lie, taking another gulp of wine. “Nothing at all. Just passenger-ing along. Same as we agreed. And this…it all looks, the same too,” I say.
He nods, seemingly satisfied.
“So, how was the sex?”
His question takes me so much by surprise that I splutter my second gulp of wine back out into my glass.
“The what?”
“Only it says here…” He holds up my diary, like a preacher brandishing a Bible at a sinner.
Like his mum used to do to him whenever she caught him out lying as a kid, he once told me.
“We had sex in the woods,” he reads out.
“And I had a huge orgasm, for once, thanks to this great new trick I just kind of came up with…”
Only that’s something I never wrote, of course. Not in my old diary, on my old timeline. Her “great new trick”? Sweet Jesus, that was me, just now, in her head.
“For once?” he says to me accusingly. “So had you been, well, faking it all before then?”
“No,” I bluster, scoffing at his indignant male pride. “It’s just that up until then it could be a bit random whether it happened, that’s all.”
“Random?” He looks mortified.
“Difficult.”
Even more mortified.
“It’s just that sometimes I could and sometimes I couldn’t… ” I try to explain.
“But then?”
“Okay, fine,” I half shout, because sod it, he’s going to work it out, isn’t he?
“But then, on this particular day, I taught myself a little trick—well, taught you, actually,” I say, waggling my fingers and watching his cheeks mottle.
“A little trick that we wouldn’t have otherwise picked up on for a few more years. ”
“Oh my God,” Adam says. “So that was you. The you from now. You were the one who first showed me how to do that to you up in the woods?”
Because, of course, he remembers that. Because for him in—oh, shit—this new alternative universe I’ve just created, I would have always taught him this trick on that date.
“So what? Is it really such a biggie?” I ask.
“Yes. Yes, it is. Because, shit, Jules. Well, for one thing, you just lied,” he says, tossing the diary onto the sofa in disgust. “We had an agreement. And you promised—”
“Oh, stop being so dramatic.”
“But it’s not even just the fact you lied,” he snaps. “Or had sex with him,” he says.
“With you.”
“No, him. With a twenty-three-year-old.”
Jesus, I can’t believe he’s getting jealous about me having sex with himself. “No, she did that,” I point out. “My younger self. I just happened to be there as well.”
“But by deliberately imposing yourself on your younger self yet again, you’ve created yet another new timeline. This one. Which means this me, the me on this timeline, I’m not the same Adam you left on your last timeline when you just went back to 1995.”
I stare at him. Really stare. Like I’ve maybe never stared so hard at someone in my life. Quantumly speaking, he’s correct, this is a different Adam, but only microscopically, right? Like when I got rid of his beard. Just now he got a bit better at sex a bit quicker than he would have otherwise.
“But you’re still you,” I soothe.
“Well, yes. Maybe.” Although it’s obvious just from his expression that he’s having trouble wrapping his head around this too. “At least, I hope. I mean, you swear nothing else has changed. You absolutely swear?”
“Yes. I double, triple, quadruple vow. And I mean, okay. I’m sorry for the lie. But apart from that, honestly, if anything, what I actually did was make our lives a little better.”
Well, a lot better, in fact. It’s weird, but I’m now getting more of those “new memories” of lots of other great sex we explored in those early years after this picnic. Sex that has stood us both in good stead ever since.
“And I promise, I double, triple, quadruple promise, I really won’t do it again,” I say, because he’s still sulking and I really don’t want this to ruin our night.
Finally, he nods, but eyeing me warily, like this really is my last chance.
“So where to next?” I say, quickly drum-rolling my hands on my thighs to lighten the mood.
“What about our wedding tape? What a day. One of the best,” I tell him, full eye contact now, meaning every word.
Because, crikey—a new memory informs me—the shag we had that night. Way better than the first time round.
“No, I’ve already got such good memories of it, I don’t want to…risk changing them, spoiling them…”
By imposing himself. Like I just did. That’s what he means. That he’s better than that, better than me.
“This one,” he says, picking out a tape labeled Flat Party 1998. “Sounds like fun. Another ninety-minute one too. Not that I remember this particular party specifically,” he adds.” I mean, we threw so many back then, they’ve all rather blurred into one.”
“Yeah, sure.” I laugh.
Because how could either of us forget that one? As in ever.
He takes the tape out of its plastic case and slides it into the Sony, then sits down in the armchair and tells me, “I’ll see you in an hour and a half.”
As he presses “Play,” “Save Tonight” by Eagle-Eye Cherry starts up.
“Ooh, I love this one,” I say, perching on the edge of the bench.
But Adam’s eyes have already glazed over.
“Wowzer,” I say, leaning in to look at him more closely. “Far out.”