Chapter 12 Adam “Happy” #4
I checked on my wonderful Nelly too. Fast asleep in bed but with her laptop still on and her phone flashing a waterfall of messages from her boss.
So same as. But also with a map out on her desk showing the route she’s got planned for us to go riding this weekend.
Equally important, my new memories tell me that she doesn’t seem to have been affected by Liam’s rise to fame, like some overshadowed siblings might be.
What I’d done was a good thing, then. Right? Something I don’t regret. Won’t. The only downside I’ve been able to think of so far is not being able to tell Jules everything I’ve achieved.
I flip my phone’s Spotify over from Catatonia’s “Mulder and Scully” to Grass Stain’s first album, Earth Twin. A reference to Liam and Max’s childhood game back in that summer of 2014, of all things. I scroll down to track four, “Zip Wire.”
“And then you rush, rush, rush down into the ground,” Max and Liam sing, along with me too right here in the car, because I know this whole album backward, of course.
Only now he never did rush, rush, rush down into the ground, did he? Not like in all the other universes that came before. Not into pain. Just for fun.
Jeez! What the hell?!
I slam on the brakes, narrowly missing running over the pristine white tennis shoes of a woman in lilac shorts and a matching top, who’s just stepped off the curb, cocking her hip and sticking out her thumb like she’s in a movie and hoping for a lift.
I don’t even need to see her face to know it’s Meredith. I remember her doing this exact same thing at the bus stop just a few weeks ago when her bus pulled up. Cute. Like it was only stopping for her. Like the whole world was stopping to look too.
Not just me.
“I thought it was you.” She grins, taking off her shades, her gray eyes shining as she stares into mine. “And. Oh. My. God. May I?” She looks over the car before climbing into the passenger seat, without even waiting for a reply. “Ooh, I love it. It’s so retro. So…you.”
Me? Meaning what? That she thinks I’m retro too?
A car beeps behind me, and I raise my arm by way of an apology as I drive on, but to flex my biceps a little too. Out of wounded pride. To remind her I’m not quite as old as all that.
“So, what’s with this baby?” she asks.
“Um…” But something stops me telling her that it’s a present for Jules, because I’ve been telling Meredith too much, haven’t I?
On this new timeline and the last. Or maybe it’s not that at all, because I can’t stop myself glancing down at her long bare legs.
Maybe it’s that I still want this little Meredith bubble to be just about us.
In spite of wanting everything sorted with Jules too.
“You got your kit in the back?” she asks.
“Huh?”
“For volleyball. That is why you’re here, right? To give me a ride?”
Then I realize I have just driven past the end of her road. When it was totally off my route. And we are meant to be playing today.
“Um, no,” I say, confused.
“So, to what do I owe this honor? Are you planning on whipping me off somewhere gorgeous in the countryside for lunch? Because, honestly, in a car like this on a day like this, you’re making it hard for a girl to say no.”
With that, she unclips her blond hair, shaking it and letting it cascade down around her shoulders.
The hairography equivalent of stripping off naked and running giggling into the woods.
Jeez. What is this? Surely a level up even from the open flirting we were doing down at the volleyball court. An escalation. An offer. For real.
I can’t believe how I’ve ended up in the exact same position as Jules and Darius in the car last night…But nothing happened between them, did it? I still have to believe that.
Even so, I can’t say I’m not tempted. Meredith is smart, she’s fun, she’s beautiful.
But maybe this is all some needy part of me has ever really wanted from her.
To be properly noticed. Because suddenly it’s not her I’m thinking about.
It’s Jules and how she’s going to look when she sees this car. How much she’s going to smile.
“Sorry,” I tell Meredith, pulling over to the side of the road again, “and…and the volleyball’s off too. I don’t think we should partner anymore.”
She stares at me for a second like she doesn’t believe me. I feel like a heel. I am a heel. This new me and the one on my last timeline, he has been stringing her along, hasn’t he? Haven’t we? Haven’t I? Letting that whole volleyball flirting thing snowball into this.
Meredith leans in to kiss me on the cheek again regardless, just like Monday morning on the court. Only this time, she lightly touches her nose against mine.
“Just do it,” she whispers, and I can feel her warm breath on my face. “Kiss me. Just do it and then it’s done.”
But I don’t want to be Nike Man. Not for her.
“No,” I tell her again. “I’m sorry.”
Because this really is my fault, isn’t it? Not hers.
Another flicker of disbelief, but then her expression hardens as she backs off and climbs out. “You’ll regret not taking this chance,” she tells me, pursed-lipped, before slamming the door.
But as bad as I feel for what I’ve been doing and for how upset she is, I feel a rush of pure relief too.
Because the original me on my original timeline would never have got himself in this fix, would he?
He’d never have let things run this far.
And no, not just because he didn’t have the body or maybe even the confidence back then for it to ever have been otherwise, but because he only ever really had eyes for Jules.
I start driving. Heart pounding. Pedal to the metal.
To home.
To Jules.
To see what she thinks of this car and the man driving it. To see if I can use this old multiverse machine of ours to finally put things right between us.