Chapter 13 Jules “The Way It Is” #2
“I wish I could,” he says. “Oh, hey, Max. Listen, guys, I gotta go. I’ll call you back.”
“Don’t go,” I beg, but it’s too late. The line crackles and goes dead.
We stare at the phone for a second.
“Well, he rang,” Adam says. “He’s alive.” He chuckles, like we were stupid to think otherwise.
“Something’s up,” I say, starting the car again.
“It’s a tour. There are bound to be highs and lows.”
“Don’t you think he sounds…I don’t know. Stoned? Or drunk? Or both?”
Adam’s phone pings. Liam has WhatsApped him his new song, “The Way It Is,” and greedily, we play it. Once, then twice. I search the lyrics for clues but find none. Even though it’s kind of taking the piss out of us both a bit, at least it’s doing it with heart. At least he sounds like him.
Adam touches my hand, as I pull out and start driving again. “Hey. Stop looking so worried. He’ll be home by Christmas.”
On this sunny summer’s day, Christmas feels like an eternity away.
“I just…I just think about him all the time,” I admit. “I mean, he’d seriously freak out if he knew how much I check my phone for news and calls.”
I sheepishly meet Adam’s eye, glad that I’ve shared my neurosis.
“Comes with the turf. I bet Chris Martin’s mum feels the same,” he says gently. “I tell you what. Let’s make a pact. Let’s turn off both of our phones. Let the outside world go away just for tonight. Let’s have this time just for us.”
—
The Retreat is super plush and we’re staying in a suite overlooking the lake and the woods beyond.
“Bubbles, m’lady?” Adam asks, pulling a bottle from the silver ice bucket on the antique table by the window.
“Don’t mind if I do.”
He’s playing Ben Folds’s Rockin’ the Suburbs on the wall-mount TV’s Spotify and “Still Fighting It” is on, a song he always says reminds him of Liam, because of how similar they are sometimes.
Outside on the private terrace, there’s a wicker love seat beneath a pink clematis. We settle in and sip the fizz and soon we’re onto everything that’s happened to us recently.
“Maybe the shed has been leading us to this, to getting each other back?” I suggest.
We’re supposed to be time traveling again tomorrow afternoon.
That’s what we’ve agreed. Just for fun. Just for the ride.
Following our rule, although I’m feeling guiltier than ever now that I’ve already done it once this week behind his back.
Plus, what did learning all that French and cooking really get me anyway?
Another too-close-for-comfort encounter with Darius.
Another fight with Adam. Fresh worries about having pushed Nelly further away.
Maybe even somehow pushing my son further away too?
“To be honest, right now, I’m not sure I want to go back,” I continue, rubbing my toes against his foot. “This is pretty kick-ass, right? This life right now?”
He smiles, surveying the view, before clinking glasses with me. “To you and me,” he says.
“And you and me.”
He grins. “But as long as we don’t change anything, what’s the harm in doing it more? I mean, Jules, it is incredible, this thing we’ve got.”
“Yes, but…”
“What?”
“I don’t know.” I can’t exactly tell him about all that French stuff and its potential knock-on effects. “But there might be wider effects, things we don’t even see,” I hedge. “You know, like what we were saying about all those other yous and mes? In those other universes we’ve left behind.”
Because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about them either. How we talked about them that first night after I’d traveled. About where they might be now. That me with the tattoo and Adam with the beard. As well as all the others we’ve now left behind.
“Yeah, but like I said…they’ll probably just have gone back to the same futures they left. It’s only us, the versions of them that did change something, who will have moved on to other universes like this.”
“But you don’t know that, do you? Not for sure.”
“No…” He thinks for a minute. “But isn’t that a bit like worrying about Captain Kirk?
Like on one level, you could say he’s allowing himself to be destroyed each time he teleports, and it’s just a copy of him that pops up somewhere else.
Meaning you could question whether the next him he materializes as is even the same Captain Kirk at all.
But maybe that original Captain Kirk’s just been left behind in another universe and, actually, does it really even matter, if he’s still out there kicking arse for a better intergalactic future for us all? ”
I sort of get his point, but I also get the real point he’s making. He wants to travel back again.
“I suppose,” I say, “but either way, let’s make another pact. That we also do this more, us more. Here in the present.”
“Deal. In fact, a pledge,” he says formally, teasingly, shaking my hand.
“Oh, and talking of the future,” he says, grabbing the champagne bottle to refill our glasses.
“Now that Darius is in charge of Quark, I’m going to request a sabbatical.
I’ve been there long enough to qualify for one of their paid ones, or where you can get half pay, anyway.
I was thinking I could use the time to really help you kick-start your pop-up.
Fix you up a new website, torque the SEO, that kind of thing. ”
“That’d be amazing.” I smile. And it would, wouldn’t it? Him doing all the stuff that I hate.
“In any case, how about we think about some time off? New Year’s maybe? Once Liam’s back. We could go somewhere all together if we can get a cheap enough deal. Somewhere hot.”
“That’d be bliss,” I tell him, and as we chat away, it feels like our lives really are opening up. Like I’ve got my old Adam back. It’s like I’ve rediscovered the exciting, excited guy I first fell in love with.
The old Adam, the new Adam, like one.
—
By the time we leave the hotel on Saturday lunchtime, everything feels different. I feel different. Clearer. Not just with Adam, but somehow with the universe too.
We park up outside our house and I feel windswept, my face aching from laughing. Even though we’ve earmarked this afternoon for the shed, we both agreed that we are going to pick up Groucho Barx first and wander down through the Lanes to the beach and have a pint in the sun.
Groucho, who instantly senses a walk is afoot, starts doing little circles of joy the second he sees us and doesn’t stop.
“Yes, okay, okay,” I tell him, as I dig out my old trainers from the wardrobe and find a towel, as he’s bound to want to jump in the sea.
Adam’s at the kitchen table on his laptop as his phone buzzes furiously beside him. I go over and put my hands on his shoulders, and he quickly shuts the screen with a groan, looking at his phone.
“Bollocks.”
“What?”
“I’ve got a bike ride this afternoon,” he says. “I arranged it months ago. Before…well, before everything…and, shit, I’m sorry.”
“Can’t you cancel it?”
“They’re already on their way to meet me.”
He tells me “they” are Marcus and Fin, two of his cycling buddies who I vaguely remember him mentioning before, and how he’s going to have to get ready. He apologizes again, but still adamant he has to go and that I should head out and do something else.
“I suppose it’s a good day for it,” I say, trying to be supportive and hide my disappointment—because it’s not like I haven’t already had a great start to my weekend.
“How about we go out for dinner instead?” I suggest, but he’s on his way upstairs to get changed into his kit.
I check my phone, noticing another missed call from Darius.
Adam’s mum’s car is still in his office car park, and I really should ring the rescue services to get it towed back today. I head into town in the Spitfire. The sooner I get this done, the sooner I can take poor Groucho Barx out for his walk.
When I get to the car park, I see that Darius’s Ferrari is tucked round the corner and I swear, because I really don’t want to see him. Then my phone pings with a message to say the tow guy won’t be here for another ten minutes.
I look up at the building. Okay, fine. I guess now is as good a time as any to clear up any misunderstanding from Thursday night.
It’s weird being in the office building on a Saturday, with the atrium so quiet, and the lifts silent. I feel like Bruce Willis in Die Hard as I head across the vast marble floor to the lift and press the button.
When I get to the eighth floor, I notice that there are quite a few workers in the big open-plan office, and I already know Nelly is one of them because she messaged me earlier to tell me not to worry about getting anything for her lunch because she was on calls all day.
I hope she doesn’t see me. The last thing I need is to have to make up some awkward excuse for what I’m doing here.
I spot Darius on his phone outside his office.
“I thought you’d dropped off the face of the planet,” he says, stepping forward to embrace me.
I don’t want any physical contact and so I shimmy past him into his office. He follows and closes the door.
“I’ve been desperate to talk to you,” he says in a conspiratorially low voice, even though we’re alone. “Why didn’t you take my calls?”
“Yeah, sorry about that. Listen…” There’s no point in pussyfooting about. “The thing is…about Thursday. I really appreciate your offer, but Adam’s going to help me with the pop-up. He sold his Star Wars figurines. So, he’s going to back me.”
Darius looks confused. “He’s going to back you with money…from toys?” He makes it sound like a ridiculous suggestion. “Right. Okay. Well, if you don’t want my help, I can take the hint.”
“Darius, honestly, I’m grateful, but Adam and I have just had this amazing night away together and he was talking about the future and how we should—”
Darius just makes a “huh” kind of noise.
“What?”
“So that’s why he didn’t respond to the email last night.”
“What email?”
“He didn’t see it?”
“I don’t know. He’s out. He had a cycle ride…”