Chapter 14 Adam “American Boy” #3
Panicking, I start looking round for the box of tapes and CDs. But of course it’s not here or outside on the overgrown lawn. Jules never did clear out the loft on this new timeline, because she’s still living with Darius and the kids in the States.
Happily.
Oh God, yeah. I get these new memories now too. Of her with Nelly and Liam, who stayed with her and Darius when I moved back to this, our old house, to try to tap back into my own childhood and make my new game the most imaginative it could be.
Leaving them in their Frank Lloyd Wright house in Montecito.
With neither Nelly nor Liam really talking to me anymore.
Not only because they both see me as the one who left, but because I’m still here working behind a closed door.
Still planning character arcs and storylines for a game that seems to have no end in sight—a game this me doesn’t even want to end.
He wants to lose himself in it for good.
This game that lets him forget what he’s lost.
It takes a huge effort of will to drag him—to drag us—up to the house.
To haul him up to the loft and back. As for the BBQ King 2014 CD that I now make him put into the Sony after firing it up, he practically recoils from it.
Wondering what the hell is happening. Loathing this new part of his consciousness for reminding him of her.
Loathing her for betraying him, but still refusing, for even just one second, to accept that he might have done anything wrong.
As the CD whirrs into motion, Paloma Faith starts singing “Only Love Can Hurt Like This” and, desperately, I dive headfirst into the chaos of that kaleidoscopic whirlwind, craving its promise of another life—because in this universe I might as well already be dead…
***
I land in the body of forty-two-year-old Adam in 2014.
He’s staring down at a row of Halloumi slices sizzling on the barbecue at the end of the garden. Wearing a singlet to show off his muscles that he’s been working on for the last five years since he joined the gym, he’s basking in the warmth of the midafternoon sun beating down on his neck.
“They done yet, Dad? Can I have one?”
Liam, age eleven, wearing a baggy old Lou Reed Transformer T-shirt and shorts, just a few months on from when I last saw him.
This being the end of that same staycation summer and it’s only this morning—a fresh memory hits me—that they’ve finally cleared up all those Earth Twin dens they built over the last two months.
To make it look a bit more sophisticated to celebrate Jules’s forty-second birthday here today.
Of course, that zip wire’s still gone too. Liam’s even forgiven me for cutting it down.
“There you go,” Adam tells him, forking one of the Halloumi slices off onto a paper napkin. “But don’t tell your mother. She wants us to sit down and do it all posh.”
“Bor-ing,” Liam chimes, biting a piece off and grinning before sneaking Groucho Barx a cheeky mouthful too.
Somehow, I resist imposing myself on Adam as he ruffles Liam’s hair and sends him on his way.
I want to hug my boy so much, but I can feel how happy Adam is watching him scamper off across the garden to where they’ve already carried out the kitchen table and laid it ready for a late lunch for twenty or so of their closest friends.
Adam glances across at Nelly, age fourteen, in jeans and a crop top.
She’s just spotted Liam eating and now detaches herself from talking to Ngozi, Geoff, and the twins to make her way toward me through the other guests.
Our friends are all over by the kitchen doors, swigging back Aperol Spritzes and G&Ts.
My Nelly. Not living with Darius and Jules five thousand miles away, but here with me…
and, Christ, I feel sick. How could I ever have done anything to jeopardize that?
How could I have tilted my life away from something as blessed as this?
For money? Out of jealousy? I swear to God, never again.
Just give me this chance to put it all right.
“What did the cheese say when it looked in the mirror?” Nelly asks as she leans up against me.
“Halloumi,” Adam tells her, because of course those cheese jokes were all the rage this year. “But why did the cheesemonger lean to the left?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because he only had one Stilton.”
She groans, her beautiful blue eyes widening with derision, before she jabs a finger at the grill until Adam forks a slice of Halloumi off it for her too.
“I love you, Dad,” she says casually, by way of thanks, as she saunters back up the garden to show her little brother that she’s every bit as much a favorite as him.
For a second, I’m stunned. By the sheer wonder of this normal nothing moment.
The kind I realize I take for granted every day.
Even though I’m here to fix my future, to try to take it back, I can’t quite bring myself to move.
Because what if I’m about to monstrously screw things up again?
What if I’m about to fuck things up even worse?
What if fucking up is all I ever do?
Because I thought I could control this last time too, didn’t I? I thought I could dictate how things would be, but I got it all wrong.
As someone turns up Talking Heads’s “Once in a Lifetime” on the speaker and David Byrne starts warning, of all things, about the various versions of your life you might end up living, Adam feels a warm body pressing up close behind him and smiles.
Because this really is his beautiful wife.
Jules.
“The garlic and rosemary brioches will be done in twenty,” she tells him, softly kissing the back of his neck, “so do you want to get going on the butterflied lamb?”
“Already on it,” Adam says. And he is. He’s got two grills going, with the lamb already steaming in blistering San Miguel lager inside a tent of tinfoil on the farther one.
“Oh, and keep the veggies totally separate,” she reminds me. “Geoff will go nuts if he catches you using the same tongs.”
“On that too,” Adam says, and from his memories I can tell that he really is.
That he really wants Jules to have a good time and not to have to do all the cheffing for once.
Because forty-two, it’s the meaning of life, right?
Something he wrote on her birthday card this morning—even though he knows she doesn’t know or care who Douglas Adams is.
I can’t help picking up on other things too.
More recent memories. Like how they just kissed for a whole minute in bed this morning before the kids came in with her presents.
This is still back in those two years when everything felt like a second honeymoon to them.
With me and Darius busy working on our business plan and starting to put together the finances, and me and Jules building up to our move to the States, and her work going so well now too, with her French cooking skills developing week by week, leaving her happier than I’d ever known her in her life.
Cold sickness sends a shiver down my spine. The knowledge of what will happen when they do get to the States. Unless I can turn things around.
“Oh, and here’s a little something for you,” she says, pressing something into Adam’s hand. “To say thanks for making such an effort today.”
“Wow,” he says, clearly delighted, as he glances down at the BBQ King 2014 CD.
He turns to thank her, but she’s already moving off, dressed in hot-pink trousers and a jewel-encrusted top. Again, it’s all I can do not to impose myself and run after her, kiss her and hold her and tell her how sorry I am for losing her in America—and how I’ll never put anything before her again.
Especially not myself.
“Careful you don’t burn them, Ads.”
Darius. Sidling up next to him. Always with the managerial advice these days, Adam thinks.
But kind of admiring him for it too. Whereas me—future me—I feel nothing but darkness in my heart.
Because even if I drove Jules away on that last timeline, he still dated her behind my back before he moved in with her, didn’t he?
I still remember how that felt—how that felt to that other me. That betrayal in another universe. That loss.
Even if…even if it was my fault too.
But here that contract’s not even written yet. Not for another two years. Here none of that’s yet happened.
“They need another minute,” Adam says, flipping the slices again to make sure they’re all nicely browned—and, naturally, losing one through the grill slots to the fiery-embers netherworld below, because that’s just what Halloumi does.
I impose myself on my old self. “Listen, Darius, we need to talk.”
“Ooh, sounds serious,” he answers mockingly.
“It is.” Glancing across at him, I watch those intelligent eyes of his focusing in.
He’s dressed in a white Fred Perry shirt, crisp white shorts, and brand-new Adidas tennis shoes, like he’s about to serve a Wimbledon ace.
Reaching down, he plucks a piece of Halloumi off the grill without even asking—or flinching, like his fingers are made of iron.
“So shoot,” he says.
“I’m out,” I tell him. “Of Sirius.”
“Oh, Adam. Not again.”
Right, because Adam has already expressed his doubts several times before. “I mean it,” I make Adam say.
Darius still thinks he’s kidding. “You cannot be Sirius,” he says. A John McEnroe tennis joke? Because of what he’s wearing? I don’t even let Adam crack a smile.
“I’m sorry, but that’s my decision,” I get him to say flatly instead.
“What is?” asks Jules, coming over and stepping in between us, her expression clouded with worry, because even though she doesn’t yet know what we’re talking about, she can clearly read the determination on my face.
“Adam’s bailing on Totally Sirius,” Darius tells her. “Or at least that’s what he says…”
“Ads?”
And I hate it. The look of concern…no, of sheer fear, on her face. That this thing she wants so much, it’s about to be taken away.
“I’m sorry,” I make Adam go on. “To both of you, for wasting your time.” But then I hit them with it.
All the reasons why this won’t work. Adam’s real reasons.
The ones that led him to not signing that damned contract on our original timeline.
Him not trusting Darius’s business record.
Not wanting to risk getting in debt. I don’t stop until they both get it.
Until they both understand that what I’m saying here is irrevocable.
That Totally Sirius—for me, and for him—is now done.
I ruin Jules’s birthday, of course. And even though she manages to swallow back the tears and keep her cool, I can still see the fury and resentment in her eyes before she turns her back on me.
I also know, just know, that this will never fully go away. Just like me not signing that deal in our original universe never did.
But I also know that the alternative is so, so much worse.
I let go of the controls then, with Darius still telling Adam what a mistake he’s making.
But as freaked out as I feel over what I’ve just done and how much I’ve just upset Jules by nipping this whole Totally Sirius idea in the bud, Adam holds his ground.
Independent of me. Because all those arguments I just said through his mouth make sense to him too. Just like they once did to me.
In fact, he’s relieved.
As everyone starts to gather around the table for the meal, he ducks into the shed, ostensibly to dig Doodles out, but also just to get away from Darius’s and Jules’s glares.
“Hey man, how’s it hanging?” Doodles asks from where he’s sprawled out gaming on the sofa, with Bowie’s “Absolute Beginners” bum-bum-ba-ooh-ing on Dad’s B&O.
“All good,” Adam lies, his heart still pounding over what he’s just done. “But food’s ready.”
“Oh, okay…” Only Doodles is having trouble pulling his eyes away from whatever game it is he’s playing on the screen.
Only he’s not actually playing it at all, is he? Adam now notices. He’s not even holding a control.
“What’s that?” Adam asks, intrigued, and almost glad for the distraction after the total mind-bomb of a conversation he just had outside.
“A new thing called Twitch,” Doodles says.
“And get this, it lets you play games live online for other people to see. Livestreaming, they’re calling it…
and, like, anyone can do it. So, like, I’m now watching someone I don’t know playing this right now…
and you know what? I reckon it’s going to be huge… ”
***
The second I wake up back in the shed in the future, I can feel my heart thundering.
But thank God! Yes. Look…my bikes, gym equipment, toned reflection…everything’s as it was before I went back to sign that contract.
Leaping up, I quickly check outside, but everything’s looking good there too. The tapes and CDs are still exactly where Jules left them. Meaning nothing else here on this new timeline can have changed.
I’ve done it. I really have put everything back.
I laugh out loud. Just from the relief that that other universe where I lost Jules isn’t my reality anymore.
Only then—mid–fist pump—it hits me. That other universe does still exist, and always will.
Along with that other doomed me. That me without her.
That me who I screwed up. Because he wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t rewound time to sign that contract. If I hadn’t tried to play God.
Because God, the real God, the universe, whatever…operates with scales, right? How the hell else to explain that by trying to take something for myself, I ended up having something else taken away?
Pulse pounding, I stare down at the tapes and CDs. The ones I now know I need to burn. Even though every atom in my mind is screaming at me not to. Not to destroy something as powerful, as incredible, as this.
But Jules is right. I can’t be trusted. Neither of us can. Maybe the only real perfection there is in this damned universe is the kind of makeshift perfection you have to build yourself.
The only way I can think of to prove to Jules how much I love her is to do what she’s asked.
With shaking hands, I continue building her pyre on the barbecue—just like Liam did ten years ago when he burned Luke Skywalker and the rest.
I open the box of matches.
I pull one out to strike.
Only then I hear Groucho Barx barking and I turn round to see Jules glaring at me from the gate.