More optimistic now, I step toward the electric doors to Zara.
There’s always a fun little dance while I wait for the glass doors to either fail to open or slam shut while I’m halfway through. As always, I put one anxious hand in the air and slowly wave it backward and forward, like a nervous chameleon getting ready to move onto a new leaf. The doors slide open with a whoosh, and a man strides straight past me: headphones on, head down, engrossed in his phone.
“Will?”
Stunned, I stare after him as he begins awkwardly attempting to stuff a brown paper bag into his satchel. I’m now desperately trying to switch focus. It feels like years ago already. Will. Breakup. This morning. Wait. Did he...just dump me and head straight to Zara Man for a natty wardrobe update? Also, didn’t he tell me mere hours ago that he had a meeting in Clerkenwell? Did he just lie to me?
My cheeks flare. Of course he did, Cassandra. History has repeatedly established that what a man says directly after he dumps you is literally whatever will get him away from you fastest.
I’ll sort out time travel later: an ex-boyfriend waits for no woman.
“Will!” I say, impulsively running after him. This is almost definitely the last chance I have to talk to Will about our relationship. From experience, the further away from the breakup itself, the less likely people are to want to discuss it in detail and the more likely they’ll just go ahead and change their phone number instead.
Adjusting his backpack, Will heads toward the tube stairs and I speed up: I don’t want our final ever conversation to happen surrounded by the scent of a million body fluids that don’t belong to either of us.
“Will,” I say, lightly touching his arm.
He turns around and pulls his headphones down, and his face is so lovely, something inside me crumbles like a piece of stale fairground fudge.
“Can we talk?” I focus instead on the bobbled green neckline of his jumper. “Just for a second?” Better adjust his expectations. “Ninety seconds, actually. Sixty seconds if I speak very fast.”
“Umm.” Will hesitates, then nods. “Sure.”
“Here goes.” I breathe out with control as if I’m playing the flute. “So I’ve been thinking over what you said about sharing and opening up, and you’re right. I don’t. I find it incredibly hard. Painful. And when I do open up, I share way too much because I’m not sure where the line is. You know, that socially appropriate line between good share and bad share. I can’t see it. There’s all this truth, gallons and gallons of it, but how much do people want? Fifty percent truth? Ninety percent? Just a trickle? None at all? Nobody ever clarifies, so I’m constantly getting it wrong.”
Will opens his mouth and I crash on regardless.
“And then I share too much or not enough, and people get angry, or irritated, or uncomfortable, or bored, or hurt. It’s confusing, and it makes me very anxious. But you asked me to share and open up, so here goes.”
I suck in the deepest breath I can find, like a free diver.
“I time traveled. Or...I think I time traveled. You broke up with me, twice. I got fired, twice. There were no banana muffins. None. And when I realized what was going on, I tried to control it. I thought maybe I could go back to the day my parents died and try to save them. Which is ridiculous, right? As if I’m Heracles, charging into the Underworld and grabbing Alcestis. But that’s what you’re supposed to do with magical power, isn’t it? You’re supposed to do something extraordinary for the people you love.”
I’d tell you what Will’s reaction is, but I’ve yet to look up.
“And it wasn’t entirely altruistic,” I admit quickly. “I think maybe losing my parents so suddenly...sent my life in the wrong direction. I guess I hoped maybe I could put everything back on track. Try again, somehow. But mainly I just wanted to see my mum and dad because I still miss them so badly.”
Will’s jumper is very bobbly: he needs one of those little combs.
“Anyway.” I breathe out. “It didn’t work, obviously, because who the hell actually thinks they can time travel? So clearly I’ve lost my mind. Which has probably been on the cards for quite some time, as I’m sure you’ll agree. And I don’t expect you to believe this, or even care, given that we’ve broken up, but I needed to tell someone, and frankly, you’re all I have.”
The accuracy of this statement brings me crashing to a halt.
Will is all I have. My ex-boyfriend of not quite four months is all I have. And this is exactly why you shouldn’t chase people down in the street without a script: you end up realizing devastating shit like that.
“Anyway,” I conclude flatly. “I shared. It’s your turn to talk now. Go.”
There’s a silence, and—as the silence stretches, melted and stringy—all at once, I sense Will’s colors. They are nothing like I’ve ever seen coming out of him before. They’re strange and mismatched, like a cake made with ingredients that taste out of balance. Confusion, which is to be expected. A little sadness, maybe. Pity, granted. But...something that looks and feels a lot like...fear?
With a deep breath, I finally look up and—
“I am so sorry.” Will smiles. He has the voice of a man picking up a broken bird. “But I don’t know who you are.”
The ground pivots.
“Don’t feel embarrassed,” he adds gently. “It happens a lot. I look exactly like eighty percent of the men on Tinder.”
Stomach folding, I check the street again. Superimposed on top of thirty minutes ago, I now realize the images look nothing alike. Nobody is wearing a jacket; the air is golden. The shops have different window displays. The trees have more leaves. Will’s hair is half an inch shorter, and his beard is neatly trimmed. Even his khaki backpack is...not revolting. He clearly hasn’t taken it on a shoot to Antarctica and left it near some penguins yet. I was so busy focusing on what was going on inside my head that I completely forgot to notice anything around me.
I wish I could say that’s unusual, but it’s really, really not.
“Anyway,” Will says politely, taking a step away. “Good luck. I’m so sorry to hear about your parents, and I hope you find the person you’re looking for.”
He turns his back on me, and never mind the fact that I just chronologically hopped about again: this is clearly my first meeting with Will and I just told him I’m his insane time-traveling ex-girlfriend who doesn’t have any friends.
This isn’t a meet-cute. It’s a meet-horrifying.
“Wait!” I say, chasing down the stairs after him. “What day is it?”
“Wednesday,” Will says over his shoulder.
My brain is furiously clutching at information as it plummets, a bit like Alice in Wonderland, falling through books and random maps. That makes sense: hence my black jumpsuit. I know it’s the same year, based on the newly decorated Bar Humbug, so—
“And the date?”
“The sixth of June.”
“But today is our anniversary!” I declare before I can stop myself, and yeah, I think that does it.
“Bloody hell,” Will mumbles, jumping the remaining stairs and slamming his Oyster card down on the barrier as if it’s the only thing stopping me from chasing him like Cerberus the three-headed dog. I consider myself a relatively intelligent person, but I’m obviously kidding myself, because it’s only now occurring to me that I could have just checked all that information on my phone.
Kicking myself, I climb slowly back up the stairs to Oxford Street while I process what just happened, shoulder blades pulled tightly together like tiny wings to make sure I don’t touch anything sticky. Suffice to say, that could have gone better. In fact, in the history of romantic first meetings, I can’t think of many worse. Oedipus and Jocasta, maybe.
But...it also worked.
Somehow, I moved through time again. I changed something, undid something: drew a different line in the sand. Not for the better, admittedly, but it’s a start, right? Although—given the pretty established laws of alternate universes and branches of reality—I’m starting to suspect it might be different sand entirely.
Which means I have one option left.
Smoothing my hair, I walk back to the doorway of Bar Humbug, clear my throat, crouch down in a tight ball on the ground and close my eyes.
I’ll just have to try again.
9
“Excuse me.”
I squeeze my eyelids together.
“Excuse me. Lady.”
Frustrated, I lift my head and flinch as the manager of Bar Humbug looms toward me again: blue eyes narrowed, clean-shaven, breath warm and minty and infinitely too close.