He Paused

"You paused," I say, mortified.

"And you're not a tomboy, for the record," he goes on, "Having short hair and liking fantasy novels doesn't make you a tomboy. A tomboy wouldn't be caught dead in a dress, wouldn't wear makeup, wouldn't want to dance or be... I mean come on, Emily. We both saw you out there and-"

"Cut the shit," I said, grabbing his arm and pulling him a little bit further away from the group so we wouldn't be heard, "You paused."

"So," he says, defiant, "Don't look into things."

"Why did you pause?" I insist, "Tell me you don't have a crush on me, Eddie. I don't think..."

I half wince, flushing a little. Visions and flashes run through my mind because even though I'm not pulled back there I still remember it. The memories of a future from the first time I touched him. The way that he touched me. The things he made me do. To him.

On my knees. In leather. The pain and the pleasure and...

I don't want that future, I know that at least. I know that I don't want to be with Eddie and I can't even think about the being that kind of way with him and besides which, that's not really the point.

It's the everything. The apartment and the squalor and the pain, the pain that was emotional rather than physical.

It's the fact that it's far too close to...

I shake my head, "Tell me you don't-"

He yanks his hand out of my grip and shakes his head, "Don't flatter yourself. I mean you're fit enough, but I'm not interested. Being with you would only fuck with my head too much for me to deal with. I get the feeling..."

"Neither of us would get out of it alive," I tell him, finishing the thought for him and having him nod, a little surprised but certainly definitive, in response.

I take a step back and start to follow the group and we walk in silence for a while again and we're slow enough that the group is starting to pull away but neither of us are complaining about that.

I know why that's the case for me. This moment, being with him here, it's a little familiar for me. Nostalgic if you can be nostalgic for trauma but I remember this tour and I remember being with him on it. I remember our snide and mean little jokes and how we used them to isolate ourselves from the rest of them, but how it made us closer together.

Eddie is like an old blanket, warm and comforting. But he's like a blanket that is so old that it's ratty and you're pretty sure the last person who had it died of something infectious so if you grasp it too close and breathe too deeply it's going to infect you too.

And then... well he said it just as right as I did. Then neither of us will get out alive.

But I couldn't run. There was far too much working against me for that.

The baba yaga had said that I owe these people, the people whose lives I changed when I went back in time. I bumped them off their path and while they had the chance to have a better one now, it wasn't certain.

Too much was still up in the air.

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