They Could Be Better

There was a chance they could be better. Happy, if happiness is the goal. A life with purpose that they chose for themselves was out there waiting for them and I could help them find it. Hell, I had a duty to make it happen.

Because of all the people here I was the only one who knew that the opportunity was out there. The only one with proof positive that they could make a difference, that they could be better.

Better than who they are and better than where they wound up, all of them.

I didn't know where Rachel wound up. Didn't know where Jake or Blake or Lucas wound up. I didn't know what future had been wiped away for them.

But with Eddie?

I remember. I remember the future that hasn't yet come to pass. The loneliness. The idleness. The choices and the consequences.

The regret.

I could change that now. I could be better and I could be better for him and I could make him better but that choice started now and here and it started by not shirking away from things just because they were hard. It meant casting off the blanket while not pushing him away and it meant starting by not letting things go unsaid.

And I wasn't the only one who thought that.

Eddie speaks haltingly and then he stops. Then he starts again. He gives a shrug in that way he does, that way that says that it doesn't really matter. That what he's about to say is stupid.

He says it dismissively but it's a start because he says it all the same.

"You called her girl-Kim, that's all," he says, "And I just thought that it was maybe something that should be said. I don't know. It's stupid."

I give him the space to talk and then he does.

"I called her that, but only in my head. I mean I thought about it because, you know, they're both named Kim and one of them is a guy and the other is a girl. So girl-Kim and guy-Kim. You know? It's just weird that you said it too. I guess you just saw the same thing as I did."

But I didn't and I remember that now. I remember that it was on this walk, in another life, that he pointed it out. A little in-joke that we carried on between each other, that connected us.

I didn't think of it first, though. He did.

"You told me," I say eventually, "Not this time. But you did. It was your idea all along, Eddie. Not mine."

The group stops and boy-Kim waxes poetic about the court house in the middle of town and I listen for a moment about the history. The founders of the town and his families part in it.

The people behind the power. The guy behind the guy.

Was that my destiny too?

"This time?" he asks softly.

And I exhale slowly and I turn to him, as serious as I possibly can because frankly there is no time for jokes here. I need him to believe me.

"Eddie?" I ask, "What do you know about time travel?"

Join my Patreon for only $3 a month and get early access to new chapters and nearly a years worth of exclusive content. https://www.patreon.com/SophiePert