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This is the weirdest fucking thing that’s ever happened to him.
He honestly can’t even remember how he got here, but what he does know is he’s standing in the rain in front of a house - in what he’s pretty sure is Ilderton - waiting for himself to open the door.
He can sense that this is some kind of Dickensian, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ rethink your choices and behaviors before it’s too late thing, but he’s not sure which of his choices he’s meant to be rethinking. Since the retirement video had gone up on Instagram, he had been battling a hollowness in his chest but had assumed it was at the final confirmation of the new direction his life was going to take. He has a sneaking suspicion that this experience is meant to show him otherwise.
Admittedly he’s also not convinced that this isn’t a hallucination of some kind.
And then the door opens.
He doesn’t recognize himself. He’d really thought that this couldn’t get any weirder, but the differences are stark. There’s a brightness to his eyes and skin that has been absent from his reflection for awhile now, and it’s striking.
“Hey,” he says quietly.
“Hey,” he replies.
“Come on in.” The other him takes a step back and gestures inside.
He steps into the house and realizes immediately that the biggest difference in this world can be boiled down to, simply (and yet also not so simply), Tessa. The house is white and tidy but also lived in and loved. There are carefully curated and hung framed pictures along the hallway toward the kitchen, but there’s also what he can only assume is the work of some mixture of her niece and his nephews in the form of messy caricatures haphazardly pinned to the wall in the living room. A cluster of mismatched frames on the bookcase in the living room contrasts with the carefully organized books behind them. Her skate bag is hung on a hook beside the door while his has been unceremoniously dropped to the floor unzipped.
He scans the pictures on the wall, and his eyes catch on one in particular. It’s in Pyeongchang, that he knows for sure, but the moment and the memory aren’t his. He’d worn those clothes and he’d won that medal, but this - it’s a kiss he didn’t give. For a moment there’s a flash of something in his brain, something foreign to him, almost like an intrusion, and he feels her lips on his and he knows exactly how it felt to hold both her and the medal like that.
It knocks the wind out of him ever so slightly.
He steps further into the house, feeling utterly out of place - a strange feeling that is only amplified by the notion that, technically, he lives there. Instinctively, he looks left down the back hallway and there she is.
She’s sitting on the bed, her arms wrapped protectively around her knees. Her eyes are guarded and calculating as though there’s something in him that she doesn’t understand. It’s not a look he’s used to seeing on Tessa. This is actually weirder than seeing himself. She’s her, but she’s not. He feels like he just spoke with her but also has never met her before and somehow both of those things are true. His eyes flick to her legs, searching for the scars he knows are there just to find a way to confirm to himself that she’s really her.
She notices him look and drops her hands to her shins, covering them. He’s struck by the feeling that he’d just crossed a line he didn’t know existed, breached an intimacy they don't share.
He looks back to himself with a question in his eyes. The other him hesitates for a moment, then says, “I made different choices than you did.”
“You know my choices?”
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t I get to know yours?”
He shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out.”
An uncomfortable silence settles around them.
“What are we supposed to do?” he asks finally.
The other him lets out a heavy breath and rubs the back of his neck. “Honestly I’m not really sure? It just happened. We had all of these memories and feelings, and none of them had happened to us. And then we knew you would be here, knew that you were coming, you know? I just - I don’t know why.”
He glances back toward Tessa who is still staring right at him.
“Well, what are we going to do?”
“I think we need to talk,” he says. “But - “ He turns to look back at Tessa too and he’s not sure but he thinks her gaze softens when it shifts to the other him. “I think it will need to wait. We - she -” he sighs. “This really took her feet out from under her.”
“I mean,” he says with a hollow laugh. “It’s pretty fucking crazy for all of us.”
He can see the other him’s jaw clench. “She’s having a lifetime of feelings she hasn’t had to have before. And from what I’m gathering they aren’t exactly good ones.”
He stiffens. It’s like he’s being attacked for something he didn’t know he’d done. These two, these versions or whatever, don’t understand him or his choices or his life.
They stare each other down for a moment, before the other Scott gestures to the couch behind him. “You can sleep there if you want. Or whatever you want to do. You can talk to her in the morning.”
“Are you her bodyguard or her -” he cuts himself off and looks away.
After a beat the other man says, “I’m a lot of things.”
With that he walks down the hall toward Tessa, throwing a ‘goodnight’ over his shoulder.
Part of him wants to walk out of the house right then and there, but he knows that he won’t be allowed to go home until he does whatever the universe has tasked him with, so with a deep breath he moves deeper into the living room. He sees blankets and pillows placed neatly on the couch; two pillows, one thick and one thin - just how he likes it - and he swallows hard. Apparently some things are consistent in all universes and Tessa accounting for his comfort even when she can’t commit to her own is one of them.
His indignation fades, and he stands helplessly in the middle of the room, torn between a thousand uncertainties.
He doesn’t know much about this world, but he knows that they didn’t skate their last show on home ice tonight. In fact, it doesn’t look like there will be an end date to them at all.
Then he hears his own voice. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” comes Tessa’s answer. He turns his head slightly toward the voices drifting down the hall.
“Tess.”
“It just makes me…” she trails off.
“What?” he prompts.
“It makes me sad.”
“What does?”
“He does.”
He doesn’t know what to say to that, and evidently neither does the Scott in the bedroom. Everything goes quiet.
He’s struck by the urge to see how they sleep. He’s shared a bed with Tessa more times than he can count, but he can’t imagine how they would share a bed like this. She’s restless and antsy and he sleeps like the dead, and he really wants to know what that looks like.
He forces himself to walk away. If he starts down that path he doesn’t know where it will end.
He lies down on the couch, hands behind his head and tries to ignore the faint smell of Tessa that lingers on the pillows.
He’s not sure how long he lies there, but he doesn’t sleep. His mind loops and twirls through where he is and what’s happening and what he’s left behind. He’s tried not to think of the tour as anything more than a fond farewell. He doesn’t want to fall down the rabbithole of what it means and how it will end, but faced with this reality he finds it’s unavoidable. Things were always going to change, but he can finally acknowledge to himself that this isn’t how he thought this would go.
He hears the soft padding of feet on the hardwood floor and is unsurprised to see Tessa come around the corner into the living room. She looks at him for a moment before curling up into the armchair across from him. With a jolt he realizes that she’s wearing an oversized Moir’s Skate Shop hoodie over her pajama shorts, her hands pulled into the sleeves. It occurs to him in that moment that he’s never seen Tessa wear any Skate Shop merchandise.
He didn’t realize that that was weird until now.
He sits up and they stare at each other momentarily. He wonders if she’s cataloguing the differences in him the way he is with her.
She looks happy. It’s not that she looks unhappy back in his world, but it’s altered slightly. It feels like a settled kind of happy, a steady comfortableness in her existence. He wonders how she feels about the dark circles under his eyes that he’d not realized were there until he came face to face with himself.
The words come out of his mouth before he can stop them.
“I’m surprised you live here.”
“Why?” she asks, her brow furrowing.
“Doesn’t seem like you to live the small town life.”
“What does that mean?”
He shrugs. “My Tessa wants a little more than that.” He finds suddenly that he’s angry with her and he doesn’t know why. There’s just something about her that fundamentally unsettles him.
“Are you sure about that?” she asks, a challenge in her eye.
“Pretty sure,” he replies defiantly. “Not too many photoshoots and galas around here.”
“You know, Toronto is only two hours away. And London has an airport. You should know that considering we managed to have a skating career from here.”
“So?”
“So it turns out that sacrifices - like maybe a bit of a commute? Don’t seem so hard when they’re worth it.”
“You don’t trust me, do you?” he asks roughly.
Her face softens slightly. “You’re Scott, of course I trust you. I’m just not sure I should.” She pauses. “I haven’t felt that way for a long time.”
He drops his head and runs his hands over his newly short hair. “You know it’s not really fair that you know everything about me and I don’t know anything about you.”
“I didn’t make the rules,” she says.
“I don’t think it’s against the rules for you to tell me.”
“What do you want to know?”
He looks around, eyes landing on a shelf of neatly stacked dvds. “Favorite movie?”
“Funny Face.”
He tilts his head slightly, and says, “Real favorite movie?”
She bites back a smile. “Shaun of the Dead.”
He can’t help but smirk. “So some things are the same.”
“Apparently.”
“Then tell me something that I don’t know.”
She thinks for a moment. “I give really good head.”
He inhales too quickly and coughs as saliva catches in his threat.
She grins. “You okay there?”
He clears his throat again. “Fine. Just - not what I was expecting.”
“Well you didn’t know that, did you?”
“Uh, nope. That’s not something I’ve - nope.”
She nods a little then tilts her head toward the hall behind them. “He knows that.”
He feels himself flush. “So you guys are really…?”
She nods, and softly says, “Yeah.”
“How long?”
She bites her lip gently, worrying it as she considers him.
“Tess, come on.”
“Does it matter?” she answers, finally.
“Yes,” he responds quickly.
“Why?”
“Because it does.”
She shakes her head slightly. “It doesn’t.”
“Okay well you’re wrong.”
“Mmm don’t think I am,” she replies.
“Tess.”
“Scott.”
He stares at her for a moment, doing his best to glare it out of her, but she doesn’t look away, just matches his gaze. He scoffs. “So stubborness is a common Tessa trait everywhere, got it.”
“I’m not stubborn, I’m just right.”
“Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive you know.”
“Fine. I’m stubborn and I’m right. I am a multi-tasker.”
“Did I - uh, was I ever with...Kaitlyn?” he asks tentatively and she shakes her head.
“And obviously no…” he clears his throat. “No Jackie.”
“No. Here Jackie’s still just the first skating partner that bailed when you messed up.”
“Not fair,” he says sharply and she looks looks away contritely.
The awkward silence they’d managed to chase away descends again.
“Are you happy?” she asks suddenly.
“What?” he asks, taken aback.
“With Jackie, are you happy?”
“Of course!” he says.
“Then why have you been like this?”
“Like what?”
“Well first of all you looked like you got underscored when you announced it.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’ve spent my entire life watching you react to things, and that look you get when you’re upset about something but you’re also on camera? I know that look well. I’m surprised you didn’t break the podium.”
Scott shakes his head, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I was there, Scott.”
“No, you weren’t, ” he replies quickly. “And you don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know how it feels.”
“I don’t?” she asks. “I don’t? Come on.”
“You don’t. Because from what I can tell, you don’t know what it’s like to have people reacting to you not being with him,” he says. “I’m getting death threats - Jackie is getting death threats, do you know what that’s like?”
“Then why did you do it?” she challenges him.
“I am allowed to have my own life,” he says. “It doesn’t have to revolve around my relationship with her.”
“Me.”
“Her.”
“I didn’t even mean that, Scott. I never meant why marry someone else, I meant why announce it like that? And why there?”
“I just needed it to be done,” he says vehemently. “I needed it be over.”
She pauses, then - “Needed what to be over?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Needed what to be over?” she pushes. “The announcement? Or us?”
“There’s no us!” he cuts in, but she continues, “Because it ended both pretty well.”
“It was just a speech,” he sighs.
“You announced your engagement to someone else at an event honoring us in our hometowns. You knew what you were doing.”
“When do I ever even go to an event that isn’t about us?” he counters. “When else would I do it?”
“God, Scott - you could have put out a press release! You aren’t stupid, don’t act like it. You kept me on stage and announced this thing without even telling me you were going to! You know how hard that is for me! I couldn’t even handle being told we won a People’s Choice Award in front of people, how did you think I was going to handle that ?!” she says, her composure fraying at the edges. “And don’t even get me started on the fact that I had to find out that you were engaged on Twitter.”
He clenches his jaw and looks away. She’s right and he knows it. The entire thing had left a weight in his stomach that he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge, but she was essentially holding it up in front of him and forcing him to look.
“You didn’t see my reaction, but I know how it felt,” she says quietly.
He remembers the look in his Tessa’s eyes when they’d stepped off the stage, and he knows that something between them fundamentally changed that day. He doesn’t know what to say, so the first thing that comes out of his mouth is, “Stop saying ‘me.’ It’s not you.”
“Why does that bother you so much?”
“Because you aren’t her.”
“The reaction happened whether I was the Tessa that had it or not. Why does it bother you to hear it?”
He doesn’t answer.
She continues. “Your Tessa might not be able to tell you how she feels, but I don’t have that problem.”
There’s something in her gaze that Scott has never quite seen in his Tessa. The Tessa from his world is not weak or meek, she’s one of the strongest people he knows, but there’s a challenge in her eyes that he’s never experienced. It’s a distinction he just can’t place.
“What’s so different here?” he asks quietly.
She eyes him for a second. “He made different choices.”
“That’s what he said. You have to tell me more than that.”
She takes a deep breath and then, “He put me first.”
The silence in the room following her words is deafening. He can’t bring himself to ask, but she continues anyway.
"He didn't run from the idea that I could be one of the most important things in his life - he ran toward it."
“How?” he asks.
She ponders for a moment. “Well for starters he didn’t break up with me over the phone when he was 9.”
He scoffs. “I see. So all of the major decisions then.”
“You laugh, but it means more than you think it does.”
“Come on, I was a kid.”
“I know you were, and it’s a dumb kid thing. I’m not saying that you did anything wrong - “
“You aren’t?” he cuts in. “Because it sure sounds like you are.”
“I’m not,” she says firmly. “I’m using it as an example and you would know that if you let me talk.”
He clenches his jaw.
“When you were a kid they teased you about me, right? I mean it’s normal - kids can find it weird, girls have cooties or whatever.”
“I never thought that you had cooties,” he replies.
“No, you didn’t,” she says. “Well. He didn’t. But you - they made you think you should and so you did.”
He’s quiet, processing what she’s saying.
She continues, “You got spooked and they pushed you into something, and it’s completely fair and one hundred percent understandable - you were nine. But his choice in that moment - it became a trend.”
“How?”
He can see her tense up ever so slightly. “Part of the feelings I got hit with, the ones that really shook me, they’re these memories of Canton.”
His stomach drops slightly. “What about it?”
“It was… I’d forgotten how it...god, Scott that was horrible,” she says.
He swallows hard and nods. “It was. It was brutal. I didn’t - but I thought I had been there for her.”
“I mean you were,” she says gently. “You couldn’t control what happened, you couldn’t have stopped it. And it certainly wasn’t your fault. It happened to me too. I remember every bit of it the same as she does, but it’s the aftermath that was different.”
“What did he do that I didn’t?” he asks.
“He didn’t believe me when I said I was fine.”
“How was I supposed to know?” he asks. “I can’t read minds, even hers. No matter what some people want to think.”
“You knew,” she replies. “You just didn’t know what to do about it.”
“And he did?”
She shakes her head. “He just decided that supporting me was more important than his discomfort doing it. It saved a part of me that doesn’t exist in her anymore. When this happened, when we - what do I even call it? Downloaded? - when we were given all of this, all of the memories and thoughts and feelings, it was like I could feel my love for all of this, our whole sport, that whole world, even you, just draining out of me.”
“She loves to skate,” he insists.
“She does,” she replies. “But that’s not what I mean.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, that for her? Skating is a job. It’s her profession.”
His confusion must be evident in his face because she continues, “It’s more than that for me.”
He pauses, he’d never really considered Tessa’s feelings towards skating in that way. He knows that she loves to skate, loves to skate with him in particular, and that she’d been just as driven and focused as he was about their career, if not more. But now that he thinks about it, it’s more than that for him too. It’s a community and a lifestyle. It’s his life. It’s a fundamental part of who he is, and even now, when they’re retiring and have declared this to be their last tour, he knows that he’s not done with skating. He could never be done. The more he thinks about it, the more he sees the way that his Tessa has been slowly saying goodbye since the Olympics, even before they really knew what their decision would be. She’s done. And in that moment he realizes that she’s been done with the skating community as a whole for a very, very long time. She’s found a way to love skating without living it.
“Fuck,” he breathes out.
“Yeah,” she says softly. “School, sponsorships, business, it’s all…”
“It’s a lifeline,” he says.
“Sort of,” she says. “She doesn’t see it that way. It’s about creating a life that doesn’t have to do with skating. It’s just that for her, creating that life is the choice that makes her happy. She does genuinely love it. And she’s good at it - I know that you don’t know this yet, but she’s already been accepted to the program for her MBA.”
He looks up suddenly. “She has? Why didn’t she tell me?”
Tessa looks at him, her gaze gone steely. “Can you think of any information that you may not have given her recently?”
He feels his heart sink. “I didn’t...she usually tells me, even if - even when I…”
“Maybe you lost that privilege,” she says quietly. She lets him sit with that for a moment before she continues. “She’s building an empire,” she says with a hint of a smile, “and I am too. But for her, you aren’t a vital part of it. For me, he is. And so is skating.”
It shouldn’t take him by surprise the way that it does. “A skating empire?”
“Yep.”
He looks at her for a moment before he mutters, “Does it strike back or anything?”
Her laugh sounds suddenly - loudly - and it startles him. “You make dumb jokes in every universe,” she explains, her face just a little too delighted. “He said the same thing the other day.”
“Well thanks for the review,” he says drily.
“You’re welcome.”
He chuckles lightly. After a moment his curiosity gets the best of him and he asks, “What else?”
“Else?”
“What else did he do that I didn’t?”
“Uh, well - and I think is the most important - he let me skate to Hall and Oates.”
“That’s a straight-up lie, T. I may not know a lot about whatever goes on here, but I know that that’s not true anywhere.”
She scrunches her nose. “Okay fine, he didn’t, but he lets me put it on in warm-up sometimes and that’s still better than whatever you’ve got going on.”
“So he’s perfect,” he says.
She rolls her eyes. “Oh my god no. Of course not. You aren’t listening.”
“I’m trying, but can we just go ahead and get to the part where he didn’t bail like a fucking prick when you had surgery? I know it’s coming. Let’s just rip off the Band-Aid. Get to the really juicy shame and pain.”
“God damn it, Scott, he did bail like a fucking prick.”
He stops short at that.
She continues, “He promised me that he would be there and he wasn’t and I hated him for it. I actually think that it was worse for me here, because -”
She stops herself, but he finishes her thought. “Because my Tess was used to me letting her down.”
She doesn’t answer, but looks at him with something close enough to pity that it makes him feel sick.
“How did you get past it?”
“You fixed it.”
“He fixed it,” Scott responds.
“You fixed it,” she repeats. “You showed up one night, really late. You sat with me and talked and talked. I was pretty annoyed at first, to be honest. You leave me alone for over a month with all of this and then come talk about how you feel? Great, okay. But you were honest. I think you were more honest with me that night than you ever were before. You told me how scared you were."
“I definitely didn’t do that.”
“You did here. And I think it’s important that you start thinking about it that way.”
“Why?” he asks.
“So you know that you’re capable of making different choices.”
“Was that when you guys…?” he asks. She just looks at him, giving nothing away, and he looks down at his hands in his lap.
Silence falls over them and the sounds of the house fill his ears. The hum of the appliances in the kitchen, the slight creak of the roof as the downpour outside continues, and faintly down the hall a half-snore grunt that makes him grimace. There’s a him down there sleeping peacefully in a bed that he shares with his partner. Partner - in every sense of the word. The two of them, he and Tessa, have this little place, somewhere that’s theirs. He used to think that their place was the ice, it was where they felt most at home, most together, it was where he felt best, but this is something else entirely. This is something away from everything else, a warm, dry, safe place that’s just for them; they don’t have to share it under the gaze of other skaters or fans or press - even their families. It’s a haven. He feels safe here, sitting with her while a storm rages outside, and he’s not even hers. Nausea spikes in his stomach when he realizes that he has no other choice but to leave; he’ll have to, and it’s his own fault.
“What else?” he asks.
“Scott,” she says, her eyes soft. “Stop.”
“What else?” he presses.
“You believed me about Marina,” she says quietly. “Before.”
He swallows heavily.
She stands and moves to sit next to him on the couch.
“I’m not saying that the decisions that you’ve made are wrong. They’re yours to make and you made them for a reason. But you’re here. And I can tell you that there’s something missing in you. It could have everything or nothing to do with Jackie. It could have everything or nothing to do with me. But it’s something.”
“How can you say that?” he asks. “When you live in a world where he...where I…?”
She smiles, glancing toward the hallway to the bedroom, her eyes warmer than he’s seen them all night. “I mean, I’m happy that this is my world. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that this is right and yours is wrong. You’ve lived a life and it matters. I can’t say that I agree with your choices, especially lately, but...I only know how I feel - the other Tessa, I don’t know how you do.”
She shuffles closer to curl into his side and lays her head on his shoulder.
“We still got silver in Sochi, Scott,” she says. “Not everything magically got fixed because he made different choices.”
“Some things did though,” he says quietly.
“Like?”
“Him,” he says.
“You don’t think you’re fixed?” she asks, propping her chin on his shoulder and looking up at him.
“No.”
She sighs. “Nobody feels fixed, Scott. That’s what I’m saying.”
“Maybe not,” he says quietly. “But he’s happy.”
She doesn’t answer, just puts her head back down onto his shoulder and curls closer to him.
“I thought I was happy. I just think maybe my idea of happiness is skewed.”
“Our lives aren’t perfect, Scott,” she mutters. “I don’t want you to think that everything is easy here.”
“I don’t,” he says with a sigh, letting his head rest against hers. “But it’s not hollow.”
“It breaks my heart that you feel like your life is hollow,” she says, her voice thick.
“Maybe I deserve it,” he says.
“No,” she says vehemently, pushing his head away and moving to look him in the eye. “You don’t deserve anything like that.”
“Isn’t the whole point of this to show me where my choices have led me? Isn’t this all about how he made different choices? Better ones?”
“No, and if you think that then you aren’t paying attention. This isn’t about showing you what you’ve done wrong, it’s about showing you that things can be different. It’s not a punishment, it’s an opportunity.”
“You know, your relentless optimism is difficult to deal with even on a good day.”
“It’s not optimism. It’s ambition.”
He chuckles against his will. “If that doesn’t describe you then I don’t know what does.”
She smiles and it crinkles her nose a little. He has the strange urge to kiss it, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t get to do that.
He curls his arm around her and brings her in close again and she wraps an arm around his stomach nudging him backwards until he’s lying on his back on the couch. She lies her head on his chest and breathes deeply, silently urging him to match it and he does. The conversation’s over, he can feel it. He’s trying to hold on to everything about this place, the faint smell of Chanel and strawberry that seems to permeate the house, the pictures of his nephews and her niece intermingled on the bookcase, the warmth and softness of her pressed into his side. His mind can’t help but remind him of the way the clock is ticking away until he’s gone, back to his world, back to...his stomach drops as realization hits. Back to where the clock is ticking away until she’s gone.
He fights against the rising tide of fatigue that overtakes him, trying to hang on just enough to stay right where he is with her fingers idly playing with the hem of his shirt.
He loses the fight.
When he wakes, he expects to be back home, but finds himself exactly where he’d been. Tessa’s gone, but the blankets are pooled around him as though she’d nudged them back up over his chest. He sits up and looks around, disoriented. He can hear the murmur of voices from the kitchen, Tessa’s soft laugh (the intimate one, the one she protects and keeps for the select few who’ve earned it) mixing in every once in awhile. It makes him ache. He doesn’t understand why he’s still there - the point had become painfully clear the night before.
Tessa comes walking down the hall, somewhat bleary-eyed, with a cup of coffee curled in her grasp, and he smiles. At least it’s something familiar. She pauses when she sees him.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning,” he replies.
She scrunches her nose then says, “You’re trying to grow a moustache aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he says warily.
“Don’t.”
He laughs in surprise. “That more of your great other worldly wisdom?”
“Yeah, you look like a predator,” she says.
They’re silent for a moment then she adds, “You’re going home in a bit.”
“How do you know?”
She shrugs. “Same way I knew everything else, I guess.”
He nods softly. “Thanks.”
“Good luck,” she says with a smile.
“Thanks, Tess.”
He finds that he means it. With one more smile, she turns and heads back down the hall. He stands and stretches, taking another glance around the house that both is and isn’t his. He grabs the blankets and folds them, hoping to do something for this Tessa, however small.
When he turns around he sees himself standing there.
They stare at each other for a moment before the other Scott says, “Make better choices.”
It becomes clear to him then that that’s why he’s still there. It’s not enough to metaphorically come face to face with his missteps, the universe is much more literal than that. Where the night before he’d been mad at the him standing there, defensive against the judgment in his eyes, he now finds himself filled with some mixture of hope and shame.
“I will,” he says.
The other him nods and gives him half a smile. “I gotta give it to you on one thing though.”
“What’s that?”
“You didn’t let Charlie talk you into that trip to Mexico.”
A laugh starts in his throat before he fully realizes it and he grins. “Didn’t go well I take it?”
“Not so much, no,” the other him says.
“Tattoo?”
“We don’t need to go into details,” he replies waving his hand dismissively. “Just know that the tally of choices isn’t as high in my favor as you might think.”
He nods slightly. “Thanks.”
With another awkward smile, the other him heads down the hallway after Tessa.
After a moment he can't resist the urge to peek around the corner and sees himself wrap an arm around Tessa's waist and pull her toward him, trying to playfully nudge the cup of coffee she refuses to move away from her lips so he can kiss her. For just a moment, the universe lets him have it - all of it - the feelings and the past and it washes over him like a warm shower after a cold day on the ice.
He closes his eyes and holds on, letting the warmth of it fill as much of him as it can before he begins to fade.
When he opens his eyes, he’s back home. And he’s cold.