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She was sitting in the front seat of Marty’s truck, studying a blank sheet of paper.
“It’s weird how this stayed,” she said. “Right?”
“Huh?” Marty’s eyes barely strayed from the road. He didn’t seem super interested in the paper. That tracked. He’d never been the type to think too deeply into stuff.
“It’s only the words that disappeared,” she said. “How does that work?”
“How should I know?” he said, eyes still on the road. “Ask the Doc some time.”
He was getting kinda terse. She let the paper crumple in her hand and figured it was best to drop it. “So – what happened after I passed out?”
Marty glanced at her. He breathed out, slowly, adjusting his grip on the steering wheel – then to her surprised, he turned on the blinkers and started to pull over.
“Marty?”
He pulled up on the side of the road and turned the engine off. For a moment longer he sat with his hands on the wheel, face blank. Then he breathed in, and said, “Okay. So, uh.” He looked at her properly. “After we got back from the future, things went kinda – off the rails.”
Jennifer blinked. “Were things ever on the rails?”
“It got worse,” said Marty, sounding strained and way too serious for her comfort.
“What happened?” she asked.
“It’s – a long story, and,” he said. “I’m just gonna cut to the chase. Okay?”
“Okay,” she echoed.
“Some stuff happened.” He let go of the steering wheel. “I’ll – tell you about it later. And we got caught in a thunderstorm and the DeLorean sorta got struck by lightning and then Doc got zapped back to 1885 –”
“Oh, God,” she said. “Is he –”
“I’m not done,” said Marty. Her stomach, which had already been sinking, sank still further. “So, I went back to get him, and I was gonna come straight back here to make sure you were okay,” he said. “But, uh.” He rubbed at his hair. “The machine got sorta busted and we were sorta – stuck back there for a while.”
She was starting to get really uneasy. She’d been wondering why he was dressed up like that, but she hadn’t thought – “How long is a while?”
“Uh,” he said.
“Marty,” she said. “How long is a while?”
He rubbed again at the back of his neck and breathing out said, “Okay – don’t freak out.”
“I’m kinda freaking out, Marty!”
He fidgeted in the driver’s seat a moment longer. Then, at last, he answered her. “Eleven months.”
“Eleven –” She couldn’t take it in. “Eleven months? Eleven months?”
“Uh-huh,” he said, sounding kinda breathlessly apologetic.
“You were gone a year?”
“Almost.”
She looked at him, taking him in properly. She’d registered the weird outfit, but she hadn’t looked that closely. Why would she look closely? It wasn’t like she’d been expecting him to look different – “Your hair’s longer.”
He touched the ends of it. “Yeah – it grew.”
Jennifer tried to think what else to say. She had no idea what to say. It didn’t feel real. Rationally she knew it was true – he wouldn’t lie to her – she’d been in that time machine – his hair had grown a full inch longer overnight. But it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. “Are you,” she managed, “Okay?”
He heaved a sigh, gaze drifting out towards the road. “Jen,” he said. “I, uh. Can’t believe I’m asking you this right now, but.” He looked at her, a note of panic entering his voice. “Did we have homework tomorrow?”
It took her a second to process the question. “We have a math test in the morning,” she offered.
“Shit.” He smacked his hand against the steering wheel. “We had a math test.”
“Marty, I,” she said. “I don’t think you should go to school tomorrow.”
“What else am I gonna do?” he said. “Tell my mom I can’t go cause I got stranded in the Old West? No, thanks.”
She was pretty sure there were other solutions – and also pretty sure he was gonna have to tell his folks what had happened eventually – but she didn’t argue. “Have you been home?”
“Only to get the truck,” he said. “I wanted to make sure you were alright. When we left you on the porch I figured I’d be back to get you in a couple of minutes. Are you okay?”
“Am I okay?” she said. “Of course I’m okay. Are you okay?”
He stared out at the road, at the passing cars, as if he’d never seen anything like them before. He breathed in, and out. Then seeming to collect himself, he turned to her and said, his voice cracking, “Jennifer. I know we had plans this weekend, but, uh. Right now I really wanna just go home – and take a shower – and then eat some Froot Loops. You know?”
“We can do that,” she said.
“I really want a shower,” he said miserably.
“Yeah.” She tried to think how to put it. “I wasn’t gonna say anything, but. You don’t smell great.”
Pulling a face, he sniffed the collar of his shirt. “Shit – sorry,” he said. “I don’t even notice it anymore.” He started the engine.
As they drove on, she said, “Froot Loops?”
He huffed. “You never know what you’re gonna miss till it’s all gone.”
*
The shower cut off. A couple of minutes later Marty wandered out into the living room, his hair damp, dressed in a fresh t-shirt and jeans.
“Hey,” said Jennifer.
“I brushed my teeth,” he said, coming to join her.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Mm.” He took her hands. “Means I can do this.” He pulled her close, and kissed her.
It was soft, and lingering. It was good. As they drew apart he wrapped his arms around her in a hug. He pressed his face into her shoulder. After a couple of seconds she felt him let out an unsteady breath; and he went kinda heavy in her arms, leaning on her.
She held him tighter. “Marty?”
“Uh-huh,” he said into her shirt.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, starting to sound strained. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”
Jennifer stroked his back. “Do you wanna go eat breakfast cereal now?”
It took him a second to answer, and when he spoke again he was noticeably choked up. “Yes, please.”
She sat beside him on the couch. The TV was on, but she wasn’t paying attention. Marty was shovelling Froot Loops into his mouth and she’d never seen someone watch commercials so intently. He had a kind of wild look in his eyes.
The longer she looked at him, the more different he looked. It wasn’t just the hair. She was pretty sure he’d lost weight. He looked kinda – older. He hadn’t been gone all that long but she figured eleven months in a different century was gonna age you a bit.
She had no idea how he planned on keeping this a secret. His mom was for sure gonna notice something was up.
“Okay?” she said.
His mouth full of cereal, he said, “These are sweeter than I remembered.”
She tried a different tack. “What was the Old West like?”
He pulled a face and set down his spoon in the bowl. “Uh.” He swallowed. “At first it was kinda fun. But then the time machine got busted and then I got food poisoning three times in a month so that was pretty rough. The past is – it’s real gross. Don’t go back there.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” she said. The future had been messed up enough. She sure as hell wasn’t gonna deal with being lost in the wrong time period and not being able to take a shower.
“Anyway,” he ate more cereal, “after a while it just got – normal. Kinda boring. There’s not a whole lot to do. I wrote some songs. I met my great-great-grandfather. Uh, the Doc got married. I got a job.”
“Oh, yeah?” she said. “What kinda job?”
“General store.” He was almost done with his cereal and was eying the bowl like he was thinking of going for the rest of the box.
She processed what he’d said properly. “Wait, the Doc got married? What?”
“Yeah, a couple of months in,” he said. “She came back with us – she’s pregnant already.”
“She’s pregnant?” She thought about that, and was met with some pretty unwelcome mental images involving Doc Brown. “Oh. Oh, ew.”
Marty huffed a laugh. “Yeah, don’t think about it too hard.” He sat back on the couch. “That’s what I’ve been doing.”
He looked kinda down. She nodded at the mostly-empty bowl in his hands. “You want the rest of those?”
“Huh?” He glanced at it. “Sure.”
She fetched the Froot Loops. He took the box and sat with it clutched to his chest, not pouring another bowl, saying nothing.
“You want the milk?” she suggested.
“No – I’m good.” Absently he took a handful out the box and began to eat it dry. “M’sorry,” he said. “I’m a little out of it. I didn’t get much sleep last night. Doc told me – he said last week that he thought he had the new machine working, but it’s been so long, I just – I guess I didn’t want to think about what would happen when I came home – in case it didn’t – you know?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I get it.”
He clutched the box still tighter, the cardboard beginning to warp. After a second, he breathed out, and relaxed his grip. “Jen, can I – tell you something?”
“Sure,” she said. “And – if this is weird, you gotta tell me,” he said, starting to babble. “And I’ll shut up. But – I’ve had a lot of time to think about stuff this year. Y’know? I mean, I’ve basically had nothing but time to think. And I thought a lot about you,” he went on, and her heart thudded. “And about us. And.”
“And?” she prompted.
Taking a breath, he sat forward to talk to her properly. “Jen, I wanna marry you.”
She – wasn’t sure where she thought been going. Maybe somewhere more like I wanna keep going steady or I still love you. “Oh – okay,” she said vaguely.
“I don’t mean right now,” he added in a rush. “Obviously not right now, cause we’re – I mean, technically I’m eighteen, but –” He relaxed his death-grip on the cereal. “Just. Someday. You know?”
Jennifer didn’t answer.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he said. “We don’t have to talk about this. I just wanted to tell you. I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m sorry.”
“No – it’s okay,” she said, kinda dazed. “I don’t mind.” She put her hands in her lap, and sighed. They did need to talk about it. She hadn’t had a whole year to mull over things, but the last day had been pretty crazy. They needed to talk it over and there was no time like the present. “I saw you. In the future.”
Marty froze, another handful of cereal halfway to his mouth. A couple of Froot Loops fell lightly onto the couch. “Oh, yeah?”
By the look on his face, she was pretty sure he knew something. Maybe not the same thing she knew, but enough to give him an idea that maybe his middle-aged self wasn’t the guy he’d prefer to grow up into.
She wasn’t gonna say as much. She’d only had a brief glimpse of herself circa 2015, but she hadn’t exactly loved it. “I don’t think we were – happy together.”
He chewed his cereal thoughtfully, not looking all that troubled by the idea. He’d had all year to think about it, she figured. “That future doesn’t have to happen anymore, though. Right? You can change time anyway you want. We can just – not do it the same way.”
She wished she believed him.
She wasn’t sure this was one of those things you could just change. Sure, the accident that had messed him up wasn’t gonna happen anymore – but she was pretty sure spending a year in the wrong century was gonna weigh on him – and now here he was saying stuff about wanting to get married when two days ago they’d been planning their weekend up at the lake – if she went along with what he wanted now, who was to say they wouldn’t end up right back at the Chapel O’Love?
“I don’t think we did it on purpose,” she said. “You know? It’s not like we just woke up one day and said hey, let’s make each other miserable.”
“I can’t imagine ever being miserable with you,” he said. “My mom and dad weren’t happy before, and, and they are now. And – it’s not like we have to stay here, you know? We don’t have to end up in Hilldale. In a year we can get out of here and go anywhere we want. We can do anything, Jen.”
The sensible part of her – the part of her that talked like her mom and said stuff like Jennifer, stop getting ahead of yourself and Jennifer, think about the consequences of your actions – wanted to argue.
But another, larger part of her couldn’t imagine being miserable with him either.
“That sounds nice,” she confessed.
“Doesn’t it?”
It was early. She still felt kinda off from spending all night on the porch swing, and from – whatever had happened to knock her out in the twenty-first century. Putting all of it out of her mind – the house in the future – the Chapel O’Love – Marty, thirty years older and worn out – she snuggled up against him.
They leaned back together on the couch. She took a handful of Froot Loops and ate them one by one. “We could go to LA.”
“That’d be cool,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to see New York.”
“Me too,” she said. His hand began to stroke her back. “I saw our kids in the future.”
“Yeah,” he said. “So did I.”
“That was really real. Huh?”
“It doesn’t have to be,” he said.
She knew he was right. He knew more about time travel than she did, but she knew it was possible to change time. It was a crazy concept to learn, but she kinda preferred it to the alternative. If she thought there was no way to change the future she’d visited she didn’t know what she’d do. Lose her mind, probably.
But their kids had been real people. They’d been alive. If they broke up, what happened to those two kids? It didn’t feel fair. It wasn’t like it was their fault.
Marty had got himself stuck in that future, she was pretty sure, by being stupid and reckless and impulsive. She thought maybe she’d stuck herself there by doing what she thought was best for other people, instead of what she wanted.
She didn’t know what she wanted. Until yesterday the furthest ahead into the future she’d been planning was date night up at the lake. If she’d ever thought about it, though, she was pretty sure she would have wanted a future with Marty.
And even if things did end up the same way again. She knew it was stupid and the grown-up mom voice part of her was saying you don’t know what you’re talking about, you have no idea what it feels like to be in your forties and married with kids and miserable, but sitting there on the couch with him, eating Froot Loops, she thought maybe she’d rather be unhappy with Marty than happy with somebody else.
“They seemed like pretty cool kids,” she said.
“Yeah, well,” said Marty, the cereal half-forgotten in his lap. He squeezed her shoulder. “They got a pretty cool mom.”
She shifted against him, meeting his eyes. “They got a pretty cool dad, too.” She kissed him, softly, on the mouth. “Mm,” she said. “You taste like Froot Loops.”
He wiped at his lips. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay – I don’t mind.” She settled down beside him to watch TV. The commercial break was ending. A cartoon was coming on.
He kissed the top of her head. “You wanna change the channel?”
“No,” she said. “This is fine.”