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“Why did I even decide to become a lawyer anyway?!”
Jennifer knows she's yelling too loud into the phone because her roommate, Joanne, startles at the volume.
“Well,” Marty answers despite it being an entirely rhetorical question, “you originally decided because you found out that Doc doesn’t like lawyers and you were still kinda pissed at us for knocking you out in 2015.”
The phone crackles a bit as he pauses, and she takes a moment to process what he said.
“But then you found out you kinda liked it. And you decided you liked the idea of being a public defender so you could help people who can’t afford a lawyer.”
That is the reason why, yes. That’s not… really what she was asking, but yes.
While the reason had been petty at first, she's found she loves it. UCLA’s law program is one of the best.
Almost all of her professors have been fantastic or better.
Almost all.
Someone beckons Marty away from the phone, and he bids her a quick goodbye. He promises to call again soon, apologising profusely for not being able to stay on the line longer or come to see her. She tells him it’s fine, because it is, and he’s got a big day today so she understands.
But she does replace the receiver with so much force that it doesn’t actually click in the first time, falling off a little and requiring further adjustment.
God help her, Jennifer is going to punch Professor Smith in the face. And then she is going to punch the dean, when she actually manages to get ahold of him.
The fall semester is coming to a close, and it has been an awful, awful week.
Professor Smith failed her term paper. Not for any good reason, no, because the date was wrong. She’d accidentally put the original due date instead of the due date it was changed to, and apparently that is grounds for a zero. This paper was worth one-fourth of her entire grade. She can’t afford to get a zero on it.
But the dean- some guy named William Glazer- is impossible to get in contact with, for whatever reason, and her advisor is being useless, and Professor Smith is the department head so she can’t complain there, and, well, she’s pretty sure he can’t fail her for something like that. Like, ninety percent sure. Ninety-five.
No, no, she's completely sure.
Also, her dorm’s hot water stopped working on Monday, and still hasn’t been fixed. She has had to have a cold shower every day since, which is not that bad in the grand scheme of things, but still bothersome. Especially when washing her hair. She hates washing her hair with cold water. It hurts her head.
She sprained her ankle by accidentally missing a step the other day, and it still aches.
And Chelsea ate her leftovers again.
A terrible, horrible, abhorrent week. It’ll be a miracle if she makes it to winter break.
“I know it was her, Jo!” she insists, and her roommate shrugs.
“Sure,” Joanne corroborates, “we all know. But nothing ever gets done about it, so, maybe don’t keep food there?”
“Where do you suppose I put the food, then? It’ll go bad!”
Joanne shrugs again.
“You are no help!”
“She ate the cookies I made, too, you know!” Joanne retorts. “It’s just the way things go.”
Jennifer sighs. That had been a full-blown argument consisting of Joanne screaming her lungs out and Chelsea, entirely unbothered, claiming she hadn’t done it while still actively holding a half-eaten cookie in her hand.
People had come and gone through the floor’s shared lounge while they argued loudly and publicly, and each had side-eyed Chelsea in a way that said, yeah, everyone knows.
“Oh! I forgot to tell you- Debbie found out about your boyfriend.” Joanne says, flicking absently through a magazine.
“…She’s always known I have a boyfriend?”
“No,” Joanne corrects, “that he’s a rockstar.”
She snorts despite herself. Marty would go nuts if he heard her call him that.
“He’s not a rockstar.”
Yet, she can almost hear Marty insist, yet!
“Well, he’s close enough, right? One of his songs was on the radio a while back. She’s going to beg you to let her meet him, you know.”
Ah, yes, that had happened. She does hope Marty’s band gets another song on the radio soon. Watching his face light up every time it played had been an absolute treat; he’d been so happy, every single time, the joy never dulling.
“I never said you guys couldn’t meet him,” Jennifer points out, “he comes to the dorm all the time.”
“Yet, somehow I’ve never seen him. You sure he even exists?”
Jennifer huffs a quiet laugh at the joke in that question that only she and a very select few people would get. Yes, Marty exists. He’s the cause of his own existence.
“I’m sure. I’ll make sure he comes around sometime you’re free, how about that?”
Joanne hums a bit like she’s considering something, and nods as if to say ‘that’s acceptable’.
Jennifer smiles, but it is short lived as she puts her head back into her hands. Her hair feels kind of greasy between her fingers; she hadn’t washed it properly, too eager to finish and get out of the shower. Her thoughts eventually drift back to her paper.
She’d worked so hard on that. Beyond the fury and contempt she held for being failed for something so inconsequential, she feels like all her efforts have gone to waste.
“Jo, you got any clue how to get in contact with the dean?”
“Nope.”
With little else to do, Jennifer finds herself milling about the floor’s common area. Other students flit in and out while she wanders aimlessly.
She glances at the fridge a couple times, wondering if it’s even worth checking what’s in there.
Her stomach rumbles.
Some things are labelled with other people’s names, so she can’t eat any of that (someone should take notes). Other than that, there’s jelly, milk, cheese, some ham. Some stale bread shoved at the back that at least looks like it hasn’t yet molded.
There are instant noodles in the cupboard, if she wants that for dinner. Or maybe…
She’s contemplating perhaps making a jelly and ham sandwich- the meal of champions- when she’s suddenly grabbed from behind.
Yelping, she tries to fight the arms wrapping around her middle before she recognises just whose arms they are and stops.
Marty presses his face into the crook of her neck, his hair tickling her ear, and Jennifer finds she is both incredibly happy he’s here and horrified he’d come.
“What are you doing here? You had your big gig tonight!”
The Pinheads were supposed to be opening for some new-ish big-ish band. Guns and flowers or something like that. All Jennifer knows is that Marty went from raving about their music to raving about getting to open for them.
Marty was supposed to be playing that right now.
“Already did it.” Marty says, giving her a last squeeze before letting her go. “It went really well! We did a good job warming up the crowd. And, uh, listening to them play after us was pretty cool too. You can totally tell why they just- skyrocketed recently. They’re really good.”
Jennifer blinks, and takes him in. He is holding a plastic takeout bag that is obviously full, and the smell of warm, cooked food hits her.
“I’m from tomorrow.” Marty elaborates, just in case Jennifer didn’t already assume that from what he said. He looks at his watch. “We actually end up playing for way longer than we should have because they came super late. Like, you think I have a bad habit of never being on time? You should see those guys.”
“You’re from tomorrow.” Jennifer repeats.
Marty raises an eyebrow. “Uh, yeah. That’s what I said.”
“…Why?”
“Well, you seemed really down and upset about your paper when you called me yesterday morning- this morning- and I wanted to come cheer you up!”
He doesn’t seem fazed in the slightest about using a time machine to do something as mundane as cheer his girlfriend up.
Jennifer has not gotten back in the DeLorean since her trip to 2015 and, supposedly, an alternate 1985. Not even when Doctor Brown rebuilt it and gave it to Marty, who Jennifer knows has since used it for all sorts of strange things ranging from making sure he gets somewhere important on time to apparently seeing dinosaurs.
She really doesn’t like it when he goes that far back in time. Part of it is the fear he’ll do something to prevent his birth again, but the other part is the cool, coiling tendrils of ice that start twisting in her gut whenever she thinks about him being completely unreachable like that.
But a day’s not so bad.
“You’re sweet, you know that?” she breathes. He gives her a soft smile, and the tension drains from her shoulders.
He places the takeout bag onto a table, the contents hitting the wood with a thunk and the plastic giving a few last crinkles as it settles, and he sweeps her up into an actual hug.
He smells faintly of earth and rain.
“I thought the weatherman said it would be sunny tomorrow,” she remarks, words muffled from where she’s burying her face into his shoulder.
“Weatherman’s wrong.”
“‘Course he is.”
He pulls back slightly, and they meet each other’s eyes for a long moment.
She could get lost in those eyes. She could get lost with him in general, following him down winding roads and glimpsing paths-not-taken while losing track of the sun, time ever elusive as they converse.
That’s her preferred method of time travel. Not by lightning and metal and fire from burning rubber tracks, but by a quiet evening of she and Marty together, speeding into the future because they can’t see the seconds ticking away when they’re too focused on each other.
The moment breaks as she watches him startle, remembering something.
“Doc and I were talking! We’re thinking of going to Europe for New Year’s, see all the things there and-” he cuts himself off and looks at her, taking a deep breath as he does, “I would really love if you came with us. I know you don’t want to time travel. And you don’t have to, but… ancient Rome. And Shakespeare. And all the cool old European things. And I want to see it with you.”
Jennifer stares at him.
“…We could just do the regular Europe stuff, too. In this time. No ancient stuff.”
Marty’s expression falls further for each second she does not respond.
Oh, she cannot say no to those eyes. He looks like a puppy.
“We can definitely do the normal Europe stuff,” she says slowly, “and maybe- maybe- I’ll see a couple ancient things with you guys, too. Maybe.”
He instantly brightens, beaming. She will probably still say no, and he will dim a little but understand anyway, and then he will take her to modern-day, safe, 1980s Paris. But even just a 'maybe', and he’s suddenly not unlike a labrador, bouncing slightly on his heels and gesturing emphatically as he begins to ramble about all the different places he and Doctor Brown have been discussing going.
Jennifer nods along, but her heart’s not really in it. She does love him, and the enthusiasm is endearing, but she doesn’t like the DeLorean.
It gives her this sickening, crawling wrong sensation. That machine, for all the good it has done her and Marty and Doctor Brown, is still fully capable of ruining their lives. One misstep and they could ruin the whole world.
But she can appreciate that Marty likes it. And she can and has learned to live with it.
(On the worst days, she still remembers how awful she’d looked in 2015. That split second before she’d passed out in shock; her future, old and worn and beaten down by the world.
Marty had been clearly miserable too, tired and lost.
She has the DeLorean to thank for that future no longer existing. But she can’t help but wonder; would her future self have wanted that? Thirty years of a life lived erased by a single choice?
She wants to say yes. She really does.
But Jennifer knows herself, and so she cannot say for certain.)
Her boyfriend, the time traveller.
Yes, there is a part of her that always feels a little giddy at that statement, a churning kind of excitement as her heart leaps into her throat. Or maybe drops into her stomach. She’s not sure the feeling is all positive.
None of this would be happening, none of this would exist at all, if he weren’t. She wonders how she can fear the DeLorean so, when it is the reason she is where she is right now.
Marty is still going on about Europe.
“What’s in the bag?” she interrupts, pointing to the takeout that Marty dropped onto the table. He picks it up again, grin splitting across his face.
“Tacos!” he chirps. “From that place you like!”
That place she likes?
“Where?”
“The little pop-up stand just down the street? You found it after your finals your first semester. You used to get food there all the time.”
…
That… that place closed down. It doesn’t exist anymore.
Jennifer’s eyebrows furrow.
“When did you get them?”
“Technically? Only, like, fifteen minutes ago. I got them on my way here,” Marty explains as he raises a nervous hand to the back of his neck, “but I got them from 1986.”
“Woah, woah, wait. You went a year into the past to get that?” she asks. Her fingers go numb at the edges. He’d been far from her again, for something so stupid.
“Well, yeah,” Marty huffs like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, “the place closed like eight months ago. Couldn’t exactly have gotten it now, could I?”
“Marty.”
Jennifer can see the moment he realises she’s not happy with him, because the dazed puppydog smile disappears from his face and he straightens.
“What?”
“You know how I feel about the DeLorean,” she says, and his nose scrunches up at the reminder.
What if you got stuck again?
She doesn't say that, and will not until much later that night. Instead, she says: “I usually don’t mind it, but I really don’t like you taking completely unnecessary risks for something so unimportant.”
“Unimportant?” he repeats like it’s heresy. “It was not unimportant! It’s your favorite!”
“Marty.”
“Oh, come on! How can you be mad at me?” he exclaims, throwing his hands into the air. “You’ve been having a bad week, so I got you your comfort food, and I didn’t cancel my previous commitment because I know you and I know you’d only feel worse if I did that for you!”
Jennifer frowns. That’s not the point. She opens her mouth to respond, but he keeps going.
“Now I can be here for you and you don’t have to blame yourself for it. And I was already using the DeLorean anyway, so what’s one extra stop along the way? I don’t see the issue!”
“Marty- it’s not about that. It’s about you rolling the dice again just to come here and bring me-” she gestures at the takeout bag, “time tacos. What if you changed something?”
Marty pouts.
“Come on. I bought a couple tacos a year ago. I was in and out. What difference is that gonna make?” he whines. “I even remembered your order.”
“Oh, great! My order. That’s just great.” Jennifer says, trying to be sarcastic but faltering slightly as she imagines him stranded and alone. “Do you want me to pat you on the head and call you a good boyfriend?”
Despite meaning that mockingly, Marty’s eyes go half lidded and he leans forward.
“I wouldn’t be opposed to that.”
She smacks him lightly, a tacit ‘knock it off’, and he rears back.
“She’s hitting me!” he yells, and Jennifer launches forward to cover his stupid mouth, “she’s hitting m-mmph!”
He licks her hand and she releases him. Gross.
“You are incorrigible.”
“I’m encourageable?” Marty repeats, tilting his head all innocent-like. “What does that even mean?”
“You-” Jesus Christ, why does she find this moron attractive? “Oh my god.”
Sometime in between her raising her hand to pinch the bridge of her nose and debating with herself whether or not she should define what the word means, Marty decides he’s done with this conversation.
“Jenn,” Marty says as he holds out her food, “eat your time taco and watch MTV with me.”
She’s not sure if it’s the way he says it, or the way he’s looking at her, or just the simple, undeniable fact that he broke the laws of reality just to comfort her that makes her relent.
Taking it in her hand, the paper crumples slightly under her grip. It is still warm. It was cooked a year ago, but it’s still warm.
It feels like he only just arrived, but she can feel her food getting closer to room temperature by the minute and she knows by the clock that they've been talking for at least ten minutes now. Time is doing that funny thing again, the fleeting nature of seconds. She does not fight to keep hold of them, but she does try to see the moment for what it is.
The DeLorean grants them access to all of time, at their disposal. Cold, sleek stainless steel with the capability to correct and overcorrect every mistake until perfection seems flawed.
Yet still, they choose the transience of the evening, of a warm college dorm and of distant city sirens and of rapidly cooling food.
Marty plops himself down on the couch, kicking his feet up onto the coffee table. She joins him, pressed against his side. He moves to throw an arm around her shoulders.
The scribbled writing on the paper wrapping is awfully familiar. It really is her exact order. Down to the extra tomato and no sour cream.
She sighs. God, he may be an impossible idiot, but he’s her impossible idiot.
“You okay?” Marty says around his own taco, a couple bits falling onto his lap.
She thinks about his double, off playing guitar in West Hollywood, and stares at the day-ahead version beside her.
“Yeah. I am.”