Page 3 of Fast Forward

“Okay, okay. I just wanted to make sure you were all right. And wish my wife a happy birthday, of course.” He leaned in for a kiss but I pushed him off, horror overtaking me.

Wife? I wasn’t his wife and this old guy certainly wasn’t my husband! Grant was supposed to be my husband. Well, after tonight’s inevitable proposal. Oh God, tonight! My birthday party. I couldn’t go looking like this!

A high-pitched jingling sound interrupted my thoughts and the man made a strange movement; pinching his watch with his thumb and forefinger and appearing to pull some invisible strand to his ear.

What was he doing?

“William speaking,” he said, as he walked out. Finally.

William? Who the heck was he and why was he saying I was his wife? This was all too weird. Dizzy, I held on to the wall as I racked my brain for an answer, a solution, anything to make sense of this… situation. William… his eyes looked kind of familiar and the way he walked out of the room, that bouncy stride. I’d seen him before… somewhere.

I know! I clicked my fingers. William McSnelly from my school days. Could it really be chubby-no-friends William McSnelly who never seemed to notice the multiple Kick Me Post-its stuck to his back? Wow, he’d actually turned out all right. Okay so he’s ancient, but for an old guy he’s not bad.

Wait… if I was married to William McSnelly, then that would make me… Oh God, no!

Kelli McSnelly. Shoot me now. I didn’t end up with McDreamy or McSexy, uh-uh. I ended up with McSnelly, or McSmelly as the kids at school used to call him. Me included… and now I was Mrs McSmelly.

Like a wilting plant my body softened, my hand slid down the wall and the nightgown escaped my grip. Instead of landing on the floor, my butt landed sharply on the cold toilet seat, the shock of it interrupting my Oscar-worthy fainting episode and causing me to stand up suddenly. I could hear William talking outside the door and when he said goodbye to whoever he was speaking to, I quickly picked my nightgown up off the floor and fed my head and arms through it.

“Kel, what’s going on?” William re-entered the bathroom that was beginning to feel like a prison. A cruel, although seemingly sanitary prison with no towels and weird mirrors that made me look old.

All I could do was shake my head in disbelief, my body soon following suit. My hands trembled and my breath came in short gasps. “Where am I? Why do I look so old?” William touched his hand to my shoulder and I flinched, although his touch seemed strangely comforting. “I don’t understand. Yesterday I was young and happy and now I’m an old shuddering mess!”

“C’mon, honey, you look great for your age. And you’re only fifty, don’t be so hard on yourself,” William said, rubbing my shoulder.

“Fifty?” I blurted, almost choking as the word launched from the slingshot of my voice box. “I’m not fifty! I’m supposed to be twenty-five!” I shook his hand away from my shoulder and he dropped it to his side. “Why aren’t I twenty-five?”

“Honey, it’s natural to feel emotional on a day like today. I mean who wouldn’t love to be twenty-five again?” William smiled. “But you’re still beautiful and today’s going to be great, especially tonight’s party. Come seven o’clock our house will fill with all the important people in your life. You must be looking forward to that?” He lifted my chin with his finger and I reluctantly met his gaze.

Looking forward? I wanted to go backward! Back to my real life and my real self, where I was only twenty-five and my stomach didn’t resemble my father’s beer belly. Soon they’d be calling me Kelli Jelly Belly McSmelly. Oh, how on earth did this happen? What the hell was going on? I can’t take this anymore!

“Where’s Grant? I need Grant!” I said, shoving his hand away.

“Grant? Who’s… oh, surely you don’t mean Grant, your ex?”

“Yes. No! I mean, he’s not my ex!”

“Honey, you haven’t had anything to do with him since we started dating twenty-five years ago.” William’s expression changed to a frown. “Or, have you?”

“Twenty-five years ago? But Grant and I… we… he was supposed to propose to me on my birthday.”

“Kelli, you broke off your relationship with him, remember?”

“I did?” It’s quite possible I’d gone mad.

William nodded. “But I proposed and you said yes. And here we are, still happily married after almost a quarter of a century.”

Okay, Kelli, just breathe. In… and… out. There had to be some explanation for all of this. Think! Maybe I’d had a bump to the head and have amnesia. That could be it. I’d simply lost all memories from the last twenty-five years. Yes, I could have fallen in the bathroom and sustained a head injury. I did remember falling, although that was after I noticed I’d become old. Maybe it happened yesterday, as in my forty-nine-year-old yesterday and now I’d lost my memory. But my head didn’t hurt or anything.

I walked over to the dreaded mirror again, but failed to see any suspicious bruise or lump. It must have happened before. Maybe I woke up as my normal twenty-five-year-old self on my birthday and had some sort of accident then. And maybe William was the paramedic or doctor who treated me, and I fell in love with him because he looked after me. But Grant would have looked after me, wouldn’t he? Time I pulled myself together and asked some questions.

“Um, William?”

“Yes?”

“Have I ever had any sort of accident, perhaps a head injury of some kind?” I asked feebly.

“No,” he replied, confusion and concern meshed together on his face. “Why, do you feel sick or something? Are you having a bad headache, is that it?”

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