Page 66 of It Should Have Been Me

“I can’t believe my sister has her own radio show.”

I inhale as I lower myself to the ground and exhale on the way up. “She and Tommy have worked so hard to get to where they are. I’m really happy for both of them, and their new show they’re prepping for at AmpUp Radio is going to be even better.”

“It’s just amazing to see. One minute she was this rebellious, self-destructive teenager, and now she’s entertainment personified. Time can change so much.”

“Time is constant, baby. Things change and people change as they move through time, but it’s not time that brings about the change.” I lower myself and push up again. “Time is a linear construct. It will continue to move into the future at a steady rate of one second per second, and it will do that whether you move with it or not. Things changeovertime, not because of it.”

I finish my last pushup of the second set, then set the timer on my phone for one minute. I brace myself on my forearms and hold in a plank position.

“Hmm....” She’s silent for a while as she ponders a bit. “If time is linear, do you think time travel is possible?”

“Yes and no. If it’s possible to travel forward, we should theoretically be able to travel backward, but if it was in fact physically possible, I’m sure we’d see evidence of people who have actually time traveled and we haven’t. I mean...unless you believe some of those quacks on social media. But, yeah, I think we have the ability to time travel. I just don’t think we have the means to do it just yet.” I feel the burn in my stomach muscles and hold steady for the last fifteen seconds. “Could you lie here in front of me instead? It’s a little hard to have this discussion without looking at you.”

I straighten my arms for the third set, and she crawls between my arms to lie on the floor directly beneath me, her head between my hands.

“You’re so sweaty.” She reaches for my towel that I’d tossed on the couch and dabs my face. “Have you heard of the butterfly effect?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure,” I reply, a little breathless as I start pushing my upper body up and down, stopping when our bodies lightly touch. “Tell me about it.”

“So, there’s a theory that if you had to change even the smallest thing in the past, it could have a major impact on the future. They say something as simple as a butterfly flapping its wings could lead to a catastrophe later on. No matter how insignificant something may seem, if you change it, it creates another version of history, which in turn creates an alternate reality in the future. Maybe the butterfly thing isn’t true, but the concept makes sense.”

“Yeah. It makes perfect sense,” I concur with a nod.

She seems to get lost in her thoughts for a while. “If you had to look back on your life, what do you think that moment is? That one moment that if you had to change it, your life would be completely different? That butterfly effect moment?”

“I’d have to think about it.” I finish off my third set and set my timer for another minute. Braced on my forearms in a plank, I’m closer to her and brush a damp curl off her forehead. The urge to kiss her is overwhelming, but I fight to resist it. “What’s yours?”

“I would say...it was my trip to the toy store with my dad. I was eight, and I had done well in school, and he told me I could choose any toy I wanted...that was less than twenty dollars.” She giggles at the memory with a hint of sadness in her eyes. “So, we went to the toy store, and out of all the dolls and plastic jewelry and kitchen sets, I chose play dough. And I went home, and I sculpted a dinosaur. My dad loved it so much, he took a picture, and we stuck it on my bedroom wall. A few days later, he bought me proper clay, and I was hooked ever since.” She pauses for a second, blinking back tears before she continues. “After he died, I stopped sculpting...and it was that same photo of the dinosaur that I took along with me when Mrs. Jeffries asked us to bring photos of our childhood. Seeing that picture made me start sculpting again. The next day, you came over and saw my sculptures. You called Connor, and that changed my whole life.” Her voice is laced with all the bittersweet implications that moment entailed. I only pick up on it because I feel it too. “That day we were sitting on my porch, and you asked why I stopped sculpting, and it was the first time I opened up to you, the first time I let my guard down...and that changed everything for us, too. After that, I found it impossible to...not fall for you. If I hadn’t seen the picture, I wouldn’t have been sculpting that day. You would’ve had no reason to bring it up and none of that would’ve happened. Do you remember that day?”

“Of course, I remember that day. It was the first day you didn’t cross off on the calendar.” My smile stretches from ear to ear because I still remember the excitement I felt that day. “What made you think about that?”

“I don’t know. Just the wedding...and you – everything seems to be reminding me of the past. I guess my mind is drawing all these links about how my life unfolded, and that particular moment in the store seemed insignificant at the time, but the butterfly effect of choosing play dough that day led to me bonding with my dad. And it led to me falling hopelessly in love with you. It led to me finding an incredibly lucrative career. Like, I don’t know if I’d still be waiting tables now because I don’t know if I would’ve gone to college if I hadn’t met Connor. My life would have been entirely different if it wasn’t for that moment.” She wipes the sweat off my brow again as I continue to huff out hot air. She’s looking at me like that love might still be there, but that’s the type of look that will lead to expectations, so I simply ignore it. “Have you thought about what your butterfly effect moment was?”

“Uh...” I think back and try to pinpoint it. “So, I was in junior year at high school and Coach comes up to me and Peter one day and says: We got a new rookie on the team. He’s good, but he’s not focused. I need you two to take him under your wing. We get back to the locker room and there’s the new kid, waiting for us. I looked at Peter and said: Fuck no! This kid didn’t even have a single designer label on him. He was a riff-raff. He comes to me and says: Coach told me to speak to you. He holds out his hand and I just look at it like...is he really expecting me to touch him?”

She laughs. “Geez, you were such a jerk!”

“I know!” I finish off the fourth set and move back into plank for another minute. I’m breathing hard but continue with my story. “He read me like a book. He pulled up his sleeve to show me his watch, which must’ve cost about ten grand, and he said: Do you respect me now, asshole? I laughed because he’s a tenacious little shit and then I finally shook his hand. I said: Hi, my name’s Scott. He said: I’m Dylan, and I want you to know that you just gave me your respect for something I can take off. You may be richer than me, have better clothes, but if I look at what you value, I’m always gonna have more than you. Have that at the back of your mind the next time you think about disrespecting me.”

“Wow! Dylan schooled your ass that day.”

“I was too ignorant to see it then, but having Dylan in my life has humbled me in ways I can’t explain. He showed me that status and popularity and image weren’t the most important things. He doesn’t care about that stuff, and he started making me question why I did.” I lift up from plank and do my last set of twenty. “Dylan changed the whole game for me because on one sunny Saturday afternoon in September, I got into the car with him and drove to a dingy diner on the other side of town, said the most awful things to you...and that set me on a completely different path. If it wasn’t for that day, I’d be married to Beth right now. My dad would be grooming me to take over as CEO of his company.” I let out a deep breath as I finish the last pushup. “Done.”

I stand up, and she walks with me to the kitchen. She hops on the counter as I start preparing a smoothie. I toss a banana, two scoops of vanilla protein powder, and almond milk into a blender.

“Dylan is the reason I found my first love and my second love.” I switch on the blender for thirty seconds, then pour my smoothie into a glass. “Dylan is the reason I came to talk to you the first time at school. I told him Peter was going to be pissed when he found out about you and me, and Dyl said he’s already pissed. At that point, he had already shown me enough times how to not give a fuck about other people’s opinions, and during lunch, I just walked up to you and sat down.”

“So, meeting Dylan caused the butterfly effect in your life?"

“Yeah. And he’s still flapping his little wings. If he weren’t getting married, you wouldn’t be here. And we can trace all this back to that moment when I decided to say hi to the new kid in school.”

“Hey, Soldier.” A strange expression comes over her face, and she takes my hand to pull me closer. “Knowing how everything turned out between us, would you go back and change anything...not with Dylan, of course...but with us? Like, would you have maybe not come to the diner? I mean, when I think about everything you gave up for me—”

“Hey.” I cup her face with both hands. “Don’t ever let that thought even cross your mind. I would do it again the same way in a heartbeat. You may not be in my life anymore, but this is still the life I want, this is the person I want to be. I wouldn’t want to go back to being the asshole I was.”

“You’re still an asshole,” she teases.

“Yeah, but notthatkind of asshole. And I don’t want to be a CEO. I love teaching and I would rather be alone than stuck in a loveless marriage with Beth. I love my life now but in the context of you specifically...I don’t know how to explain it. It’s weird. There’s this pain I feel right here.” I lift her hand and place it in the middle of my chest. “It started on the day I ended that call with you, and it hasn’t let up since. It’s always there, and when you leave again in ten days, it’s still going to be there. Chances are it will get worse. But I’ll keep carrying it around because it’s almost like a part of me now. Most days it’s bearable. I just sort of push it aside and try not to think about it, but there are some days when it hurts so bad, I can’t even breathe. That hollowness in my chest when you’re not around— I feel so...empty without you. I fucking hate it...but I wouldn’t change it. The entire chain reaction of the butterfly effect stems from a single choice and that’s all life is – it’s the sum of a series of choices. The sum of our choices unfortunately led us here. But if you’re asking if I would change anything that happened between us just for this pain to go away, my answer is never. I’d take it a million times over. In any version of our history, in any alternate form of our reality, in any lifetime that may exist – if someone came to me and said this is what you’ll have to go through to spend three years with Catalina Diaz, I’ll take all of it without a second thought...because I love you.”

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