Page 68 of The Seven Year Slip

So after he left my aunt’s place. After the summer. So soon, though, after he got his job. His grandpa didn’t even get to see him become the chef he was today. It was unfair, really. I wasn’t sure how to comfort him—or even if hewantedcomfort. It had been seven years, after all... and he seemed to be able to talk about his grandpa a lot better than I could about my aunt. In the end, I just said, “Look at all you’ve done. You’re about to open up your ownrestaurant. You’ve made him proud.”

“I have,” he agreed, though there wasn’t ego in his voice. There was just... a tiredness? Yeah—he sounded tired. “And I’ve given up a lot to be here. Relationships, friendships, other career opportunities... only way to go is up.”

I took one last bite of chicken fajita, studying him in the streetlights. “Do you regret it?”

“If I said I did,” he replied, looking thoughtful, “would that be a disservice to the past me who dreamed of getting here? Probably.” But then a slow smile spread across his lips, honeyed and coy. “Though it’s a good thing I don’t. But...” He hesitated. “I do regret not being there. For you,” he added. “When your aunt passed. I regret that.”

A knot formed in my throat. I looked away. Anywhere else. “It’s fine,” I said shortly. “I’m fine.”

“No,” he mumbled, studying my face, and I knew it looked a little lost, a little broken, “you aren’t.”

“Why didn’t you come find me, then?” I asked abruptly. “Over the last seven years?”

His face pinched, he set down his plate on the bench beside him and started to clean his hands. I imagined he was thinking about how best to break it to me that he didn’t care to, that if he wanted to he could have, but he just planted a hand between us, leaned on it as he came in close, and whispered, “Would you have believed me, Lemon?”

28

Time Well Traveled

“I... don’t understand whatyou mean,” I confessed.

He sighed and leaned back again, looking around the park, to a group of young people taking photos under the arch. “Then let me set the scene. Seven years ago. You’re... what, twenty-two? I find you, and I’m a stranger, right? Becauseyouwon’t know me for another seven years.”

His words caught me off guard, and I almost choked on my beer as I tried to take another sip. What had he said earlier? “I think it was a little longer for me”? “You—you know, then? That...”

“Yeah,” he replied shortly. “I do.”

I wasn’t sure what was more shocking: the realization that hehadthought about coming to find me, or the fact that at some point in the next few weeks before he moved out of my aunt’s apartment, I would tell him the truth. I sat up a little straighter at the realization—“I make it back, then, don’t I? To the apartment in your time?”

He concentrated on a streetlight. “I don’t remember.”

I studied his face for a long moment, trying to see if I could tell if he was lying, the set of his mouth, an uncertainty in his eyes, but he didn’t betray anything, not even when he caught me staring, and returned it.

“I don’t remember, Lemon,” he insisted, and I quickly looked away.

Does something happen?I wanted to ask. Something so terrible that he couldn’t even tell me? I tried to think back and remember that summer seven years ago, when I went gallivanting off with my aunt at a moment’s notice. It was the first and only time my aunt and I stole away for months, charging our phones in cafés and sleeping in hostels. The next year I had a job at Strauss & Adder, and so we planned a trip at the end of summer every year instead. We’d meet at the Met on my birthday, suitcases in hand, and we’d sit and visit van Gogh for a while, and then leave for places unknown.

I didn’t remember the day I came home from that glorious summer abroad seven years ago. I remembered taxiingwaytoo long on the tarmac in LaGuardia, so long they ran out of complimentary wine, and I remembered dropping my aunt off at her apartment, hugging her goodbye, and being so tired I accidentally caught a taxi with another person already inside.

I frowned.

James reached toward me and smoothed out the skin between my brows with his thumb. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to, because I figured I had that look on my face again, that distant sour one, like I was sucking on a lemon drop.

“Do you not remember, or do you not want to tell me?” I asked, pulling away from him, and he tilted his head to one side and debated on how to answer.

“Is there a third option?”

“Sure, but what is it?”

He hesitated, and looked down at his half-eaten fajita as if he was trying to figure out how to say what he needed to, and suddenly I got the terrible feeling that it would just make everything worse.

“Sorry,” I said quickly. “You don’t have to answer that. Wow, I—I really don’t know how to carry on a normal conversation, do I? What’s your favorite band? Favorite book? Favoritecolor?”

“Tsk,tsk, you still have to guess it—oh, no,” he added quieter, catching sight of something behind me, and his gaze darkened. “I feel like I’m about to regret this.”

“What?” I glanced over my shoulder.

Miguel and Isa were closing up the truck, pulling down their window covering and locking their doors, before heading over our way. I checked my watch. They reallydidclose at ten sharp, didn’t they?

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