Page 58 of Melt With You

Chapter Twenty-Six

Except that leaving wasn’t so easy.

Because Dori had engaged in a relationship with Van. And she had to explain both her presence to him, and her absence when she departed. She’d affected a whole slew of people. She’d broken the Prime Directive.

‘Why don’t we try again?’ she asked Rowan. ‘You take me back to the present and we go back again, and I won’t talk to anyone. I swear. I’ll be quiet as a mouse.’

He shook his head. ‘I can’t pinpoint the exact moment of return. Only close. It’s one of the reasons I missed you at the dance, and then at the Bed & Breakfast. The more we fuck around, the worse problems we’ll make. As it is, there’s a chance that you’d overlap with yourself, and that would fuck everyone’s memory up.’

‘Well, what then?’

‘We have to do the best we can. We have to tell a plausible story, explain your departure. There will be some confusion, of course. When you get back from London and go to work and people talk to you about this cousin that you never knew you had …’

‘No,’ Dori shook her head. ‘I didn’t go back to work. I went right to LA.’

‘Well, when you see Bette again. She’ll undoubtedly mention this Emma, and then what will happen?’

Dori shrugged. ‘I hardly ever came back,’ she said. ‘And the store closed my freshman year. I don’t know. I think we might be okay.’

‘You’re willing to take a risk?’

She nodded. ‘What other choice do we have?’

‘You still can’t just disappear. You have to say goodbye.’

‘Do I?’

He nodded. ‘You know you do, Dori. Don’t you? To Bette and Gael and Calvin.’

‘Who?’

‘Calvin. The boy you’ve been fucking for nearly a month.’

‘Van?’ Dori had never realized he had a real name. First, she’d thought of him as ‘Ozzy.’ Then as Van. She’d assumed the moniker came from the all-black vehicle he used to drive the instruments around. Thinking of him as someone named Calvin made her feel different towards him, but she didn’t know why.

Saying goodbye was far more difficult than she’d expected. In Dori’s daily life, she traveled from one film set to another, one magazine shoot to the next, with such ease and speed that she never thought she’d have a problem with moving on.

She’d just say goodbye. That was enough. A quick kiss on the cheek. A firm handshake. What more was required of her?

And then she looked into Van’s eyes, and her resolve began to melt.

Van didn’t understand why she wouldn’t give him her address, why she wouldn’t promise to see him when she was next back in town. He was tearful, which made her feel horrible inside. She’d never been a heartbreaker before. She’d always been the girl to end up with a broken heart.

‘It’s better like this,’ she said. ‘You’re going to go and kill in that competition. All the girls … and boys.’ She grinned at him. ‘All of them are going to want you. You don’t need someone like me waiting in the wings.’

‘What do you mean, “like you”?’

‘You know,’ she said, ‘an old lady.’

He frowned. ‘You’re amazing,’ he said. ‘I’ve never been with anyone so sexy before.’

‘Come on,’ she smiled, flattered. ‘You’ve been with a lot of women …’

He silenced her with his mouth on hers, but she pulled back. She was with Rowan now. Kissing Van no longer felt right. He let her pull away from him, and she could see the clarity in his eyes. He wasn’t on X right now. Wasn’t fucked up.

‘Promise me something,’ she said.

Van was looking at her hard, as if trying to memorize everything about her face.

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