Page 64 of Love and Other Paradoxes

“‘My future.Myfuture,’” she mimicked him. “Tell me something. What makes it yours?”

He stared at her, lost. “What?”

“Why should you be entitled to it, just because you had it before? Why shouldn’t you have to work for it, and risk, and doubt, just like everybody else?”

Her words undid something in him, something so deeply rooted he had never even realised it was there. It hurt, like being a child and watching a longed-for balloon disappear into the empty sky. The hurt had something underneath it, something important, but he wasn’t ready to face it yet. Right now, he just wanted to push the hurt outwards onto the person who had caused it. “You told me when we met that you were a bomb crater. But you’re worse than that. You’re a bomb. You came into my life and you exploded it to fucking smithereens, and you don’t even have the honesty to admit that’s what you did.” He shook his head, trembling. “You tried to warn me. Guess I should have listened.”

He got what he wanted. Her expression splintered, and her proud, upright posture sank, as he hit the heart of her vulnerability. “And I should have walked out as soon as you came in here. I wish—”

“—we’d never met,” he filled in. “That’s what you do, isn’t it? Wish things had never happened, instead of facing up to them. Rewrite history, instead of finding a way to move on.” He walked to the door, turning back to face her. “I’ve never been real to you, have I? This whole time, you’ve treated me like nothing but an obstacle to your plan. But I’m a person, Esi. I exist. Here and now.” He hit his chest, wishing she could feel it. “You can walk away. Jump into that river and come out of it as someone else. Overwrite me and you like we never met. But we did. It happened.” He swallowed, wondering why his voice was shaking. “I’m not going to forget.”

He wasn’t sure how it had happened, but he wasn’t talking about his future anymore. Somehow, through the rage and the hurt, he had circled back to the reason he had first meant to come here.

She walked up to him, until they were as close as they had been that night in Diana’s garden. He stared into her dark, red-rimmed eyes, unsure if she was about to kiss him or shove him away.

What she did was worse than either. Her voice trembled as she said, “I can’t wait to forget you.”

She reached past him and opened the door. He turned and left, the pain in his leg surging back, his eyes filling with stupid, needless tears. As he passed the window, he saw Esi sweeping away hearts and couple and moon, scattering them to fragments as if they had never been.

Chapter Twenty-Three

He staggered down Mill Road, blinded by tears, his leg throbbing with a hot, angry pulse. He should have been concerned about that, and about the way he was starting to feel, lightheaded as if he’d had too much whisky on an empty stomach, but he couldn’t see past the aching void where his future used to be.

His phone was buzzing insistently; someone was calling him. If it had been anyone but Rob, he wouldn’t have answered. “What?”

“Where are you?” said Rob over the hum of a crowd. “I’m surrounded by thesps and poets and I can’t see you anywhere.”

Joe stared bleakly at the night-lit curve of the swimming pool. “I’m on Mill Road.”

“Mill Road? Why are you on Mill Road?”

“I don’t know,” he said miserably. “Why is anybody anything?”

“You sound sad. Why are you sad? Everyone was clapping for you, Greeney. They really liked your poem. Isn’t that literally your main life goal?”

“I’m bleeding,” he said, reasoning thatI had an accidentwould be an easier explanation thanI was wrong about time travel.

“You’re bleeding?” Rob sounded amused. “Were you set upon by critics?”

“No. A bike crashed into my leg.” He looked down at the gory mess of his shin. “The wrong leg.”

Rob’s tone shifted. “Greeney. Listen to me. Sit down where you are. No, actually, lie down, and prop your leg up on something. I’m coming to get you.”

Joe felt inexpressibly relieved that someone had taken his fate out of his hands. He crumpled where he was and rested his head on the pavement. People walked around him. Some of them laughed. But it didn’t matter: nothing mattered. He stayed where he belonged, in the gutter.

When Rob found him, he made a very un-Rob-like sound. He called a taxi to take them to hospital. At the hospital, Joe had stitches, after which the doctor gave him some strong painkillers and advised him to avoid strenuous activity for a while.

“That won’t be a problem,” said Rob, “he’s a poet,” and he and the doctor had a good chuckle while Joe stared at the floor, wondering if he was actually anything at all.

It was midnight by the time they got back to college. Rob helped Joe up the stairs, and deposited him ungently on his bed. “Your phone’s ringing.”

He hadn’t noticed. He got it out of his pocket—maybe it was Esi, calling to say she was sorry, and he could say he was sorry too, and they could go back to how it was—and saw the name on the screen.

He looked up at Rob in horror. “It’s Diana.”

“The stunning and talented actress you’re in love with?” Rob gestured at the phone. “She’s probably worried about you. Aren’t you going to pick up?”

The painkillers were kicking in. Everything felt pearlescentand ethereal, and he saw a way out, quivering like a mirage in the distance. “No,” he said. “I’m going to do the opposite.” He rejected the call, then blocked Diana’s number. He placed the phone carefully inside his shoe, then slumped down in bed, muttering to himself. “I have to undo it all. Reverse it. Go back to where I was. Then the future can happen, just like it was meant to.”

---