Page 2 of Just in Time
I rolled my eyes. “Probably shouldn’t use my powers for that.” My powers certainly weren’t the garden variety sort. Not like my Momma’s, which gave her a green thumb of monumental proportions.
No, my powers were slightly more complicated than that. And I’d nearly messed up a ton of stuff before with my curiosity.But that had been years before, when I was a teenager. I had more practice now. Surely, a little fun here and there wouldn’t be remiss.
“What can you use ‘em for, if not for that?” he protested.
“Fine. But if it screws up our future, that’s on you, Claws.” I grinned before I closed my eyes, reaching out with my mind to what I called the edges. To the very ends of sensical space. It wasn’t a solid thing. It felt more like… clay or something. Wet clay that solidified the more you gripped on. There were infinite edges, from what I could tell. They all moved with one another, simultaneously.
There was an edge that was mine. One that was time. One that was Brody’s. And so on and so forth.
This time, I’d just need to turn mine. To get myself where I was a couple minutes before. It shouldn’t be too difficult.
I reached it, the edges. My mental fingers curled around the softness and found a place to hold on. I could feel whatever it was turning beneath my grip. Moving forward, in a sense. I gripped harder, wrenching the plane until it stuttered to a halt and slowly, slowly, started to turn back. I only had to go back about two minutes, so it didn’t take long at all. I could feel my feet on the stairs, going backwards and up them until I was back through the door. I let go, my feet skidding to a halt on the carpeted floor by our front entrance exactly one minute and forty seconds before hand.
I blinked rapidly as I opened my eyes and Brody glanced over at me. “What’d you forget?” he asked, knowing the look on my face very, very well.
“My sweater,”I replied with a grin. “It’s cold outside.”
“So you cheated and went back,” he teased.
“I’ll have you know,youwere the one who goaded me into coming back,” I said with a high laugh, pulling on my sweater as he reached for the doorknob.
I placed my hand in the crook of his arm as we made our way down the stairs.
We, of course, arrived a few seconds after we had before, and just in time to see Jolene herself stepping out of her car and up to the front door of her bar.
“Hey there lovebirds,” she called, waving at us as we strolled along the sidewalk. “You headed back to work there, Brody?”
“Yes’m,” he replied, smiling widely as she nodded her head.
“That’s good, that’s good. You’re gonna make a truth-teller outta me yet. There ain’t no argument I can’t win with Ed now that you’re his best mechanic. So thank you for that!”
Brody’s face reddened a little, like it always did when someone praised him. “I feel like I should thankyou, Ms. Martin. I wouldn’t have stood a snowball’s chance in hell of getting that job without your help.”
She waved her hand and shook her head. “Stop that, you. You can’t keep thanking me for the rest of my life. I ain’t that nice of a person, Rickard.”
“You’re nice enough, Ms. Martin.”
“Jolene,” she insisted. “I know you’re a good boy and your momma obviously raised you right, but that ‘Ms. Martin’ business is liable to make me start feeling like an old woman. And an old woman, I ain’t. Not yet, anyway.” And when she grinned like that, like she did when she was in a really good mood, it was believable.
“Andyou,” she directed at me, “Your shift doesn’t start until five p.m, Missy… I don’t want to see you nosing around this bar until then. Go do something nice for yourself or something.”
Brody straightened his arm and caught my hand in his. “You hear that? That’s straight from your boss, so you gotta listen.”
Jolene was a rough older lady. And I meant lady. She had this unfinished edge to her, but she was a lady, through and through. I wasn’t even sure what Jolene’s actual age was, but I knew she’d owned this bar back whenmyMomma first moved here in the late 80s, so logically, she was an old woman. But you wouldn’t know it by looking at her. She was fiery and full of the dickens—by her own admission—and she was the most reliable person in my life.
She’d given me a job when I’d asked for it, gotten me back on my feet when Momma’d pushed me out the door and told me to ‘do something away from her.’
And she’d come through again for Brody when I’d brought him home from the bar one night. She had a soft spot for strays.
“That’s right, Lily! That’s a direct order!” Jolene called after us as Brody and I made our way down the sidewalk and towards downtown.
I just laughed, knowing damn well I’d probably just go drop in on Momma at the store for my weekly dose of what she called mothering. I didn’t know if that counted as something for myself or if that was just something that made Momma still feel needed.
It was probably the latter.
The breeze whipped through the street and cut right through the sweater I’d gone back to put on. I moved closer to Brody, feeling his heat radiating from under his t-shirt like always. Shifters ran warmer than humans. Something about all that energy just waiting there within grasp.
“You cold, sugar?” he asked, slipping his arm around my waist and hauling me closer. His scent, motor oil and soap, flooded my nose and I nodded, cuddling as close as I could and still keep both of my feet on the ground.
