Proposal of...

After everything that happened, I was still hesitant. I watched the water lap at the shore. It looked especially beautiful since the rain had stopped falling. The steel blanket in the sky dissipated.
Things had changed.
People had changed.
Jamie and I sat on a rock outcropping. Her hand had felt soft in mind. Her touch felt soft in mind haunting me, even though I hadn’t left yet.
I wanted to say something in the cool night air, but my mind was a blank. Part of me had reverted to the person I had always been.
“So, will I ever see you again?”
I look over, but remained silent.
“How can you do this to me?”
“Jamie, this isn’t being done to you. Please, don’t make me the bad guy in this.” Every part of my soul screamed at me for what I was doing, as if I was committing murder. I also knew it was selfish. “It’s about the universe, Jamie. I need to go home.”
She glared at me, anger brimming over. Her eyes darkened as a tear made a trail down her face reflecting what light there was. “And what happens to me?
“Jamie, you know I can’t tell you that.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I wish I could tell you how sorry I am about having to do this.”
The plaintive looked on her face made me feel even guiltier.
“Why don’t you stay? Who cares about disruptions?”
I gave her the flower I had taken from the funeral. “I can’t take that with me. Maybe you can hang on to it for me.”
She held it in her hands gently. The soft petals made me think about angels for some reason. “You won’t forget about me, will you?”
I shook my head, my eyes becoming wet. “I haven’t forgotten about you in fifteen years, Jamie. I never will. I love you.”
“I love you.” The way she had said it had moved and terrified me at the same time, yet I knew the dangers of falling in love in other timelines.
It was the only way I had managed to flee Corson’s castle. It would be the only way I could evade capture again. It was the only way of ensuring Jamie’s safety. It was also the only way I could maintain my original timeline.
The question of love as opposed to morality flooded through my mind. Rational morality had to win out. I could never presume to play, or even, be God.
She half-smiled when she looked over at me. In my time, I had never noticed how tilted her head to one side when she was upset. I never would have noticed a lot of things.
Then a realization occurred to me. “I think I figured out what Ariel was trying to tell me before Corson…” I didn’t want to say it. Not only had I fallen in love with a girl from my past, but I had also fallen in love with Ariel Hawkins the way a person loves their grandmother. She had died saving both timelines.
“What, Kev?”
“Ariel was here for forty years. Don’t you see?” I was excited, but tears stating coming, and coming hard. “Ariel said the only way to defeat Corson was to keep him from finding me and the amulet. Keeping us separate would maintain the universe. She knew where it is.”
“Okay.”
“Well, together, he can use it and me to open portals into my time. He can cause a temporal paradox.” I was talking so quickly, all of my words ran together.
“I thought that would cause a collapse.”
I nodded. “But I think I might have the answer.”
Jamie frowned.
I had never told anyone that I had loved them before now. I had always thought it wasn’t possible. I was wrong.
She stood up, and wrapped her arms around me, and as we kissed for the first and last time, I hated the unfairness of it all.
I hated Corson.
I hated having to give up something wonderful that I had never thought was possible.
I hated loving someone I had just found.
I hated having to give it up. Being young again had made me feel free; like the world was so full of possibilities, despite knowing that it is not. I had seen what people seek their whole lives. I had felt youth again. I also had to hurry before I changed my mind, and lost the audacity to do it.
I pulled away from Jamie and started down the beach. “I go to go.”
She held on to me so tightly, that it was difficult to breathe.
I had no idea when the portal would envelope me.
As I turned to wave goodbye, she wasn’t there. I never saw Jamie Ellings again.
Stormy weather brewed on the horizon in an accelerated dawn. I would never see the first girl I had ever loved again.
A flash of lightening rippled in blue streaks. It was the last memory I had of Jamie Ellings.
I knew Corson’s errand boys would never yield, and I had precious little time.

Epilogue
It was the worst headache I had ever had.
I woke up with the startling bizarre feeling that my surroundings were more than just impressions or empty feelings of regret.
Everything was where it should have been. The suns shone in streams making my head pound more than it already was. Emptiness took hold with claws tearing into my mind. I looked at the pipe and the empty baggie on the coffee table.
I stretched and looked out the window. I was thirty years old again. The colors of the world were an intense sensory overload. The world had been reprinted in Technicolor, but my eyes adjusted back into stark reality.
I remembered the look on Jamie’s face as I turned to walk away. I remembered Corson’s castle. Everything was as clear as a bell, especially Jamie Ellings.
For a moment I wondered what and who she was in the real world.
Was she a different kind of person? Did she have that look? Did the light play across her eyes?
Maybe I am a bad person for wishing it, but maybe it wouldn’t have been such a bad idea to fix things. Regret seems to be one of the only constants in the universe.
On the floor next to me was Time Travel In a Universe of Infinite Possibilities. I chuckled to myself. I took a shower to begin my day. It was Saturday, but a dark chasm was forming deep within me. Walking down that beach would forever tear my heart. So, maybe it was all just a dream, but that doesn’t make it any less real.
I resigned myself to knowing it had never happened. I suppose, dreaming is funny like that.
But I had things to do today. Through a murky sea of sadness and regret, I got dressed to leave. I had grabbed the keys from the hook the way Mom had always done. Even in my reality, it was so burned into my memory; there would be no disruptions. On the small table was a vase I had never seen.
A single daisy leaned against the side, but I had never had flowers in the house since Mom had died.
Still, one daisy sat, as if it was peering back at me.
I walked to the library. I had hoping to see Ariel Hawkins’s Taurus in the paring lot, but it was empty.
Instead of Ariel’s poof of hair behind the circulation desk, a short lady in her mid-thirties sat where Ariel always had. I approached the desk, and she put down the Hemmingway she had been flipping through.
“May I help you?”
I smiled. “I was wondering when Ariel Hawkins would be working.”
She glared at me. “Is this some kind of joke?”
I shook my head.
“I think you’d better leave.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Ariel Hawkins was my mother. She was murdered fifteen years ago.”
A pang of guilt washed over me, but I had thought it had been impossible. “Murdered?”
“Yes, murdered. Someone killed her. You do know what murder is, don’t you?” I couldn’t blame her for getting upset. I had seen Ariel die. I was responsible. If I hadn’t been more careful, she would still be alive with her nose in a Hemmingway or Dickens.
“Hey, I’m sorry.”
“What do you want?”
I looked at my feet, afraid of what was coming next. “My name is Kevin. I knew Ariel.”
Her back straightened. Obviously Ariel’s daughter was just as tall as her mother, and had Ariel’s bad habit of hunching downward. “Kevin? Oh, my God.”
I was scared. I couldn’t read the look on her face. Even so, it reminded me of Ariel. A tear slid down my cheek. It felt like just moments ago I had attended her funeral. I started reciting Ariel’s favorite sonnet.
She spoke with me in unison while reaching into her desk and pulled out a daisy that had been dead for fifteen years. It had been dried and pressed in a book, probably a Shakespeare.
“I was supposed top give you something.” The somber and quiet look on her face reminded me of how Ariel looked right before Corson had finally impaled her. “She knew you’d be coming.”
Seemingly from nowhere, she had grabbed an envelope and placed it in front of me.
“I tired saving her you know.”
Ariel’s daughter looked down. “I know.”
I could contain myself no longer. I tore open the envelope, trying to hide my excitement. I was hoping for a very long letter, simply, because I wanted my friend and adopted grandmother to be near again, but there were only five words on the paper. “Thank you, Kevin. I love you.”
I read it to myself before Ariel’s daughter asked what it said. “You know the library closes in five minutes. You want to grab a cup of coffee?”
I smiled through tears I had struggled to hold back. “I’d like that.

We walked down Main Street in Apple Falls. It felt, strangely, creepy, as if the world was coming to an end, and no one knew. I realized this was a quiet before the storm, but that only would have been the case if I had been dreaming. I guess the line between dreams and reality can be a fine one.
Still, two questions remain. Who determines that line? I also wondered about Corson. Still, I had never been so afraid.
In the evening light, it began to rain.