The Only One For Me

by JeremyT

An elderly couple lay on their stomachs in the grass of a hillside under a starry sky. The air is warm and moist, not like it is these days; dry and brittle like old glass. The wife sighs in contentment and they press against one another in a sideways embrace.

“Jessica left James yesterday,” she says.

“James always was a jerk,” he mumbles. A firefly bobs past overhead. “Anyway, why?”

“He was using the machine to cheat on her,” she says. “With her.”

He chuckles. She slides an inch away from him.

“You wouldn’t ever do something like that, would you?”

He laughs louder. She swats him gently.

“No, no. It’s a damn fool thing to do. I can’t see the attraction of it, to be honest.”

“Why not? A younger me, prettier…”

He thinks for a moment. “Pretty might have mattered to me back then, and sure, I’ll look at a finely shaped woman at any age, but if pretty was all I cared about, we wouldn’t have lasted ten years, let alone thirty.”

“Thirty-one,” she corrected.

“Ah, right. Sure, I could travel back to meet you before, and you might even be willing, but… to be honest, my dear, you were terrible in bed then.”

“So were you!”

“Exactly. That was before you learned how to do that thing with your tongue, and…”

“I see the point. Now shh. Here we come.”

A small blue convertible pulls onto the shoulder of the road below the hill and parks. The top is down. A much younger version of the couple tumble out of the vehicle, laughing, chasing one another. Minutes pass, and the younger couple spread a blanket in the grass.

“My, but you were handsome then,” she whispers from their hiding spot on the hill.

He nods. “And energetic too,” he says and presses record on the video camera.

you’re the one that I love

by Edd

“Out again?”

The words, so suddenly spoken, startled Scott Parkinson out of his post-fuck bliss. He almost dropped his shoes.

Rachel switched on the bedside light, dazzling him. When his eyes adjusted, he saw that hers were red-rimmed. She’d been crying.

Scott stood there, clothes in hand. He’d been about to lay them carefully over the chair, the shoes next to it, as they’d been a few minutes ago when Rachel and he had first gone to bed. But he was frozen, rooted by her glare.

“Well?” she said, settling herself back against a pillow. It looked like she was preparing for battle. “You’ve been to see her again.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes, I–” It was stupid to stand there holding all his clothes, naked while she lay fortified under the blanket. He tossed everything aside and sat on the bed, half-facing her. “You knew all along, you had to.” He tried to smile, just a bit, to show her he still cared.

“Sure I knew. Twice before, and now for a third time.” The thought, the memory, had just come to her. Rachel looked down, then across at their wedding picture. “I’m not stupid.” She was thirty years removed from that beaming bride, and suddenly Rachel hated her. Her firm breasts, her trim body, her stamina her energy her naïve love for this man grinning, goddamn grinning! At her.

Rachel bunched up the edge of the blanket in fists gone white. “Is she married?” Her voice trembled.

Scott rubbed his neck with one hand. “No,” he said finally. “She’s not. Not yet, anyway. It would be too much like–”

“Cheating,” she said. “You’re seeing someone who’s not me. That is cheating. That’s what they call it.”

“No.” Scott reached out a tentative hand, laid it on one of her fists. “I’m seeing you. It’s you, it’s always been you.”

“I know,” she said, tucking her hand under the blanket so he wouldn’t see it shaking.. “But time machine or no time machine, it’s still cheating.”