Timeless

CHAPTER 32

A bby sat there, staring at her screen in a daze, so when her phone rang, she jumped. She’d more than been in a daze. She’d been in a vision of Cheryl and Diana as they met Paul as an adult, which meant that she ’d met Paul as an adult.

“He was happy,” she said to herself as she sniffled, realizing at the same time that she’d been about to cry.

Then, she picked up her phone and noticed the name of her publisher on the screen.

“Okay. I’m loving these pages,” Margo said by way of a greeting.

“Hello to you, too,” Abby replied and sniffled again.

“Are you all right? Are you getting sick? Don’t get sick. You need to finish this damn book. It’s really good, Abby. So different than your last one, but I think this one is even better.”

“Better?” she asked.

“It’s so raw and real without being too depressing. I love how they end up. They’re happy and together, and they have their son. It’s great, Abby. Are you going to get me the rest of it anytime soon?”

“The rest of it?” Abby asked.

As she reached for a box of tissues on her desk, she thought about a time when Harriet had handed Deb a handkerchief. She was back in that moment then, but it quickly turned into a moment between Isabella and Maria. It was blurrier. She couldn’t see much. She could only tell it was them, and Isabella, still required to serve her wife in public, offered a handkerchief to Maria while they were at dinner with the rest of the nuns.

“Abby? Are you there?”

“What? Yes, I’m here. What did you say?”

“You’re not writing a novella, so where are the rest of the pages? Are you still on track?”

“Oh,” she uttered. “Uh… You have all I’ve written so far.”

“I thought you would’ve made more progress by now,” Margo said.

“Yeah, I… got a little sidetracked.”

“Sidetracked with what?”

Abby wiped at her nose and replied, “Nothing. It’s fine now. I’ll get back to it.”

“Are you sure? You wrote this book very differently than your first. You have the ending done, but there’s not a lot of stuff in the middle. It’s just the main events, so you’ve got a lot to flesh out here.”

“I know. I will. I… I started working on my next one. That’s the thing I got sidetracked on.”

Why had she just said that? She smacked her forehead at the thought.

“I’m sorry… You haven’t finished the second one, but you’re writing the third?”

“Yes, I had an idea, so I ran with it. That’s good, right?”

“I guess so. But we still need the second book finished because we have to actually publish the thing.”

“I know. I’m on it. I can take a pause on the third one. I have some changes to make on the one I sent you, so I’ll get moving on those first and then get the rest of the story to you as soon as I can.”

“What do you need to fix? The editor hasn’t even gotten anything back to you yet.”

“Just a few things I don’t like. Nothing major. I’ll have the revised pages and the rest of the draft to you all by the deadline,” she said.

She needed to change the names of the very real people in her stories since she hadn’t known that Deb and Harriet had existed when she’d written the pages that she’d then sent to her publisher without thought. She’d also have to change the names in the newest story that she’d been working on and had just finished .

“I trust you, Abby, but are you sure you’re okay? You sound, I don’t know, sad right now. I thought you were sick or something, but were you crying?”

“I’m okay. I just wrote a difficult scene to get through, but I’m all good.”

“Okay. Well, I look forward to reading the rest of this book and the other one you’re, apparently, working on, too,” Margo said.

“I’m looking forward to getting everyone’s thoughts,” she replied.

They hung up, and she blew her nose into the Kleenex. She hadn’t meant to tell her publisher that she was already hard at work on another book. She wasn’t even sure that she could publish this one, too, given the topic of the second book. She supposed that they could be connected somehow; maybe as part of a series about women falling in love after discovering they were reincarnated. It would be a little close to home, though, and it wasn’t just her decision to make.

“Dinner! Shit!”

Abby checked the time on her laptop, made sure to hit save, and closed the computer. She only had an hour before Quinn would be there, and she hadn’t exactly gone shopping for the food she was supposed to cook for her. She hurried out of the office and down the hall to change into some jeans and a sweater because she needed to hit the store. When she was about to pull down on her sweatpants, the doorbell rang.

“Oh, I don’t have time for this,” she muttered.

Ever the anxious person when it came to unexpected guests as well as safety, being a woman living alone, she’d installed a security camera at both her front and her back door, so she pulled up the live view on her phone, expecting to see a delivery driver dropping off a package that she forgot that she’d ordered.

“What the…” She closed the app and, without changing, walked toward the front door, pulling it open. “You’re early.”

“Hello to you, too,” Quinn said with a little laugh. “You look nice. ”

Abby looked down at herself and said, “Hilarious. I was just about to go to the grocery store to pick up something to cook. I haven’t changed yet, and you’re early.”

“Well, based on our text exchange earlier today, I had a feeling that you were writing and would probably forget about the dinner entirely. So, first, I’m happy that you didn’t. And second…” She held up two reusable grocery bags. “I did the shopping for us.”

They’d been texting pretty much non-stop since Abby had left Quinn’s house the previous night. She would only stop when she needed to write or Quinn needed to work, but she didn’t want to stop texting her. Quinn was funny and witty, and Abby had always had a thing for witty, funny women. It was one of the reasons why she and her ex hadn’t worked out. Samantha hadn’t been all that witty. She’d had a hard time keeping up with Abby’s own wit and hadn’t always understood her humor.

“You went shopping?”

“Yes. And this bag with wine in it is pretty heavy, so can I come in and set it down, please, Abs?”

“Why are you calling me Abs?”

“Should I not?”

“It’s fine. You just did it in your texts today, too.”

“I don’t know. I like it. Easier than Abby .”

“My two -syllable name is too hard for you to say?”

“Abigail! Can I please come in and put this stuff down?”

“Oh. Shit. Sorry. Yeah.” Abby moved out of the way and motioned for Quinn to come into her house. “I don’t have visitors often. Okay… That’s a lie.” She closed the door behind them. “I never have visitors. I’m not even sure anyone else has been inside this house since I moved in. Maybe the plumber I had to call to fix the kitchen sink, but that’s it. And I didn’t cook him dinner or dress up for him .”

“No? Didn’t put on a little black dress for the poor guy? How else would you get a discount, then? Also, where is the kitchen?”

“To the left.” Abby pointed. “And arriving an hour early doesn’t exactly give me time to put on one of those for you , Quinn.”

Quinn set the bags on the counter and turned, lifting an eyebrow at her.

“You have one?”

“I have several. I have to go to events and stuff sometimes. They might want to make the first book into a movie, so there’s probably a premier or something that I’ll have to attend then, too, if that happens.”

“You have several… little black dresses?”

“Dresses in general, yes.”

“I can start cooking if you want to… put one on.”

Abby smiled at her and said, “You look nice, by the way.”

“I’m not wearing a little black dress.”

“No, but you aren’t comfortable in dresses, so I wouldn’t want you to wear one. You put on a blazer, and you’re wearing some very tight jeans.”

“Not too tight. They’d come off if someone gave them a good pull. Just saying.”

Abby laughed and said, “You know that’s not happening tonight, right?”

“Not if you don’t put on a little black dress, it’s not,” Quinn joked.

Abby laughed again. This was already so nice, possibly the best date she’d ever had, and it hadn’t even started yet. Technically, it was an hour before it had been scheduled to start, but Abby had already laughed more than any date with anyone else.

“Give me five? I can at least put on some grown-up clothes.”

“Grown-up clothes sound like lingerie to me.”

“Oh, my God!” Abby laughed and turned around. “Just unpack the stuff you brought. I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll open the wine to let it breathe.”

“I wouldn’t know the difference anyway,” she replied as she walked away.

“What about all those fancy events you have to attend? They don’t have good wine there?” Quinn yelled after her.

“I repeat: I wouldn’t know the difference.”

She made it down the hall and into her bedroom. When the door closed, she pressed herself back against it.

“Fuck. She’s hot,” she said to herself.

Then, Abby looked down at her clothes and could not believe that she’d opened the door on their first date looking like this: blue sweatpants, a white T-shirt with no bra under it, and her fluffy pink socks that kept her feet warm. Kicking those off first, she moved to her closet to find a decent sweater to throw on. When she did, she tossed it on her bed, went to her drawer, pulled out her best bra, removed her shirt, put it on, and then, gracefully, smelled her armpits.

“Deodorant,” she muttered.

After applying that, she dressed and returned to the bathroom to try to do something with her hair before she found a tube of lipstick she had in a drawer. She’d forgotten all about it, and when she put a little on, blotting most of it away, she had a vision of Cheryl and Diana’s wedding day in the underground lesbian bar. Cheryl had on bright red lipstick, and when she kissed her new wife in the vision, she left some of it on Diana’s lips, causing Cheryl to laugh and then wipe it away.

“Tonight, you’re not them,” she told herself as she slipped on some new, plain white socks. “You’re you. She’s Quinn. You need to know if this can be real between you two because of who the two of you are today, not just because you have this connection you still don’t really understand.”

She stood up from her bed and walked to the door. Before she pulled it open, though, she held her hand in front of her mouth and exhaled.

“Brush your teeth,” she scolded herself and headed back into the bathroom.

Minutes later, she walked back down the hall and saw Quinn in her kitchen. No vision came to her that time, but she leaned against the wall and crossed her arms over her chest, taking in the sight right in front of her. Quinn looked like she belonged there. She’d kicked off her shoes and was doing a little sliding around the kitchen to get from the counter to a cabinet instead of merely walking from one place to the other. Abby smiled as she watched her and then listened as Quinn started to hum some tune that Abby didn’t recognize. She wondered if it was something from a past life and decided to ask.

“What song is that? I don’t recognize it. Something from one of our many lives?” she asked as she made her way back into the kitchen.

“Um… No. It was the slow version of Baby Got Back .”

Abby laughed wildly and went to say, “You were–”

“I heard it in the grocery store,” Quinn explained then. “They were playing it over the speakers. I guess it got stuck in my head.”

Abby laughed again and asked, “And is that your favorite song?”

“What? No,” Quinn replied as she expertly uncorked the wine.

“How did you do that so easily if you’re not a big wine drinker?”

“I waited tables in college before I dropped out. I had to open bottles at the table if they ordered the stuff.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Why would you? We’ve spent so much time talking about everything else. We really hardly know each other.”

“Is that what tonight is all about to you?”

“No, tonight is a date. On dates, you generally get to know the other person, so yes, by default, we’ll do some of that, but I don’t want there to be any pressure, Abs. I know you weren’t sure about this. I don’t want you to run because we put too much pressure on seeing if this could work between modern-day… us.”

“You keep thinking that I’m going to run, Quinn. I’m not.”

“Okay. Well, can tonight be about you and me, not any of them? ”

“Yes, I’d really like that. But I was supposed to cook for you, and you’re taking over my kitchen right now. So, what, exactly, am I supposed to do?”

“How about we just cook together?” Quinn suggested.

“Are you trying to end this thing on the first date? You really think we can cook a full meal in my small kitchen and make it out of here alive?”

Quinn chuckled and said, “I bought pasta and two kinds of sauce so that we wouldn’t have to make it from scratch. Marinara or Alfredo?”

“Alfredo,” Abby replied.

“My kind of woman,” Quinn said with a wink. “Can you get the pans out and fill one with water? I’ll get the rest of the stuff out of the bags.”

“Did you buy garlic bread?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“So, not planning on having our first kiss tonight, then? Got it.”

Quinn laughed.