Chapter 74

“I had evolved a year too soon, and it nearly broke me.”
—Carlyle Labuschagne, The Broken Destiny

3 NOVEMBER 2019

My bed seems so vacant when I lie down in it. This morning, Em left for San Diego where she’ll be stationed for the next year and a half. In that time, she’ll get three more one-week vacations and regular government holidays. We might be able to go see her once or twice. Dad said we’d see her this summer and if she can’t come here, we’ll definitely go see her next Christmas. I understand all the reasons the old man inside me was a proponent of National Service but as a teen, it totally sucks.

And she’ll come out of it a truck driver? How is that supposed to prepare her for college? Especially since government trucking contracts with private firms have been cancelled because they can conscript drivers from the Service. Well, not all of them, apparently. The government has drivers but they are still catching up in acquiring trucks. Politicians in this age are just as much dumb fucks as they were in my timeline.

I can still smell her on my pillow, our sex on the sheets. I don’t want to wash them. And I don’t want to keep crying.

I kept training with an addition. Livy was now joining Nanette and me for our training runs. Nanette had us doing interval training every other day. It was convenient to have Livy training with us because Nanette could do a longer run on our non-interval days and Livy could take me home in time to get ready for school.

I thought Mom would drop her teeth when Livy walked out of the bathroom Thursday morning after showering. Except V3 Mom had all her own teeth. V1 was wearing false teeth by the time she was forty. Dental hygiene and treatment weren’t quite the same back then. V1 remembered being so traumatized by the dentist when he was four that he wouldn’t sit in the barber chair because it looked the same.

Not that Livy and I had showered together. I was already in the kitchen fixing breakfast for Pey when Mom and Livy walked in together. They’d been talking in the hall.

“We need to talk,” Mom said.

“Mom, it was just more convenient for Livy to get ready here and then we can head out to school,” I protested. “We weren’t doing anything wrong.” Well, we did have a little near-naked groping when I got out of the shower and she went in, but we were discreet.

“I’m not upset about Olivia getting ready here as long as it doesn’t tie up the bathroom so your little sister has trouble getting ready for school. We managed with Emily. But I understand you are planning a trip that you haven’t mentioned to your parents,” Mom said. Shit. I planned to talk to them about the race in Bloomington but hadn’t gotten around to it yet. I’d sort of circumvented the issue with the Noblesville race because Em came down to meet me in Indy.

“I was going to talk to you about that but with Em here last week it sort of slipped my mind,” I whined. Christ! I sound like a teenager!

“Invite your ... uh—Nanette?—Invite her to Sunday dinner after your long run. Olivia, your parents, too. I’ll talk to them tomorrow, so please invite them as soon as possible. We need to know about the arrangements.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Livy said. We escaped and went to school.

Thursday after school was my normal Honors English study group but we’d all agreed to forgo a bit of it so we could all have a little birthday party for Rachel. Today was her seventeenth birthday. I shuddered. Next year, she’d receive her induction letter. Conscription was more like it.

Livy wasn’t going to make the party, of course, because basketball practice had started with the first game this Saturday. Most girls’ games were weeknights or Saturday afternoon. The boys got the prime time on Friday night and often a second game either mid-week or Saturday night.

We had a good time. It was low-key, but since we were at Brittany’s house, that meant we danced a little. Rachel had to be home for dinner to celebrate with her family. She and I would celebrate Friday night.

Nanette was a little shocked that our families wanted to meet to talk about the race but she accepted the invitation.

It looked like some of our group date time would be spent watching Livy play basketball this winter. Of course, we were at her first game against Carmel at home Saturday afternoon. The game was over by two-thirty and we collected our girlfriend after her shower so we could go to Joan’s to continue Rachel’s abbreviated birthday party from Thursday night.

I smiled at my redhead girlfriend. Friday night, we’d gone out to dinner and I’d driven. It was a first for me to drive a date and believe me I was careful. During Em’s visit, I’d discovered the traffic laws were far more rigidly enforced in this timeline than they had been in V1. And violations were paid in days of community service. I was not going to run afoul of that mess. Statistically 80% of high school aged drivers in our area spent at least one day of community service before graduation. Crap! I guess it’s all part of getting us ready for National Service.

We went to a nice restaurant called Montezuma’s that wasn’t nearly as expensive as I remembered restaurants being in V1. But ... My past fifty or so years of memories included having wine or cocktails with the meal. Our house special taco platters were fifteen dollars each. Thirty bucks plus five for Cokes and a nice seven-dollar tip. Forty-two dollars. I scanned down the menu and saw that a pitcher of margaritas cost fifty bucks. No wonder the meals V1 remembered were so expensive!

We went out into the country to the cemetery Livy had shown me and got in the back seat of Mom’s roomy Impala. I’d carefully equipped the car with blankets before our date. We giggled a lot and got naked. Once I was holding my love in my arms, though, it was evident that we just wanted the closeness and not a raucous round of sex. It was just holding our naked bodies together and whispering as we kissed that was important.

Yeah. We made love. How could I hold that beautiful naked girl next to me and not get a little carried away? I was focused on her, though, and just wanted to give her the pleasure she deserved. Her wanting me to come in her was a bonus.

I didn’t get as much opportunity to baby her Saturday afternoon after the game. We had five other girlfriends who wanted to play with her and love her. It seemed that Sharon Long had become a bit more domesticated in the past couple of months. She adopted the role of hostess-mother and even baked a nice cake for Rachel. When the seven of us were settled, she disappeared.

“Mom has a new boyfriend,” Joan whispered. “I haven’t met him yet but it’s pretty unusual for her to be content with a guy for long. He must have a ten-inch dong!”

“Well, it’s nice of her to disappear. I wanted to spend some time kissing and loving you,” I said. And we did. At one point during the party when it seemed the girls were all intent on smothering Rachel with kisses, Joan and I slipped off to her room and made love quickly. I like to take my time with my girlfriends, but Joan ramps up quickly when I start sucking on her nipples and sliding into her was no problem. We got a couple of raised eyebrows when we returned to the party but aside from Beca’s smirk, there was no comment.

“So, what is your relationship with Jacob?” Dad asked when we’d gathered for Sunday lunch. Mom had put a pot roast in the slow cooker. Olivia’s family of five and mine of four had to be a little intimidating to her. Her eyes went wide and I thought for a moment she’d bolt. Dad went on. “Are you a coach? A mentor? A therapist? A girlfriend?”

“I ... uh ... No ... I mean, I think Jacob has real potential as a distance runner. Maybe not marathons but at least 10k and maybe half-marathon,” she got out. “I was one of the physical therapists when Jacob was in the hospital. I thought he’d have difficulty ever walking again when I first met him. When I ran into Jacob and his sister running, I was impressed and wanted to help further in his recovery. But I’m not here in any official capacity other than as a running partner. I’m ... You can tell I’m a little old for the position of girlfriend.”

Dad and Mr. Dayton both laughed. We all wondered what the joke was.

“Times have changed,” Mr. Dayton, Randall, said. “And I’m old fashioned enough that if it was a male your age taking an interest in Olivia’s running, I’d throw a fit. But we see much stranger things these days.”

“I suppose that’s one reason I’m not too concerned. Ten years ago, it would have been different,” Dad said.

“We’ve noticed a lot of changes in you since the accident, Jacob,” Mom said. “We haven’t objected to any of your relationships and don’t plan to. We just want to know about them. Nanette, the changes you’ve seen in Jacob aren’t just physical. He’s become a man in the few short months since the accident. And he is over the age of consent now. He’s still a minor and has restrictions, but as long as he shows the maturity of an adult, we’ll treat him as one.”