Chapter 3: The Revelation

Denise held his gaze for a moment then rose to refill their coffee cups. After she replaced the carafe she returned to the table and sat opposite of Thomas.

She simply said, “This is going to be hard to believe, but I am from the 1980s.”

Denise thought it would take a minute for that to register but Thomas replied immediately. “No shit. We are both ‘from the 80s.’ Went to high school together almost forty years ago. Hence, you, me, we’re from the eighties.”

Denise realized this was going to be harder than she first envisioned. She shook her head gently.

“No, what I mean is that when I went to bed last night I was in the eighties. With you. In a separate timeline or universe or whatever it is called. In that timeline we are both in our twenties. And this morning when I woke up, I am in this timeline, including my fifty-something body, but I have not lived my life the past thirty years. You are who you were before you first teleported back to the eighties. I was teleported into the future. And obviously, you don’t know anything about the other timeline.”

Thomas stared at her with a blank look. Nothing was sinking in.

Denise tried again. “Two years ago, you went to bed the night before Thanksgiving with a raging hangover. When you woke, a version of you was no longer in this time but in your mom’s house, in your bedroom, in the eighties.”

“I thought I drank too much last night but you clearly don’t have anything on me today,” said Thomas with a snort.

Denise saw that his coffee cup was empty and started to reach for it to buy her a few seconds to think when she remember the carafe was empty. Instead, she sat back in her chair and looked at Thomas with an even expression.

She took a deep breath and tried one final approach.

“Your mom’s name is Sandy Ford. Your dad’s name is Stanley but you don’t remember him since he was a long-haul trucker and left your mom shortly after your sister Tammy was born. By the time you graduated high school you went to college out of town just to get away from Sandy and Tammy. At college you met a girl and dated for about nine months but it didn’t last. You graduated with a degree in economics and now work as a CPA. Your ex-wife is Andrea and you have two daughters. Neither your daughters nor your wife speak to you if they can help it. Now you live minute-to-minute, paycheck-to-paycheck, with nothing to live for and most nights you drink yourself comatose with the hope that you die in your sleep.”

Thomas’s face had gone white. “I don’t know what kind of voodoo shit you did to learn all that but you need to get the fuck out of my house.”

“I can’t,” Denise said flatly. “Go take a shower. We can talk more later.”

Denise could see the internal struggle Thomas was fighting. Should he kick her out now or shower and kick her out later? He chose the latter by standing and leaving the kitchen without a word.

Denise let out a long breath. She thought he was going to make her leave. She did not know what she was doing in this timeline without the Thomas she knew but it seemed obvious that she had to stay with him until there was some kind of resolution.

While she waited for Thomas to shower and get dressed Denise washed the dishes, wiped down the counter tops, and dropped two bags of trash out the back door.

Thirty minutes later Thomas entered the kitchen. He looked marginally better. At least he was wearing a clean shirt, shaved, and no longer smelled of beer.

“You’re still here,” he said as he sat heavily at the table.

“Eat this,” she said as she placed a plate in front of Thomas. “It was all you had in the fridge that didn’t have mold on it.”

A meager-looking egg and cheese sandwich on two pieces of the end of a loaf of bread was on the plate. A small glass of apple juice sat nearby.

He ate slowly as he watched Denise dry the dishes in the strainer and put them in cabinets.

When she finished she sat at the table. He took his last bite and drank the juice.

“Time traveler, huh? For real? This isn’t some kind of hidden-camera bullshit? Was the call from my ex real, or was that part of this gimmick?”

“It’s real. You don’t know how or why you were teleported to the eighties two years ago on Thanksgiving. Last year, the one-year anniversary of your restart in the eighties, you had to choose to stay in the eighties or return to this life. You chose to stay and there were consequences. It really hurt the ones closest to you. This year it was my decision. Should you stay in the eighties or return. I chose for you to stay and the next thing I knew I woke in your current-day bedroom as a fifty-something woman.”

Thomas scratched his head.

“That’s fucked up and I don’t understand it for shit. Tell me again. Two years ago, I time-travelled to you, in the past, and then last night you made a decision to keep me in the eighties and ended up here?”

She nodded. She was thinking, even with the current circumstances, there were a great number of fantastic memories she shared with Thomas the past two years.

“It’s quite a long story. The short version is that when you restarted your timeline you kept your memories from this life. You became an excellent student and aced all your classes. I needed help and asked you to tutor me and that’s how we started to talk, then date, then broke up, and finally got back together again.”