Rebecca Serle - In Five Years

Two hours later we’re home. Hungry and buzzing off champagne and wine, we crouch around the computer, ordering Thai food from Spice online. This is us. Spend seven hundred dollars on dinner, come home to eat eight-dollar fried rice. I never want that to change.

I want to put on sweatpants, per usual, but something tells me not to — not tonight, not yet. If I were different, someone else — Bella, for example — I’d have lingerie to wear. I’d have bought some this week. I’d put on a matching bra and underwear and hover by the door. Fuck the Pad Thai. But then I probably wouldn’t be engaged to David right now.

We’re not big drinkers, and the champagne and wine have gotten to both of us. I edge myself farther onto the couch. I put my feet in David’s lap. He squeezes the arch of my foot, kneading the tender place my heels are unkind to. I feel the buzzing in my stomach move upward to my head, until my eyes are being pulled closed like blinds. I yawn. Within a minute, I’m asleep.

I wake up slowly. How long have I been asleep? I roll over and look at the clock on the nightstand: 10:59 p.m. I stretch my legs. Did David move me to bed? The sheets feel crisp and cool around me, and I weigh just closing my eyes again and drifting back to sleep — but then I’d miss this, our engagement night, and I force them open. We still have more champagne to drink, and we need to have sex. That’s a thing you should do on the night you get engaged. I yawn, blinking, and then sit up, my breath exiting my body in a rush. Because I’m not in our bed. I’m not even in our apartment. I’m wearing a formal dress, red, beaded around the neckline. And I’m somewhere I’ve never been before.

I could tell you I think I’m dreaming, but I don’t, not really. I can feel my legs and arms and the frenetic beating of my own uneasy heart. Was I kidnapped?

I take in my surroundings. On further glance, I realize I’m in a loft apartment. The bed I’m in is flush up against floor-to-ceiling windows that appear to orient me in… Long Island City? I look out, desperate for some anchoring image. And then I spot the Empire State Building, rising out of the water in the distance. I’m in Brooklyn, but where? I can see the New York City skyline across the river, and to the right, the Manhattan Bridge. Which means I’m in Dumbo; I must be. Did David take me to a hotel? I see a redbrick building across the street with a brown barn door. There’s a party happening inside. I can see camera flashes and lots of flowers. A wedding, maybe.

The apartment isn’t giant, but it gives the illusion of space. Two blue velvet chairs sit necking in front of a glass-and-steel coffee table. An orange dresser perches at the foot of the bed, and colorful Persian rugs make the open space feel cozy, if not a little cluttered. There are exposed pipes and wood beams and a print on the wall. It’s an eye chart that reads: I WAS YOUNG I NEEDED THE MONEY.

Where the hell am I?

I hear him before I see him. He calls: “Are you awake?”

I freeze. Should I hide? Make a run for it? I see a large steel door, across the apartment, in the direction of where the voice is coming from. If I bolt, I might be able to get it open before—

He rounds the corner from what must be the kitchen. He’s dressed in black dress pants and a blue-and-black-striped shirt, unbuttoned at the top.

My eyes go wide. I want to scream; I might.

The well-dressed stranger comes over to me, and I leap onto the other side of the bed, by the windows.

“Hey,” he says. “Are you okay?”

“No!” I say. “No, I’m not.”

He sighs. He does not seem surprised by my response. “You fell asleep.” He runs his hand back and forth across his forehead. I notice he has a scar, crooked, over his left eye.

“What are you doing here?” I’ve backed myself so far into a corner I’m practically pushed up against the windows.

“C’mon,” he says.

“Do you know me?”

He bends one knee onto the bed. “Dannie,” he says. “Are you really asking me that?”

He knows my name. And there’s something about the way he says it that makes me pause, take a breath. He says it like he’s said it before.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know where I am.”

“It was a good night,” he says. “Wasn’t it?”

I look down at my dress. I realize, for the first time, it’s one I already own. My mom and I bought it with Bella on a shopping trip three years ago. Bella has the same one in white.

“Yeah,” I say, without even thinking. As if I know. As if I were there. What is happening?

And that’s when I catch the TV. It has been on this whole time, the volume low. It’s hanging on the wall opposite the bed and it’s playing the news. On the screen is a small graphic with the date and time: December 15, 2025. A man in a blue suit is prattling on about the weather, a snow cloud swaying behind him. I try to breathe.

“What?” he says. “Do you want me to turn it off?”

I shake my head. The response is automatic, and I watch him as he walks to the coffee table and grabs the remote. As he goes, he untucks his shirt.

“Weather warning for the East Coast as a blizzard heads toward us. Possibility of six inches overnight, with continued accumulation into Sunday.”

2025. It’s not possible; of course it’s not. Five years…

This must be some kind of prank. Bella. When we were younger, she used to pull shit like this all the time. Once, for my eleventh birthday, she figured out how to get a pony into my backyard without my parents knowing. We woke up to it playing chicken with the swing set.

But even Bella couldn’t get a fake date and time on national television. Could she? And who is this guy? Oh my god, David.

The man in the apartment turns around. “Hey,” he says. “Are you hungry?”

At his question, my stomach rumbles. I barely ate at dinner and wherever I am, in whatever parallel universe with David, the Pad Thai has most certainly not yet arrived.

“No,” I say.

He cocks his head to the side. “Kind of sounds like you are.”

“I’m not,” I insist. “I just. I need…”

“Some food,” he says. He smiles. I wonder how wide the windows open.

I slowly come around the bed.

“Do you want to change first?” he asks me.

“I don’t…” I start, but I don’t know how to finish the sentence because I don’t know where we are. Where I would even find clothes.

I follow him into a closet. It’s a walk-in, right off the bedroom alcove. There are rows of bags and shoes and clothes hanging, organized by color. I know right away. This is my closet. Which means this is my apartment. I live here.

“I moved to Dumbo,” I say, out loud.

The man laughs. And then he opens a drawer near the center of the closet and pulls out a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt and my heart stops. They’re his. He lives here, too. We’re… together.

David.

I reel back and run for the bathroom. I find it to the left of the living room. I close the door and bolt it. I splash some cold water on my face. “Think, Dannie, think.”

Inside the bathroom are all the products I love. Abba body cream and Tea Tree Oil shampoo. I dab some MyChelle serum on my face, comforted by the smell, the familiarity.

On the back of the door hangs a bathrobe with my initials, one I’ve had forever. Also, there are a pair of drawstring black pajama pants and an old Columbia sweatshirt. I take off the dress. I put them both on.

I run some rose hip oil over my lips and unlock the door.

“We have pasta or… pasta!” the man calls from the kitchen.

First things first, I need to find out this guy’s name.

His wallet.

David and I have a sixty-forty split when it comes to our finances, based on the income discrepancy between us. We decided this after we moved in together and haven’t changed it since. I have never once looked inside his wallet except for one unfortunate incident involving a new knife and his insurance card.

“Pasta sounds good,” I say.

I go back near the bed, to where his pants hang half off a chair, trailing to the floor. I glance toward the kitchen and check the pockets. I pull out his wallet. Old leather, indistinguishable brand. I riffle through it.

He doesn’t look up from filling a pot with water.

I pull out two business cards. One to a dry cleaner. The other a Stumptown punch card.

Then I find his license. Aaron Gregory, thirty-three years old. His license is New York State, and he’s six-foot and has green eyes.