Rebecca Serle - In Five Years

I put everything back where I found it.

“Do you want red sauce or pesto?” he asks from the kitchen.

“Aaron?” I try.

He smiles. “Yes?”

“Pesto,” I say.

I walk toward the kitchen. It’s 2025, a man I’ve never met is my boyfriend, and I live in Brooklyn.

“Pesto is what I wanted, too.”

I sit down at the counter. There are cherrywood stools with wire-framed backs I don’t recognize and don’t particularly like.

I take him in. He’s blonde, with green eyes and a jaw that makes him look like one of the superhero Chrises. He’s hot. Too hot for me, to be totally honest with you, and evidently, based on his looks and his name, not Jewish. I feel my stomach twist. This is what becomes of me in five years? I’m dating a golden Adonis in an artist’s loft? Oh god, does my mother know?

The water boils, and he pours the pasta into the pot. Steam rises up and he steps back, wiping his forehead.

“Am I still a lawyer?” I ask suddenly.

Aaron looks at me and laughs. “Of course,” he says. “Wine?”

I nod, exhaling a sigh of relief. So some things have gotten off track, but not all. I can work with this. I just have to find David, figure out what happened there, and we’ll be back in business. Still a lawyer. Halleluiah.

When the noodles are cooked, he drains them and tosses them back into the pot with the pesto and Parmesan, and all of a sudden I’m dizzy with hunger. All I can think about right now is the food.

Aaron takes two wineglasses down from a cabinet, moving expertly around the kitchen. My kitchen. Our kitchen.

He pours me a glass of red and hands it over the counter. It’s big and bold. A Brunello, maybe. Not something I’d usually buy.

“Dinner is served.”

Aaron hands me a giant steaming bowl of spaghetti and pesto, and before he even comes back around the counter, I’m shoveling a forkful into my mouth. It occurs to me, mid-bite, that this could all be some kind of government science play and he could be poisoning me, but I’m too hungry to stop or care.

The pasta is delicious — warm and salty — and I don’t look up for another five minutes. When I do, he’s staring at me.

I wipe my mouth with my napkin. “Sorry,” I say. “I feel like I haven’t eaten in years.”

He nods and pushes back his plate. “So now we have two choices. We can just get drunk, or we can get drunk and play Scattergories.”

I love board games, which, of course, he would know. David is more of a card guy. He taught me how to play Bridge and Rummy. He thinks board games are childish, and that if we’re playing something we should be strengthening our brain pathways, which both Bridge and Rummy do.

“Get drunk,” I say.

Aaron gives my arm an affectionate squeeze. I feel like his hand is still there when he lets go. There is something strange here. Some strange pull. Some emotion that begins to expand in the room, fill up the corners.

Aaron tops off our wineglasses. We leave our plates where they sit on the counter. Now what? And then I realize he’s going to want to get into bed. This boyfriend of mine, he’s going to want to touch me. I can just feel it.

I make a beeline for one of the blue velvet chairs and take a seat. He looks at me sideways. Huh.

All at once something occurs to me. I look down at my hand, panicked. There, on my finger, is an engagement ring. It’s a solitaire canary diamond with tiny stones around it. It’s vintage and whimsical. Not the ring David gave me tonight. It’s not anything I’d ever pick out. Yet here it is, on my finger.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

I bolt up from the chair. I pace the apartment. Should I leave? Where would I go? To my old place? Maybe David is still there. But what are the odds? He’s probably living in Gramercy with some non-insane wife. Maybe if I tell him what’s going on he’ll know how to fix it. He’ll forgive me for whatever I did to get us here — me in this apartment with a stranger and him on the other side of the bridge. He’s the best problem solver. He’ll figure it out.

I get up and head toward the door. I need to get out of here. To escape whatever feeling is flooding this room. Where do I keep my coats?

“Hey,” Aaron says. “Where are you going?”

Think fast. “Just the deli,” I say.

“The deli?”

Aaron gets up and comes over to me. Then he puts his hands on my face. Right up against either cheek. His hands are cool, and for a moment the temperature change and motion shocks me and I make a move to reel back, but he holds me in place.

“Stay. Please don’t leave right now.”

He looks at me and his eyes are liquid, open. So this is what this guy has on me. This feeling. It’s… it’s new and familiar all at once. It’s heavy, weighted. It sits all around us. And despite myself, I want to… I want to stay.

“Okay,” I whisper. Because his skin is still on mine and his eyes are still looking at me, and while I don’t understand why I’ve committed to spend my life with this man, I do know that the bed we share gets a lot of action, because… this is big. I feel its resonance in my body, the reverberations of some kind of seismic tidal wave. Outside, the sky turns.

He heads toward the bed, holding my hand, and I follow. The wine has started to make me feel languid. I want to stretch out.

I perch on the edge of the bed.

“Five years,” I mutter.

Aaron just looks at me. He sits back against the pillows. “Hey,” he says. “Can you come here?”

But it’s not a question, not really, not insofar as it only has one, rhetorical, answer.

He holds his arms open and out, and I ease onto the bed. I can feel it, this tug on my limbs, like I’m a marionette being pulled unevenly forward, toward him.

God help me, I let him hold me. He pulls me to him, and I feel his breath warm near my cheek.

His face hovers close. Here we go, he’s going to kiss me. Am I going to let him? I think about it, about David, and about this Aaron’s muscled arms. But before I can weigh the pros and cons and come to a solid conclusion, his lips are on mine.

They land gently and he holds them there, delicately — as if he knows, as if he’s letting me get used to him. And then he uses his tongue to open my mouth slowly.

Oh my god.

I’m melting. I’ve never felt anything like this. Not with David, not with Ben, the only other guy I dated seriously, not even with Anthony, the study abroad fling I had in Florence. This is something else entirely. He kisses and touches like he’s inside my brain. I mean, I’m in the future, maybe he is.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asks me, and I respond by pulling him closer.

He threads his hands under my sweatshirt and then it’s off before I even realize, the cool air hitting my bare skin. Am I not wearing a bra? I am not wearing a bra. He bends and takes one of my nipples into his mouth.

This is insane. I’m insane. I’ve lost my mind.

It feels so good.

The rest of the clothes come off. From somewhere — a different stratosphere — I hear a car horn honk, a train rumble, the city carry on.

He kisses me harder. We get horizontal quickly. Everything feels incredible. His hands tracing the curves of my stomach, his mouth on my neck. I’ve never had a one-night stand up until this point — but this has to count, right? We met barely an hour ago and now we’re about to have sex.

I can’t wait to tell Bella about this. She’ll love it. She’ll… but what if I never make it back? What if this guy is just my fiancé now and not a stranger and I can’t even share the details of this wild and…

He presses his thumb down into the crease of my hip, and all thoughts of time and space escape through the slightly cracked window.

“Aaron,” I say.

“Yes.”

He rolls on top of me, and then my hands are finding the muscles in his back, the crevices of his bones, like terrain — knotted and wooden and peaceful. I arch against him, this man who is a stranger but somehow something else entirely. His hands cup my face, they run down my neck, they wrap around my rib cage. His mouth is urgent and seeking against mine. My fingers grip his shoulders. Slowly, and then all at once, I forget where I am. All I’m aware of are Aaron’s arms wrapped tightly around me.

I wake up with a jolt, grasping at my chest.

“Hey, hey,” a familiar voice says. “You’re awake.”

I look up to see David standing over me, a bowl of popcorn in one hand. He’s also holding a bottle of water — not exactly the wine I was just drinking. Just drinking? I look down at my body, still fully clothed in my red Reformation ensemble. What the hell just happened?

I scramble up to sitting. I’m back on the couch. David is now in his chess team tournament sweatshirt and black sweatpants. We’re in our apartment.

“I thought you might be down for the count,” David says. “And miss our big night. I knew that second bottle would do us in. I already took two Advil, do you want some?” He sets the popcorn and water down and leans over to kiss me. “Should we call our parents now or tomorrow? You know they’re all losing it. I told everyone beforehand.”

I parse through what he’s saying. I’m frozen. It must have been a dream, but it… how could it be? I was, just three minutes ago, in bed with someone named Aaron. We were kissing, and his hands were on me, and we were having the most intense sex of my life. Dream me slept with a stranger. I feel the need to touch my body, to confirm my physical reality. I put my hands on each elbow and hold my arms to my chest.