Just a Minute

It was an accident. It slipped. I just…I hated to see her disappointed. And I’m not in control around her. So I blurted it out.

“I can fix it,” I’d told her. A note of desperation in my voice. Whether the emotion was from my need to make everything perfect for her or from the subconscious panic of the words I was speaking is impossible to say.

She had laughed. From the day I’d met her that soft sound has always been able to ease my soul, soothe me like nothing and no one ever has. “How do you propose to do that?” She’d asked, smirking at my seemingly silly offer. “You can’t change the past.”

I had startled at her words, only then really putting together what I had said and what it almost revealed. I’d never told anyone before. Never even tried. This strange power that I’d discovered when I was nine. The way I can rework the past five minutes into a better version. The way I shape the world over and over until it’s just right. Going back in time again and again until every minute is perfect.

I could have taken it back.

She’d thought I was joking. A simple, ‘I guess you’re right’, would have done it. What good would telling her do anyway? She wouldn’t want me to change anything. I’m sure of it. I wouldn’t want to either, if I’m being honest.

She’d once told me that the best things in life are mistakes. The accidents, the surprises. The way they shake things up and show us the truth. Teach us, tempt us, push us. Scare us. I hadn’t agreed with her, of course, but at that point I had already fallen in love with the imperfect way I was around her and I was willing to keep it that way. For her. So she remained the only person who I had never changed anything for. My time with her was exactly as it always had been. Every single memory I had of our time together, she had too.

With her, I didn’t try to force every moment to be perfect. Somehow, that made each moment we shared together even better. Authentic, as it were.

If I told her the truth, would she question that? Would she want to know how much of our time I’d reworked? Yes. Of course she would. Would she believe me when I told her none?

I didn’t know the answer to that one.

If I told her what I could do, and she asked me how often I used that power, I don’t think I have it in me to lie to her. Every day, I’d say. Sometimes it feels like every minute. When I get an answer wrong. When my tone of voice comes out harsher than I meant it to. When I sigh before agreeing with my mother. When I can’t fake my calm exterior anymore and spend four minutes ranting about the unfairness of cancer and my anger at the world for continuously wanting to take my mother away from me. When I simply need an extra minute to breathe.

The shame of that admission held my tongue. The shame that I can’t go a single minute in a day being my true self. I spend every second of every day, of which I have at least twice more than anyone else, making sure I’m the right version of me. That I’m doing what someone else wants. What they expects. What they need.

It’s exhausting.

The argument that won out, despite all my fears and misgivings, the thing that really swayed me, was the same thing that had me accidentally blurting things out to her that I had never shared with anyone else. I wanted her to know me. To know everything about me. And I wanted her to accept me. To want me. As I am.

So I had met her eyes, intently searching her gaze for her reaction, and whispered, “Yes, I can.”

Now, five minutes later, we’re still in much the same position. Her, thinking. Me, panicking. Both of us watching the other carefully.

“Prove it,” she says to me, and I take a deep breath. I laugh in desperation.

“How? I never could before.” My hand grips my arm until my nails dig in. She places her own fingers on mine, making me relax.

“Have you really tried?” She looks at me in a way that says she knows I haven’t. And she’s right. I’ve thought about it. Once or twice. For her. But never have I gotten this far. I’ve never seriously considered it enough to come up with a plan of how to make her believe me. She smirks in victory, taking her damn pencil and shoving it into it’s usual resting place in her high bun. “Go back in time and do something different.”

I roll my eyes. If it was that simple I would have told her ages ago. Probably. Maybe. “That won’t prove anything, I’m the only one that will know anything’s changed.”

She thinks for a moment, biting her lip like she always does when she’s thinking through a problem. In that way that makes me want to bite it, too. God, I am so gone for her. I am so gone.

“Right.” She says, and I deflate a little, but rather than looking as lost as I feel, her face settles in determination. “I’m going to think of something.” She decides, picking up her phone and setting a timer. “The same thing. For five minutes. When the timer goes off I’ll tell you what it is. And you’ll come right back here to this moment, and tell me what I’m thinking.”

My mind blanks for a moment. I try to think through the various ways this won’t work. But it will. It’s simple. Straightforward. I laugh a little at the fact that I couldn’t see it myself. I feel my whole body relax. “This is…it’s good. How have I never thought of this before?”

“Did you ever really want anyone to know?” She asks softly, in a tone that makes me think she knows the answer. And she’s right. Again. Who would I tell? The only other person I would ever tell is mother, and I can’t do that to her. Tell her that almost every moment we’ve had together has been agonized over and reworked and perfected by me so that her life is as simple and easy as possible. Tell her that she doesn’t know who I really am, not really.

“Hush now,” she tells me, and I startle out of my reverie. “I’m thinking.”

“I didn’t say anything,” I argue.

“Your thoughts are too loud.”

Rolling my eyes, I lean back on my hands and wait, studying her. Eyes closed, turned up toward the sky, the column of her neck drawing my gaze. I track the seconds by counting off her freckles.

The timer sits at four minutes.

Three minutes.

Two.

As we reach the last minute, she starts to get nervous. I can see her wringing her hands. Reworking the pencil in her hair. Tapping her fingers. Biting that damn lip again. I sit forward, watching the signs closely.

“You don’t believe me,” I say, a little defeated, and her eyes open.

“I believe you.” Her voice wavers but she looks me right in the eyes as she says it. Hers are colored with worry, brows drawn tight, in stark contrast to her words.

“Then why are you so nervous?”

My question hangs between us for a breathe as the last few seconds tick down on her alarm. The timer goes off and determination replaces the worry in her eyes as she continues to look between mine. The two different colors in her irises drawing me in like they always do.

“Kiss me,” she says, and I feel a shock all the way to my toes.

I’m meant to go back by five minutes, to prove my powers and show her that she’s already told me what to do. But it’ll have to wait.

My hands are on her before the timer stops it’s chime. They’re in her hair, pulling at that stupid pencil, on her waist, pulling her as close to me as I can manage, they’re on her hands, pulling them behind me.

I kiss her like it’s all I’ve ever wanted, and it feels like it is. I think of all the minutes I’ve relived, and how not one of them was as perfect as this.

She was right. I feel perfection in every little imperfect piece of this moment. The way our teeth scrape together and how I have no idea where to put my hands, the uncertainty as I bring that lip between my teeth. Finally. Finally.

The rough edges of her soul grate perfectly against mine, their friction the only thing that brings me light.

“You’re-” she takes a deep breath and I pull away, but only to place a kiss against her temple. “You’re supposed to-” I move and kiss behind her ear. “The past-” she says, giving up on full sentences as I come back to catch her lips again.

“I’ll do it there too,” I tell her, my internal clock keeping perfect time.

I need it to be right. Because when the time comes, maybe tomorrow, maybe years from now, when she asks me how much time I’ve relived with her, how much of our time together was manufactured perfection, I’ll get to tell her. Just a minute. Just this minute.