I Erased Our Marriage Timeline novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Morning After That Wasn't

Esteban cooks for Jocelyn and moves a seat away from Marisol, who escapes to the library, starts her London application and trades jokes with an architect, until Jocelyn calls her home for big news.

I didn't sleep.

I sat on my bed with the lamp off and watched the camera through the crack in my door.

The red light stayed on for fourteen minutes.

Then it blinked out, and the lens swung back to the stairs.

At six I checked the hall tablet.

The screen was black.

When I tapped it, it showed the weather.

At seven I smelled butter.

Esteban was at the stove in a gray T-shirt, cracking eggs one-handed.

In five years I had seen him cook maybe twice.

Both times were for me, when I had the flu.

He scrambled the eggs slowly, the way Jocelyn liked them, wet in the middle.

He warmed milk in a pan.

He cut the toast into triangles and fanned them on a plate.

Jocelyn came down in his old college sweatshirt with her hair in a knot.

"Who are you," she said, "and what have you done with the man who forgot my birthday?"

"Eat it while it's hot."

He set the plate in front of her.

She laughed and pulled him down by the collar and kissed him.

I stopped on the third stair from the bottom.

In my first life he made me tea like that, once a month, without saying a word.

I used to think it meant something.

"Mari!" Jocelyn waved a triangle of toast at me. "Come eat. He made enough for an army."

I sat down across from her.

Esteban looked at me.

His face didn't move.

He picked up his coffee and his plate and sat down one chair farther away.

Jocelyn didn't notice.

I did.

I knew that look.

It was the look he gave me across a lawyer's table eight years from now.

I ate half a piece of toast and stood up.

"I have studio," I said. "I'm going to be late."

"On a Saturday?" Jocelyn said. "You haven't touched your milk."

"Architecture students don't have Saturdays."

I grabbed my backpack and was out the door before she could argue.

The university library opens at nine on weekends.

I was outside the doors at eight-forty.

I took a carrel on the fourth floor, by the window, and opened my laptop.

In my first life, my studio professor had pushed a brochure across her desk at me.

A two-year master's in London.

"Apply," she said. "You'll get in."

I didn't.

Esteban's wedding was off, he was drinking, and I thought he needed me.

I stayed in San Diego and drew kitchen remodels for eight years.

I typed the school's name into the search bar.

The application was due November 1.

Portfolio, two references, a personal statement of a thousand words.

I opened a blank document and wrote one sentence.

I want to build things I'll never have to ask permission to live in.

I deleted it.

I wrote it again.

By noon I had the reference requests out and my portfolio sorted into a folder.

My scale ruler was missing.

I dumped my whole bag on the desk.

Pencils, an eraser shaped like a cactus, a granola bar from last semester.

No ruler.

"Looking for this?"

A tall man in a flannel shirt stood at the end of my row.

He had messy brown hair and black glasses and a pencil behind one ear.

He was holding my triangular scale ruler between two fingers.

It had my name written down the side in purple marker.

"You left it on the third floor," he said. "In September."

"It's October."

"I've been looking for you since September."

I took it from him.

"You could have turned it in at the desk."

"I could have," he agreed. "But then I couldn't have borrowed it twice."

I stared at him.

"You borrowed my ruler?"

"Mine is metric." He pushed his glasses up. "I'm not proud of it."

That was when I remembered him.

September, a Thursday, a guy at the next table borrowed my ruler.

He gave it back with an apology note folded around it.

The note had said, Sorry, it was an emergency. A very small staircase.

"You're the staircase guy," I said.

"Abel." He held out his hand. "I'm the staircase guy."

"Marisol."

"I know. It's on the ruler."

He looked at my laptop screen before I could close it.

"London," he said.

"Are you going to tell me I won't get in?"

"No. I applied there once."

"And?"

"And I got in." He shrugged. "Then I didn't go."

His hand tightened on the strap of his bag.

"You should get a better ruler," he said. "For the portfolio. That one's chipped at the forty."

"It was free."

"It shows."

I laughed before I could stop it.

It came out of me so loud that a girl two carrels down hissed at us.

I hadn't laughed in that library in two lives.

Abel looked pleased with himself in a very quiet way.

"I'll be on three," he said. "If you need to borrow anything back."

He walked off toward the stairs.

I sat there smiling at my statement for a full minute.

At six my phone buzzed.

Jocelyn.

"Mari, where are you? Come home for dinner."

"I was going to crash at the studio."

"No. You can't." Her voice was bright and shaky at the same time, like she'd been crying and laughing in turns. "Come home right now. I have big news, and I need you here when I say it."

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