Recap: I’m a 21 year-old boy who moved away from my family and friends to live with the girl that I loved. But it turned out that after 3 years, she had been cheating on me, possibly the entire time. In my grief I blindly put faith in a watch that my grandfather had sent to me that he said would turn back time. True to his word, it seemed as though the watch could take me anywhere within my own time line, which I used to try my hand at a relationship with a classmate of mine named Tina.

February 25, 2012:

“‘Cause love’s such an old fashioned word, and love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night, and love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves-” My phone pierced the silent blackness of my room which caused me to jump out of bed to shut it off. Even after I had silenced the ring it insistently blinked that there was a new text message from Tina. This was the first that I’d heard from her in what felt like a lifetime, though in reality it had only been a week. I lazily wiped the sleep from my eyes with the side of my first, then flipped open my phone and checked my new message.

“Please open the door.” It read, a simple request, and one that I decided did not require pants to perform.

Stretching my legs actually felt good as I pulled myself to my feet, stepping immediately onto a discarded pair of pants. Instead of putting them, on I kicked them aside, pushing them further into the growing pile of clothes that had started to consume my bedroom floor. I shook my head to clear out any lingering cobwebs, making my way clumsily into the living room. The doorknob twisted and I pulled the door open gracelessly.

“Were you still asleep? You know it’s three in the afternoon, don’t you?” There she was, the woman that I loved, auburn hair resting gracefully on her t-shirt clad shoulders. “No, I didn’t know, I was sleeping. Please shut the door, the light burns my eyes.” Hesitantly she complied, the door shut quietly and Tina fell quietly into step behind me. “Do you want anything to drink?” I asked, looking back casually to see the shadow of my girlfriend standing behind me. “Nope, I’m fine. Some sort of light would be appreciated though.”

The kitchen light turned on for a second was bright, but then it flickered and burnt out, returning the house to its mostly-darkened state. Some light was pouring in from the skylight above the living room, but it rested solely on one of the desk chairs. “I guess there’s no light in the kitchen, try the one out there?” My call was immediately answered by a glaring light flaring into existence behind me. “Have you not cleaned at all since Friday? This place looks like it was hit by a tornado!”

From the kitchen I laughed as I rooted through my refrigerator for anything to eat. “I have not. But in my defense, I’ve either been working or sleeping, so it’s not that I’m not going to clean, more that I just haven’t gotten to it yet.” My voice died down as I reached the end of my sentence, an awkward silence followed which I broke almost immediately, “So, what do you need? I’ve got today and tomorrow off, so I’m up for anything you want to do.” I left the kitchen, my search for food abandoned. When I saw her I could tell that something wasn’t right, she was looking away from me and her expression was far from happy.

“I just thought that we needed to talk a bit, about us.” While I hadn’t had many girlfriends, I could tell that was a bad sign, so I decided to tread carefully. “Sure babe, what do you wanna talk about?” Tina’s hair shined as she turned to face me, the light making it seem redder than it was brown for an instant, “You don’t have to be nervous, I just want to talk.” I knew that I was slightly on edge, but I quickly denied it, “I’m not nervous babe, should I be?” A smile briefly flashed across her face before she answered, “I can tell you’re nervous, you only call me babe when you are.” With a just a hint of anger I retorted, “I told you I’m not nervous ba-” With a sigh I looked down at the floor, “What did you want to talk about?”

Tina sat on one of the two desk chairs, the only one that was clean, before continuing, “I just-” she paused, biting her lower lip subtly, “We’re not working out.” The impact of that sentence hit me like a bus, I was speechless for a few seconds, and after that all I could manage to say was “Why?” She had prepared for this, it showed in her immediately reply, “Because we’re different people.