Aventurine

  Like a light being turned off, the goddess disappeared from my room. I was a little worried. It didn’t look like she chose to go. Something was wrong. What did she mean by she’d see me again? Didn’t she come whenever I called her, and times I didn’t? What was going on?

  This was all getting too confusing. I needed to save my friends and mother. Logan was the key to learning how. I couldn’t ever love him the way I loved Seth, but I needed to do something to get him to teach me how to save everyone. Could I fake interest in him long enough to get him to tell me the truth? Once he did so, what would keep him from whisking me away from everyone? The bracelet, too, was as much of a problem as convincing Logan I was done with Seth. I needed to learn how to keep my friends safe, and I needed the bracelet off of my arm. Those two things were my priority. Then I could find out what was going on with Logan and his schemes, and also figure out why the goddess was flickering away.

  “Mari?” Logan called from outside the locked door to my room.

  It was time to accomplish the first goal. I needed to learn how to get my family safe.

  I opened my bedroom door, but it wasn’t necessary. Logan could just pop right in my room if he wanted. He was being polite.

  “Are you okay?” Logan asked. He was concerned.

  “Okay?” I replied. Did he sense the goddess had been in my room? She didn’t leave a dusting of sparkles like she had in the past. I wasn’t sure if Logan would be happy to know the goddess had been there. It was obvious he was keeping secrets and doing something against her.

  Logan reached up and brushed a stray tear off my cheek. Oh, that.

  “As good as can be expected,” I replied with a shrug.

  “I’m sorry it hurts you to see Seth with Melissa. I figured he would move on after you broke up with him, but I didn’t expect it to be that fast. It makes it seem like you didn’t even really mean something to him,” Logan replied. “I’m sorry it hurts to see that all day long.”

  I nodded. It did hurt, but I had to ignore all of that. I needed to ignore it. I had a mission. From the moment he knocked on my door, I started it.

  “It hurt, but I think I needed to see that,” I answered truthfully. I did need to see that. I’d hold those images in my mind as motivation. “I need to see him happy to know that I’m doing the right thing.”

  “And you are,” Logan replied. “I can make you just as happy, or even more than Seth could. We’ll have a great life together. You can save everyone. No one will have to go home to a past that will end badly. Let me be the one you look to.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. I needed to play the game, but I still was finding it hard. He was keeping me prisoner with the bracelet around my wrist, yet wanted me to trust him. How could I trust someone that truly didn’t trust me? It didn’t matter. I needed to suck it up and play the game.

  Logan didn’t need a response.

  “How about I take you out? You don’t need to go to classes tomorrow. We could have fun. Get your mind off of everything. Let me show you the world you chose when you chose me.”

  I really wanted to continue to wallow in self-pity with my pillow, but it was time to suck it up.

  “Sounds good,” I replied. Logan grinned. Did he really think I could move on that easily?

  “How about I let you get ready? Is an hour long enough?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  It took me less than an hour to get ready, but I used the extra time to sit in my room and wait. I didn’t want to go downstairs too early and seem too eager. He needed to believe I was slowly coming around to him and his side. Before I left my room, I reached over and took the necklace from my mother. It felt right to wear it. I’d need her strength to play this game.

  Logan was waiting for me on the steps when I finally left my room. He had showered and changed. His dark blond hair was unruly, but looked like it was perfect. His clothing fit him well and accentuated his broad shoulders and lean torso. He looked like he walked right out of the pages of any magazine. He was beautiful. I remembered the first date we had years ago when he tried to impress me with his way around Chicago and all the places he could get into. He didn’t need to do that. I was hooked the first time he laid his violet eyes on me. It was strange now to look at him. He was the same. He was still gorgeous. But I felt different. I didn’t feel those butterflies when he looked me over anymore. He was just another guy. It was like comparing the stars in the sky to the sun. Next to Seth no one would shine as bright, or be as close. It didn’t matter what Logan wanted. All I could give him was a show and a façade. I hoped it would be good enough.

  “Where are we heading?” I asked as Logan reached up and took my hand to help me down the last few steps. I looked for my coat, but he stopped me.

  “You won’t need that for our first stop,” he said, never letting go of my hand.

  The scenery changed around me instantly. I felt the heat first as I looked around. It was nighttime wherever we landed, yet still warm. Water lapped a shoreline. We were somewhere tropical, but I had no clue where. Logan gave me a second to catch my bearings and then began leading me along the wooden walkway we were standing on. We passed small huts and doorways which seemed strange since we were on a pier, but I was beginning to ignore the strangeness with Logan. Heck, I had been standing thousands of years ago in his palace only weeks ago.

  Logan finally slowed as we neared the end of the pier. Under a thatched roof sat a table and two chairs. A full meal was laid out, and two waiters stood off to the side, near the railings of the pier. Logan led me to one chair and pulled it out for me. I sat down as he walked around to the other side to sit directly across from me. I still didn’t know where we were, but it was beautiful. All I saw in every direction, beyond the one we came from, was the water and the stars. A large full moon shone bright, and lit the water that danced beneath and all around us.

  The two waiters filled up our drinks and uncovered the meals that were already set up. Logan nodded to the two men and they made their way back down the pier from which we just came.

  I looked at the food heaped on my plate and the table before me. There was no way we were going to eat even a quarter of it, no matter how hungry Logan was. He smiled at my surprise.

  “There’s just too much here that I wanted you to try,” he explained. “It’s like this everywhere I go. I think of you, and wish you could be there beside me. I’ve been here many times. I’ve tried all of this before, and thought you’d like it.”

  “This is all for me?” I asked, surprised.

  “Yes. Mari, you can have the world if you let me give it to you,” Logan replied, sitting back and watching me.

  I looked at the food to avoid his gaze. He didn’t move to eat any of the food. He just sat and watched me. I felt self-conscious, and kind of wanted to find a restroom to check my makeup, like there had to be something on my face he was staring at.

  Logan laughed. “You were always uncomfortable in the spotlight. It seems that hasn’t changed.”

  I smiled as I looked up and shook my head. That would never change. I just wasn’t one for seeking attention, and never would be. At least now he seemed to be getting it.

  Logan looked back down at the food which was still untouched. He leaned forward and helped himself to a couple of the dishes and began to eat. I didn’t know if he were truly hungry, or was just humoring me. I followed his lead and did the same.

  “I always wanted to take you here, but couldn’t seem to find the right reason to fly you halfway across the world for dinner. It works better now that you know my secret,” Logan began, kick starting the conversation.

  “Is this how you do every meal?” I asked. “You know, sitting around the house. Mmm, I think Chinese sounds good tonight. So you just pop over to China to get some?” It actually didn’t sound like too bad of a life.

  Logan pressed his fingers in front of his face for a moment and then lowered them to show his smile. “Guess you’ll just have to stick around a
nd see.”

  “Guess so,” I replied with a grin. If that was what it would take to save my friends, then I guess I would be trying world cuisine for a while.

  I picked up some sort of stuffed vegetable and put it in my mouth. The flavor was great, and I had no way to describe it. I looked back down and wondered about everything in front of me. The whole table was filled with a variety of foods, most of which I had never seen before. Logan was right. It was a good dinner, and I couldn’t help but sample a bit of everything.

  The water lapped on the pier as we ate. I didn’t start any conversations, but I talked when Logan asked me something. We hadn’t really seen each other over the last few years, but we still both were more than comfortable listening to the water. It had been so long since we’d actually gotten along, and I didn’t even know how to start a conversation. Everything was different. I was glad he was fine with not talking a lot. His eyes watched me instead. In fact, I don’t think they ever left my face. I got the feeling he was having just as hard time with this start-over as I was. It took a bit to get used to, but eventually I forgot how much he was looking at me.

  “So, this whole going to college business,” I began as the two waiters returned with more platters of food, desserts this time, and removed the half-eaten dishes from the table. “Is there really a point? I mean, if you’re just going to make up a past that includes classes you took, but didn’t really take. Does that even mean something?” Logan technically hadn’t gone to college the first semester, yet had grades that said otherwise.

  Logan laughed. “I suppose not. But you have to remember, I’ve lived this age three times. So taking another class at this point is kind of pointless. I kind of already have two degrees in the future. Besides, how could I not pass the history of the Middle East pre-1000BC? I lived through that time. It’s harder to just sit in a class and pretend like they’re actually teaching me something.”

  “That has me thinking…,” I started. Logan smiled more. “Exactly how old are you really?”

  “Nineteen,” Logan replied.

  “No, really. Like in how many years have passed that you’ve been alive, not how many years you’ve lived here in this time,” I quickly added. His answer was just a tease by the smirk on his face. He knew exactly what I was asking.

  “Would that make a difference?” Logan asked.

  “A difference in what?” I responded.

  “In how you see me. If I told you I had lived nineteen years here, sixteen years in the past, and more than that in the present, would that make you see me as an old man?”

  He was purposely being vague about his age. How long had he lived in the future? Was he an old man there? Nineteen plus sixteen alone put him in his mid-thirties. That was a heck of an age difference and a lifestyle difference when you compared us, not to mention how old he would be in the future.

  “You’re an old man, whether you want to be or not,” I replied, and he laughed.

  “I suppose I am in that sense, but give you a few more years here and there, and you’ll be just as old mentally,” Logan answered.

  “So you don’t physically age, then?” I was confused.

  “Yes, obviously I’m not a small child. I age, but only in the time period I was born. Which means I have only a few years difference between all the times I live in, as it would be really strange if I showed up in one period as a ten-year-old, and then moved back to one where I should have been a twenty-five-year-old.”

  “So you can only live in one place for a couple years, and then you have to move on to another?” That had to be confusing.

  “Not exactly. You’ll be like this, too. I can live in a time as long as I want, and will appear to age just like everyone else. But when I time travel again, I’ll move back to the age I was supposed to be to match the age from my real time.”

  “What is your real time?” I didn’t get what he was explaining. This was all so confusing.

  “Your real time is where you were born. You essentially only physically age in the time you were born. For you, that would be this time. If you lived the rest of your life not in this time, you’d essentially live forever. It’s only when you come back here that your body ages. I can’t believe the goddess didn’t tell you any of this.”

  Yes, the goddess left out a lot. It was confusing enough, but to be doing it without knowing all the rules kind of sucked. There was much more to time traveling than she let on, and there seemed to be more rules than the one she had told me.

  Logan shook his head. “I really don’t know what she was thinking.”

  “I think she thinks the same thing about you,” I replied. Logan stopped smiling and looked around, then back at me.

  “She talks about me?” he inquired like it wasn’t that big of a deal, but his eyes said otherwise.

  “Just that you can block where you are to her. I’d like to know that trick. If I’m going to go against her rules and all, I’d like to be able to get away with things like you do.”

  Logan relaxed a little. “It seems there’s much more than that I need to teach you.”

  I had to agree with him there. I was stuck in the time travel world with very little knowledge. I was wary to have Logan as my teacher again, but with thirty or more years of experience, I was sure there wasn’t much that he wouldn’t be able to teach me. There must be quite a bit of knowledge that would be helpful to get from him.

  Logan stood and offered me his hand. I took it without regard to where we would be next.

  “Let’s go a place a bit more private to continue talking,” Logan suggested. I had no clue what he meant. How could you get more private than on a deserted pier in the middle of some tropical island? He gave a tug of my hand and pulled me closer to him, allowing him to put his arms around me.

  The world shimmered around us, and I closed my eyes to try to deal with the sudden travel.

  “You know you could warn me before doing that,” I suggested while my eyes were still closed.

  Logan laughed and continued to hold onto me as he struggled to put a coat over my shoulders. It was cooler here than where we just had dinner. I slowly opened my eyes and found myself looking directly at his chest, which was in front of me. I tilted my head up to look at him, and he was still grinning.

  “But it’s so much more fun to do if you’re taken by surprise.”

  I pushed on his chest to break his hold around me. Taking a step back, he quickly grabbed me around the waist again as I teetered a bit from my disorientation.

  “Not the best idea to go walking away until you can stand on your own,” Logan explained. Slowly, he turned me in his arms to make me face away from him, and toward the way I was walking.

  I wanted to give him a quick, witty comeback but was stopped by the sight in front of me. A city lay below us, and we were at least a couple hundred feet above it. Streetlights sparkled below, and stars twinkled above. The crisscross of roads and light below me were beautiful, and I could I see into the distance unhindered. I knew where I was, and was still too shocked to talk.

  Logan stepped back, and I walked to the railing edge. It really was as pretty as I always imagined it would be.

  “You remembered,” I told him. Logan didn’t respond, so I turned to him.

  “I remember everything,” Logan replied.

  It hit me then. I knew exactly where we had been just moments ago. We had been in the South Pacific. Logan and I had argued over where to go for our two-year anniversary back when we had been dating. With Logan’s expensive tastes and excessive wooing, we had tried out almost every romantic spot in Chicago by the time we had been dating for two years. When we finally had to choose a place, Logan told me to imagine anywhere I’d want to go. I told him the Eiffel Tower at nighttime would be perfect. I had been there a year before with my grandfather during the day, and didn’t have time to actually go up and see the city. With its unobstructed views, unlike our own Chicago filled with skyscrapers, I figured nighttime on the observation pl
atform of the Eiffel Tower would be beautiful. Logan had suggested dinner first at his favorite spot in the South Pacific at some resort his family owned. We never made it to that anniversary because I broke up with Logan two weeks before.

  Logan stared at me as everything came flooding back.

  “I’m sorry for all of it,” Logan began. “I really should have told you who I was when we first started dating.” I began to interrupt him, but he gently covered my mouth to keep me from talking. “I knew you’d never believe me, but I could have tried. I could have showed you. You’d have believed me then. I just didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want you to be part of this life. It isn’t an easy one. I’ve watched people leave, and loved ones die. When you can live forever, it isn’t all everyone thinks it will be. There’s much I’ve seen and felt that I wanted to spare you from. If I kept it all a secret, we could live a normal life in this time period. You never had to meet the goddess. You’d never have to travel into time alone. You’d be safe from the future you were meant to have.”

  I wanted to ask questions, but I kept my mouth shut. I saw in his eyes that there was nothing he was hiding for once. He was telling me the truth, and I had to let him continue.

  “All I’ve ever wanted is for you to be happy and safe. Your time in the past was nothing close to that, and you only were there for a few days. It isn’t the same back there as it is here. This was a safe time for you. This was a good place for you to live. That’s all I wanted, and why I never told you.”

  “It would have been better to know that then, instead of what I went through,” I added quietly. And it would have been. If he had told me the truth, and shown me what he could do, things would have been different. I don’t know how I would have felt about him leaving for his job all the time, but it would have been better than being left alone on prom night as the last person at the party because your date and ride home disappeared.

  “I know that now.” Logan smiled sadly.

  I watched him for a moment, and then couldn’t help but ask. “Then why haven’t you gone back to do it over? Why don’t you just go back there and tell me?” Once I said those words, I was sorry. I didn’t mean to give him a new idea, and hoped he wouldn’t act on it.