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“Are you sure?” Murray wears his usual lopsided smile as he regards you with kind eyes, just a touch of concern in his voice. “You can’t go back and forth. If this is what you two have decided…”
“We’re sure,” Nicky cuts in. His voice takes on a bit of that old intimidating tone. Though he needs that brusque persona less and less these days. “We wouldn’t be asking you if we weren’t sure.”
Murray nods, considering.
It had been a difficult decision, and a lot of long talks had led to this moment. But you are sure.
“If you take Nicky back with you,” Murray says, “You’re going back to your life. I can take care of the little things like documents that bring Nicky into the 21st century. But you’re going back to a modest apartment, leaving behind this mansion in the Hamptons.”
You were giving up a fantasy for the mundane, but that was the point. The expensive houses and extravagant clothes did not a happy life make. You miss your family, your friends. Most of the people you loved had not been born yet, and that feeling itself is almost too lonely to bear. All the while, Nicky, sweet Nicky, had been waiting for you to come around to the idea that Murray might let you bring him back. He had always been keen on adventure and yearned for a fresh start. For him, the decision was easy.
“Murray.” You stop him with a wave of your hand. “We’re sure.”
And so it’s settled. Murray — by whatever means he’d brought you here in the first place — is going to send you back home with your husband. In just a few moments, it will be the year of your 97th wedding anniversary and you will still be in your mid-20s. How strange your life has become.
“I’m ready when you’re ready, love,” Nicky whispers as he pulls you into a tight embrace. The words fall softly into the crook of your neck in that smooth accent you’re sure will stick out back home. “This is all you.”
You wrap your arms around him and feel him press a gentle kiss to your cheek. He’s always a gentleman with Murray around, treating the mysterious man as your sort-of surrogate father. You pull away and look up into his eyes, finding that cloudy, lovestruck expression of his. Anyone else would be completely unable to tell, but you know that he’s nervous.
“Are you worried? About meeting my family? Or about the future?”
He laughs easily, “I’ve never been worried about my future with you, baby.”
You know that it’s a lie, but it’s a sweet one and you allow it to pass unquestioned.
“Not our future, but the future,” you say. “With us, there’s a difference.”
He shrugs, all mafioso for just a blink. “Not to me. My future is you. The future is you. Same thing.”
You smile. “Same thing.”
Nicky glances to the side at Murray and then looks back to you before deciding clearly to forget his manners for once. His hands tighten around your waist and pull you flush to his chest. He holds you with such desperation that his large hands crinkle the fabric of your shirt, raising the hem drastically in the back. Present company be damned, Nicky was going to properly kiss you in this century one last time.
You loop your arms around his neck, opening your mouth to tease him, but his mouth is on yours before you can speak. He slips his tongue gently between your already parted lips, using surprise to his advantage. After all this time, he still kisses you like you might disappear at any moment.
Finally, he pulls back and looks down at you in his arms. He’s grinning like he’s won the lottery. “As long as I can do that in the future, I’ll have it made.”
“You can do that all you want in the future,” you say, a little breathless.
He smirks, clearly pleased. “Let’s get this show on the road, no?”
❤ ❤ ❤
You’ve woken up next to Nicky Valentino countless times, but this was easily the most disorienting it’s ever been. You’re in your own bed — your bed from before. In your apartment from before. It’s as if the last three years were all a dream. That is, except for the handsome man asleep next to you.
Nicky is dressed, miraculously, in a modern gray tee shirt and cuddled up to you with his hand drifting underneath your pajamas. You’re thankful that he’s still sleeping, it gives you a moment to collect yourself before you have to hold Nicky through what will most likely be a much more difficult transition. You’ve been here before, you remind yourself. You’ve been a stranger lost in time. You remember how terrified you had been and remember Nicky’s gentle guidance through it. Now it’s your turn to do the same thing.
Nicky makes a little grunting noise in his sleep and pulls you closer.
“Nicky,” you say. “Are you okay?”
He scrunches his brows cutely before giving a noncommittal hum. He’s still very much asleep.
Your first instinct is to wake him, but you resist. Instead, you pull one of your arms free from the comforter and search for your phone. It’s plugged in and on your nightstand, just where you would have left it if you’d gone to bed here last night. Three years and you still had no idea how any of Murray’s magic worked, but it was awfully convenient when it wanted to be.
The date and time shown on your phone surprises you. No time has passed at all. It is just the day after the day you left this century for Nicky’s. You had often worried whether your friends or family would notice you missing and have to deal with your loss. Now, that proved a nonissue, but new problems came to mind immediately.
“Mm… Baby?”
Problems that would have to wait.
“You alright, honey?” You ask, wondering when that 1920s lilt had snuck into your voice.
Nicky groans and pulls you tighter. “Mhm.”
You wait for Nicky’s eyes to open and widen with scared realization, but the moment doesn’t come. He’s fallen back asleep. On a normal day, you would let him, you might even drift off alongside him, but you’re bubbling with anxiety that threatens to boil over. This necessitates a ripping of a bandage.
“Nicky, wake up.” You smooth your hand through his messy hair and to the base of his neck where you scratch gently. He stirs ever so slightly at your touch. “Murray did it,” you say, finally.
It happens then, what you feared. His eyes open and go wide. You’ve been in perilous situations with Nicky before — almost daily before the move to LA. But you don’t think you’ve ever seen him this shocked.
“He did?” Nicky’s eyes don’t leave yours like he’s avoiding looking at his surroundings. He would see a bed and a desk, you think, nothing too strange for him. But the laptop, the television mounted on the wall…
What you fear most is Nicky having second thoughts. You won’t be able to live with yourself if he regrets this.
Then suddenly, “That’s great!” Nicky pushes himself up on his forearms and kisses your cheek. “We made it here together.” His eyes are crinkled now with a smile.
You blink, shocked. “You’re not… scared?”
“I’m excited, toots. I’m a man of the 21st century, now.” He sits up and stretches his hands fall to his midsection and he feels the fabric of his Murray-supplied tee shirt. “This shirt is so soft…”
In so many words, Nicky has turned you from anxious to excited. Your mind reels with all of the things you’ll get to show him. Relief crawls up from your chest in the form of a laugh.
Nicky raises an eyebrow. “You laughin’ at me?”
“No, no,” you say. “I guess I’m relieved.”
“Why do you still sound worried?”
He knows you too well.
You pick up your phone again and before touching the screen to turn it on you say, “This is the cell phone thing I told you about. It’s kind of bright.” You quickly switch the screen on and turn the brightness all the way down. “I don’t know if your eyes are used to that…”
Nicky laughs. “You’re so protective.”
He’s got you there. “Murray sent us back to the day after I left. So while three years passed for us there only one day passed for me here.” You show him the date on the phone screen but he doesn’t seem to read any of it. You watch his eyes tracing the shape of the phone in your hand.
“He sent us forward and back?”
“Confusing, right? I’m glad that no one in my life missed me, but…”
“But?” Nicky prompts.
You sigh, turning your phone off and setting it in your lap.
“But we’ve been married for a year and I never told anyone I was dating anyone. We’re either going to have to pretend to meet each other today or look like complete idiots.”
“Didn’t we act like idiots when we met anyways?”
You frown. “That’s different.”
Nicky leans forward, easily kissing the corner of your mouth as he almost always does when you frown at him. “What is different, my love?”
“It’s different here. People are much more judgmental here. People including my loved ones who will worry for me if I tell them I’m in love with a man I just met.”
“Hm.” He considers. “We’ll just have to pretend. Now, are there any other concerns to address before you show me your magic phone?”
“Magic phone? You’re really gonna fit right in.”
He simpers. “Please?”
❤ ❤ ❤
As time passes, Nicky becomes more and more accustomed to a life in the 2020s. You introduce him to your loved ones after a few weeks, announcing him as your new boyfriend. You’re careful with your words about him around others, but most people assume that the two of you are just meant to be. You are, aren’t you?
Nicky is rarely afraid of the future but often overwhelmed by it, the catching up and learning and adjusting is endless. But he is patient and ambitious. Your friends share sideways glances at you occasionally when he sounds like a man lost in time, but his mannerisms are taken as cute idiosyncrasies and not as red flags.
When you celebrate your final repeat birthday, a completion of the three years you spent with Nicky spent again with the same man, Nicky asks you to marry him. Of course, you say yes just like you did before. But he is still nervous to ask, just like he was before. This time, the ring and the wedding are much more modest, but the love you feel has doubled. You are married again on your 100th wedding anniversary, which is a beautiful and strange secret the two of you share.
“I’m so happy,” he says to you the night of your second wedding, “I feel like I could live a thousand lives with you.”
And that’s what it is: another life. And it validates everything in you to know that Nicky would love you so fervently anywhere. Any time.