desireearmfeldt

“If you could go back in time and change one thing, what would you pick?” asks Ray, lazily running his fingers around my knee.  His head rests on my chest, rising and falling slightly with each breath I take.

“Are there any restrictions in this hypothetical scenario?” I ask.  “Do you mean historical events, or only events I have experienced personally?”

“That second thing,” he says.  “I mean, like, it has to be something you could change, something you did in the first place, you know?  Or something you didn’t do, that you wish you’d done.”

His tone is casual, and his body remains relaxed; probably Ray is only playing, laying out his idle thoughts as a source of conversation.  Still, I know that he is endlessly curious, and furthermore, that it is a source of pain to him that despite our intimacy, there are still many things about me that he does not know.

So I run my fingers through his hair while I seriously consider the question.

“I’m not sure,” I say slowly.  “There are certainly many times in my life when I have done things that I regretted, or when things went wrong and I wondered, afterwards, whether some different action on my part might have led to a different outcome.”

“Seriously?”

“Of course.  Everyone has regrets, Ray.”

“Well, sure, but you’re different.”

“I’m really not,” I protest.

Ray snorts.  This is far from the first time we have argued about Ray’s supposed belief in my superhuman perfection. 

“So, there are things you’d do over, if you had the chance?” he asks.

“There are. . .things I would do over, if I found myself reliving those moments, knowing everything I know now.  Yes.  But. . .”

“But?” Ray prompts, when I let the pause go on too long.

“It’s just. . .well, for example, if I had the chance to talk with my father, before he died, I would tell him some things I never got the chance to say.  And perhaps that would have. . .made things easier between us.  But I can’t think of anything I might have said or done to prevent his murder.  Well, except for telling him about the events of the future, or physically apprehend his killer in advance, although I was hundreds of miles away at the time.  But I don’t think that that was the sort of change you had in mind.”

“Nah, you’re right, I didn’t mean like Back to the Future stuff, I just meant, doing your own shit over, you know?”

“Yes.”

There’s another silence, but surprisingly, Ray doesn’t break it.  He just keeps stroking my knee.  He’s learning to wait me out, I realize, and for reasons I don’t entirely understand, the thought makes my heart beat a little faster.

“My father once told me—“

“Fraser!”  So much for Ray’s newfound patience.  “Is this going to be one of your incomprehensible Canadian tangents?”

“I hope not,” I tell him seriously, stroking the back of his head until he lays it back down on my chest.  I draw a breath, making Ray’s head bob, which makes him chuckle.

“My father once told me that sometimes all you need in life is—“  I am surprised to hear my voice start to tremble.  Ray’s wandering hand stills, then comes down on my hip, warm and solid.  I force my voice to steady as I continue.  “Is a second chance.  But that sometimes you don’t get it.  At the time, I rather desperately wanted a chance to put right a mistake I’d made. . .among other things.”

“Geez, your dad really wasn’t much for optimism, was he?” says Ray quietly, but with an edge to his voice.

“In some ways, he was very optimistic.  In others. . .  In any event, in that particular case, he was correct.  I thought I had been offered a second chance, but I was wrong.  All I had before me was the opportunity to compound the error.”

There’s another long silence, in which I stare up at the ceiling to keep from seeing Victoria’s face on the inside of my eyelids, and run through my familiar litany of might-have-beens.  If I hadn’t let Ray bail me out.. . .if I hadn’t brought her to my apartment in the first place. . .if I had turned her in, told her to get out of town. . .if I had pretended not to see her, not to recognize her. . .

“I have. . .spent a lot of time thinking about what I might have done differently, that could have brought about a better outcome.  The only answer I’ve ever been able to come up with is that if I had not made the original bad decision, then I would not have needed a chance to correct it.  And yet. . .if I had chosen differently. . .I cannot imagine who I would be today.”

“I can’t imagine you being any different than who you are,” says Ray.

“And yet, our choices and our experiences define us as much as anything else does.  Don’t you think you would be different if you had not married Stella, or not chosen to go into law enforcement?”

“I used to think about it all the time,” he says, and now his fingers start roaming over my chest, a gentle random walk, as though he’s doodling in the dirt.  “I mean, I’d think about all the different times I’ve fucked up in my life, and think, What if I’d read Botrelle’s damned suicide note and handed it into evidence like I was supposed to?  I’d imagine how great everything would be, if I could just go back and fix that one thing.  Of course, it’s stupid, because fixing one fuck-up wouldn’t suddenly make life perfect.  For one thing, it wouldn’t magically keep me from fucking up the next thing that came along.”

“Indeed,” I say, running my hand down his back.  “On the other hand, the one thing to be said for painful experiences is that we do learn from them.  Perhaps we do not always learn not to repeat them, but. . .there is always hope.”

“Yeah.”   Ray rolls onto his side, tugging at my shoulder to make me follow him.  Lying face-to-face, now, I can see him looking at me, his face dimly illuminated by the spill from the window.  His hand snakes over my bare skin, past my ribs and around to the scar near my spine.  I cannot entirely suppress my shudder.

He presses his lips to my shoulder and makes a little shushing noise.

“See, but the thing I realized,” he says, tucking his chin over my shoulder.  “The thing is, I do wish I hadn’t fucked up her life, God, I do.  For her sake.  But I can’t wish. . .I mean, you turn a different corner, you take a different bus, you end up in some totally different life, maybe.”  Now he pulls back a little, just far enough that we can see each other’s faces again.  “And I—well, I like where I am, you know?

“Yes,” I say, cupping his face in my hand.  “I know.”