3.

Timothy had been drinking. A lot.

He came stumbling in and collapsed face-first onto the couch.

His head lolled to one side, and the bright red print of lipstick jumped straight into my eyes.

I wanted to pretend I hadn't seen it. I reached over and scrubbed hard at the kiss mark on his neck.

My heart twisted, and it truly hurt. I asked him softly,

"I really am going to disappear soon."

"And when I'm gone, it's going to break you."

"Can't you just cherish me while I'm still here? Just be with me, only me?"

Drunk as he was, Timothy heard me clearly enough.

His face bunched up, and he shoved me aside, irritated.

His voice came out sharp. Timothy snapped,

"I'm exhausted, Laura, and honestly you're being impossible."

"What is there to whine about all day? That's the one thing Pansy does better than you. She doesn't carry on like this."

"Forget it. I'm going to go deal with things at the site. I won't be back tonight."

Timothy sighed and got up right away.

The words asking him to stay and eat lodged in my throat.

I watched him wrench the door open and walk out, then turned and sat down alone to a table of food that had long gone cold.

The next day I realized Timothy had walked out without even taking his phone. Forget dealing with anything at a site.

He couldn't even have checked into a hotel.

I pulled his phone out from between the couch cushions where it had slipped. The screen lit up, and there it was, last night's text from Pansy.

The text said,

"Big brother, you really can't hold your liquor."

"But since you kissed me there, I'll keep my promise about last night. Your girlfriend won't hear a word of it from me."

The message wasn't long or short, but reading it made it hard to breathe.

My head buzzed. And right then, a call came in for Timothy from his mother's phone.

The moment I answered, Denise Sawyer's voice came through, broken and unsteady.

"Hello? Sweetheart, Mom needs a little money for her treatment..."

"I'm outside the ER right now and I can't cover it. Can you help your mom, just this last time?"

The woman's voice was as forlorn as I remembered it.

At thirty-seven she'd walked out on Timothy and run off with a man of forty, and after that Timothy hated her to the bone.

But in my last life, Timothy missed his chance to save his mother, and after she died it became a wound he carried for the rest of his life.

That missed chance was this exact phone call.

So the instant I heard the state she was in, I didn't say a word. I grabbed my bank card.

I ran downstairs and got a cab straight to the hospital.

"Use it, Denise, don't worry about it."

"Just make sure you get well."

"Timothy talks tough and says he hates you, but the truth is he wants you to live a long life more than anyone."

Once that was settled, I threw myself into it, running back and forth for a full week.

Timothy must have finally gone home and gotten his phone, because he came to the hospital after seeing the messages.

But the first thing he did when he saw me was demand,

"Where did you get thirty-eight hundred dollars?"

I didn't want to tell him it was the money I'd been saving for the little home we were supposed to build together.

I didn't want to tell him I'd been quietly picking up work on the side, saving it up so I could come to him a better bride.

I was afraid it would weigh on him.

But before I could get a word out, Timothy let out a cold laugh and held up a photo Pansy had sent him.

He asked me through gritted teeth,

"Three days running, off with this man. What, is that where the money came from? You slept with him for it?"

"And another thing." Timothy shot a flat glance at his mother in the hospital bed, then turned that hateful stare back on me. "Who asked you to stick your nose in?"

"How many times has she played dead now? Did you hand money to someone like her just to spite me?"

"Laura, sometimes I honestly wish you'd do exactly what you keep saying and disappear for good."

My chest went tight listening to it.

Tears welled up and spun in my eyes.

I reached out, wanting to explain that the man was just an ordinary coworker, someone I'd been handing off work to lately.

But from a week of running myself into the ground, my stomach seized all at once in a vicious cramp.

The words never made it out. Cold sweat broke over me and I crumpled down to the floor, doubled over.

I reached toward Timothy, wanting him to help me. I said, "My stomach's killing me. Take me to get some medicine first."

But Timothy looked down at my white face and only gave a cold grunt.

The pain was unbearable, and I tried again. "Please. Get me the medicine first. I'll explain everything after."

Timothy took a step back and left me there.

And once again, he walked away without looking back.

4.

In the end it was a stranger who noticed how wrong I looked.

He held me up all the way to the pharmacy window, got me something for the pain, sat me down to rest, and only then did I start to feel a little better.

Once I'd steadied myself, I told myself Timothy had only said all that in the heat of the moment.

I cried, tears running down my face, and at the same time went digging through my memory like a madwoman for proof that he'd once been good to me.

I couldn't forget how, right after graduation, he'd carried me down six flights of that old walk-up, step by step, when I was sick, and taken me to the hospital and looked after me so carefully.

I couldn't forget how he'd gone hungry, meal after meal, and climbed over the school wall to bring me the biggest, best food he could find.

I remembered how, in my last life, I'd been handling a case as a lawyer, and someone deliberately hurt me, driving a car door through my shoulder blade until I died.

Timothy had been across the street from me then, on the other side.

That day he'd said he was finally letting Pansy Fox go for good, that from then on he'd be good to me.

But right there, waiting at the red light, he watched me die with his own eyes.

He cried so hard that day.

His obsession ran too deep.

I couldn't leave. I became a lost, wandering ghost, drifting at his side.

I watched him refuse to eat or drink, shut in his room every day, holding my photo and weeping.

He half lost his mind. Every day he knelt and prayed to the heavens, saying, "If I get to do it over, I'll treat Laura Swanson right."

"Every step. I won't take a single wrong step."

He begged like that, bitterly, for forty-nine days, and drifting there beside him I felt like Timothy was going to die too.

The next second, I found myself back in this stretch of time, carrying all my memories from before.

But now, given it all over again, without the distance between us, he was somehow worse to me than he'd ever been.

Timothy, is it possible you never loved me at all?

I wiped at the tears, one swipe after another, unable to answer my own question.

Everything went black, and I finally crawled home and dropped onto the couch, only to spike a fever and pass out cold.

My mind was hazy, my whole body aching. I picked up my phone and sent Timothy a muddled string of messages.

"I have a fever. Can you stay with me?"

"You never used to treat me this badly."

"In about five days I'll be gone."

"Timothy, I've repaid every kindness you ever showed me."

"……"

Timothy didn't answer a single message.

Not until four days later did he finally appear in front of me, like he was granting me a favor.

Holding a ring box, he shoved it straight into my hands and said:

"No matter what, we've been together since we were kids. I have to take responsibility for you."

"And I will marry you."

"Our engagement ceremony is tomorrow. Clean yourself up, make yourself presentable, and just show up."

I felt my body slowly draining of everything, and I stared at the necklace around Timothy's neck, the one Pansy Fox had given him.

I shook my head.

"I can't. My time's up. I won't make it to tomorrow."

Hearing that, Timothy flew into a rage again.

"Disappear, then! Go on, disappear, let me see it! Laura Swanson, lately you really make me sick!"

He strode toward the door, ready to storm out again.

But before he shut it, he didn't forget to give me one more order, a warning:

"Whatever happens, I want to see you at the engagement tomorrow. This is a big deal. Don't pull any more of your nonsense."

Timothy was gone, and I looked down at my own hollowed-out body, which was starting to feel light.

I drifted around the room for a day. Timothy didn't come back, and didn't send me any messages.

On the day of the engagement, Timothy came storming in and kicked the door open.

He shouted in my direction: "Laura Swanson! Think a lot of yourself, don't you! What kind of game are you playing—"

His voice trailed off, smaller and smaller.

I was right there in the room, but he couldn't see me.

Timothy, I really have disappeared from your life, completely.