Come Down In Time (A Time Travel Romance) (5 page)

When Jamie got back home, she
called her parents. Her mother started to cry when she heard Jamie’s
voice. When she had regained control, her mother told her that Bobby
was getting married. Bobby! Her little brother. The last time she had
seen Bobby was when her parents brought him on a trip to Vanderbilt.
He must have been seventeen or so at the time. He was twenty-five now
with a B.S. degree in electrical engineering and working for the TVA
in Chattanooga.

After Thanksgiving, Stacie and
Tiffany took down the decorations and put up a Christmas tree. It was
a fake tree with built-in white lights, but it was pretty. Jamie got
her own tree, a live one she found at a nearby farmer’s market. She
had no decorations, so she bought them at Wal-Mart in Athens. Gold
and silver, red and green gleamed from her tree, reflecting off the
multicolored miniature lights. She bought a crystal wine decanter for
Stacie and the complete Beatles collection for Nate. The three would
be celebrating together, so she took boxes of candy to the clinic for
Tiffany and the receptionist, Mrs. Wilcox.

On Christmas Eve, Nate and Stacie
came over to Jamie’s house. “It’s chilly in here,” Nate said
when he walked in. “Can I make a fire?”

“
Yes,” Jamie said. “Please
make a fire. I meant to do that earlier, but I’ve been so busy in
the kitchen.”

The fire crackled in the
fireplace as they exchanged gifts. Nate had wrapped presents for
Jamie and Stacie in newspaper comics. Oh, well. It was the thought
that counted. He had bought each of them a framed folk-art print from
one of the crafts fairs.

After they opened their gifts,
Nate got up to start the barbecue. They were having steak and baked
potatoes that night. The wine, both red and white, flowed freely
while the Beatles sang from the iPod. At one point, Nate danced with
both Stacie and Jamie at the same time. They all danced together and
collapsed in a laughing heap on the floor when “Day Tripper” was
over. Jamie was happy. She couldn’t believe it.

A few days before New Year’s
Eve, Stacie talked to Jamie in the supply room at the clinic. The
days had been slower that week.

“
I heard from Dustin,” Stacie
said out of the blue. Jamie remembered Stacie talking about Dustin,
her college boyfriend.

“
He wants to see me,” Stacie
said. “I’m considering it. It’s not like I’m meeting anybody
up here on this mountain.”

Stacie decided that she would
meet Dustin on New Year’s Eve, in Knoxville where he was working at
the university as a computer tech. That left Jamie and Nate to fend
for themselves, but they decided to go ahead with their plans. Where
else did they have to go? Nowhere, it seemed.

Around eight on New Year’s Eve,
Nate came over with two bottles of white wine. Jamie had a pot of
minestrone cooking on the stove. When it was ready, she would serve
it with sourdough bread and salad. She had made brownies for dessert.

She felt awkward with Nate
without Stacie there. The dynamics were all changed without a third
person. She felt shy. Nate seemed to stumble over his words. Jamie
put on a CD of jazz. Nate poured the wine and she sat on the couch
with him as they listened to the music, talking occasionally.

“
This feels weird,” Nate
finally said. “It’s like we don’t know how to talk to each
other without Stacie here.”

Jamie burst out laughing and Nate
joined her. The ice was broken then, and they talked easily. Jamie
spread a quilt in front of the fireplace and she and Nate sat there
eating their soup and drinking glass after glass of wine. After a
while, Nate got up and checked out Jamie’s iPod. “Hey,” he
said. “You’ve got a Rolling Stones folder here. I’m going to
put that on.”

Nate pulled two pillows off the
back of the couch and put them behind them on the floor in front of
the fireplace. They leaned back and listened to the Stones. They sat
up and sipped from their wineglasses and lay back down again. The
logs adjusted themselves in the fire, falling, and crackling again as
fresher wood caught fire. Mick Jagger began to sing “Wild Horses.”
Jamie closed her eyes, listening to the music. She felt her hair
brush her shoulders. She felt the music vibrate through her. She was
alive and tingly.

“
Jamie,” Nate said.

“
Hmmm,” she said, lost in
herself, the fire, the music.

“
I know that I’m going to
cross a line right now, and I know I’ll probably lose you at the
clinic, but I want to kiss you.”

Jamie opened her eyes and sat up
on her elbows. She looked at Nate who looked back at her. She
laughed.

“
Okay,” she said. “I want
to kiss you, too.”

Nate sat up then and brought
Jamie’s face to his. His lips touched hers gently, then urgently.
Their tongues slid together, in and out, sliding around, together.

Nate pulled away. “If we do
this,” he said, “I’m going to want to be together with you. I
don’t give myself to just anyone.”

Jamie laughed softly. “Me
either,” she said. She found his mouth again and drew him in. They
moved their hands over each other while they kissed, up in their
shirts to their skin, down lower. Nate unzipped Jamie’s jeans and
slid them off her. He pulled her shirt over her head. She unzipped
him and pulled his jeans down below his hips. He pushed his hardness
against her nude body then, and skin touched skin. He slid out of his
jeans and shirt and they rubbed their nakedness together. Nate gently
pushed Jamie back against the pillow and got on top of her. She
sighed as he entered her. Together, they moved against each other as
the Stones sang “Playing with Fire.” Nate moved in and out of
her, rubbing against her, before moving away and coming back again.
Jamie was carried away to another place as she neared her climax, and
then she gasped. Nate groaned a second later. She wrapped her legs
around him, and he stayed inside of her for a few moments.

He moved off of her slowly and
lay back on the pillow. The fire crackled and smelled smoky and
woodsy. The Stones had moved on to “Satisfaction.” They looked at
each other and laughed.

“
I know that every employer’s
handbook in the country says we weren’t supposed to do that,”
Nate said.

“
Probably,” Jamie said. “But
I’m glad we did it.” After a while, they got up and went to
Jamie’s bed. They reached for each other again. Jamie was hungry.
Very hungry. She wanted to kiss him, taste him, feel him inside of
her. She couldn’t get enough of Nate.

“
I’m going to have to tell
Stacie,” Jamie said the next morning. “She’s going to figure it
out. I’ve got to tell her ahead of time.”

“
This is a little
embarrassing,” Nate said. “But I guess she’s got to know. I
hope she takes it all right.”

Nate left Jamie’s house in the
early evening. He had been gone for thirty minutes when Stacie
called.

“
I’m back,” she said.

“
How was it?” Jamie asked.

“
It was better than I ever
imagined it could be,” Stacie said. “I really can’t believe how
good it was to see him. He seems so much more mature now.”

“
That’s good,” Jamie said.
She didn’t know how to bring up the fact that she had been with
Nate.

“
This may sound crazy,”
Stacie said. “But we’re going to give it another try. We’re
going to be together.”

“
That doesn’t sound crazy,”
Jamie said. “There’s nothing like being with someone you already
know.” How did Jamie know anything about that? She didn’t, but it
sounded good to say. Sounded good to think about being with someone
you knew. An image of Tommy’s face floated in front of her mind,
but she pushed it away.

Stacie kept talking about her
weekend, where she and Dustin had gone for New Year’s, Dustin’s
apartment, his job. She was bubbling over with excitement.

“
So how was your New Year’s?”
Stacie finally asked. “Sorry to go on and on about Dustin. How was
it here on the home front? Did you see Nate?”

“
I did see Nate,” Jamie said.
“I saw him a lot.”

“
What does that mean?” Stacie
asked with a suspicious tone in her voice.

“
It means that we saw each
other on New Year’s Eve. It means we got together.”

“
What do you mean ‘got
together’”? Stacie asked.

It was hard for Jamie to say it
outright. “I mean that we’re together now. We’re a couple.”

“
Oh my God!” Stacie shouted
into the phone. “Are you kidding me?”

“
Not kidding,” Jamie said.

“
I’m not surprised,” Stacie
said. “Well, I am surprised. But I’ve seen the way you look at
each other. It seemed like something that was going to happen.”

“
You never told me that,”
Jamie said.

“
I didn’t want to freak you
out, girlfriend,” Stacie said. “But it’s been sort of obvious
for a while now.”

“
We don’t want it to have any
affect on work or our relationship with you,” Jamie said. “We
know it’s not necessarily the easiest thing to deal with.”

“
Hell, don’t worry about me,”
Stacie said. “My two favorite people have found each other. I’m a
happy camper.”

Jamie blushed the first time she
saw Nate at the clinic after they had been together. He gave her a
sly smile. Once, when she was in the supply room, he came in and shut
the door. He moved behind her and nuzzled her neck. She turned and
kissed him.

“
We need to control ourselves
better,” she said laughing. “This is not professional.” Nate
rubbed up against her. “You’re right,” he said. But he didn’t
stop. She kissed him. “We’ve got to get back to work,” she
said.

Stacie and Dustin started seeing
each other every weekend. He came down to Grahamville the week after
New Year’s and they all went on a double date to a restaurant in
Athens. When they got back to Grahamville, the couples separated and
Nate went back to Jamie’s house.

It was cold and rainy in the
mountains through January and February. Every other weekend, Jamie
and Nate spent time with Stacie and Dustin. On the other weekends,
Jamie and Nate were together at one or the other’s house. They
cooked together and they slept together. Jamie felt secure and
comfortable with Nate. By April, when the trees had green baby leaves
and flowers had started to push their heads out of the ground, Jamie
and Nate were inseparable.

On a sunny Friday in late April,
Lela rushed Darma in to the clinic. It was another asthma attack,
only this one was worse. Jamie gave the child oxygen and sat by her
bed holding her hand. She considered taking Darma to the hospital in
Athens, but the girl started to get better. She calmed down.

As Jamie sat at Darma’s side,
the little girl looked at Jamie with her brown Native eyes. She
looked into Jamie’s Native eyes.

“
I’ve got something to tell
you,” she said.

“
What’s that, Darma?” Jamie
asked the little girl.

“
Tommy loves you,” she said.

Jamie felt the blood drain out of
her. How could Darma know anything about Tommy? What was she even
talking about? The girl must be delirious.

“
What do you mean?” Jamie
said.

“
It’s a message for you,”
Darma said in her little girl voice. She was talking in a way that
was too big for her. She didn’t sound like a three-year-old. She
sounded like an old woman. “Tommy loves you,” she said. “He’s
waiting.” Darma closed her eyes then. Stacie looked at Jamie.
“What’s she talking about?” she said in a whisper to Jamie.

“
I have no idea,” Jamie said.
“I think she’s not thinking straight due to lack of oxygen or
something.”

Jamie left the room then, leaving
Darma in the capable hands of Stacie. She walked back to the supply
room and stood with her hands on the counter. She didn’t know how
she was going to go back out and work as a doctor. Darma had
mentioned Tommy’s name when she had no idea who he was. Jamie
crumpled against the counter and put her face in her hands. Tommy.

Chapter
Four

After that first day that Jamie
had seen Tommy’s garden, she got off the bus at his house every day
for the rest of the year. There wasn’t much of the year left. It
was late May and school ended for the summer in early June. Jamie
told her mother that Tommy was teaching her about organic gardening
and would it be all right if Tommy walked her home later. Her mother
had no problem with that. She knew Tommy’s family, had known them
for years. It was okay.

The next time that Tommy and
Jamie walked through the path from his land to hers, Jamie noticed a
definite difference. The path was clear. There were no branches or
bushes reaching out to grab her long hair. Tommy had trimmed all of
the branches. It must have taken him a long time to do that. It was a
long path.

When school was over for the
summer, Jamie got up every morning and walked the path to Tommy’s
garden. He was waiting for her. He showed her his organic
fertilizers, which included manure teas. That seemed disgusting to
Jamie, but Tommy explained it all to her. He gave her a watering can
with manure tea and she poured it all around the roots of the
vegetables, like Tommy showed her.