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She choked back her tears with a big sniffle, managed a slight smile, and insisted. “Who is she?”

Now this was a lie he was prepared to tell. He had created this story almost as soon as Trina had begun to badger him about his secret love’s identity, hoping never to need it. “Her name is Kathy. She lives in Utah. She comes to visit her grandparents here once in a while.”

“And…” she paused, but, not long enough for him to respond, “How did you meet her?”

She was fishing for details because she wanted his story to be true. If Kathy was real, and so was his commitment to her, then Trina could walk away with her self-esteem intact. So he fed her every detail he had invented and rehearsed in his mind. He delivered this elaborate lie with an adeptness that was somewhat disturbing.

They parted that evening with a hug and his profuse apology for lying to her and letting her believe that he was available. And that night, when he wanted to feel great about saving their friendship, he instead felt like an idiot. What he had really done was to blow the opportunity to get rid of this temptation once and for all. Trina was supposed to be out of his life for good after next summer. But everything he was doing was making her stay, and now he had to maintain a fictional girlfriend, making an already complex relationship even harder to juggle. The emotional side of him was systematically trying to destroy everything the logical side of him was trying to accomplish.

*****

After this little drama, Lovelle was feeling overwhelmed. He wasn’t sure if he could handle this for six years. He needed to do something he had been avoiding. He needed to see Katie. He just had to do it in a way that she would never notice. He couldn’t afford to be a creepy older guy hanging around where he had no reason to be. And she couldn’t know him until the time was right. Even under the best of circumstances he couldn’t risk poisoning their future.

One afternoon he informed Shane that he would have to take the bus that next Monday. Lovelle came up with some ridiculous excuse to put his friend off, and that day he left his house early and drove in the opposite direction. He turned down the street where Katie’s parents lived and there she was, walking toward her bus stop. It was pure luck. A few minutes earlier or later and he might have missed her. But, there she was, a beautiful young teen. Now a sophomore in high school, her blonde hair was blowing in the wind, and her bright blue eyes shone bright in the morning sun. He managed not to stare, allowing himself only that brief glimpse. That little reminder of what he was trying to hold on for.

He drove to the nearest parking lot to ponder his situation. He wasn’t entirely sure if he had done himself any good. Yes, he was now more determined than ever that no one but Katie would do. But he was now so desperate to be with her that he didn’t know if he had the will to wait. Could he know right where she was for another six years and not go get her? He didn’t think he could. He felt almost sure that he would have to short circuit the process. He would have to seek her out just as soon as she was old enough.

He went to school that morning in a desperate state. And he stayed in that state until a few days later, when everything changed.

CHAPTER FIVE

In September of 1986, Lovelle’s life changed in the most dramatic fashion. Every plan he had been making flew right out of the window. On that particular day, he was watching the news when a story came on that redirected his focus in life. What he saw was terrorists holding a plane hostage on a runway. A terrorist organization, headed by Abu Nidal, had hijacked an Egypt Air flight and forced it down in Malta. The end result would be 20 deaths, but, it took only the sight of that plane to remind Lovelle of September 11, 2001.

His thoughts turned to the 3000 or so people who were to die on that day. He remembered the pictures of grieving family members. He replayed those awful images of people plummeting to their certain death in order to escape what must have been to them the more unspeakable fate of burning alive. He remembered vividly the sight of the towers crashing to the ground. And he thought
Maybe I could stop that
. And maybe he could stop the nation from going to war in the aftermath, and save those soldiers as well.

His memory of the details of the plot was sketchy at best. Remembering names and dates was not his strength. But he knew that he had to try. He knew enough that, if he were in the right position, he might really be able to stop them. And he was young enough that he could put himself in the right place. There really wasn’t even a decision to be made. He couldn’t choose not to do this. This was a calling that was bigger than him and any desires he might have. If there were some purpose for him being placed in this time, with the knowledge of the future that he possessed, he couldn’t imagine a better one.

And this new focus, this sense of purpose, liberated him from all of those concerns he had for his personal life. He wouldn’t allow himself to brood over them anymore. He could deal with them as they came up, decisively and without rehashing them over and over. He just simply could not let them paralyze him anymore. Micro analyzing every move was no longer his pastime; it was a waste of time.

And that was how he operated for the rest of his senior year. He was transfixed on his goal, and everyone noticed. He improved at work. He improved at school. He quit partying on the weekends. And he set about simplifying his complicated life. So when Trina asked him one day about Kathy, he took his chances and shed the lie. He told her that he had confessed about Shannon and that she had quit taking his calls.

Trina asked, “So. What now?” in an obvious allusion her earlier proposal.

Prepared this time, he answered with great conviction. “I just need some time. I’ve got to figure out what’s wrong with me. Being a cheater goes against everything I’ve ever believed about myself. I’ve been so consumed with guilt. I had to tell her. And now she’s gone, and I feel like dirt. I feel terrible because I lost her, and because I don’t like myself. I always worried that other people didn’t really like me very much. But, I’ve never wanted to crawl out of my own skin and get away from myself before.” Lovelle had tapped into the memories of his own teenage anxieties and let them pour.

Trina responded in her caring manner and comforted him. She embraced him and consoled him “Oh, Curtis. You made a mistake. People make mistakes. If you were such a bad person you wouldn’t be this torn up about it. If I thought you were a bad person I wouldn’t be your friend. You just have to forgive yourself.”

Her compassion kept her from bringing up the subject again for quite a long time. It also made Lovelle feel terribly guilty for not being straight with her. So, in his new found purposefulness, he decided that she deserved to know that she should not wait for him. He just had to find a way to tell her. Unfortunately, that purposefulness still fell short of actually doing something. It was a project that sat on the back burner for some time.

A lot of things, and other relationships, fell to the back burner at that time. He was much less concerned with appearances, and his maturity was showing through. For most of his life he had been much more comfortable with a small group of friends. He found it much easier to concentrate on the things that were important to him when his private life was fairly simple. So he stopped spending time with some of the people who he had never really cared for, and with some that he had liked very much when he was as immature as they were. His closest friend, Shane, moved to the other side of town that year, which left him with a lot of alone time.

When the time came to leave high school behind for the second time, Lovelle barely looked back. Once he left these people, he really didn’t care what happened to them, and he doubted there was ever a second thought about him either. The first time around only his friendships with Shane and Dan had carried over past high school, and with them going to different colleges, those had waned eventually as well. This time those had all but ended already, but Lovelle wasn't concerned, knowing that he would have lost touch with them before he ever met Katie anyhow. Every lasting relationship in his adult life had been formed outside of school. This time, however he was taking one friend with him. This time Trina was going to be at MSU with him.

CHAPTE
R
SI
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Over the summer, before going away to college, Lovelle landed himself a commission sales job and put his experience to work. He worked every hour they would give him, and earned an impressive sum for the short time he had. He was determined that his parents wouldn’t have to pay for anything but room and board, and whatever part of tuition he couldn’t find a scholarship or grant to cover. He would not be calling them up and asking them to pay for food or any other miscellaneous expenses. So, for the first time, he used his knowledge of the future to his financial advantage. An acquaintance at work was friends with a bookmaker, and Lovelle placed a sizable bet on a baseball game that he had attended with his father the first time it was played. Although he had qualms about taking other people’s money under such false pretenses, he was less than troubled in taking cash from a bookie. He parlayed a chunk of his earnings into a nice little severance package.

When the time came to register for classes Trina managed to get them into the same "Intro to Government" class. Beyond that core requirement class their varying interests took them in different directions. As for himself, he quickly declared his major as Criminal Justice and set about to position himself for a career in the FBI. His plan was to take any and every class that he thought might qualify him to work in some counter intelligence capacity, with an emphasis on the Middle East.

*****

Although Lovelle saw himself as a lone wolf, he quickly found out that he really did miss having friends around. And Trina had a lot more on her plate than just him. He may have come to school with only one friend, but she had six or seven from high school, and several new ones to boot. She got along great with her dorm mates, and quickly adopted their friends as well. Still, Lovelle knew this was actually to his advantage. Spending all of his free time with Trina was probably not the best prescription for his loneliness.

Of course, Lovelle didn’t fare so well with his own roomies. Not surprisingly he found them immature. Them, and nearly everyone else in the freshman dorms. As he saw it, he had three options. Party with the drunken teenagers, find a girl himself, or get used to being alone a lot. He chose option three. He had always been much happier alone than in the company of people he didn’t like, so drunken teenagers were definitely out. And, even if he decided to give in and start dating, he couldn’t. He absolutely couldn’t go out with Trina. Just being her friend was a test of his willpower. But, as long as she was available, he couldn’t date someone else without hurting her. So he spent a lot of time in his room and at the library. The library was the closest thing he could get to the internet, which had been one of his favorite pastimes for years.

All of this resulted in making him the best student he could ever be. For the first time in his life he actually did all of his homework, and really cared about what he was learning. It was funny to him how the moment he stopped caring about grades, and started caring about learning, he became the student he should have always been. Actually, he knew that wasn’t so odd. After all, the best teachers are the ones who get you to actually be interested in the subject.

The rest of their freshmen year went along pretty much like that. He saw Trina occasionally, and she expressed her concern about his hermit status. He assured her repeatedly that he was fine. She even went so far as to encourage him to find a nice girl, but he knew that was a trap he didn't want to fall into.

Finally, towards the end of the year, he caught a break. Trina met a nice guy. Not understanding what a relief this was to him, she felt the need to explain to him why she was “moving on”. She asked him to dinner, but not in a casual way, so he knew something was up. Her demeanor was as odd as it had been when she asked him to pick her up from work on that day she’d bared her soul to him.

“Curtis, we both know there’s a little something extra between us,” She began, “I don’t really know why we haven’t been able to work that out.” His heart sank as he thought she was about to give him an ultimatum. “But I’ve kinda had to get over that.”

He wanted to yell ‘yes!’, and a sense of relief washed over him. He was now well practiced at concealing such internal emotional outbursts, so she had no idea of the relief he felt as he gave her an understanding nod, “mm-hmm,” and tried to look disappointed.

“I’ve been waiting for you to stop acting like you’re not good enough to have a girlfriend. I thought if I gave you some time and space you’d decide you were ready to give us a try. Or even that you’d find someone else and I’d know I shouldn’t wait anymore. But it’s been like… a year. I don’t know what’s going on with you. I don’t know if we ever really had a chance. I don’t think I want to know. I just want to get on with life. And I want you to get on with yours.” Lovelle looked as though he were about to speak, but she shushed him, “I don’t need an explanation.”

“I…” he tried to interrupt again.

“No! I mean, I don’t want an explanation,” she stated emphatically. “Whatever is going on with you, you’ve got to get over it.” Trina paused to let that sink in. “I met someone a few weeks ago. We’ve been out a couple of times and I don’t need any complications from you. You said once before that you needed my friendship. I hope you’ll always feel that way, because that’s all I’m ever going to offer you now.” She stated this with such cold dispassion that Lovelle felt certain that she had been practicing this speech to ensure the proper delivery.

They chatted a while longer, but that was pretty much it. She had a boyfriend, and he was jealous as hell. He didn’t want to be, but he was.

For a while he almost felt like he had made a mistake. The release he had been wanting had finally come, and now he was unhappy about it. For as long as he had been trying to put Trina off, he knew that he had also been trying to keep her close. It was as if he knew deep down that his plans to reunite with Katie stood a very good chance of failure, and he wanted to hold Trina in reserve. Looking at it now, this seemed to him to be very selfish and manipulative, but he could not help feeling the disappointment of losing this option. Being so close to Trina again, and for all of that time, had brought those old feelings very close to the surface. They came almost flooding back as soon as she let him know that he could be with her. And now he didn’t know how to feel about how the situation had resolved itself.

Luckily, the semester was just about over and he didn’t have to wallow in self pity for too long. He could go home and occupy himself with other things. And after 17 months of serious dedication to his ‘cause’, he was ready to give himself a break.

*****

The summer of ’88 was a time of change for Lovelle. He decided it was no longer necessary to maintain a pretense of immaturity. In his brooding mood, he hadn’t been doing a very good job at it anyhow. Coming back from his first year away at college was as good a time as any for ‘growing up’. From there on out he would do the things that he wanted, instead of the things that he thought were expected of him. In reality, it had taken him a lot longer to mature than nineteen years, but he could see no reason to repeat that performance. His second life bore so little resemblance to his first life, he couldn’t imagine how it would benefit him to continue that facade.

Back at school, for six months Lovelle put aside nearly every concern except his pursuit of a career in the FBI. He had racked up as many hours as possible at his summer job and he worked like a dog once he was back at school. This left him with no time for a social life, and therefore no time to get himself into trouble. The only problem was that it also left him plenty of alone time to think about Katie. And as the final semester of his sophomore year approached, Lovelle started to think very seriously about how he would engineer their first meeting.

Katie would be graduating from High School that year, and that was the earliest he had even considered approaching her. He was equally desperate to have her back in his life, and deathly afraid that if he changed the timing of their meeting they would fail to connect, or they would connect in some way so materially different that it would make the birth of Kyle impossible. Of course, not believing in fate, Lovelle already believed deep down that it was unlikely in the extreme that he would ever see his son again. Still, he refused to give up on that particular dream until it became a real impossibility.

Lovelle had already changed his life so drastically that he was unsure of anything. He was nearly three and a half years into this life and it was virtually unrecognizable. What another few years might do was hard to fathom. As it was, even if he now tried to follow his original plan, he would be approaching her not as a young salesman just trying to get his footing in life, but as a young FBI agent, probably living somewhere else and only back in Detroit visiting his parents. This alone could put her off from him? He knew full well that she would have objected if he had decided to go into law enforcement while they were together. But would she refuse to get involved with him if he were already a Fed? He also wondered if it would make a difference to her if he met her while law enforcement was still only a future goal.

While he wondered what to do with himself, Lovelle received a reminder of his mission in life. On December 21, 1988, Pan Am flight #103 was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. Once again, his priorities were set straight. He shook off his doubts and decided then and there that he would simply take charge and meet her that coming summer.