For Us This Once - Chapter Four
The cheesesteaks looked delicious and were delicious. No sooner had Devan laid the bag on the table than he, John, Austin and Kip ravenously tore it apart. Perfectly fried beef and melted American cheese oozed out the sides of their French bread rolls onto the off-white wrapping paper as then dug in. Ketchup, fries, grease, glory. These little joys were what made life worth living. It tasted so good John had to force himself to eat slowly for fear that it would be gone too quickly. They were foodies, and this was food heaven.
“I could eat all of this myself, forget you guys,” Kip said with his mouth full. The other three smiled knowingly. Yes, he could, so could any of them. John smiled silently to himself too, happy just to have the four of them all together again. Such get-togethers seemed to occur less and less often with each passing week. The nature of the beast, though, John thought as he swallowed another massive bite. It’s nice to have something to focus on, too. The debacle from the afternoon was thankfully behind him, but these periods of lapses in consciousness and time dilation seemed more frequent. John could remember nothing of what had happened after lunch that day. The conversation between his future-dad and his future-self had swallowed up a whole afternoon of his now-time. When these things happened, it never felt like time travel, in the H.G. Wells sense. These visions had been coming to him for so long, since such a young age, that they felt normal to him now.
To the best of his knowledge, no one else had them, so he never mentioned them to anyone, but losing chunks of his day having no idea what he had done or what anyone had said to him did present its own problems. They had never felt like dreams; he saw them as windows to different points on the continuum that was his life. He had “learned” a few things about his future though, if you could call it that: like that he would become a drug addict, that he would eventually get clean, that he wouldn’t marry anyone who he knew at this point in his life. A great many other things he had learned but could no longer remember. In that sense they were like dreams.
John also knew the four of them would not be friends forever. Not that they would one day loathe each other after some divisive event. He simply knew that they would grow apart, live different places, live their lives according to different values. It was inevitable, and made John appreciate these (mostly) worry-free moments of youth. Life would change, as it must, but he would always remember these as the simpler days. New towns, new friends, new lovers awaited the four, realities totally unlike what they now had together, a truth each knew but which none would articulate.
“Five dollar buy-in tonight?” Kip asked with a sly smile.
“Oh, God, please no poker tonight, man,” John pleaded. As fun as winning his friends’ money might be, losing his own would ruin his night for certain.
“I’m down,” Devan added pliantly. Austin nodded his head in passive agreement as well.
“I guess I don’t have a choice then,” John answered, defeated. It wasn’t all bad, though. The food had put him in a good enough mood that losing five bucks wouldn’t be the end of the world. This time, anyway. Suddenly, John heard a vibration in his backpack. His cellphone most likely. As Kip started to shuffle the cards he reached inside his bag and pulled out his phone as subtly as possible. Incoming message. He scrolled to the menus to see that it was from Damian, another of his classmates and somewhat of a friend. CALL ME, it read. John wasn’t sure what to make of that.
