What If I Had

twenty - something borrowed, something new

"What do you want now, Gwendolyn?" Rick spat, not even bothering to look up at me from whatever he was doing.

"The hell are you doing up so early?"

He scoffed. "Was just about to ask you the same thing." I furrowed my eyebrows, looking all around the garage before my eyes landed on the cardboard box on the shelf in the corner. I walked up to it and swiped my hand across the side that had something sketched into it with permanent marker. I patted the residue dust off of my hand and on my pajama shorts.

"Wanna tell me what this is?" Rick took a second before turning to look at what I was pointing at. He squinted his eyes at it before giving me cut eye. "Why do you wanna know?"

I shrugged. "Is time travel possible?"

He took a moment of pure silence before chuckling sarcastically and turning back around to doing his work. "Not on your life. Dimension jumping is one thing, but time travel makes absolutely no sense. There's no way of anyone being able to—"

"But I have."

Again, there was another pause. At this point, I was glad I wore my fuzzy pink socks to bed so I wouldn't have to walk on the uncomfortably cold garage floor when I had to go talk to Rick. I didn't know what Rick would think of me telling him this. Maybe he'd think I was crazy or delusional or possibly mock me because that's just who he was.

"I know."

His response caught me off guard. It was quiet again, except for the occasional cursing under Rick's breath as he tinkered with his toy.

All the possible reasons why Rick could've known about it filled my head instantaneously.

But it was all just a dream.
Why or how the hell could I have mistakened it for reality?

"Did—Did I tell you about the dreams I've been having?"

Another long pause.

"No."

"You think I've lost it, don't you? Crazy fucking Gwen thinks she traveled through time and space." Rick gave me no answer, so I waited before speaking again.

"I dreamt... that me and my boyfriend were fighting because I spent more time working on my time machine than with him—"

Rick spoke up, with sarcasm dripping from his voice, "Shocker. You dreamt of that meathead Connor again."

"No. Someone else, someone I've never seen before in my life." I pulled out one of the chairs next to Rick who stood and sat down on it. I continued, "The machine malfunctioned and I was sucked through it."

"How did the dream end?" He asked, leaving little room for there to be a long and awkward pause.

"That is how it ends." I sighed. "I've been having dreams about the exact same guy for over a year now and I have no idea what these dreams mean."

To my surprise, Rick dropped whatever he was doing in the moment and turned away from his work to face me fully. "Oh yeah?" He asked, sounding somewhat intrigued as he folded his arms across of his chest. I nodded softly, staring down at the thing Rick had been tinkering with.