The Time Traveler's Boyfriend by Annabelle Costa Read Free Book Online Page A

close to him. I can hear the slow beat of his heart thudding in my ear. It feels so right , lying here with him.
    “This last year with you has been perfect,” Adam says, as if reading my mind.
    “Yeah,” I say, squeezing his chest. “It has.”
    “I just …” He sighs. “I wish my life before meeting you had been different.”
    I press my face into his firm chest. Gradually, I hear his breathing start to slow and deepen. I’d wonder how he could sleep after a day like today, but I bet a million dollars that he swallowed a sleeping pill. I, on the other hand, am drug-free and I’m not finding sleep nearly as easy.
    Eventually, I just give up that sleep is ever going to happen and wander out into the living room. I flick on the lights, although I know the layout of the house so well that I could navigate it practically in my sleep. Even the first time I walked in here, I felt comfortable here, like it was a place I was meant to be. Everything about Adam just always felt so right. Up until recently, when everything has felt wrong.
    In the corner of the room is a large translucent red jar. It was Adam’s Valentine’s Day present to me, a couple of months before our failed anniversary dinner. We decided to leave it here, since it’s pretty heavy and I’m here most of the time anyway. The jar is filled with gourmet jelly beans—one of my favorite treats. Under the red glass, I can make out dozens of colors representing different flavors of jelly beans.
    “But how do you get them out?” I asked him when he presented it to me. The top of the jar was sealed and there was only a little rectangular metal door at the bottom, like the opening for change on an old payphone. I stuck my fingers in the door but found nothing.
    “I installed an app on your phone,” he explained.
    I took out my phone and he showed me an icon titled “Jelly beans.” I clicked on it and there was a list of dozens of jelly bean flavors. I selected “marshmallow,” and a second later, I heard a clanging noise from the giant jar.
    “Okay, now you can check,” he told me.
    Sure enough, when I stuck my finger in the rectangular door, a marshmallow-flavored jelly bean was waiting for me. I stared at it in amazement before popping it in my mouth. “How did you do that?”
    He shrugged sheepishly and then launched into some detailed explanation that went right over my head. I requested a cherry-flavored jelly bean, followed by a buttered popcorn one. “It must have taken you forever to do this,” I said.
    “Nah,” Adam said. “Maybe, like, fifty hours?”
    Fifty hours. The guy works full time and still spent fifty hours slaving away to make me a present that was really cool, something he thought I’d love. Most of the guys I’d dated could hardly be bothered to pick up a box of chocolates or something. I imagined him in his lab, daydreaming about my face when I saw what he made for me. It was just about the most romantic thing I could imagine.
    “Adam …” I said, my eyes filling with tears.
    “Do you like it?” he asked anxiously.
    “I love it,” I whispered.
    He dug out something concealed behind his thigh. I was a velvet rectangular box. “Because I also got you this.”
    The second present was a beautiful white gold necklace with a diamond heart pendant. It looked like it cost thousands of dollars. I nearly fainted when I saw it. “Adam,” I said, holding it up. “This … this is all too much. I love you. You don’t have to …”
    “I love you too,” he said quickly. “I just want to make sure you know how much.”
    I put on the necklace for him, and we spent the rest of the night eating jelly beans until our stomachs ached. In my whole life, no man has ever made me feel as special and loved as Adam does. And the frustrating part is that I feel like I can never quite reciprocate. Yes, I love him, but I can’t compete with these big romantic gestures. Like, for example, for that Valentine’s Day, I bought Adam a tie