CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Synchronize
Saturday, November 12, 1955
8:30 AM
It was a harsh reality waking up in her bed, having barely remembered her father tending to her shoulder the night before. Emma was half-afraid she had dreamed falling asleep on the couch under Marty's arm; it had been as pleasant as it had been wearisome to lament over the uncertainty of their situation with casual physical contact.
But, as her hand slid down the smooth railing to the silent first floor in the fuzzy beams of diffused sunlight, her lips pulled to the side to see Marty exactly as she'd left him. His fist had pushed his jaw slack from the angle of the armrest, and his other arm rested on the pillow where her head had been.
Emma eyed the empty length of cushions she had occupied; would it be so difficult to slip right back onto that pillow? He'd be none-the-wiser.
She straightened her back in the face of such thoughts, ignoring its gnaw. If she was still lying there, what awkwardness would ensue? Was there a line that had been crossed last night? A true, definitive one? He had encouraged and all but laid her in his lap, but there were some strong, ugly, scary emotions attached to that comfort – the sounds of rapid gunfire, the guilt still pounding in her chest over their shouting match, the horrors of what possibly awaited them – or rather, who didn't await them – back in 1985 if this whole lightning stint was even successful.
It could wait. It had to. She wasn't going to keep a level head tearing open invisible wounds, staring blankly at her jumbled emotions, and dwelling on them right now, not when they had so much to get through today. So, as to ward off those monstrous shadows, it was imperative to keep their narrative as normal as possible.
Paying a visit to the octagonal table in the foyer, Emma picked up a set of blueprints her father had missed during his tirade when they'd shown up a week ago. She smiled down at the calipers he had edged toward her menacingly as she rolled a rubber band off the blueprints.
Throwing her clumped, crinkled bedhead behind her shoulders, Emma let the ends of the snakeskin robe trail along behind her on the floor as she returned to Marty, testing the elasticity of the rubber band between her fingers. With a steady exhale, she planted her feet, extended her arms, said a silent apology, and released the rubber band. It snapped soundly just above the inside of his elbow, and laughter immediately leapt from her when he all but crashed to the floor between the couch and coffee table. She winced through her giggling at the ensuing thud, proudly maintaining an impish smirk as he sat up, panting incredulously.
The rubber band had done its job and done it well.
"Take it easy on the table, McFly," she chided, pushing its legs back into the impressions of the thick rug as he clambered to his feet. "It's an antique."
Before Marty even had a chance to retaliate with more than a vengeful scowl, Doc entered from the back door, Marty's suit for the dance draped over his forearm.
"I should have thought you'd both be in the lab packing up for tonight by the time I returned!" he called, detouring to the kitchen for an apple. Approaching the stifled rubber band conflict at the coffee table, he passed the suit to Marty, nodded to the staircase, and made for the back door. "Get dressed and meet me in the lab in fifteen minutes! There's still some calibration to be done as well!"
Emma made for the stairs with a smirk at Marty, her brow deepening when he smirked back, snapping the rubber band back at her calves. His smile at the yelp she emitted was short-lived; in one fluid motion, Emma seized an umbrella from the stand at the foot of the stairs and raised it in retaliation. Marty made to cower behind his suit bag when Doc boomed, "Drop it!"
"Yeah, Em. Take it easy," Marty goaded quietly. "It's an antique."
A silent standoff manifested, and Emma ultimately relented under her not-yet father's stern glare with an angry pout as she shoved the umbrella back into the stand. Everything slowly came to motion again at her surrender, Doc eyeing them both until he left the room.
Emma rolled her eyes. The fact that he was hardly this chastising in 1985 irritated her as much as Marty's smugness radiating from two stairs below her. She narrowed her eyes at him.
"You're –"
"—lucky you weren't near any power tools. I know."
She pursed her lips, continuing up the stairs. "I still have one good arm, McFly."
As hoped, The Great Rubber Band Incident of November 12, 1955 was successful in maintaining the established rapport between Marty and Emma, both content to leave the previous evening unacknowledged as they worked with Doc through the morning. And, much to Emma's relief, her father made no effort whatsoever to mention it, pry, or coax details from them, not even with a passing comment or casual question. His discretion might be the one thing she actually admired about the younger version of himself.
She could also admire the improvement of his dressings on her shoulder over the past week; with each evening's cleaning and bandaging, the gauze squares became thinner, making her less self-conscious about a visible puff under her dresses. His perfected lightness of hand made the removal and replacement of the tape, the swabbing of iodine and salve, and the delivery of morphine to her veins virtually painless.
She, too, had improved at a few things during these sessions, none of which surpassed her ability to emotionally shut down and exchange small talk with ease.
Emma pushed the tiny sleeve of her Enchantment Under the Sea dress aside and surveyed her father's latest bandage in her vanity mirror. Flat, compact, and structurally sound, she sent another silent "thank you" out into the universe to her not-yet mother for giving him some early pointers in first aid. Pulling the sleeve back up, she moved a stray wisp of hair back into her updo, tightened the backs of her teardrop pearl earrings, and crossed the hallway to Marty's doorway.
Inwardly chuckling at "Rock Around the Clock" playing on the small radio from within his stay room, Emma knocked, smiling as he looked over from fastening his tiepin in a floor-length mirror. Rather unexpectedly, her smile grew when his fell, eyes widening ever so slightly in greeting. His hands slipped from the tie.
"Wow, Em," he said quietly, subconsciously appreciating her in his reverence. "You're supposed to ward him off, remember?"
Emma huffed out a laugh. "I'll take that as a compliment." She turned in the doorway, exposing the smooth expanse of her back to him. "Do you mind?"
For the briefest of moments, Marty wasn't sure she had said anything. His eyes ran up and down her back as he approached, a fleeting sense of panic hitting him when he realized he was involuntarily committing the curves of her shoulder blades and the light mole in the small of her back to memory. Finding the zipper just below it, he slowly pulled it to the bottom of her neck, hoping she hadn't felt his fingers fumble.
Dispelling the thickness from his voice, Marty dropped his hands to his sides. "You're good to go."
"Can you see the bandage?"
"No."
"Oh, one more thing."
With a half-turn, she held up the pearl necklace that was not yet hers, wordlessly asking for his assistance. Marty took it, a chill sweeping over him as he berated himself for wondering if her back shared the same cool, flawless texture of the pearls. He'd seen her back how many times this week?
Reel it in, McFly.
Lying one end over her wounded shoulder, Marty carefully reached around the other for the clasp. He brought the ends together, ignoring the way each pearl glided over the rise of her clavicle with commendable composure. She thanked him when it settled on the back of her neck, but he could only manage a nod in response; an overwhelming urge to rest his hands on her hips when she turned to go to the mirror sent them deep into his pockets.
This was not cool.
Marty's reflection appeared beyond Emma's in the mirror as she scrutinized her make-up one last time. Through the silver-plated glass, she threw a smile back at him, wiping some excess lipstick from her upper lip.
"What?" she teased. "You've never seen a girl gussied up before?"
"Not this girl."
"I've been wearing dresses all week. Much to my dismay."
"Not this dress."
Emma stood straight. She locked onto his reflection's eyes, daring herself to turn and meet them face-to-face. His thoughtful silence pierced her, the way his head was tilted just so and the steady beat of his eyelashes making the aftertaste of her toothpaste acrid in the back of her throat. She needed something – anything – to get him to stop looking at her like that. They had a hell of a mission to see through, and while it was a mere three hours until the lightning strike, so much could still go wrong.
Marty stood on the verge of plummeting into a bottomless abyss, gradually accepting that he was becoming more and more willing to throw himself into it the longer he stood there. His mind was screaming at him to smash the Pandora's Box of all that was unspoken but pleading with her to do it so he didn't have to. Whether she heard it or not, Marty's chest clenched when she dipped her head, reluctantly severing their eye contact at Doc's hard-soled shoes climbing the stairs to collect them.
Marty sighed through his nose, surprised at how calming it was in the face of his own disappointment to reunite with Emma's smile, even if it was strained. She gave his lapels a tug, her voice small as she winked.
"You're supposed to ward her off, remember?"
In a final wordless exchange, Marty conceded to drop the matter, taking her bait with an exaggerated grimace. "Christ, Em, you had to remind me."
Her smile was gracious as Doc rapped on the door.
"Didn't you hear me? Time to go! Out. Out, out out!"
Their final attempt to appeal to Doc regarding the events in which they had arrived in 1955 and to which they would soon be returning was met with another heated refusal to see reason: Even if your intentions are good, they could backfire drastically. Whatever you have to tell me, I'll find out through the natural course of time.
Which was exactly what they didn't want to happen at all.
Emma was near tears by the time Marty pulled her away from the "weather experiment" and into Lou's Café, his own stomach anxiously twisting in upset. Seeing Emma to a booth, he asked a pen, an envelope, a sheet of paper, and two cups of coffee of Goldie, the lone employee tending the bar.
Not ten minutes later, Emma was considering each word carefully as Marty read their letter aloud in the dim café. His voice was unsteady, his note short and to the point. "Disaster" might not have been the word she would have used – "tragedy," perhaps – but it would get the point across. Whatever words the ink had leaked into the fibers of the page, the message that filled the spaces between them could not have been spelled out more simply. Maybe by 1985 when her father opened that letter, if he did at all, he would understand.
And that was all she could hope for now – that he would understand.
Marty looked up at her from across the booth. She was still, frowning into an untouched cup of coffee. She absentmindedly lifted the spoon out of it, tilted its tiny puddle back into the oily murk, and scraped it off the smooth ceramic. Taking a deep breath, Emma let the spoon clink loudly into the bottom of the cup and her hands fall to her lap, not sure what to do with them. Finality loomed in the air, palpable and heavy on her chest. She nodded, swallowing the emotion welling up in her throat.
"It's good," she whispered. "It's good."
"Do you want to add anything?"
Emma shook her head, sniffed, and held her breath. "No. Just…" She shut her eyes, wiping away the black smear under her lashes with her thumb. "We're going to be late."
Marty watched her come back down, his own chest tight. The image that had plagued him over the last week was fresh as ever; that split second he looked back from the DeLorean and just knew Doc was motionless from the weight of death crushing him into that cold, wet asphalt. That was the moment that clamped down on his throat, trapping the blood in his ears and the hopelessness in his eyes. And Emma – god, what she could only be going through. He couldn't even pretend to guess.
Sighing, Marty laid the pen next to the saucer and folded the crisp stationary. Emma slid from the booth and looked out the window at her father mounting the cable to the far lamp post, and warmth filled her ears with thick patches of cotton crackling when she swallowed. She calmly met Marty's eyes when he was standing next to her, sealed envelope in hand. He pushed his lips together to resemble an attempt at a small smile.
Wordlessly, they left the café with polite nods to Goldie behind the counter who was towel-drying a handful of soda glasses before closing up shop for the night. Emma willed her pumps to a whisper as they crossed back to Doc Brown and his DeLorean being snooped on by a bored police officer. Marty slipped the envelope into Doc's coat pocket, looking back at Emma as she came to terms with the fact that it was now entirely out of their hands.
She took a deep breath. "Ready?"
Marty nodded, leading her to the Packard by her fingertips. "Let's get to it."
The lively radio initiated the transition of their dismal spirits in the café. Then, through some prompted banter, Marty and Emma were quickly able to pull each other back on track, burying thoughts of Doc, the letter, and his survival until they had once and for all secured Marty's existence.
Marty pulled over a block away from the school, lobbing the gearshift into park. The Packard chugged idly, and Emma smiled over at Marty as her fingers wrapped around the door handle. She paused, however, reading an unfamiliar expression in the lines of his face. Perhaps they were just obscured by the odd angles of refraction the streetlights had to contend with to reach the inside her eyes in the darkness of the car, but for such austere shadows, his eyes were softly fixated on her.
"What?"
Marty shook his head. "Nothing."
"Is there something wrong with my hair?"
"No."
Emma inclined her head, bringing out her serious eyebrows.
"Your hair is fine, Em," Marty said. "You look…great. You look beautiful."
Emma looked down at her lap, smoothing the snowy floral lace over the sea-foam silk of her dress. He was all compliments tonight, and she was coming undone by them unacceptably fast. She wanted to blame the morphine for suddenly turning her into an emotionally unchecked school girl. She wanted to blame missing her real father for her desire to constantly be close to him. She wanted to blame that ludicrous five minutes in his bedroom an hour ago for throwing impossibly big questions at her. She knew it was all false data, though.
She wanted him because she wanted him, plain and simple.
It was just getting to be too much to handle, like everything else had been this past week.
Before she could get ahold of herself, Marty had reached for her hand and pulled it back toward him. She turned to him slowly, her heart thudding so that it left her a little breathless. He was staring at her hand the way he had stared at her in the mirror, one of his holding it while the other trailed over her knuckles and fingertips in thought. She stared at his ministrations as intently as she had the DeLorean when it reappeared in the JC Penney parking lot a week ago; was this real, whatever it was?
"Em, we're in trouble."
Blinking, she made herself nod at his soft echo of some of the first words he spoke to her when they arrived in 1955.
Trouble.
Her eyes pricked fearfully in the silence, a deep tremor fighting to overcome the tense muscles of her abdomen and rack her entire body.
This was where he let her down easy. This was the part where he told her he only liked her as a friend, wanted to see how things with Jennifer went, actually saw her as a sister now after playing big brother for a week…
Forbidding herself to physically respond to the sudden onslaught of her sympathetic nervous system, Emma felt the entire flood of adrenaline vanish sickeningly when Marty stopped his caress of her hand.
"For once, I'm actually jealous of my old man."
Emma's head shot up. "I-I'm…What?"
Marty smirked to himself before meeting her wide eyes.
Forget his friends and his family and the whole damn town. Hell, chalk him up as one of the crazies if need be. Not one of them meant to him what she did, and he was done being afraid to admit that.
In fact, it was time to start proving it.
"Will you go with me to the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance? In thirty years?"
The conversation Emma had been anticipating had just taken a merciless one-eighty, hurling her in eight different directions. She gaped at him, torn between hope and misunderstanding.
"What about Jennifer?"
"What about Jennifer? I want to go with you."
"…Really?" she squeaked.
Marty swallowed. "Em, I'm not lying to you or myself anymore. I'm not. I'm done pretending that it bothers me when my bandmates call you my girlfriend or that I'm going to have a future you're not part of."
Emma held her breath as he touched a wisp of hair next to her ear, carefully searching her eyes for the same confession. "I want to be with you when this is all over. When we're home and everything is okay again."
Nothing seemed more okay to Emma than in that moment. All she could do was nod. Heat surged across her cheeks as he leaned in and kissed her, bringing one of his hands to the back of her head. She laced their fingers together and pulled him closer with them, inviting him to deepen their kiss.
She was so lost in the unknown time it took to compute bliss to reality that she squealed when a car drove by, honking its horn. Marty and Emma leapt apart, watching it go around the bend with more honks and general hoorahs of approval out the window. Emma felt her laughter ignite every nerve ending in her body, cheeks and fingertips aflame.
"I hope they didn't recognize us," she said, raising her eyebrows back at Marty. "We are siblings after all."
Marty laughed. "I doubt they saw our faces."
Emma's blush drained momentarily. A pale pink, shimmering sheen was on his mouth.
"Oh, shit," she whispered, reaching over and rubbing his lips with the heel of her hand. "I got lipstick on you! Lorraine is gonna—"
Marty sputtered her hand away. "Em, Em! It's a little lipstick," he said, pulling a kerchief from his jacket. "Are you afraid my mom'll beat you up or something?"
Emma chuckled, taking the proffered handkerchief from him to clean off her hand. "No, I'm afraid she'll beat you up. That girl is all claws."
"Tell me about it."
She handed the handkerchief back after folding it, their bright eyes meeting again. The corner of Marty's mouth pulled upward into a smirk again, and Emma was suddenly sitting on her bench in the town square with him as she had so many times before. Everything about this moment was familiar and new and made her want to leap off something. She'd eventually admitted to herself some time ago that she wanted him to look at her with the look that changes everything - a longing smile in his eyes that she herself had already reserved for him.
And it made her skin tingle to realize it had just happened.
"So, 6:30 then?" Marty asked. "In thirty years?"
Emma beamed. "You bet."
"Take care of my dad. And I meant what I said."
With a nod, Emma found the door handle. Stepping out of the car, her heels scraped the asphalt as she spun to keep her dress from catching in the door.
"Hey, Em?"
Emma leaned down to the passenger window. "Yeah?"
He motioned to his mouth. "You might want to touch up your lipstick."
Emma kicked the front tire, smacking the hood of the car as she laughed.
"Go get your mom."