The place was just temporary. Just until he figured out what he wanted to do next he'd been freed from the weight of knowing far too much about his future.
Yes, he still loved Kat and he'd hated breaking her heart so soon after being given it but he not even that could undo the other burdens about a few of the secrets of the Landry family pond.
With a guilty sigh, Elliot stretched out on the hotel room sofa taking a break after unpacking the last of his bags from the car before doing much more.
As he dozed off the more background music he'd been playing as he unpacked seemed to grow louder pulling him into a scene more memory than true dream.
The town was still buzzing with the news of how Kat had suddenly left town with that boy she's been seeing. He'd wish they'd find something else to gossip about.
True he'd had to hide the fact he'd been well informed it would happen considering for a while at least he'd had to pal around with Kat's teenaged daughter and having to guard not just that but several other mind-blowing secrets since Alice had splashed into his life and had asked for his help. That didn't make having to live through it any easier to take.
Now it seemed all Elliot had to look forward to was his own pending attempt at a marriage he already knew was doomed to failure and becoming the high school science teacher to one not yet conceived Alice Dhawan.
A soft but defeated attempt at a breath had the dazed teenager glancing up towards the sound.
"Jez you...you scared me" Elliot stammers in favor of a more traditional 'What the heck?' or 'How'd you get in here?' clutching the broom handle a little tighter as the woman he hadn't noticed before remained huddled on the back stairs of the closed-up movie theater. Watching him with a truly heartbroken expression as he'd swept up the place lost in his own head. Her hair and clothes were heavily dampened despite the earlier rainstorm having calmed down hours before.
"are... are you okay?" he asks in sympathy at just how torn up this woman seemed to be.
"Am I okay?" the woman echoes in a broken sniff.
"Right, I'm sorry." Elliott backtracks apologetically now as the woman attempts to wipe her tearful eyes on the sleeve of her waterlogged shirt.
"can... Can I get you anything? A snack? A soda? Tissues?" the teenager lists at the sight of the stranger wandering around so wet on such a cold night like tonight was proving to be.
That does trigger a shaky laugh from the stranger. "It's well after hours. Theaters closed up for the night meaning so is the snack bar." she says still dabbing uselessly at her tearful eyes as she spoke.
"I think the owners would allow it" The teen waves off, but the dark-haired woman is already shaking her head tugging herself unsteady from her huddles placed on the back stairs.
I'm sorry i...t—th- This...this was a mistake" she says more to herself than to him as she gets shakily to her feet. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have- I should go."
She makes it clear to the already locked front doors before he unfreezes enough to call after her. "No wait, please."
Again, she shakes her head in continued denial, keeping her back to him as she attempts once again to run away.
"I know you." it wasn't a lie. Considering all this need to lie and hide for Alice he'd become quite adept at taking in everything about his surroundings.
She gives a fast gasp of her next breath at his words. "No, you don't."
"I saw you. I saw you at Colten's funeral." Elliott says "I saw you with….with." but he breaks off before uttering Alice's name as a crashing realization washes over him. "Holy smokes are you…."
"El please."
Well that all but confirmed it for him. "Kat?"
She turns slowly back around to face him. "I know, I know." She begins to ramble before Elliott can do more than gasp in surprise when his hunch actually proves right. "I know. I shouldn't have come that this is totally messed up and I may be risking some crazy time thing but I…. I just had to see you again."
"Wait does that mean…"
"No, God, no your still alive." The more adult Kat assures "I swear to you, yours still alive."
"Then why are you here?"
"Journalistic curiosity?" Kat offers with a small shrug of her shoulders.
"What?" Elliott asks with a rough cough of a laugh.
"Well, after a few weeks of you know licking my wounds after you broke things off with us which I get really I do, I remembered you told me that you were making a journal of sorts for keeping track of Alice's visits here to the past." Kat says now absently ringing out more of the dripping water from her hair "and I was reading through some of the entries."
"I showed it to you?" only able to remember much, much later the other much more bombshell information that had been slipped in the moment.
"It was one of the things you left behind after…." Kat hesitates to chew her lower lip in that pained, nervous way Elliott noticed her doing when something particularly upsetting happened to his best friend. "Anyway, after Dad's funeral, you stopped making entries."
"Didn't seem a point when Alice stopped popping up." The teenager defends now leaning against the broom he hadn't yet let go of as they talked.
"That's the thing El. You stopped making entries for Alice's visits, but you did make one last entry before completely ending the journal."
"About what?"
Kat shrugged "That's what I came to find out."
"Then what the hell kind of note did I leave if you tried to rip apart time just to see that it was?"
Again, Kat shakes her head in confusion. "I honestly don't know El, all it said was 'the answer' and a notation of the time, and what I uncoded later to be notes for a radio station channel then you just stopped writing."
"Not that finding any of that out actually helped much considering that all information on what the hell was playing for that channel was lost in a records fire before it could be digitized. Hence why yes call me curious but yes, it's why I'm risking ripping apart time just to find out."
"A radio station channel huh?" Elliot asks finally letting the broom handle drop from his fingers as he heads over to the powered-down snacks counter.
Kat nodes "Yeah."
"This one by chance?" the teenager asks after some rather expert spinning of the portable radio dials.
The opening notes for the song play out the same moment the set alarm on Kat's watch chirps out its warning.
"Moon River." Kat recognizes as the soft opening notes start to play around them.
"The one and only" Elliott nods in equal recognition. "Always thought this was a good song for a slow dance."
The blaring of the hotel alarm clock drags the sleeper back from his remembered dream as a groggy Elliot reaches blindly for the annoying thing.
Elliot jolts awake to the hazy memory of Kat- adult Kat, Alice's mother Kat, his Kat smiling through the new traces of tears in her eyes as her gaze peaks up to meet that of his more teenaged counterpart as she holds out her hand towards him.
"Elliot Augustine, may I have this dance?"
Without bothering to put his glasses back on the groggy man reaches blindly for his phone as the closing notes of the same song lingering in his mind plays out much more from the still-playing radio.
As he expected no one answered when he dialed his now ex's cell number, but Elliot tried again only a few moments after he first hung up the phone with an annoyed huff in frustration.
Again, no answer.
Even after only two calls he starts to feel like Kat the first time Alice had made her first ever trip to the Landry pond.
After the third time, however…..
"Hello?"
"Alice?"
"Mr. Augustine." Alice answers more along the lines of Agent Smith's cold. 'Mr. Anderson' greeting over the open line.
"I need to talk to your mother, is she around?" Elliot asks already guessing the answer.
"Obviously she doesn't want to talk to you." Alice answers "You did break her heart by ending things with her."
Elliot can only smile at the protective anger of her tone.
"Alice—"
"Goodbye, Elliot." His now former student says before the call ends.
And in his head another sadder "See you around, El." Like a haze in his mind as he lowers his phone from his ear turning to look into the now rain-splattered window glass of his hotel room like he was looking through a watered portal into the past.
His dance with Kat had just ended.
Kat even leaned in to give teen Elliot a very light kiss to his cheek before she stepped away completely as the song drew to it close.
"How does a dance answer your question?" Elliot remembers himself asking
"Not mine. Yours." Kat corrects with a smile. "you'll understand one day." She goes on with a sad smile.
Elliot would have pressed for more but the watch on Kat's wrist chimes again in warning.
"Gotta go." Kat sighs.
"Kat."
She shakes her head in denial. "See you around, El."
