Chapter Fifteen: Stargazing
"Are you sure you know where you're going?" Angela asked, as Tony shifted back from fourth to third before squeezing around another twenty-mile-per-hour curve.
"Five more miles," he said. "I'm keeping an eye on the odometer." That only worried her more. The road was windy, and it was already dark.
"Can you slow down? I'm afraid I'm going to be sick," she warned.
"Yeah, sorry." Tony grabbed her wrist and slid his thumb a couple of inches up her inner arm, pressing firmly. "Keep doing that. It reduces nausea," he advised, downshifting again as they approached the next curve. Angela followed his instructions. "Switch sides," he said after a minute.
"It's helping. Where did you learn that?" she asked.
"On the road. You think jocks don't get carsick?"
"You're a font of knowledge," she joked. It was amazing that Tony's trick worked so well. For a moment, she thought of using it on the train, and then she remembered: there would be no train commute in the foreseeable future.
"I'm multi-faceted," he bragged. There was a lot of truth to the statement. He hoped to show her his worth beyond cooking and cleaning during their time in this alternate reality. They were already a good parenting team before the move. Now, he had started to forget which child was biologically his. Marie was still there, permanently alive in his memory, and Sam was looking more like her with every passing month. But Angela currently held the role of mother; he couldn't even say that was limited to Jess.
They pulled into the Vista Point parking lot, which was empty, and set the parking break. It was much darker up here, and they couldn't see the lake in the valley below at all. Tony had zipped the two sleeping bags together and jammed them behind the bench seat to maintain a bit of warmth. Before they reclined in the truck bed, he wanted to take Angela for a little hike.
"Come on. There's a bench down this trail, I think," he said, grabbing a flashlight and bottle of water.
"I don't want to get lost in the dark," she fretted.
"Less than a quarter mile. We'll be able to see the truck the whole time," he promised.
"Alright, I trust you," she said. "We wouldn't be able to do this in Connecticut," she said, subtly breaking character as they walked past the trailhead marker. "Not this time of year."
"We've only gone hiking once, Angela. I didn't think it was something you were interested in."
"I don't know, Tony. Maybe I'll be more outdoorsy now. It all depends on Jess."
"You know you still have free will, right? Not about everything, but things like this? You can choose. You're not being held hostage by her."
"It feels like it. I don't even know who she is, and I have to pretend to be her for God knows how long." Angela stumbled on a rock and steadied herself on Tony's arm. "Don't you feel trapped by Bobby?"
"To be honest, I feel freed by him. Sure, I've lost my baseball days, my Brooklyn roots, my van, but look what I've gained," he said, trailing off, but berating himself for not speaking the truth with more confidence.
"You could be charming your way into a different woman's bed every weekend if you were still Tony Micelli," she joked, challenging him to clarify his statement.
"I am still Tony Micelli, and, in case you haven't noticed, I don't want that anymore," he said seriously. They had reached the bench but remained standing. "You're still Angela Catherine Robinson. Angela Bower. Give me any name you want: Ingrid, Jess, I don't care. You're you, and you're the one I want to be with."
She felt her breath catch at his candor. "I don't know who I would be if this were really my life. How can you be so sure you'd like me if circumstances were different?"
"I just know. These feelings? They're not new. I've been falling for you for a while now. Why do you think I kissed you on your birthday?"
"I thought you said I kissed you," she teased, swatting him playfully.
"You did kiss me, baby," he said catching her in the same hold he had used in their kitchen. They recreated their first kiss as adults. It was twice as long as their childhood kiss and half as long as they wanted it to be. "Can I ask you something, Angela?"
"Yeah, Tony. Of course you can ," she answered, happy to remain in his arms.
"Why were you so sure we had had sex? You weren't even undressed. You had your nightgown on over your clothes."
"I guess it's because my head was pounding and my memories were so fuzzy, and because I thought if I ever got a chance to sleep with you, I would." She was past the point of hiding it. The confession felt good. Wonderful, actually. All the little lies were wearing her down.
"I'm sorry I rejected you in the motel," Tony blurted out.
"Which motel?" she asked with a bitter chuckle.
"The creepy one. At camp."
"Oh, so you're not sorry about rejecting me in Ohio, or Iowa, or wherever it was?"
"I don't regret that, but I feel bad if I hurt your feelings," he hedged.
"It's fine. I think you were right both times." Angela thought back to the last night in the motel. She had straight-up offered to have sex with Tony, out of a fear that he wouldn't enjoy it. She wanted to give him one last chance to be rid of her. When he turned her down, she began to plead with him, telling him that she didn't know how they could pretend to be married with children if they weren't sure of their sexual compatibility.
"I'm more sure than ever that we're going to have mind-blowing sex," he told her with a shy smile. It was a variation of what he'd told her in Toledo.
"And I'm glad that we had that night to appreciate being just friends before things changed," she admitted.
"You know, if we had done it at camp, it would have been a one-time thing. We would have had to pretend it never happened and try to move on knowing what it was like to be together," he said.
"Because there was no way for the two of us to have a relationship back home," she continued.
"Yeah, I wanted it, but I didn't know how to begin to make it work."
"I wished that you were bad enough at your job that I could fire you and ask you out," she laughed.
"I bought a few lottery tickets. If I won, my plan was to buy a house in the neighborhood and go back to college," he told her.
"If we get to go home, it's going to feel like winning the lottery," she said.
"You do realize, I'm not going to be able to give this up," he said, tilting his head and pressing his lips to hers. She poured her answer into the kiss, hoping he would understand how powerless she was to break their bond.
After several minutes of making out, the two decided to fulfill the stated purpose of their little road trip. Tony straddled the bench and allowed Angela to lean back against him. He had memorized a few points from the night sky chart. "There's Venus, and there's Jupiter," he said, pointing up.
"That's the Big Dipper, isn't it?" she asked.
"Yeah, so if you follow the edge of the ladle, that should be Polaris," he said.
"I am constant as the Northern Star, of whose true fixed and resting quality, there is no fellow in the firmament," Angela recited.
"The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks. They are all fire, and every one doth shine, but there's but one in all doth hold his place," Tony continued. Angela sat up and turned in surprise. "Julius Caesar. One of my favorites," he explained. "Of course, A Midsummer Night's Dream is up there, too."
"You should have been an English teacher," she said in awe.
"I would have liked that," he agreed. "Do you want to go back to the truck and see what else is visible with the binoculars? I brought hot cocoa."
"It is getting cold out here," she replied, getting up and extending her hand to help him. He used it to pull her into another kiss. Halfway up the trail, she stopped him. "Tony, I'm having a really good time. Thank you for taking me out."
"I'm having a good time, too, Angela," he said. "We should do it again."
"Like dating?" she asked.
"Yeah. Like dating. Let's not worry so much about Bobby and Jess. They're already married. We still have things to discover about each other," he said.
"So maybe we shouldn't rush into a physical relationship?"
"I think we should move at our own pace instead of using them as a shortcut."
"That makes a lot of sense, Tony, but I don't think I can go back."
"Oh, I definitely want to keep touching your boobs," he said lightly, getting a sweet smile in return.
They reached the lone vehicle after only a few minutes and climbed into the cab to share a thermos lid cup full of hot cocoa. Then Tony pulled the double sleeping bag out and handed Angela the binoculars. He helped her up into the truck bed and they resumed their half-reclined position from the bench, trading the binoculars back and forth. Neither of them could see much beyond what they had named from the bench, and they resorted to passionately necking in the bed of the truck.
A/N: See M-rated story "Bobby and Jess Take Things Further" "Chapter One: First Date" for the rest of the evening or feel free to skip it. No important plot details will reside in the M-rated chapters of this story.