Teddy tore the bag off my casted arm as we devoured each other in hungry kisses. He squeezed my ass, pressing his body hard against mine. I backed him to my bedroom. Collapsing on top of him, I ground against him, pulling at his hair. The more I pulled, the more he moaned. He guided my head down his body, moaning louder as I took his dick in my mouth. We didn't have to be quiet here.

"It's been so long," he said, playing with my hair as I sucked his dick. Although I remembered him, my concept of time was skewed. If he said 'it's been so long,' I believed him. His legs fell to either side of him, allowing me full access. I squeezed some lube on my finger and circled it around his hole. He giggled, keeping his eyes on mine. "Oh, wow... what is that stuff?" he asked as I inserted the tip of my finger. I withdrew it and handed him the bottle of lube. "You can just go to any store and buy this?"

"Yes." I reinserted my finger, adding another. With my fingers inside him, I leaned forward, kissing him. He enjoyed it so much, he accidentally bit my bottom lip.

"Oops," he laughed.

I lathered my dick and slowly eased into him. "Oh, wow," he muttered, pinching my waist. He moaned and laughed at the same time against my lips. "I love 2023 sex."

With me inside him, I propped him up on my lap. He clung to me, hooking his ankles behind my back. "I can't wait to do this to you," he said. He pushed down hard as my hips shifted up. His body trembled as he cried out against my shoulder. He lay on his back, allowing me to hold his ankles as I thrust hard, finishing inside him. Teddy brought his toes to my mouth, encouraging me to suck them. As I nibbled his toe, rubbing his foot, I noticed his cheeks glisten with tears.

"Hey," I said. "What's wrong?"

Wiping his cheeks, he turned his head to the side, avoiding my eyes. "Sorry. I'm afraid that if I go to sleep, you won't be here when I wake up."

"I'll be here."

"I wanna believe that."

I got off him and lay beside him, draping an arm across his chest.

"I've never experienced anything quite like this," he said.

"We'll do it again. I'm not going anywhere. Are you hungry? We'll do Doordash."

"What's Doordash?

"It's a food delivery service. You order food online and someone delivers it to the house."

"Online? That's the internet thing, right?"

"Yeah."

Before the pizza showed up, Teddy shoveled the stairs and walkway, making it easier for both me and the driver.

Meanwhile, I explored Spotify, searching for music he'd enjoy, music from his generation. By the early forties, Glenn Miller had become popular, so I selected a Glenn Miller playlist.

In twenty minutes, Teddy returned with the pizza. He handed me the box so he could get some plates and Cokes from the fridge. "I love this refrigerator," he said, removing two cans of Coke. "Where's the can opener?"

"You don't need a can opener," I said, stifling a laugh. I realized Teddy had never seen tin cans with pull tabs before. I opened my can with a loud pop, demonstrating how to do it. He didn't act like someone who'd spent a month here in 2014. But, then again, he was living in a homeless shelter and neither of us remembered everything about our travels.

"I feel so stupid. There's a lot of things I don't remember from 2014... and my other trips weren't helpful."

"Where'd you go, anyway?" I asked. "I'm dying to know."

"Ireland 1848."

"Interesting. Millie said she went to Ireland in 1848."

"Yeah, well, I didn't see Millie there. After that, I got another chance... landed in Lowell in the 1830s. I worked in a cotton mill and stayed in a boarding house. The third time, I ended up here in front of Millie's house. She knew who I was right away, but I just thought she was a crazy old cat lady. Once I saw the family photos, I knew who she was."

"Third time's a charm, huh?"

"Yeah," he said with an uneasy laugh. "It doesn't seem right, though. George and Jimmy were already drafted. My number hadn't come up yet. My kid brother, Billy, was called up before me. He was barely eighteen, and I was thirty years old. Millie said they all came home, and everyone assumed I got killed on a beach in France. That was the plan... that I'd disappear and come here. In a way, I'd already said my goodbyes to everyone. If I stayed, I'd never make it home, anyway. I can't talk about that right now."

"You must be here for a reason, right?" I said.

"I don't know. I can't figure it out."

I turned on Spotify, tuning in to Glenn Miller. Spotify, like so many things, fascinated him. He didn't want to talk about his family, the war, or how he got here.

"You can listen to whatever you want?"

"Pretty much," I said.

He held the remote, toying with the volume. He snickered as he cranked it up, then down. "Play something modern," he said. "Something you like."

I selected Phoebe Bridgers. He leaned against me, listening to her soft melodies.

"I've lived in Massachusetts my entire life and I've never been to the ocean," he said sleepily.

"I'll take you."

"And I always wanted to go to Maine. I hear there are nice beaches there."

"I went to summer camp in Maine once. When the weather's warmer, we'll go."

"I'd like that," he yawned. Before he totally fell asleep, I walked him to the bedroom. We both undressed and fell asleep in each other's arms.

In the middle of the night, the pain in my arm woke me up, sweat dripping off my naked body. Teddy was gone, but his side of the bed was still warm. I followed the flickering light down the hall and into the living room. Teddy sat in the semi-dark with a blanket around him, surrounded by history books. I had a bookcase full of them. One book lay open in his lap. The TV was on, stuck on menu.

A half eaten chocolate bar lay on the coffee table beside an empty bag of chips and a pint of ice cream. Teddy found my special chocolate bar, not realizing it was special. Zoned out, he stared straight ahead at the TV. "Hey, there," I said.

"Hi. I can't figure out which button to press to get out of this," he said. "There are three changer things. I don't know which ones to use."

"You're high," I said, sitting beside him. "Next time you want chocolate, let me know. This isn't just any chocolate bar. It contains marijuana... Mary Jane... reefer. It's in the chocolate. Marijuana is legal in Massachusetts. One triangle is enough to get you high, and you ate half the bar. I'm surprised you're still awake."

"I can't sleep. I tried to get on that computer thing, but I don't know your password."

I sat beside him, removing the book from his lap. "It's better to read it in a book, anyway. You'll see a lot of disturbing things online."

"Like the Holocaust? That camp... it begins with an A... over a million Jews were killed there... gassed and burned in ovens." He spoke slowly, his speech slightly slurred, a sure sign he was high, but also distressed by what he read. "We knew what was going on, but we did nothing. And now Germany's our friend?" Teddy's mood turned somber.

"The camp is Auschwitz. It's been almost eighty years since the end of World War II, so things have changed. Japan's also an ally. It's Russia and China we have to worry about."

"The battle of Normandy is the turning point in the war, and I'm supposed to be there."

"But you're here, so maybe you're not supposed to be there. Anyway, you can't learn eighty years of history in one night stoned out of your mind."

He nodded, spooning ice cream into his mouth while I reached for my chocolate bar. I broke off a piece and popped it in my mouth. I hoped the chocolate would ease the pain. Once Teddy polished off the ice cream, he agreed to go back to bed. He fell asleep within minutes. I tossed and turned all night. The chocolate barely took the edge off.

***

At six in the morning, Teddy was still asleep, snoring into the pillow. I hated calling in sick, but I needed to get my arm checked out. To avoid a long wait, I wanted to get to urgent care when it opened at eight. Reluctant to leave Teddy alone, I dragged him out of bed at seven fifteen.

Before entering the urgent care center, I grabbed two face masks from the box outside the door. I handed one to Teddy, but he merely held it, distracted by the girl with a septum ring who reached for a mask. "Stop staring," I whispered. "And put the mask on."

"Why does that girl have a metal thing in her nose?" he asked, fumbling with the mask. "And why do we have to wear this? We're not going into surgery."

"It's a COVID precaution."

"Oh, yeah... COVID."

"And lots of people have piercings. You'll get used to it."

"People find that attractive?"

"They think it looks cool."

"It looks stupid."

In the waiting room, a man with long hair, matching long beard, and quarter-size plug earrings caught his attention. Teddy shifted uncomfortably in his seat, shoving his hands in his coat pockets. He reacted like a grandfather or some ultra-conservative. I found his reactions amusing.

As the nurse called my name, I grabbed Teddy's arm and dragged him into the exam room with me. If he kept staring at people, he'd get his face punched in.

The X-ray confirmed I had a broken wrist, and there was nothing they could do for me except give me a new, smaller cast, a prescription for Tramadol (a mild narcotic), and a referral to an orthopedic doctor. Based on my father's history, I chose not to fill the prescription, relying on Tylenol and special chocolate.

Instead of going home, I took Teddy for a drive up the Massachusetts coast. He'd never traveled on a highway before. In 2014, he stayed within the city's boundaries. In 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower signed legislation funding the construction of the U.S. Interstate Highway System, something Americans had dreamed of since the invention of cars. It's hard to imagine life before routes 495 and 95, the most traveled highways in Massachusetts.

"95 runs from Maine to Florida," I told Teddy as he stared out the window. "Crazy, huh?"

Teddy was speechless, maybe struggling to make sense of everything he was experiencing. His eyes widened as I pulled into a vacant parking lot in Salisbury. He didn't wait for me, running to the ocean, tripping once on the snow-covered sand. The wind nearly made him fall over again. On this cold, blustery day, we were the only ones out there.

"Thank you for taking me out here," he said. "It's freezing, though, isn't it?"

"It's February." With my arm around his waist, I held him to me as he gazed into the ocean. "I'll take you to Maine on a warmer day."

I'd never been with anyone like Teddy. At this point in my life, I realized that every man I'd dated was an asshole who treated me like shit because I believed I deserved to be treated that way. Teddy was different. Sometimes he didn't seem real.

"You're not like any other guy I've been with," I said. "You treat me like I matter."

"Everyone matters, and you matter the most."

I embraced him, planting a soft, lingering kiss on his mouth. "I love you," I said in his ear.

Smiling, he nodded, pulling away from me. We trudged through the snow, the sound of the waves crashing in the distance, our hands intertwined.

After our lengthy walk, we stopped at a Japanese restaurant on the way home. It was Teddy's first exposure to sushi. "Do I unroll it?" he asked, holding up a piece of the California roll.

"No. You eat it whole."

As soon as he stuck it in his mouth, he spit it into a napkin. "Sorry," he said. "Can I get something else?"

"Scallion pancakes are good... shrimp tempura's good, too."

He preferred the scallion pancakes over the shrimp tempura, but he ate both. He'd never had wasabi or soy sauce before, either. He didn't mind the soy sauce and was undecided on the wasabi.

Exhausted after a long day, Teddy plopped on the couch, inhaling and exhaling deeply. "Show me how to use this thing," he said, picking up one of the remote controls. "I wanna listen to music. My music."

Sitting beside him, I showed him how to access Spotify. "You hold this button and say what you want to listen to."

"The Andrews Sisters," he said, holding the microphone button on the remote. Teddy closed his eyes, leaning back, listening to the trio sing. As his knee bounced to the Andrews Sisters' 1940s swing, I opened a bottle of red wine a friend gave me for Christmas. I never liked drinking alone. Teddy opened his eyes, accepting the glass. He gulped it down before opening another history book.

"That's enough reading," I said, taking the book away from him. "I bet you never danced with another man."

"No," he said in bewilderment.

"Teach me how to jitterbug."

"Oh, no. I'm terrible at it."

"I bet you're not. You like dancing and singing."

"Just because I like it doesn't mean I'm good at it."

Clasping his hand, I hauled him to his feet. He rolled his eyes, nevertheless leading me in my first dance of Bei Mir Bist Du Schön. Within ten seconds, I stepped on his foot. "Let me lead," he laughed. There were no acrobats involved since neither Teddy nor I were athletically built or inclined. Teddy always said I was stronger than him, but he was the one who pinned me down on the bed. Then again, he had the fiery temper and I didn't. "Let's dance to something else," he said after I stepped on his foot one too many times.

Glenn Miller's Moonlight Serenade was a better choice for me, but at least we got a good laugh. He pressed his cheek against mine, placing his hand in the center of my back while I held his hand tight. Even though I couldn't see his face, I sensed his smile against my cheek. Teddy didn't want to stop after just one song. We danced for another five songs, dancing as if we'd never get the chance  to dance together again.

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