A few days before the trip to the Maldives, Tam was preparing to leave work for the evening when Goldie stopped her. "I need a mani-pedi." She waved her perfect nails in front of Tam. "I would ask you to come with me, but I already know you'll say no."

"Sorry, but I'm going to meet up with my sister tonight. We don't see each other that often."

"Family is important," Goldie said. "Aren't you curious how I knew you would say no though?"

"Because you guessed?"

"I didn't need to guess. I remembered this conversation before it took place. I know how it will end and it won't be you going with me, which is a real shame because I would have paid."

"What do you mean you remembered? Like, déjà vu?"

Goldie scrunched up her nose. "I don't like that term. It's dismissive. Everyone gets déjà vu and it's regarded as this vague feeling—practically imaginary. What I experience—how I see the end of things and work my way back—it's because I'm a time traveler."

"Okay, sure. You're a time traveler."

"I'm serious. You don't know what version of me you're talking to right now. I could be the Goldie from this afternoon or from tomorrow. Time doesn't always work how you expect it to."

"So, if you're Goldie from tomorrow, what's going to happen tonight? Who will win the baseball game? What topics will trend?"

"Be careful, Tamara. Tonight. Every night. I would tell you to trust no one, but that wouldn't be good advice. We all need to trust someone; the challenge is figuring out who that someone should be. So, consider who to trust with caution. Sometimes the most reliable people are the ones you don't realize are on your side."

"Are you on my side? Whatever that means." She laughed. The entire conversation was so absurd. How Goldie managed to keep a straight face, she had no idea.

"That's enough advice from future Goldie for you, so off you go." She shoed Tam out the door. "See you in the morning. I ordered something special for you. I hope you'll like it."

#

Tam taped closed another box and set it in the corner. Amazing that for such a small space, she'd accumulated so much stuff. She'd begun unloading books from her bookshelf when her buzzer rang.

After a moment of deliberation, she let Jasper in.

He glanced at her collection of cardboard boxes. "Are you moving?"

She nodded. "People have begun to figure out I live here. Everyone's been nice, so far. Most are apologetic, or they're hoping I'll tell them some juicy detail not known publicly. Several asked specifically about you and how the sex was. It's... it's a bit much."

"The sex or the people harassing you?"

"You know what I'm talking about. I need to move, to start over. Besides, I wanted a space a bit bigger, so I found a one bedroom. For my sister. I'll still be sleeping in my living room so not everything will be different."

"Your sister?"

"I'm working on getting legal custody."

He nodded. "I could help you. With all the boxes, I mean."

She tossed one of her old textbooks into her give-away pile. "Why are you here, Jasper? It's been over a month. I've texted, I've called. Nothing."

"I wasn't..." He looked up towards the ceiling, then brought his gaze back to her. "I couldn't deal with it all. My own father murdered one of the people I love most."

"And your secret half-sister tried to frame me to help him get away with it."

"That too. Why did she never come to me? I could have helped her. She didn't have to throw away her life for Paul DeAngelis' approval. If she'd understood him better, she'd have realized she was never going to get that from him, no matter what she did."

"I take it she's still a missing person?"

"No sign of her. If Paul has any idea where she fled to, he won't say."

Tam's theory was that he'd funded her freedom, but there was no sense in stirring the pot with that information now. "How's Becca?"

"She's still on a retreat up north. It involves healing crystals and gongs and that's the extent of my knowledge. Not sure when she'll return, if ever. Before she left, she dropped Bailey Boo off at my place saying she couldn't deal with his trauma in addition to her own. That's probably true, but it felt like she was writing off both of us." He picked up a tape gun and began securing a box she hadn't finished filling. "Bailey Boo was almost as fond of you as he was of Goldie but me, he just tolerates. He likes my yard, and has quite the crush on the neighbor's chihuahua."

"Jasper," she took the tape gun from him and set it on top of a box. "I gave you space. I gave you time. I'm trying not to be petty about it because honestly, you left me to pick up the pieces all by myself."

"It seems you managed. I heard you got a new job. Production assistant, right?"

"It's a good position, a way forward. I'm happy there, so far. But, Jasper, the fact that I managed despite your absence...that's the point. You were my one true ally through that whole nightmare, but you wouldn't allow me to be the same for you."

He turned away. "I didn't deserve your support."

"If that's what you believe, then why are you here?" she asked. "If it's only to tell me you don't want me in your life anymore, your absence this past month already said as much. I don't need a slap in the face too."

"That's not what I'm saying, Tam."

She held her breath as he reversed course, grabbing onto her hands., warm palms melded against her own. "Are we back to that point where we keep fighting because every signal we send each other gets crossed?"

"Come out with it then, Jasper! I've been in limbo, and I'm sick of it. Before I can move on, I need to know where I stand."

"You're standing right here." He lowered his forehead so that it touched the top of her head.

She breathed in a wilderness. A fallen cedar. A campfire in the morning, the last bit of ash alighting on the wind at the first rays of dawn.

"I had to get my head on straight, and when I did, I realized I needed you. Move on, Tam, but take me with you."

She lifted her chin. "The most reliable people are the ones you don't realize are on your side."

"What?"

"It's something Goldie once told me. Sometimes, I can almost believe she really was a time traveler like she imagined herself to be, stretching her mind into the future to see what would happen. She was comfortable in a time that didn't exist yet, but it was the present that she struggled with. I like to imagine that she saw us—you and me, in the end. And her whole ridiculous hook-up in the Maldives, it was all because she'd already seen this moment."

"And then she worked time backwards and made it happen."

"That's how I chose to remember her now." Tam leaned in towards him. "She influenced so much more than the most popular shade of lipstick. We're proof of that. All these lives woven into her life and her death. And our life, our future." Goldie hadn't saved herself, but she'd managed to save them.

"This is the end then," he said. "The end Goldie saw."

"Maybe so, but we don't have her vision anymore." She met his waiting lips with her own as he slid his arm around to her back, pulling her close. "Whatever's beyond this point, Jasper, it's up to us to find out what it will be."

The End

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Thank you for reading INFLUENCE! Your support means the world to me! I got quite attached to these characters and I hope you did too. I made the decision early on when writing this, that Tam and Jasper would, in the style of classic film noir, get their chance to walk off into the sunset. But they wouldn't go unscathed. Whatever happens next for them, they will carry the events of this story with them forever.

Thank you again, and while you're here, be sure to check out my profile for more of my stories.

XOXOXO