The Best Use of Time

"All right, so -- truth or dare, it's the turn of the extremely shy girl who doesn't really know anyone else there, who only is there because she has a huge secret crush on Raj Kapoor who is sitting four feet away from her, even though she doesn't know him at all and only sees him because they are both in Mr. Henderson's History class together, and Allison, the girl who's house it is, says to her 'truth or dare', and she's far too shy to ever pick 'dare' so she picks 'truth' and gets asked 'who is your secret crush' and absolutely panics because obviously she can't say 'Raj Kapoor' so she says the first thing which does come into her stupefied brain, which is "Mr. Henderson".

"Ouch!" said Nick, cringing a little.

"And, you know, gods love the man, I don't want to speak ill of him, but he was decidedly not a teacher that anyone was going to have a crush on. And someone starts laughing. And it's contagious, everyone is laughing, and it goes on and on, and it's so loud, and I hide my head in my hands, and I do my best to literally shrink and I want to run away but I can't make any of my muscles move and I'm thinking "crapcrapcrap undo that, undo that, no no nononono..." and then I get all dizzy, and it's like I'm falling except I'm not moving and...and then there's no laughter anymore, and I hear Allison say 'truth or dare' and a voice that I recognize as mine says 'dare', and she says 'go in the laundry room with Raj for three minutes and let him touch you above the waist however he likes', and..." she waved her hands mystically.

"Wait" Nick said. "You...what? You...went back in time? What!?" She nodded, face neutral. "How??"

Ariel shrugged. "Honestly, I don't know. That's what happened. I can't explain why it happened. I mean, I have some theories, but honestly I've no idea. And because of how intoxicating Raj was in the immediate aftermath, I didn't even try to explain it to myself right away, and then afterward, at first, I assumed I must have just imagined it."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but...are you sure you didn't imagine it?"

"Die Hard, Willow Street, Dr Cooper, you don't remember, pretty much any of the Marvel movies, tennis, you only felt up Brenda above her clothes, and 'I'm not telling you that!'."

"What?"

"Your favourite Christmas movie, the street you grew up on, your doctor, the name of your first grade teacher, a popular movie you don't like, a sport you have played a lot, you know, Brenda, and the first person to give you a blowjob. I asked you those questions, then rewound back to here to tell you the answers. Because it turns out I can do that -- 'rewinding', I call it. After it happened the first time, I worked out I could do it again, and, you know, with practice it gets easier." She held out her empty glass for a refill.

"That's...I can't..." He looked at her for a moment. "Ok. Wait." He took a deep breath. "Ask me again" he said, pouring her more wine.

"Oh, you are even more interesting than I thought! Greg!! Did you reciprocate?"

"Fuck!" he said, louder than he intended, putting the bottle down and grabbing his face in his hands. "I don't bel...fuuuck" he said more softly. "Nobody knows about that! I don't...have a better explanation for any of this than that you're telling the truth, but..."

"I hope you reciprocated, it's only polite" she said, smiling demurely. "Don't be embarrassed about it!"

"Could we focus on something a little more important?" he said, still looking confused.

Ariel grinned "Important by whose standard? I've known about my rewinding for years now, but I only just learned about the intriguing possibility that you..." she paused, and a few seconds later the waiter appeared behind her, asking whether they wanted another bottle. "Oh yes please" she said to him, before turning back to Nick and saying "sorry, first time around he showed up just as I said 'you might suck cock', and it turns out that embarrassed you!" She grinned.

Nick stared intently at the wall behind her for a few seconds. "Ok" he said "I believe you. Or at least, I am going to act as though I believe you, because I'm not sure I can really start 'believing' on cue. And" he swallowed "I have to admit it explains how you would know when a streak is about to start. You just sit at the table, looking for one, then when it has played out, you go back to the start".

"Yes", she said "and while I'm waiting for one, I keep letting my bets ride, so it doesn't look so odd when eventually that pays off. And so now we've gotten that out of the way, tell me, did you suck Greg off or not! Did you swallow? Have there been others?" She grinned teasingly at him. "Gods! It just occurred to me! You do like women, right?" She pushed the straps off both shoulders, her dress falling to her elbows. At his shocked expression she laughed and said "don't worry, no-one looks this way for four, three, two..." as she pulled her dress back into position.

Nick shook his head again to clear it, saying "Yes, absolutely! I said before, nice breast, turns out both of them, your nipples especially, and i am not answering any of those other questions! And!" he waggled his finger at her "You are not in the least shy anymore!"

Ariel laughed "Yes, it turns out being able to undo embarrassing moments gives you so much more self-confidence! Try something, if you don't like it, well, just go back! I was already a decent student at the time, but that made me so much more willing to speak up in class, that sort of thing? Yes, it did wonders for me!"

Nick laughed. "It must have made tests a lot simpler too!"

"You know, you'd think that, but less than you'd expect? Here's a thing -- I can't rewind past a point where I was not conscious -- asleep, I mean, but I assume it would apply to, oh anaesthesia or being knocked out or something. And -- this is tricky to explain, but -- it takes time to rewind? Effort? Like, you went to two high schools, Elgin Heights and Allenbrook because your parents moved when you were sixteen, their names are Jarek and Elaine, you don't have a strong opinion about Lady Gaga, and you still won't tell me anything about Greg.

Nick shook his head with a slight smile. "Quiz time again?" he said lightly.

She grinned. "well, yes, but my point is that it wasn't hard to come back a few minutes after asking you about those things. But we were a fair way into our conversation before I went back more or less to the start after deciding I was going to tell you and so that was a bit of an effort. And it would be much more - not exactly time-consuming, but sort of that? - to get back to, say, this morning. So it's not like I could read an exam question and then go back and become a lot more knowledgeable about, oh, the impacts of colonization! Maybe if I'd been taking math classes or something I could have just looked up the answers, but that's not how it worked out."

Nick laughed "I get that I shouldn't remember you asking me these questions, because, well, basically you didn't, right, but it still feels odd!"

"No, exactly, as far as I can tell no-one else detects it at all? I mean, sometimes my timing is off and I interrupt myself in the middle of a sentence, that sort of thing, which might seem odd to someone, but mostly? Yes, I just get to try things out, and if I like them, I lock them in, and if I don't, well -- rewind! Which is very handy in my profession, obviously, if we can call 'cheating at gambling' a profession!" She laughed. "But if it worries you that much, I'll ask you a question and then not jump back, so you'll remember! Ok?"

"Is it a question about Greg?" he said drily, holding her eyes with mock sternness.

She pursed her lips and looked sideways for a moment. "Well, not now it isn't, no!" She laughed.

He looked at her, mock distrust in his eyes and a slight smile on his lips. "Ok, go ahead then."

"Other than Greg, whose cock have you sucked?" She beamed at him.

Nick laughed " I knew it! You are completely hung up on that! I don't even remember telling you anything about that and yet I regret doing so!"

"I did say I am no longer shy! Because, let's be honest here, that greater confidence and adventurousness that comes from being able to rewind? Yeah, mostly that's about sex. I mean, realistically, that's how I have most made use of it! Wouldn't you? I mean, for example...ok, Alex? At the cottage? A couple of months later I was up there, and so was he, and we went out canoeing to this nearby island, and we were lying on the beach, and his couple of friends decided to go exploring. And Alex said to me -- it was a running joke, he said it all the time, he'd said it for years, obviously he really was hoping I'd do it but still he always said it as a joke -- he said 'ok, it's just us, you can go topless now!'

Nick grinnned. "I hope I see where this is going" he said.

Ariel smiled. "Probably yes and no? I mean, usually I'd just laugh, and this time I laughed. But I also thought, well why not, I can just rewind if I don't like it. And so I lay on my stomach, undid my top and slid it out from under me, then looked over at him and said 'can you put sunscreen on me?' Honestly, the astonishment in his eyes alone was worth it! He started rubbing it into my shoulders, and down my back and my sides, until eventually I just told him to wait a second, and then I rolled over onto my back. Then I stretched my arms out, crossed behind my head, which honestly makes me pretty flat-chested but he didn't seem to mind..." She raised her arms to illustrate the movement, her nipples dancing under the fabric "...then shut my eyes, and after a moment said to him 'well'?"

Nick grinned. "I'm guessing he understood that to be an invitation to keep rubbing sunscreen on you?"

"Oh yes!" Ariel laughed. "I'm pretty sure none of it got applied anywhere but my breasts, they were definitely well-protected from the sun. Have I mentioned how much I like having my breasts fondled? Yes, that turned out to be very nice, and I was not regretting my decision at all! In fact, well, eventually I said to him 'this is hardly fair, I took my top off and here's you still wearing your bathing suit.' He got the hint --"

Nick laughed "I'm not sure that 'get naked' is a 'hint'!"

Ariel smiled broadly. "Well, maybe not. But he did get naked! And -- I don't know whether this is surprising or not, but that was actually the first time, despite the rewinding, that I'd -- well, that I'd quite so personally encountered someone's penis. It was only a couple of months since Raj, and mostly, to be honest, I'd been letting guys feel me up then rewinding! So that was new and exciting, especially as he was absolutely so hard! He was trying to pretend like this was no big deal, but his cock was just twitching away! So finally I said to him -- gods I love this memory! -- I said 'we should make sure you don't burn', and I picked up the sunscreen."

Nick grinned appreciatively. "Ok, I'm jealous, and this is just a handjob!"

"And it was just a handjob, that's all I did" she continued "and my first one, but I count something less than a minute between putting my oiled up hand on his shaft and his cum shooting all over his stomach and chest as a successful trial effort! He seemed to think so, anyway." Ariel smiled again across the table, putting her glass down. She paused for a moment, for emphasis. "So, it turns out, did his two friends, who had arrived back at some point, which we found out when one of them said 'wow' as I was still stroking Alex's cock while it got softer."

"Ha!" said Nick. "So rewinding doesn't always protect you!"

Ariel grinned, replying "Well, it does and it doesn't. I was so shocked I almost rewound right away. But then I thought, ok, no rush, I can rewind whenever I want, and so, um...." Ariel dropped her eyes for a moment, then looked up at him, biting her lower lip "...and so I picked up the lotion, looked at them, and said 'anyone else?'" She laughed. "The answer turned out to be yes, so I lotioned up my hand again, and they both took longer than a minute, but still not very long! And by then Alex was hard again, and it seemed only fair to give him another go, and he lasted longer that time and didn't cum as much, but still, I was definitely left with the overall impression that handjobs are easy!" She laughed.

"Weren't you worried? Just you, three guys, isolated island -- that could go pretty wrong."

"I mean, it could? But I also had a good out, so I wasn't really worried. After Alex's second turn, it was more sort of -- awkward? -- than anything? None of us were really equipped with what to say to each other after that sort of encounter, and so I thought, well, good time to rewind! And so I focused, and went back to just before Alex's friends left for their hike."

"If only Alex knew what he'd missed out on!" laughed Nick.

"I think the afternoon wasn't a total waste for him?" She grinned. "They left, he said 'you can sunbathe topless now', and he didn't remember what had happened but I sure did, and I thought 'you know what?' and said to him 'can you hand me the sunscreen?' So I took off my top, rubbed sunscreen on my breasts, lay down on my back with my eyes closed and said 'make sure you tell me before they get back'. Nothing else happened, and he did warn me, and in the end I locked that in, because -- possibly you have worked this part out already -- it turns out I'm a bit of an exhibitionist!" She grinned, tugging her neckline open again for a moment.

"I had noticed. And I do have to admit that that's the most interesting 'first handjob' story I've ever heard" Nick said with a laugh. "Though to be fair it might also be the only one."

"Oh, that's not my first handjob!" Ariel said quickly.

"What? But I thought you said..."

She cut him off. "No, I didn't lock it in, you see. Those don't count. No, no, all my 'firsts', all my experiences, they're only the ones that, well, that, 'exist', you know, that are part of this, this, world, timeline, whatever. In the history of this world, those did not happen, so they couldn't be my first, could they."

"I...suppose?" Nick said. "I mean, you could see it that way, but -- it did happen, right? You did it!"

"Nope! I didn't do it. That's the point of rewinding! Think about it this way -- how many sexual partners do you think I've had?"

Nick laughed slightly, with a wry smile. "There's no timeline in which I see a good outcome from me answering that question to anyone! But contextually, you want me to suggest a high number, so, given that you could explore any passing whim you liked, purely for the sake of argument, let's say -- this isn't really a guess, I'm humouring you! -- let's say...a hundred?"

"Three people", she said.

"By which you mean only three people with whom you have later locked in the sex?

"Yes, but that's reasonable! Look, you could hire a private detective, you could interview every person I've ever spoken to, there could have been a drone following me around for my entire adult life, and all you'd discover is those three people. And, yes, there might be another hundred -- or, or so -- people that I personally recall, but in every important sense those things didn't happen!"

Nick looked contemplative, then said "I have a philosophical question for you. I'm going to assume those three people are ones you were in a relationship with. Did you - no offence, and feel free not to answer - but did you have sex -- sex which you didn't lock in -- with other people during those relationships?"

"Freebies, you mean? I call them freebies, not terribly original, but, you know, there's no chance of pregnancy or STIs, no risk of getting -- gasp! -- a 'reputation'" she grinned, "they are as consequence-free as you can possibly imagine, so - freebies". She smiled. "I see your point, if I didn't have freebie sex while in a relationship, that would suggest that I do see it as 'counting' in some way. But even so, I do think I have a point that sex I don't lock in, oh, you know, doesn't, doesn't go to my 'body count'! I'm willing to argue strenuously that I have never been gangbanged by six guys at once!"

Nick spluttered a little. "Really? I want to hear that one!" Ariel laughed "Actually, I was joking with that, I really haven't done that, not, not that I did it and didn't lock it in, I truly haven't done that!"

Nick made a quick face of mock disappointment, then grinned. "Ok, but are you just dodging my question on purpose?"

She smiled broadly. "Like you with my questions about Greg, you mean? Don't think I've forgotten!" She laughed. "Tell you what, ask me again later, ok? Nick nodded in agreement.

She continued "Besides, rewinding during sex in a relationship is already pretty great! You can make a blowjob amazing if you take someone right to the edge repeatedly before finally letting him cum, and what better way to work out exactly where the edge is than to go past it, swallow that mouthful, but then rewind to just before?" She smiled "Not to mention that swallowing cum is pretty fun all by itself, so, you know, if I can indulge myself a little, well why not? Or -- and this is really good -- you can be rubbing yourself while he straddles your face, and make sure the timing is exactly right so that you cum yourself just as you hear him groaning and feel him fill your mouth!"

She grinned impishly at him. "Or just more practical things, like, once Alex was thrusting so hard..."

"Alex?" he interrupted with a chuckle.

"Yes, Alex, we started going out that summer, and were together for a few years. So he did actually get my first handjob" she grinned "along with a lot of other firsts. I mean, I lost my virginity to him. Three times, actually, because the first time it really hurt so I thought we needed more foreplay and I rewound a couple of minutes and waited a bit longer but it still hurt, so I rewound again and waited even longer, and then I decided it just was going to hurt so I locked it in. But a later time, when he was thrusting so hard my head hit the headboard of his bed, yes I backed up from that one!" She laughed.

Nick looked thoughtful for a moment, and then asked "Did he know?"

"About the rewinding?" she replied. "No." She looked briefly glum. "I did try to tell him, a couple of times, but it always went sideways, and so I rewound out of it. Not just him, I tried telling all three of my partners, it never worked." She shrugged. "I've told other people. Most of the time they thought I was crazy. Sometimes they pretended I hadn't said anything. Sometimes they humoured me because they thought I was going to have sex with them." She grinned widely. "Which, to be fair, I was!"

"So how many people know about this" Nick asked, intrigued.

"Right now?" she said, "Hmm, let's see..." She held up her closed hand, extending one finger after another in turn, then doing the same on the other hand, pausing, then lowering each in turn till she had just one index finger raised, which she pointed at him. "You!" she said with a laugh.

He laughed. "Well, I'm honoured!"

She grinned "I don't mean to suggest you shouldn't be, but it turns out to be pretty simple to pick up freebies without mentioning it!"

"Really ", he said, raising his eyebrows in mock astonishment "You mean most people don't put 'must be able to warp the very fabric of reality' in their Tinder profile? I'm shocked!"

Ariel laughed. "Fine, mock me" she said "see where that gets you! But yes, mostly freebies are pretty simple to manage! Like, have you been to one of those 'all-inclusive' resorts? You know, with the buffets, the beach, the open bar, the balconies where you can sit naked pretending you don't know you are visible from the other side of the courtyard, all that?" Nick laughed at the last comment, but nodded.