What Could Have Been

But his orgasm hit him hard, a beat sooner than he expected. He withdrew as quickly as he could, but he knew it wasn't quite quick enough. The first pulse of his release came as he was withdrawing from her. Some of his milky seed spilled onto the smooth skin of her stomach, but he knew he'd left some inside her.

"Shit. I think I...I think a bit got inside," he said.

"Yup," she said knowingly. She must have felt it. He was ashamed, and freaking out.

They lay there side by side, naked and cooling down, suddenly interrupted. Eric felt awful.

"Are you gonna be okay?" he asked.

"Um...we'll see, I guess," she replied.

"I'm sorry," he said. He heard the disappointment in her tone. Beyond what had just happened, he knew she also hadn't had a chance to cum yet. "Hey, do you want me to..." He slid his hand down her thigh.

"No, forget it," she said, wiping herself clean.

Eric remembered the call he got at college. Angie telling him she was pregnant. She wasn't entirely happy about it, but she clearly didn't see it like he did. To her, it was just a thing that had happened to her, not a mistake to be undone. They tried to talk about it, but they couldn't agree on anything. He couldn't understand why she wouldn't just end the pregnancy, but it seemed more and more like she was going to keep the baby. She was already talking about dropping out of college, moving back home.

This happened just as Eric was trying to hook up with other girls at his college. It felt like Angie was trying to claw him back to her. She said she was ready to be a single parent, if that was what it would take. She wasn't demanding anything specific from him, but he knew what was expected if she had his baby. He didn't want to be a father. He didn't want the rest of his life to suddenly change. The more he stewed on it, the more determined he ended up, to not give in. To try to carry on untouched by this whole tawdry affair as much as he could. He told her he'd fund the child's upbringing as much as he could, but that was it. He stayed at his first job out of college mostly because he had to keep sending checks to Angie for Tim.

From then on, Eric always felt betrayed by her, suspicious of her motives. When she was kind to him, he thought she was trying to manipulate him. Even as he got to know Tim, and came to value spending time with his son, he could never forgive Angie for having him.

Now Eric got up from the bed. His mind had two sets of memories for the past twenty years, and he was struggling to sort them out from each other, and not let these new memories clobber his own. He couldn't help but look upon what he'd just done through the eyes of this world's Eric. Cynically, he thought Angie had seduced him, and gotten what she wanted from him again. He'd be paying the costs of another child for decades to come.

At the same time, Eric didn't entirely buy into the sinister interpretation. Angie was beautiful and sexy and fit, and a pleasure to be around. She had matured into an elegant woman with talents and compassion. Why couldn't this world's Eric see all that in her? It made him sick with worry that after he left, Eric wouldn't want to be involved anymore. But there was nothing he could do about that.

He still had the watch on his wrist. Part of him wanted to stay, and make love to Angie all over again, all night long. To be with her in the morning. But now he had the other Eric's memories in his head, clouding his view of her.

Eric wanted to see what the other paths his life could have taken. He wasn't ready to return to where he started. He wound the watch another second forward.

As soon as the watch hand clicked into place, Eric was transported. He was lying in bed, in the dark, just roused from his sleep. The air was humid, but cool. There was a woman in bed with him, snoring softly. Through an open window, he could hear a chorus of insects, and a highway somewhere in the distance.

The breeze shifted, lifting the window curtain aside and casting moonlight on the bed. It was Angie asleep next to him, but a different Angie from either of the others he knew. Her cheeks were plumper. Her hair was red and curled at it splayed across the pillow.

Then he heard a cry from the corner, barely more than a whimper. There was a cradle there. Already awake, Eric got up to check it out. In the cradle was an infant in a onesie. Starting to get hungry, but not yet crying at full throttle. Was this his and Angie's? he wondered.

Eric picked up the child. It felt awkward and lumpy but warm in his arms. He carried it out of the room, in search of milk.

The house was big. There were several bedroom doors in a row, left just barely ajar. Behind each one, Eric heard the whisper of sleeping breath. He couldn't be sure how many kids there were here. Along the hallway, Eric found photos of him and Angie posed together. In each one, her arms were cradling her pregnant belly. But they were wearing different clothes in each one, different hair styles. In some of the photos, they looked younger, in some older.

Carrying the baby, Eric found his way down to the kitchen. There was a bottle of milk ready to go in the fridge. He didn't quite know what he was doing, but he managed to feed the baby enough to satisfy it for now. He carried it back upstairs and laid it back down in its cradle.

His mind was racing, trying to catch up with everything that had happened in this timeline. He and Angie had kids. Not just one. Maybe several.

He lay back down in bed, but he didn't feel sleepy. Wrapping an arm around Angie from behind, he drew her close. She smelled warm and sweet and a little cheesy. His hand brushed past her breast, and she gasped a little. She wasn't completely asleep either. He couldn't resist, and brought his lips to her neck, prompting her to writhe in his embrace. She pressed herself back at him, where she no doubt felt his hardness pressing against her.

She reached behind her, drawing him closer. Eric remembered just having made love to Angie in another reality, and feeling drained from it. Here he felt just the opposite. It took only a moment for both of them to slip out of their bed clothes.

With his hands, he traced her curves all over again. The shape of her was different here. Her breasts were larger. Her hips and thighs were thicker. She had more padding on her belly. She was becoming aroused even more easily.

Lifting a leg, she guided the tip of him to her vulva from behind. He could feel her quickly becoming sopping wet, as he edged himself into her. Everything inside her welcomed him, pulling him deeper, until his hips were nestled against the back of hers.

It felt like they fit together perfectly, from years of practice, their bodies shaping themselves to be perfect complements to each other. He wanted to just lie there and enjoy it for a moment, rocking subtly, gently forward and back. But she had other ideas, other needs.

She pulled herself away and rolled towards him. In one swift move, she rolled him onto his back and straddled his waist. With her hand, she guided him easily back into herself, letting her crotch come to rest on his. Then she started to roll her hips back and forth, pressing her clit against him.

He reached up, sliding a hand across her belly--the belly that had apparently given life to several offspring already--to her breasts, breasts that they had all suckled at. He had never seen Angie like this, never imagined her like this.

Even though she was clearly focused on her pleasure, she was working him expertly, her muscles gripping, squeezing him. He could tell by her smile in the moonlight that she knew exactly what she was doing to him.

"Gettin' close, hon?" she asked. In this reality, she had picked up a little of a rural drawl. She kept her voice low enough not to wake the others.

"Mm. Can't you tell?" he asked. It was already a struggle to focus.

"What do you think, should we go for an even dozen?" she asked.

"Huh?" he asked. It was a struggle to follow her words, when her body was speaking to his so loud and clear.

"My cycle just started back up, and the timing's just about right. If I've got one more in me..."

Eric was trying to catch up. Eleven children already? And she was saying tonight could make their twelfth.

"Oh my god," he said.

"I know," she said. "Well? What are you waiting for? Do I have to beg you to knock me up again?"

She was right, of course. She knew as much about how his body responded as he did. He couldn't hold back any longer. And he didn't feel conflicted about it, because he had a pretty good idea what this world's Eric would do.

As he swelled up inside of her, she must have felt it, must have known exactly what it meant. She bent down, smothering his rapid breaths with a kiss, the muscles of her thighs tightening around his waist. They had clearly done this dance many times before.

His seed shot up into her. It was like that was what her body was waiting for. Now it was her own moans she was stifling with their kiss. Her vaginal walls contracted around him, drawing more of his seed out of him and up into herself. Together they formed a well-running machine with a mind of its own. It was all Eric could do to hold on and ride out their shared orgasm, as their genetic material fervently combined itself yet expertly again.

"That ought to do it, don't you think?" she asked afterwards.

"If that didn't, I don't know what would," he replied. "Though maybe we shouldn't assume."

But his body was flooding with peace and euphoria and exhaustion.

"I love you," he said. They kissed again before he drifted to sleep, cuddling against her again.

When he awoke in the morning, he could hear footsteps in the hallway, running water from the bathrooms, and the clatter of bowls and spoons from downstairs. The whole house was alive with their progeny.

Before he could get up to start the day, this Eric's memories came flooding in. Now that night in the van played out completely differently.

The two teenagers rutted against each other, tentatively, awkwardly. Eric knew it was a risk to be doing this without protection. He was counting down the seconds before he'd have to pull out, but his instincts were telling him not to.

He stopped himself before it was too late, and took a breath to steady himself, though he could still feel the heat of her all around him. He could feel her body yearning to go on.

"I might be about to cum," he warned her.

"Okay," she said.

"...Okay?" he asked, starting to move again.

She just nodded her head, biting her lip. "Me too."

She let out a cry every time he pressed into her, whether it was because he was reaching somewhere deep within her that no one ever had, or because he was doing something right despite his inexperience.

"Are you sure?" he asked. He was at a point where he needed an answer and knew he might not get a chance to ask again.

"Don't stop," she said.

Every nerve ending in his body was lighting up with new sensations. He knew what was imminent, even if he could tell this particular orgasm was going to be different from anything he'd ever felt before. It felt like a wave cresting impossibly high before it hit the shore.

He couldn't be sure what drove him now, whether it was his own pursuit of pleasure, or some instinct eons older than himself. He gripped her hips hard to himself, pushing deeper into her, holding himself there with all his strength. She likewise clung to him with a whimper.

"Oh Angie," he moaned, through choked breaths.

Seed erupted from him, flooding her recesses warming her interior. It set off her orgasm suddenly and unexpectedly. Her slender teenage body writhed in his grasp, something inside her working hard at its primal design.

"Oh my god," she gasped in his ear.

He could feel the throes of her passion, and it took him to new, uncharted heights, propelling more of him into her, hard enough to make her feel it again, that sensation she never knew she needed.

By the end, they were sweaty and sore and breathless.

"You wanted to know if we were sexually compatible?" he asked with a smile, and kissed her again.

He wanted to go again, but they both knew there wasn't time before they'd be missed.

When Eric went off to college, he couldn't stop thinking about that night, about Angie, about what their bodies achieved together. It was still on Eric's mind weeks later, when he got the call from her, telling him she got pregnant that night. He rushed home from college to be with her again, to make love to her again. They both marveled at the spark of life that their glorious ecstasy had planted inside her.

Eric and Angie both dropped out of college after a semester, got married before the baby came, and moved in together as soon as they could. Their parents were supportive, as much as they could be. Eric was still a little skeptical about the whole thing until he got to hold baby Tim in his arms.

Not long after the baby, Angie told Eric that she was probably fertile again. Eric tried to be more cautious, tried to temper his desires for his wife, but ultimately neither of them could think straight. Not when they were overwhelmed with desire to experience that magical moment again.

So it went, every year or two, over the next couple of decades. They found that they loved conceiving, they loved having kids, they loved raising their kids, and they loved it when Angie was pregnant, which was often. They decided they weren't going to stop for anything. They weren't quite sure they could have. And they loved their kids, from the day they were born, to the adults they became.

Angie became a stay-at-home mom, though she also picked up some part time work when she could. Eric became a freelance handyman. He could take on more work when the bills piled up, and less work when he could help with the kids more.

By now there were eleven offspring. Two at college already. A third staying with those two, to go to a magnet high school in the city. Two of the kids were staying with Eric's parents. One with Angie's parents. That left a slightly-more-manageable five kids at home, in their big house out in the country, where land was cheaper. Including baby Elijah in the cradle. The older kids helped with the younger ones. Now there might be a twelfth on the way.

It had been an eventful twenty years since this Eric's path diverged, and Eric had even more trouble keeping his memories straight, when they were now jumbled up with so many new names and faces and first steps and baby teeth.

As much as he wanted to meet them all, and feel Eric's love for them firsthand, Eric knew this wasn't really his life. He was just visiting, and the more attached he got, the harder it would be to leave. He was already stealing precious moments from the Eric who lived here. He didn't belong here. Besides, he felt like he had unresolved business of his own, back in the reality where he started. He had to get back there while he still could.

He wound the watch two seconds back, to the way it had first been set. He was suddenly alone in his apartment. In contrast to the family home, it was completely silent. He was dressed for the work day, just lingering over his morning coffee before he went out. In his absence, it seemed like he had just been going about his routine.

The watch was still on his wrist, with all of the possibilities it represented. He'd have to turn it back into the laboratory, and report what he saw. But first, he looked Angie up on social media, looked at her hiking pics again. No one else in the picture. What if she was waiting for him still? What if they could start over?

After all, who she was in this reality was different from the other Angies he'd seen, but he found himself attracted to this Angie too. Sure, it was overlaid with two other sets of memories of her now. She wouldn't know him like he already knew her, but he had to keep reminding himself that the Angie he knew so intimately wasn't this one. But he was starting to think he could love her no matter what path she chose for herself. The truth was that she had never been far from his mind, wondering what could have happened if their lives hadn't led them apart. Now he knew.

Before he could second-guess himself, he found her number. The same one she'd had all those years ago. Miraculously, she picked up.

"Hey, Eric," she said, as if it hadn't been twenty years since they spoke.

"Angie. Hey. This might be random, but I was going to be in your area next weekend."

"Really? What for?" she asked.

"Pfft" he stumbled. He didn't want to say he was just passing through. Or that he would go all that way just to see her, though it was true. "I'm thinking of moving, actually. Anyway, I was wondering if you'd like to get some coffee together and catch up?"

He felt as giddy and nervous as he had when he first asked her out, as a virgin teenager.

"Huh," she said, surprised. "Sure. Yeah. I'd like that." He could hear her smiling.

Eric wasn't sure where his path went from here. Maybe up a mountain with Angie and her dog. Maybe uprooting his career and moving to North Carolina. But he knew he had to take whatever chance he had.