an old guy he’s not bad.
Wait … if I was married to William McSnelly, then that would make me … Oh God, no!
Kelli McSnelly. Shoot me now . I didn’t end up with McDreamy or McSexy, uh-uh. I ended up with McSnelly, or McSmelly as the kids at school used to call him. Me included … and now I was Mrs McSmelly.
Like a wilting plant my body softened, my hand slid down the wall and the nightgown escaped my grip. Instead of landing on the floor, my butt landed sharply on the cold toilet seat, the shock of it interrupting my Oscar-worthy fainting episode and causing me to stand up suddenly. I could hear William talking outside the door and when he said goodbye to whoever he was speaking to, I quickly picked my nightgown up off the floor and fed my head and arms through it.
“Kel, what’s going on?” William re-entered the bathroom that was beginning to feel like a prison. A cruel, although seemingly sanitary prison with no towels and weird mirrors that made me look old.
All I could do was shake my head in disbelief, my body soon following suit. My hands trembled and my breath came in short gasps. “Where am I? Why do I look so old?” William touched his hand to my shoulder and I flinched, although his touch seemed strangely comforting. “I don’t understand. Yesterday I was young and happy and now I’m an old shuddering mess!”
“C’mon honey, you look great for your age. And you’re only fifty, don’t be so hard on yourself,” William said, rubbing my shoulder.
“Fifty?” I blurted, almost choking as the word launched from the slingshot of my voice box. “I’m not fifty! I’m supposed to be twenty five!” I shook his hand away from my shoulder and he dropped it to his side. “Why aren’t I twenty five?”
“Honey, it’s natural to feel emotional on a day like today. I mean who wouldn’t love to be twenty five again?” William smiled. “But you’re still beautiful and today’s going to be great, especially tonight’s party. Come seven o’clock our house will fill with all the important people in your life. You must be looking forward to that?” He lifted my chin with his finger and I reluctantly met his gaze.
Looking forward? I wanted to go backward! Back to my real life and my real self, where I was only twenty five and my stomach didn’t resemble my father’s beer belly. Soon they’d be calling me Kelli Jelly Belly McSmelly. Oh, how on Earth did this happen? What the hell was going on? I can’t take this anymore !
“Where’s Grant? I need Grant!” I said, shoving his hand away.
“Grant? Who’s … oh, surely you don’t mean Grant, your ex?”
“Yes. No! I mean, he’s not my ex!”
“Honey, you haven’t had anything to do with him since we started dating twenty five years ago.” William’s expression changed to a frown. “Or, have you?”
“Twenty five years ago? But Grant and I … we … he was supposed to propose to me on my birthday.”
“Kelli, you broke off your relationship with him, remember?”
“I did?” It’s quite possible I’d gone mad.
William nodded. “But I proposed and you said yes. And here we are, still happily married after almost a quarter of a century.”
Okay Kelli, just breathe. In … and … out. There had to be some explanation for all of this. Think! Maybe I’d had a bump to the head and have amnesia. That could be it. I’d simply lost all memories from the last twenty five years. Yes, I could have fallen in the bathroom and sustained a head injury. I did remember falling, although that was after I noticed I’d become old. Maybe it happened yesterday, as in my forty-nine-year-old yesterday and now I’d lost my memory. But my head didn’t hurt or anything.
I walked over to the dreaded mirror again, but failed to see any suspicious bruise or lump. It must have happened before. Maybe I woke up as my normal twenty-five-year-old self on my birthday and had some sort of accident then. And maybe William was the paramedic or