"Have I ever made you jealous?"
Donald tensed under the blankets. Ten years of marriage, and Faye was still trying "to get to know him better." He turned toward her. The diffused light of halogen street lamps and late jetcars spilled from the window and made her face pale against her dark hair.
"No," he whispered. He knew where this would lead. He glanced over her shoulder at the clock. 11:30. Donald had an important appointment tomorrow, a meeting with a time travel agency. His head was full of marketing angles, and he didn't want to be bothered with intimate conversation.
"TimeCo: Bringing Home The Past." Not too bad, he thought. Still, time travel was expensive, something of an elitist pleasure. That pitch was a little too folksy.
"If You Had It To Do Over..." Hmm. A little better. Implied that what you did in the past actually made a difference in this life, even though in fact you could change nothing but that alternate life in whatever specific reality you visited.
How about "Did You Ever Wonder?" Yeah. Create a little element of the unknown, paint the travel client as a daring adventurer, maybe make--
"Really?" Faye's voice interrupted his brainstorming. "I've never made you jealous?"
Uh-oh. She sounded disappointed. Donald looked at her face. She was still beautiful, her skin untouched by age. Her eyes were bright and moist in the dim bedroom, and even though he couldn't make out the startling shades of hazel-fading-to-gold in her irises, he sighed with the remembered pleasure of looking into them. Her eyebrows were raised slightly in inquisition.
"No, you've never made me jealous," he said. He kept his voice quiet, even though they had half the entire seventh level to themselves. Donald made a good salary as an advertising rep. Not enough income to afford luxuries like time travel or a star-jaunter, but they were doing okay. At least they weren't crammed six-to-a-cubicle down on the first level.
"Not ever?" Faye asked. She hadn't blinked since beginning her interrogation.
"Why should I be jealous? I've always known you loved me." He shrugged an arm free of the blankets and reached it around her neck.
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