Part 1Weeds Toward the Sun

I never thought it was possible to travel through time, to leap ten years into the future.

But here I am. Thirty years old, stripped of all dignity in the dead of night, clinging to my husband's body like some shameless woman, begging him to make love to me.

“Curtis, please… just give me a child.”

He shoved me away, his voice cold and distant.

“Not tonight, Jena. Ava is only twenty. She’s sick, and I promised her brother I’d take care of her.”

The thirty-year-old me might have accepted this. But the twenty-year-old me? Never.

I threw the divorce papers at him.

“Let’s get a divorce. You like them young? Fine. But you don’t deserve me.”

* * *

The moment Curtis pushed me away, my soul was ripped from its thirty-year-old vessel and then violently shoved back in.

I was twenty again, trapped in a thirty-year-old’s body. There were fine lines around my eyes, but the eyes themselves burned with the clear, bright fire of my youth.

He was about to leave. My voice, as cold as ice, stopped him.

“Wait.”

Curtis paused, his impatience a palpable thing in the room. “Jena, are you done? Ava’s brother died for me. She’s just a kid, and she’s running a 102-degree fever. You think I shouldn’t go?” He scoffed. “There’s a limit to your jealousy, you know.”

“I’m not stopping you,” I said, my voice flat and emotionless. “But let’s get a divorce.”

The words came out before I could even think. I didn't know how I'd time-traveled, but the twenty-year-old me would never tolerate a husband with such blurred boundaries. I wouldn't swallow my pride and suffer in silence. The thirty-year-old me might have been weighed down by a decade of compromises, but the twenty-year-old me had nothing to lose and all the courage in the world to start over.

Curtis’s hand, which had been adjusting his shirt, froze. A look of disbelief, then amusement, crossed his face. “Jena, have you lost your mind?”

I frowned. “Why do you assume I’m throwing a tantrum? He saved your life, yes. If you feel you owe him, then pay that debt with your own life, but don’t you dare drag me into it.”

He sneered. “So, just because I won’t sleep with you tonight, you want a divorce? Jena, don’t be so ungrateful.”

“Ungrateful?” I stood up straighter, my voice firm and serious. “It’s precisely because I’m not content. You can’t fulfill the basic needs of a partner, so what’s wrong with me wanting a divorce?”

For the twenty-year-old me, even granting him this much of an explanation was a monumental effort. The thirty-year-old Curtis demanded far too much.

“A divorce?” He still didn’t believe me. “Jena, can you please be reasonable for once? Now you’re resorting to threats? I don’t want to hear this kind of talk from you ever again.”

As if on cue, his phone rang again. He answered it, his voice instantly melting into a gentle murmur, a stark contrast to the harsh tone he used with me.

“Ava, I’m on my way.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” I said, stepping in front of him, blocking his path. “We haven’t finished talking.”

The thirty-year-old me loved this man. But the twenty-year-old me? I didn’t know him at all.

He glared at me, a silent warning in his eyes. “Don’t push me, Jena. If anything happens to Ava because of this delay, I swear, you and I are finished.”

I met his gaze without flinching. “Don’t worry, nothing will happen to her. But you’re not going to delay me, either. If you have no objections, my lawyer will be in touch tomorrow.”

“Do whatever you want,” he spat, slamming the door behind him.

He was so certain I wouldn’t go through with it. He thought he had clipped my wings so thoroughly that I wouldn’t dare to fly.

This time, he was wrong.

After he left, I stumbled to the bathroom, still reeling from the impossible reality of time travel. The woman in the mirror was both familiar and a stranger. It was me, but not me. The corners of her eyes were etched with the passage of time, her skin no longer holding the tight, radiant glow of my twenties.

A thirty-year-old woman. No job. No identity of her own. Pathetically hoping a child could solidify her position and hold onto a man whose heart had long since strayed.

It was laughable. Utterly, tragically laughable.