I was disgusted. Obviously.
But I couldn't let him get to me. Even though Ashley had decided to ruin my backpack, I just couldn't let him hurt me inside. This was one problem I could fix with a stern glint in my eye, toughness in my soul, and a lot of soap and scrubbing.
At least, that was what I had planned to do.
Back at home, I set my bag out on my bedroom floor, tore up the note Ashley had written, and threw it in my bin.
Then I got to work on the gummy mass that lay clinging to the inside of my bag. It was a lot harder to disentangle the half-chewed mess than I had originally thought, and it took 15 minutes just to scrape most of it off with my fingernails.
I was left clutching a ball of sticky gum-clump.
And that was when whatever thing that controls the universe was like, "let's send her, and her gross ball of gum, back to 1970 again! That'll be good fun!"
Firstly: it was not fun.
Secondly: I swear, I should file a formal complaint to someone.
I mean, come on! Me and the gumball get hitched back to 1970?
***
I arrived in front of a door to a pub, probably some time in the middle of the night. There was a loud buzz coming from it, shouts and music too, but I wasn't really focused on that.
I was more focused on the rock god who stumbled out the door that moment.
His long tendrils were slightly knotted, and he seemed a little dazed. Make that more than a little dazed: closer towards drunk.
There were barely two seconds from when he stumbled through the door to the time he tripped and fell: onto me.
We cascaded through the air and, luckily,
landed onto the grass beside the pub instead of the concrete sidewalk.
It had hurt, a bit, but I didn't really care so much. I cared more about the man sprawled next to me, who was grinning with his crooked teeth.
He lay there in a drunken stupor for a few minutes, and he seemed to be off in another world.
I took the moment to try and discreetly scrape the gum off my hand and onto the grass beside me. It wouldn't budge.
The sticky mess was still there when he snapped back to reality and we made eye contact. It was like the recognition of me had knocked some sense into him.
"Florence?" He said, still a bit tipsy.
I replied, "Hey, David. How are you? You seem a little..."
"Drunk? No... I would never..." He gave me a mischievous wink.
At this point, I was still trying to scrape the gum onto the floor beside me, and he looked at me confusedly.
I was rather embarrassed, so I just started to stand up, and he followed.
Once we had both straightened ourselves up, and picked the grass from our clothes, David was the first to say anything next.
"Florence. You're here... I never thought I would see you again... Surely it isn't just coincidence us bumping into each other."
At this point, I had given up with the gum, and just put my sticky hand behind me, trying to act casual and continue the conversation.
"Probably not." I replied.
"It's just... after last time... I... well... where were you?"
I didn't know what to say. Where was I? Only 46 years in the future!
I had to stall him to try and think of an excuse; "David... It's a long story... is there any chance we could talk, maybe, not on the grass outside a pub?"
"Okay... I guess then you can follow me to where I was going. I need to tell you something too, anyways. Plus, I find conversations always go better when you are walking through deserted London streets at 4:30am."
He chuckled to himself, though deep down I could tell he was longing for an explanation for the hurt I had caused him.
David gestured for me to follow him down the pathway, so I caught up, and walked close to him.
"David, can I ask you something odd?"
"Sure..."
"When is it? Like the month and year?"
"Florence, what? It's Thursday... 19th March... 1970. I think, but that was indeed a weird question. I'm beginning to think that you, my friend, may be as drunk as I." He gave me a soft bop on the nose, and my heart filled with glee.
Maybe he could forgive me after last time? Was my disappearance really that bad?
In the eerie light of the night, the London streets were quiet yet held a deep sense of vigour and adventure. This London was very different to the one I had left back in 2016.
Hippies were playing guitar in parks, people in bell bottoms were drunkenly coming out of pubs, and vintage cars were churning across the narrow roads. It was sweet 1970s bliss, and it felt even more so as I was walking alongside David Bowie, as the sun slowly began to peek above some of the brick buildings.
The light gave David's chiseled features a soft glow, radiating light and love and beauty.
This whole time, we had been talking. It was slightly tense and awkward at first, but now, as the dawn approached, we were feeling more free. Though the whole time we steered away from the topic of last time's kiss, and my disappearance.
David went to hold my hand, and, without thinking, I pulled away - not wanting him to touch the slimy mess still stuck to it.
He looked at me, his mismatched eyes slightly saddened, and a small droop in his lilting smile.
"David... I didn't mean to pull away like that, it's actually a funny story..." I began to say. He stopped in the pathway.
"Tell me about it. I know we have just been joking around, but I really need to know. About you, and why you left... It really hurt, Florence. But I tried to move on."
"David. I'm so sorry, but I just can't tell you why I had to leave. It was an emergency. I really didn't want to go, I swear, but that wasn't why I pulled away-"
"Okay. Fine. You keep your secrets. It's just, Florence, it's so hard you leaving like that... wait? Is that, gum, on your hand?"
Midway through his sentence, I had lifted the gummy mess, the size of a tennis ball, up to show him.
"Yes. It is. Some boy put it in my bag. It's nothing, he's a douche."
David tried to act serious. He was hurt by last time, but this was rather too funny for him to keep a straight face. He started full-heartedly laughing, his beautiful crooked smile shining in the new sunlight.
"Is that it? Oh, Florence, you are rather funny! Come here," David got a twig from the side of the street and swiftly scraped the ball from my hand, flinging it into the trash can nearby.
He was smiling again, and I was glad that at least my sticky situation had helped me get out of my other sticky situation: that conversation.
We continued walking until we get to an office building, and by now it was fully light. At the top of the door was a sign stating, "marriage registration".
I was confused. Surely David wasn't thinking of marrying me, after two meetings?
However, my question was answered in the most annoying of ways: Angie stepping out of a sleek black car with her short bleached hair. She scoffed at me, and went over to David.
She embraced him with the longest, sloppiest kiss I had ever observed. And that observation was indeed long, and awkward.
After this, David came to me and said, "I'm sorry, I had meant to tell you. I got so carried away, but Angie and I are getting married."
Oh no!
Of course they were getting married. They get married in 1970, God damn! I knew this!
How silly I was to even think for a moment that maybe, just maybe, David had actually liked me. Would choose me over Angie.
"What's she doing here?" Angie asked David as if I wasn't even standing there.
"I bumped into her, quite literally, down at the pub. We kind of wandered up here, and now, here we are!"
She sneered at this, but acted politely around David, inviting us inside. When I was at the door however, she whispered in my ear so David couldn't hear, "I win. He's mine. With those papers, you lose."
As if it was ever a competition.
Angie clearly only cared for David because he was a budding star, and those papers bonded her to a soon-to-be-growing fortune, but I cared for him more than that. It was as if the universe had brought us together, cosmically intertwined. So much so, it caused me to time travel, apparently.
***
The wedding was a simple service, with only Angie, David, a few friends and the registrar. It was over in less than an hour, and Angie couldn't help flashing her ring in my face as she walked out.
David seemed happy.
I had to admit it: he was beaming.
And I knew I should have been happy for him, because it was obvious he loved her. But still, some part of me wanted him to myself. Was that selfish?
He told me later the marriage was 'open', so they could still see and date whoever they wanted. I knew that, of course, but it was still very odd. No matter how open this wedding was, Angie still had that ring on her finger, and David on her marriage certificate.
Not five minutes had passed after the wedding, when Angie has gotten back into her car, and sped away on some urgent mission.
David said she was always on those, driving away to go find the next big talent. He asked if I wanted to come back to the house with him.
"I'll play you some never-before-heard demos I'm was working on - for my number one fan, of course." He had said.
Back at Haddon Hall, David sat on a large Victorian couch with velvet patterning. I knew this couch! It had the same curves and woodwork as the one on the cover for The Man Who Sold The World.
But it wasn't until he lay gracefully on top of it that I was sure. His golden tresses fell down, and the stunning man before me made it only too clear I was in a magical moment from the cover of a magical album.
He pulled out his trusty twelve string, and joked about how he had named it "Florence" in my honour. I chuckled, trying not to blush too hard. He always had the best sense of humour.
As soon as his fingers started strumming, I knew the song.
"We passed upon the stair, we spoke of was and when..."
The title track to that same album with that same chair.
David's angelic voice transported me into another world. One far far away from 2016, from Ashley, from school, and from the realities of life.
There was only me, David, and his guitar.
It got up to the chorus, and I lost control of my senses. I sang along.
"You're face to face, with the man who sold the world..." I sang, remembering every intonation and note from the track I had played millions of times over.
Bad idea.
David stopped playing, and looked at me, worried and confused.
"Florence, how... how do you know the lyrics? I've never shown this song to anyone before."
I realised now that I was in deep trouble.