Readers: I would like to welcome you to my story. Hello stranger, thanks for taking the time to click on my title page.
DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN ANY RIGHTS TO ICARY AND OR AUDREY NIFFENEGGER'S NOVEL THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE (which is where the idea for this came from).
Rated M: If you do not find yourself emotionally mature enough to handle vulgar language, sex, and various other forms of M rated material please don't read and please don't slander me. Thanks a bunch. Also this is CAM story meaning a Carly and Sam pairing, so no homophobic comments, let's all be adults here.
Paper Hearts
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PROLOG
(April 15, 2020) Sam is 34, Carly is 28
SAM: This is the worst part. No, not standing in the Barnes&Noble parking lot in the dark completely naked, but being where she is not. I don't know what city or state I'm in, I don't know the date or time. I stand up from the black pavement and wince. I look over my body, checking for any permanent damages. My knees are bloody from the hard rocky landing and my mouth is dry.
I was getting ready for bed when it happened. I was in the bathroom, brushing my teeth with the new cinnamon toothpaste she bought me, when I disappeared. Rubbing my sore elbows I search for a clothing store, anything to get something on my back.
Good thing it's warm out, sometimes I'm not so lucky.
I walk, my bare feet padding the pavement and my body arched forward, arms warped around myself.
This is the worst part. I hate being away from her, existing in some frame of time where she is not near me. I ache to be with her again, I long to pull back the sheets of our bed and nestle my body against hers- to feel the heat. Carly's heat, the warmth of her breath on my skin.
I cannot control it; I can never foresee when I will suddenly jump through the hoop of time. One moment I'm happily making dinner, listening to my favorite indie album and the next, I'm on the floor of my old school's gymnasium. Or I'm standing outside some apartment back in 1975 freezing my ass off in the middle of winter. I don't understand it. Sometimes it comes suddenly I could be standing up from a chair or turning the corner on a street and then I vanish. Sometimes I feel sick to my stomach- I know its coming, the travel, the disappearing act- I run as fast as I can to a disserted area.
But it's always there, hovering over me. The maddening notion that at any second I could be gone suddenly transported to a new destination. So I take pleasure in simple every day actions, objects. All I ask for is something common, ordinary: my ratty black converse shoes, the smell of ham roasting in the oven, Carly's dark hair wet after a shower, extra change jingling in my pocket, fresh coconut cream pie, Carly's soft lips on my jaw, the fabric of my old Tegan and Sara t-shirt.
And God, just Carly- always, always Carly. Her face when I'm back from disappearing, her hands deep in my hair when we kiss, the way my name sounds from her lips- a husky slur. Without her, nothing- I would be nothing- I would have died long ago. Died of heartbreak.
And that's precisely what it feels like, when leaving her, feels like my heart crumbling breaking slowly. But I must leave, I can't help it, I'm Sam Puckett- the time traveler.
(March 10, 2026) Sam is 34, Carly is 34
CARLY:It would be a horrendous lie if I said I felt nothing when she wanders to a time and place that I cannot follow. It would be an ugly lie if I said her traveling never once kept me from sleep, from worriedly biting my nails and crying hopelessly on the days she never came back to me unharmed.
I miss my Sam constantly when I come home to find a pile of clothes and nothing else. A pile of clothes left behind because she can never take anything or anyone along with her when she vanishes. An unknown disorder, a mystery disease lives inside my girl. I feel helpless.
All I can offer to her is my love. Above all else, I can only give her my heart and pray that it is enough, wish for it to demolish all other pain that rides inside of her. The pain that steals her from me in the dead of night and in the dawn of morning. The pain that she must always be sloshed about like water in a bucket from year to year- not living her life through and through like a straight line but zigzagged and crisscrossed. She is far from normal, but she is all mine and I love her, with all that I' am.
I turn over in bed and press my face into her pillow, wishing her back to me, back to my safe arms.
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Readers: I do hope that wasn't all too terrible. Also, if anyone knows of an iCarly beta reader then please inform me, I would like to improve on my writing and grammar. Now then, if you wish please leave comments. I would like to know if I should keep writing.