Right place, right person, wrong era? ‘The Seven Year Slip’ is a time travel love story

Right place, right person ... wrong time? "The Seven Year Slip" by Ashley Poston, out June 27, is a romantic comedy about two people who meet thanks to a trick in the time-space continuum.

The novel begins when Clementine, an overworked book publicist, inherits her late aunt’s Upper East Side apartment, and finds that it’s a little bit magical when she meets a man staying there seven years in the past.

"The book feels like your favorite slice of lemon pie — sweet and perfect for summer, with a little bite of sour at the edges," Poston tells TODAY.com when asked to describe the book.

Poston is the author of other romance novels that verge on the supernatural, like "The Dead Romantics," about a ghostwriter who falls for a — you guessed it — ghost.

This time, the magical element Poston uses to bring her characters together, and keep them apart, is time travel.

"I wanted my usage of time travel to feel familiar, and yet still give readers something new to chew on, so the apartment became sort of this liminal space, where time folds in on itself so two moments can exist at once. Clementine in the present, and Iwan seven years in the past," she says.

The premise was inspired by a song by the band Motion City Soundtrack: "It’s not a matter of time, but a matter of timing. Do you ever wonder how you got to here?' And yes, yes I absolutely did wonder, and 'The Seven Year Slip' came out of it."

While reading, she hopes you ask yourself, "If you could meet yourself, or someone you love, at any point in their life, when would you meet them? And what would you say?"

Read an excerpt of 'The Seven Year Slip'

A hand on my shoulder shook me awake.

“Five more minutes,” I mumbled, brushing the touch away. There was a crick in my neck, and the pounding in my head made me want to burrow down into the sofa with all the chip crumbs and never return. It was so quiet, I thought I heard someone in the kitchen. My aunt humming. Getting her favorite chipped coffee mug that read f--k the patriarchy. Putting on a pot of coffee.

It almost sounded like it used to, when I’d stumble in late at night, head full of wine, too tired (and too drunk) to make it back to my apartment in Brooklyn. I’d always crash on the couch, and wake up in the mornings with a mouth that tasted like cotton and a glass of water on the coffee table in front of me, and she’d be waiting at her yellow kitchen table for me to tell her all about last night’s gossip. The authors behaving badly, the publicists lament- ing about the lack of datable men, the agent who had an affair with their author, the latest blind date Drew and Fiona hooked me up with.

But when I opened my eyes, ready to tell my aunt about Rhon- da’s retirement and another failed relationship and the new chef Drew wanted to sign...

I remembered.

I lived here now.

The hand shook my shoulder again, the touch soft yet firm. Then a voice, gentle and rumbly, said, “Hey, hey, friend, wake up.”

Two things occurred to me then:

One, my aunt was very much dead.

And two, there was a man in her apartment.

With pure unbridled terror, I propelled myself to sit up, throw- ing my hands out widely. I connected with the intruder. In the face. The man gave a cry, clutching his nose, as I pushed myself to my feet, standing on the couch, my aunt’s decorative tasseled pil- low of Jeff Goldblum’s face raised in defense.

The stranger threw up his arms. “I’m unarmed!” “I’m not!”

And I hit him with the pillow.

Then again, and again, until he backed up halfway into the kitchen, his hands raised in surrender.

Which was when, in my semi-sleepy state of fight or flight, I got a good look at him.

He was young — in his mid-twenties — clean-shaven and wide-eyed. My mother would have called him boyishly handsome. He wore a dark shirt with an overstretched neckline, a cartoon pickle on the front and the words (PICKLE)BACK ME UP, BRO, and distressed blue jeans that had definitely seen better days. His auburn hair was wild and unbrushed, his eyes so light gray they almost looked white, set into a handsomely pale face with a brush of freckles across his cheeks.

I angled my pillow toward him again as I (ungracefully) dis-mounted over the back of the couch and sized him up. He was a little taller than I was, and gangly, but I had nails and the will to live.

I could take him.

Miss Congeniality taught me to sing, and I was nothing if not a prepared, depressed millennial.

He gave me a hesitant look, his hands still in the air. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said apologetically in a soft Southern drawl. “I take it you’re...um, you’re Clementine?”

At the sound of my name, I held the pillow higher. “How do you know that?”

“Well, I’m actually—”

“How did you get here?”

“The — um — the front door, but—”

“How long have you been here? Have you been watching me sleep? What kind of sick p—”

He interrupted me loudly, “All night. I mean — I didn’t watch you sleep all night. I was in the bedroom. I got dressed and came out here and saw you on the couch. My mom’s a friend of your aunt’s. She’s letting me sublet the apartment for the summer, and she said I might have a visitor.”

That made very little sense. “What?”

“Analea Collins,” he replied with that same confused hesitance. He began to reach for something in his back pocket. “Here, see—?”

“Don’t you dare move,” I snapped, and he froze.

And slowly raised his hands again. “Okay ... but I have a note?”

“Give it to me, then.”

“You told me—you told me not to move?” I glared at him.

He cleared his throat. “You can reach for it. Back left pocket.”

“I’m not reaching for anything.” He gave me an exasperated look.

Oh. Right. I told him not to move. “...Fine.” I carefully crept up to him and began to reach around to his back left pocket...

“And here we find the rare gentleman in the wild,” he began to narrate — in a really terrible Australian accent, by the way. “Careful. He must be approached cautiously so not to be easily startled...”

I glared at him.

He raised a single infuriating eyebrow.

I snatched the contents out of his back left pocket and quickly moved an arm’s length away from him. As I backed away, I recognized my aunt’s apartment key. I knew it was hers because it was on a little key chain she bought in the Milan airport years ago when we went after my high school graduation. I thought this key had been lost. And with it was a note, folded into the shape of a paper crane.

I unfolded it.

Iwan,

It’s so lovely that this could work out! Tell your mother hello for me and be sure to check the mailbox every day. If Mother and Fucker come by the window, do not open it. They lie. I hope you enjoy New York—it’s quite lovely in the summers, albeit a bit hot. Ta‑ta!

xoxo, AC

(P.S. If you see an elderly woman wandering the halls, please be a dear and send Miss Norris back to G6.)

(P.P.S. If my niece comes by, please tell Clementine you’ll be subletting from me this summer. Remind her about summers abroad.)

I stared at it for longer than I probably needed to. Even though I had countless birthday cards and Valentine’s cards and Christmas cards from her stashed in my jewelry box in the bedroom, seeing new words strung together in her looping script made my throat constrict anyway. Because I didn’t think I’d ever see any more combinations.

It was silly, I knew it was silly.

But it was a bit more of her than before that remained.

Summers abroad...

The stranger brought me out of my thoughts when he said, quite confidently, “Does everything make sense now?”

I set my jaw. “No, actually.” His bravado faltered. “...No?”

“No.” Because Miss Norris passed away three years ago, and a young couple moved into her apartment and threw away all of her antique music boxes and her violin, since she didn’t have anyone to will them to. My aunt wanted to save them, but before she could, they were ruined out on the curb in the rain. “I’m not sure what you think subletting means, but it doesn’t mean you can waltz in just any summer you want to.”

His eyebrows scrunched together in vexation. “Any summer? No, I just spoke to her last week—”

“You’re not funny,” I snapped, hugging the sequined face of Jeff Goldblum to my chest.

He blinked then, and gave a slow nod. “All right . . . let me get my things, and I’ll be gone, okay?”

I tried not to look too relieved as I said, “Good.”

He dropped his hands and quietly turned back into my aunt’s bedroom. Inside, I expected to see my full bed on its IKEA black metal frame, and instead caught a glimpse of a blanket I hadn’t seen since I’d packed it up six months ago. I quickly looked away. It just looked like that blanket. It wasn’t really.

My chest constricted, but I tried to push the feeling down. It happened almost six months ago, I told myself, rubbing my sternum. She’s not here.

As he began to pack up, I turned and paced the living room—I always paced when I was nervous. The apartment was brighter than I remembered, sunlight streaming in through the large bay windows.

I passed a picture on the wall—one of my aunt smiling in front of the Richard Rodgers Theatre the opening night of "The Heart Mattered." One that I knew I had taken down when I moved in the week before. It was in storage, along with the vase that was now on the table and the colorful porcelain peacocks on the windowsill she’d bought in Morocco.

And then I noticed the calendar on the coffee table. I could’ve sworn I threw it out, and I knew Aunt Analea had stopped keeping track of the days, but not for seven years...

“Well, I think that’s all of my things. I’ll leave the groceries in the refrigerator,” he added, a duffel bag over his shoulder as he came out of my aunt’s room, but I barely noticed him. My chest felt tighter.

I could barely breathe.

Seven years — why was the calendar set to seven years ago?

Excerpted from The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston, published by Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2023

This article was originally published on TODAY.com