(Sorry about the pronouns. I had meant to use male pronouns up until Nick decided to play along with being Nikki.)
"It's a long story," said Nikki.
"Try me," responded Mike.
"Look, I'll tell you when we meet, okay? Please?" She was about to press the disconnect button when suddenly the phone disconnected by itself, displaying an error message she had never seen before. 'Duplicate connection detected'? Maybe the Nick of this time turned on his phone and the two versions of the same phone tried to connect at the same time? Does this mean that Nick isn't able to be contacted by phone either? She tried to remember if she had ever seen such an error as Nick, but it was years ago, and she as Nick might have just turned it on and not paid attention to the screen.
A half hour later, Nikki finally managed to hail a cab. Her first action was not to get into the cab but to try to time travel again. Same problem--dizziness but no effect. So she got in. This time there weren't any mobsters to cause trouble, though she thought she might have seen the same limo driving by. And the ride gave her time to think of a story.
The taxi pulled up to the hotel, Nikki paid and tipped the driver, she got out, and she walked in.
Mike was waiting in the lobby, sitting on a red sofa chair. "Hi, Nikki," he said. "You know, I really like you, but some things have been confusing me. They're... suspicious. You say you decided to take a plane flight on a whim. Nobody does that. You have Nick's phone and by coincidence your name is almost his. Like you picked some kind of alias. You meet me, and you want to come to the hotel, and then you suddenly ran off. I actually checked my luggage when you did that. I was hoping you hadn't stolen anything."
"Well?" replied Nikki. "Did I?"
"No..." replied Mike. "But you have to admit, if you were in my position, you'd check that too."
In Nikki's head, she ran through her ideas for what to tell Mike. "The truth is..."
