Chapter 4
Chapter four
“Uncle Sergio! Wake up!”
“Fuck,” Sergio coughs out as he jumps out of bed, then doubles over in pain for the third day in a row from Henry’s insanely accurate knee to the balls.
He narrowly misses stepping on Gus as the cat hisses and shoots out from under the bed.
“Fuck!” he cries again, clutching himself.
Which, despite the near vomit-inducing pain, is not why he’s cursing.
His fucks come more out of the frustration he’s feeling that he’s found himself waking up on New Year’s Eve again.
He doesn’t even need to check the date on his phone.
He’s been awake for thirty seconds, and it’s already painfully obvious he’s back to yesterday, as he has no memory of anything happening after the clock struck midnight.
“What’s wrong?” Henry asks, looking up at him with wide, innocent eyes.
“Nothing,” Sergio grumbles, knowing full well Henry will never understand. “Can you go wake up your Uncle Adrien and send him downstairs? I need to talk to him.”
“Okay!” Henry yells and runs out the door, his thumbs raised high above his head. Sergio waits for the telltale oof of Adrien being awakened and then slinks out of his own room, tired, defeated, and in desperate need of a cup of coffee.
“Good morning, shithead!” Holden says brightly as Sergio shuffles into the kitchen, tripping over Gus while going straight past Holden and Rose, heading right to the coffeepot.
He pulls it off the warmer before it’s finished brewing and pours himself a cup, chugging it black and piping hot, acknowledging no one in the room. When his cup is empty, he pours himself another one.
“Thanks for pouring me a cup,” Rose says, reaching for it.
Sergio jerks it away. “Oh no, you don’t. Not today.”
“It’s like no one ever taught you to share.”
“We’ve tried,” Adrien says as he enters with Henry hanging upside down from his shoulders. “Some dogs can’t be housebroken.”
Sergio rolls his eyes. “I’m not a dog.”
“Jury is still out on that one.” Adrien laughs.
“Jury is still out on you,” Sergio bites back.
“Now, now, boys,” Holden says, walking between them, his arms laden with food to place on the table. “There’s too much to do today for you two to be fighting.”
“Yes, we have a full day,” Sergio says, annoyed.
He puts his cup of coffee down, then holds up his hand and ticks through his fingers as he lists.
“We eat breakfast, then we go skiing,” he says, pausing to look directly at Adrien, “which is when Adrien quits on me.” All the color fades from Adrien’s face.
“Then after that, we have lunch. Then more skiing. Then I go with Holden to grab Henry from Jeremy and make an ass out of myself. And after that is the New Year’s party where I punch Chadwick Levinson, and this day starts all the fuck over again. ”
The room goes silent, and everyone looks at Sergio with varying levels of confusion on their faces. Holden is the first to speak. “Any particular reason you have ‘punch Chadwick Levinson’ on your agenda, mate?”
And that’s when it hits him. Maybe if he can get through today without throwing a punch, he can wake up tomorrow.
“Five!”
Don’t hit him.
“Four!”
Don’t hit him.
“Three!”
You can do this.
“Two!”
Oh, thank God it’s almost over.
“One! Happy …”
“Uncle Sergio! Wake up!”
“Fuuuuuuck,” Sergio bemoans into his pillow as he rolls onto his side, cradling his freshly smashed balls in his hands while Gus hisses underneath the bed before bolting out the bedroom door.
“It’s time for breakfast.”
“I know, buddy,” Sergio says, his face still obscured by his pillow as he tries to catch his breath. “I’m sitting this one out.”
“Uncle Sergio! Wake up!”
“Goddamn it.”
“Hiss…”
“Uncle Sergio! Wake up!”
“Fuck!” Sergio yells out in pain and jumps out of bed, missing Gus by an inch as the cat runs out from under the bed and through the bedroom door.
Henry looks up at him, frightened.
“I’m sorry, buddy,” he says hastily, leaning back over the bed to muss up Henry’s hair. “Go wake up Adrien. I need to go talk to your dad.”
Henry, still stunned, blinks at him and makes no attempt to move.
“Go on,” Sergio encourages, and watches Henry get off the bed and make his way slowly out of Sergio’s room, looking over his shoulder once as he goes.
Sergio gestures for him to continue with a few flicks of his hand.
Once Henry’s gone, he turns on his heel and runs out of the room and down the stairs, not even listening for the telltale oof of Adrien being awakened.
“Good morning, shithead!” Holden beams.
“We need to talk,” Sergio grunts out, tripping over Gus, then grabbing Holden by the shoulder and pulling him towards the back door.
“Hey!” Holden tries to pull it from his grasp. “What the fuck, man? I’ve got breakfast going.”
“I know.” Sergio huffs. After all, it’s not like he hasn’t been through this before. With more force, he tugs Holden halfway out the door. “But I need to talk to you.”
Holden tosses the spatula in his hand onto the counter. It bounces off the granite and lands on the floor as the back door clicks shut. The cold air outside gives Sergio a sobering shock, but it’s not enough to jolt him back to a timeline that makes sense.
“Alright, what the fuck is up with you?” Holden asks as he rubs his exposed arms. Like Sergio, he’s outside in only sweatpants and a T-shirt. Unlike Sergio, he’s at least wearing slippers.
Sergio peers over Holden’s shoulder and can see Rose peering out the glass at them. He starts walking them further away from the house, moving them more towards the barn. “I know this is going to sound crazy,” he says, yanking at his hair. “But I’m living the same day, over and over again.”
“As in, your day-to-day life is monotonous? Sergio, that’s called being an adult. Why are you so bent out of shape?”
Sergio stops in his tracks and rubs harshly at his face. “No, not like that. I’m literally living the same day over. This is the sixth time I’ve lived today.”
“Well, yeah,” Holden says, giving Sergio a fleeting moment of hope. “This is our sixth New Year’s all together up here.”
“No!” Sergio shouts. “I mean, I keep waking up on the same day! Today. New Year’s Eve. And no one else seems to notice.”
“I’m still not following. Do you want to go back to bed or something? We can talk about this tomorrow.”
“Aren’t you listening? There is no tomorrow. Tonight the clock will strike midnight, and I’ll wake back up right here.”
“Well, yeah,” Holden says again. “That’s kind of how going to sleep works. One tends to wake up where they fell asleep. Unless they were drugged.” He pauses and looks at Sergio, furrowing his brows. “Are you on drugs?”
“No! I don’t know what I am! All I know is that I’ve woken up right here at your house for the past six days.”
“That’s impossible, though. You only got here yesterday.”
“Yesterday to you, maybe. But to me, it’s been six days.”
“So, you’re telling me that you’ve been here for six days and none of us has noticed?”
“Yes!” Sergio yells out.
“Wow. Sorry, mate. That sounds like a real kick in the dick.”
“Funny you should say that because your son wakes me up with a literal kick in the dick every morning.”
“That sucks.” Holden winces. “He’s got one hell of a kick on him. Have you tried locking the door before you go to bed?”
Sergio looks at him with a blank expression, eyes narrowed, and his lips set in a line.
“I’m only saying, it might help.” Holden shrugs, then rubs his arms some more before he blows into his hands.
“What part of ‘I wake up on the same day’ are you not getting? Even if I lock the door tonight, it won’t change the fact that I didn’t lock it last night. So no matter what, Henry is going to burst into my bedroom tomorrow morning and knee me in the nuts.”
“I thought you said he kicked you in the dick.”
“Are we really going to split hairs here?”
“You’re right. It’s the same thing.” Holden holds up his hands in defense, then stands a little taller.
His eyes shine bright as if a light bulb was flicked on somewhere inside him with an idea.
“Wait a minute.” He grabs Sergio’s shoulder and looks him directly in the eyes.
“Are you fucking with me? Is this some kind of prank? Because if it is, it’s hilarious!
You really got me on this one. I was actually concerned for a minute. ”
Sergio’s blood boils. “This. Isn’t. A. Prank.”
“It kind of feels like a prank.”
“If anyone is being pranked, it’s me!”
Holden lets out a whistle. “I wish I’d have come up with this.”
Sergio jolts out from under Holden’s hold on his shoulders and rubs harshly at his face. “Trust me, I wish you had, too.”
“Okay, so let me try to get a handle on this. What you’re telling me is that today feels exactly like yesterday, even though you weren’t here yesterday?”
“No. I’m telling you that I have woken up here for six days in a row on a perpetual Mobius strip of New Year’s Eves, and I’m the only one who notices.”
“So, like a time loop?”
“I don’t know. I guess. How does something like that even work?”
Holden shrugs again. “Not sure, man. We don’t even have a hot tub.”
“A hot tub!” Sergio exclaims, not sure what Holden could possibly be talking about.
“Yeah, you know. Like that movie! Hot Tub Time Machine.”
“I don’t think this equates,” Sergio says and hangs his head in defeat as he realizes he’s talking to a moron.
“Oh!” Holden’s eyes widen and his mouth drops open into an oh shape to match his word. “Maybe this is more like Groundhog Day?”
“Like with the rodent?”
“Yeah! I mean, sort of. Like how Bill Murray had to repeat the same day over and over again to learn how to be a better person or something.”
“Is that what that story was about?” Sergio asks, trying to remember the details.
“It definitely wasn’t about him continuing to be an asshole,” Holden points out, right as something catches Sergio’s eye over Holden’s shoulder.
It’s Jeremy looking like he’s fresh from waking up, coming out of the barn with a steaming mug held in his sweatshirt sleeve-covered hands.
He blows on it and then takes a sip. “I mean, I’m no expert here.
But if what you’re saying is true, I’m thinking you’ve been given the opportunity to change yourself. ”
Sergio keeps his eyes on Jeremy, unable to look away.
His cheeks are flushed from the cold, and Sergio has an urge to warm them with his hands.
Not that it would help. He is woefully underdressed for the morning chill, and he’s pretty sure his toes are frozen.
At least Jeremy was wise enough to wear a thick hoodie over his practice gear.
“Yeah, I think you might be right.”
“Great.” Holden claps Sergio on the shoulder. “Now, can we please go back inside? I’m freezing and my bacon’s probably burning.”
“Yeah,” Sergio says, slowly taking his eyes off Jeremy.
As he looks away, something deep inside him tingles in the pit of his stomach.
He looks over his shoulder and catches Jeremy stepping through the barn door, heading back inside.
The sunken feeling in the pit of his stomach is practically screaming, telling Sergio that having a second chance with Jeremy is key.