Chapter 14 #6
“Good,” Holden says, and takes a look at the ice. “Looks like you guys made good use of the rink today. I’d offer to Zamboni for you, but I gotta get ready for this party. Is tomorrow morning okay?”
“Oh yeah, we’re done for the day,” Jeremy assures him and starts putting on his blade guards.
Sergio rises to help him off the ice, taking one of his hands.
Holden eyes it and grins. “Besides, I should start getting ready as well. Might do me some good to take a quick nap if I have to stay out late tonight.”
“We could not go,” Sergio says in a rush. The thought of leaving this barn and going to this New Year’s Eve party again utterly exhausts him. “Stay in. Have a quiet New Year.”
“I’m being paid to host this party,” Holden says with a clap onto Sergio’s shoulder. “But you don’t have to come.”
Sergio looks at Jeremy, asking a silent question.
Jeremy lets go of Sergio's hand, takes a seat on a nearby bench, and starts taking his skates off. He smiles at Sergio, holding his gaze as he says to Holden, “If you and Rose don’t mind. I could be persuaded to sit this one out.”
“Yeah. It’s no problem,” Holden says and smirks at them. “I’ll make up some excuse.”
“You can’t tell her they were kissing,” Henry says. “Because that would make us tattletales.”
“Thanks, Henry.” Sergio groans and hangs his head.
Henry gives two thumbs up. “No problem, Uncle Sergio.”
Holden starts laughing and claps Sergio on the shoulder once more. “Don’t worry, lovebirds,” he says, walking away. “Your secret’s safe with me. I’ll see you both tomorrow morning for New Year’s Day breakfast.”
With any luck, you will.
“I’m ashamed to say I don’t have anything flashy to make us to eat,” Jeremy says as he rummages through his refrigerator.
“I’ve eaten nothing but rich and indulgent foods every time I’ve lived this day.
Trust me when I tell you there is no need to try to impress me with something gourmet,” Sergio says from where he’s standing at the counter of Jeremy’s small kitchenette, holding another cup of tea in his palms to warm them after his afternoon on the ice.
He takes a sip and marvels at how much he enjoys this simple elixir.
He’s never pegged himself to be a tea guy, but now he understands the appeal.
It’s simple and warm and feels like home in his hands.
It’s also so unmistakably Jeremy that he’ll never be able to drink another cup of tea without thinking fondly of him.
“That’s presumptuous of you to assume I wanted to impress you,” Jeremy teases as he turns around with a handful of vegetables. He shuts the refrigerator door with his shoulder, then places the vegetables down on the counter beside Sergio.
“Can I help at all?”
“Nah.” Jeremy waves him off with his hand, but bumps him away with his hip. “I’m gonna throw together a stir fry.”
Sergio’s mouth waters. It’s simple, like the tea.
Taking another sip, he looks around Jeremy’s place and notices, like he does most days, the lack of any displays of Jeremy’s accomplishments.
The absence is still striking. Lord knows Holden and Rose have an entire trophy room that doubles as their office.
But in Jeremy’s case, if not for the fact that Sergio has been watching him skate every day, he’d believe Jeremy had never once stepped foot on the ice.
He’s never had the chance to ask Jeremy about it before, but the shared vulnerability they’ve been experiencing all day has opened the door for Sergio to inquire.
“You keep things pretty simple around here, huh?” Sergio asks, his eyes on the functional living space. The only extras are Jeremy’s collections of books and plants, neither of which overwhelms the room. Instead, they make the place feel quaint and inviting.
Jeremy shrugs and slices through a crisp onion. “I’m not really working with a lot of space.”
“True,” Sergio says and turns around to get a better look at Jeremy, whose eyes are watering from the onion. “But I get the feeling that even if you had the big house for yourself, you wouldn’t go overboard.”
“Old me may have,” Jeremy says with another shrug.
He slices through the onion with his knife again, releasing its sharp aroma.
“But now, I honestly can’t really be bothered.
I don’t always have the energy to keep up with daily tasks, so the solution is to simplify.
Less stuff to clean, less stuff to move around, less stuff to maintain. More energy for what’s important.”
“And what’s that?”
“Living,” Jeremy says with a smile as an onion-induced tear slides down his cheek. Jeremy lifts his hand from the knife and brings it towards his face, presumably to wipe his eyes.
“Let me,” Sergio says, stopping him. He reaches for Jeremy, whose eyes slowly close, releasing a stream that Sergio wipes away. “There. There. No need for all the tears. It’s only dinner.”
“Shut up.” Jeremy laughs and goes back to his vegetables, this time to begin cutting the less-likely-to-provoke-tears red bell pepper.
“But really, I think that sounds nice.”
“What? Living simply or not having energy to do regular daily tasks?”
“The simply part of course.” Sergio takes another sip of his tea. “I must admit, I’ve had a bit of a revelation recently. That maybe simple isn’t so bad.”
“Huh.” Jeremy slides the chopped bell pepper to the side, then slices into a head of broccoli. “I never actually saw you as someone who lived all that un-simply.”
“What do you mean?”
Jeremy pauses and looks at Sergio with his bottom lip trapped between his teeth. “Well, no offense, but you tend to come across as pretty shallow, which doesn’t leave a lot of room for extra.”
Not sure how to feel about that statement, Sergio furrows his brow.
“I said no offense,” Jeremy tries to explain, and Sergio can’t help but laugh.
Jeremy’s not wrong. Sergio has another revelation that before all of this, he never would have taken Jeremy’s proclamation so lightly.
“You might be onto something,” he says, looking at Jeremy with his lips lifted on one side. Jeremy grabs a pan and drizzles oil into it, then lights the burner. “Perhaps my shallowness is what has gotten me into this predicament.”
“You think?” Jeremy asks, sarcasm and teasing thick in his voice. He may as well have hit Sergio with the frying pan to punctuate his bluntness. Thankfully, instead, he tosses the vegetables into said pan, then adds some seasoning and gives it all a good mix with a wooden spoon.
“Touché,” Sergio says, laughing some more. “But it does make sense, doesn’t it?”
Jeremy grabs a package of pre-cooked soba noodles out of his cabinet and opens them with a knife. “It makes sense, assuming it’s working. Do you feel less shallow?”
“I’m drinking tea in a studio apartment above an ice rink-slash-barn, and it’s the happiest I’ve been in months. What do you think?”
Jeremy mixes the vegetables again and adds a splash of soy sauce.
“Then I think perhaps you’re finally figuring out what’s important to you in this life.
” Jeremy looks at him and lets his eyes rove up and down Sergio’s body before they come to rest to stare directly at Sergio’s face from beneath Jeremy’s furrowed brow.
He grins. “Or … you’re crazy and all of this is some ploy that will never work to get into my pants. ”
Sergio blushes at the thought of getting into Jeremy’s pants.
It is quite an enticing option. However, the history of this day has told him how unlikely that is to happen.
“As wonderful as that sounds, the longer I live this day, the less I think getting laid is the solution to getting me out of it.”
“Well, when has sex ever solved anything, anyway?” Jeremy asks and dumps the noodles into the pan, and begins to mix them in with the vegetables.
“As I’ve come to recently reflect, never.”
“I guess it’s a good thing you and I have never actually slept together then, huh?”
“Very good.”
“Wait.” Jeremy stands up stock straight and looks at Sergio, then tugs at his left eye. His tone and expression lose all traces of teasing and shift straight into something serious, with even a hint of concern. “We haven’t ever actually slept together, have we?”
“We have not.”
“Not even once in all the times you’ve relived this day?”
“Not a single time. All we’ve ever done is kiss.”
“And you’re not lying to me to save your own ass?”
Sergio hooks his thumb and first finger onto Jeremy’s chin and directs him to look directly into his eyes. “I wouldn’t lie to you,” he says. “Especially about that.”
“All I’ve ever done is kiss you?”
“Just kisses.”
“Not even hand stuff?” Jeremy asks, a glimmer of a playful smirk coming back to his face.
Sergio huffs out a laugh and brushes his thumb over Jeremy’s cheek. “Not even hand stuff.”
“That seems unfair,” Jeremy says and takes his attention back to the food.
“You’re telling me.”
“I’m talking about the kisses, not the lack of hand stuff, by the way.”
Sergio wrinkles his nose and nods knowingly at him. “Thanks for clarifying.”
“I’m just saying that it sucks that you get to remember all these kisses and all I get is the one I got today.”
“Yeah,” Sergio says and steps behind Jeremy at the stove. He places his hands on Jeremy’s hips and hooks his head over Jeremy’s shoulder. “That’s what I was referring to as well.”
Jeremy turns his head to look over at him, the best he can in the space Sergio has provided. “Don’t think for a second that I’m sleeping with you today after I now know how unlikely it is I’ll remember it.”
“I guess that’s a no to hand stuff then, too?” Sergio gives him a quick kiss.
“You’ve got your own hands.” Jeremy kisses him back.
Despite the lightness of their teasing, Sergio has something important he needs to say. He spins Jeremy in his arms and looks at him with soft eyes, holding Jeremy’s direct attention as he makes a promise. “I wouldn’t take advantage of you. Ever. I mean it.”
Jeremy nods his head at him in understanding, and Sergio takes that as his cue. He holds onto Jeremy’s hips a little tighter, then kisses him with the crackle of the food cooking on the stove covering up the sound of the content sigh that escapes his lips before he kisses Jeremy more firmly.
After dinner, with Groundhog Day playing on the TV, Sergio and Jeremy are snuggled together on the cramped sofa. Jeremy lets out a yawn and scootches closer to Sergio, pressing himself flush against Sergio’s body. Sergio holds onto him like a life raft.
The hour is late, and the clock is fast approaching midnight. All Sergio wants is more time. More time he isn’t going to get into a dilemma that is giving him nothing but time for everything but this perfect version of this day that he’s been reveling in.
He places a soft kiss on the top of Jeremy’s head and breathes in Jeremy’s ginger, lemon, barn wood, and ice smell.
His eyes are focused forward on the TV screen.
It was Jeremy’s idea to put the movie on, claiming the irony of the situation was funny, or at the very least, it would give Sergio some clues as to what else he could do in his quest to break his loop.
But Sergio has hardly been paying attention, choosing to cling to Jeremy and the idea of being able to have these near-perfect days with Jeremy again and again.
Preferably, after Sergio breaks free of this torturous loop, and they both get to remember them.
“What should I expect?” Jeremy asks.
“About what?”
“About what’s going to happen at midnight?”
“I’m not sure,” Sergio says and runs his hand up and down Jeremy’s arm. “The clock always strikes midnight at the party, and then suddenly I wake up back in my bed up at the house.”
“And you’ve never not gone to the party?”
“Nope,” Sergio says, then winces. “Except that time I pitched myself off the chairlift on the mountain.”
“Yikes,” Jeremy says.
“Yeah. That was not my best day,” Sergio confesses. “I do not want to know how that went over.”
“Well, luckily, it would seem none of us remembers it. So I think you’re in the clear.” Jeremy strains his neck to look at him. “But please don’t do that again. Okay?”
“I won’t,” Sergio says, meeting Jeremy’s lips to kiss him.
When Jeremy pulls away, he sighs and checks his watch. “Ten more seconds.”
Nine.
“Can I get another kiss?” Sergio asks.
Eight.
“You can have as many as you want when you break this loop.”
Seven.
“I’m gonna hold you to that.”
Six.
“You better.”
Five.
“Please don’t forget about me.”
Four.
“I could never.”
Three.
“You will.”
Two.
“Convince me again.”
One.
“I think I’m falling …”