Chapter 13
Carly
Carly reset in the funeral home, which would’ve been just like any other reset, except for the fact that she started this
one off smug.
So smug that she felt entitled to dictate that she and Adam go eat a fancy, celebratory lunch in her honor. Yeah, that was
right. She—the underdog in the plot of her own movie—had come up with a theory that, lo and behold, had legs. Killer legs,
if she could say so. Not the rocket scientist guy, but the gal who had barely squeaked by most science classes with a passing
grade.
If Carly had been a big drinker, she’d have opened champagne or a good whiskey, but she liked cheese. And this was an occasion
that called for a visit to Le Petit Coeur, a small French bistro just off Main Street with a blue-and-white motif.
Carly held a cheese croissant at eye level and said, “Cheers to me being right.” She waited for Adam to clink his chocolate
croissant to hers, but he just took a big bite instead. She shrugged and bit into the layered bread, letting the melted cheese
remind her what winning felt like.
It felt fantastic, for the record.
The timer stopped at 4:02 for the previous two loops, which meant her theory was correct. Something about them being together
had changed the eclipse.
Carly smiled through her chew. “I keep waiting for you to congratulate me,” she said. “But it’s okay. The pastry is a close
second.”
She watched, waiting for acknowledgment, but Adam was doing his far-off gaze thing. She snapped her fingers and he gave her
a bewildered look. God, he was cute.
“The thing is,” Adam said, “we don’t know if you’re right yet, because we have to see if there’s a change in the eclipse today now that we’re back together.”
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, Adam, you’re a sore loser.”
Adam sipped his bottled water and leaned back in his chair. Admittedly, as she took in the way his lean muscles popped under
his shirt, he didn’t look like a sore loser. He looked attractive. She readjusted her glasses, as if that would fix her problem of finding his face,
throat and forearms handsome.
“We still have evidence to collect,” he said.
“Okay, well, it’s like a few more hours until the eclipse, and there are only so many cheese sandwiches I can eat.” Then she
got a brilliant idea. “Unless that’s how you want to spend the time—eating cheese sandwiches—like a competition? In which
case I think I could probably eat two to three sandwiches per hour without exploding.”
Adam’s mouth opened, then closed. Carly more than enjoyed the moments where she rendered him speechless, this one included.
But eventually, he said, “You haven’t asked about my theory. For all you know, I’m right, too.”
Carly wiped her mouth with a napkin, leaned forward, elbows on the table, and said, “Are you right, then?”
“I’m making strides.” He crossed his arms. “You have your . . . Together Theory, let’s call it.”
“I prefer ‘Carly’s Theory Is the Correct Theory’ Theory, but go on.” She managed to get a tight smile from him with that one.
“Rick has his Pop the Bubble Theory. I have the shadow bands, but I also think it’s worth timing things like the sunset, the
length of the day, maybe even the shooting star that crosses the sky every night. What if we’re so focused on the eclipse
that we miss a bigger, more telling change?”
Carly found herself agreeing with Adam. What if there was more to discover? What if the eclipse ended up being a dead end,
but there was something else shifting at a faster rate?
“There’s a shooting star?” Carly asked. “Never seen one.”
“Yes. Every night at 11:23. I’ll show you sometime.”
He actually sounded excited about that last bit, which was sort of cute. The guy had really grown on her. “All right, so today
we will time all of the things, and when the eclipse shortens—because I’m definitely right—then we can keep pursuing my theory,”
she said.
“I agree with most of what you’re saying,” Adam admitted. “But still, we need to follow the evidence.”
Unfortunately, the evidence was pointing to the fact that she found him cuter when he spoke in science. Carly shoved the rest
of the croissant into her mouth to stop her thoughts.
“Want to take a drive?” Adam asked.
As Adam drove them up a winding path into the mountains, Carly kept one hand on the door handle to steady herself. Whatever
was going on between them was confusing at best, and the first sign of early onset dementia, at worst.
This was a man she’d had murderous thoughts about.
There was one particularly fulfilling fantasy that involved him being taken out with a wrecking ball.
But now? As they breezed past tall pine trees and endless stretches of wooded mountainside, she sat next to him and felt like she was exactly where she was meant to be.
What the hell was wrong with her? Was she such a broken human that the only person she found attractive was someone who’d
gone out of his way to make her feel inferior on more than one occasion?
“I have a problem,” she told herself.
“What problem?” Adam asked.
“Oh my God, did I say that out loud?” She covered her mouth with her hands. Great, so on top of having a crush, she was now
talking to herself, but out loud and in front of him.
Oh fuck, a crush? Carly checked to make sure she hadn’t said that one out loud, too, but Adam hadn’t reacted. Shit. She had a crush on Adam.
It’s not just that she found him hot—no, she liked this guy. She had feelings, emphasis on the desire to feel him up.
“You okay?” he tried again.
“No,” she said without thinking. Then winced, but added, “Hungry.”
“The place we’re going has snacks,” he said.
“Hmmm . . .” They drove past a big blue sign for the Julian Planetarium. “Where could the astronomer be taking me? Maybe to
a gas station so we can raid the candy section? An elementary school cafeteria? An abandoned church so we can eat the unblessed
wafers?”
“You are rather strange,” Adam said as he pulled into the empty parking lot.
The planetarium had a big round dome in the middle, and floor-to-ceiling glass windows. There were lights on inside, but Carly
didn’t see evidence of any people.
“You really like stargazing,” she said as she got out of the car.
“I used to volunteer here occasionally,” he said by way of explanation. They walked toward the entrance door.
Which is when Carly saw the opportunity for a good deed. She dashed ahead, reached for the door handle and pulled it open
with a flourish. “Look at me, holding the door open for you, because I’m a kind person and because I need to prove my theory.”
“I recognize you’re being a bit sarcastic, but it does feel nice to have the door held open.” Adam gave a tight smile as he
breezed through, then turned back to tell her, “Usually the other way around, considering my height and gender norms.”
“Call me Saint Carly, because I just made your day.” She walked inside the wide atrium where the tiled floor was covered in
painted stars, and the glass ceiling opened up to the sky above them. “Well, this is cool.”
“Perhaps best of all, there are no cows here.” Adam led her across the floor and toward the café, which was stocked with grab-and-go
lunch boxes, packaged cookies and a cooler of cold drinks. Carly grabbed the cheese plate, and Adam took an oatmeal raisin
cookie.
“You understand that you chose the grandma of cookies, right?” She pulled out a metal chair and took a seat at a bistro table.
“When presented with plenty of other, more reasonable options, you made the decision to go for oatmeal and raisins?”
“And you understand that cheese comes from cows?” He noisily unwrapped the cookie from the plastic packaging.
“Not always.” Carly popped a cheese cube into her mouth. “You’re annoying, by the way.”
“I’m starting to think my destiny on this earth is specifically to annoy you.” Adam took a bite of the cookie and chewed.
When she’d finished her snack, he said, “Come with me.”
Carly followed Adam down the cavernous hall to an observation deck surrounded by windows that looked out onto the town below.
The sun and moon were about to make contact.
They were at the top of the mountain with the whole of Julian ahead of them, but Carly was too aware of Adam next to her to notice.
“Here.” He handed her eclipse glasses and, as she took them, the closeness of his fingertips sent a wave of heat through her.
“Thanks.” Her voice came out breathy, and she cleared her throat. “What about the shadow bands?”
“We can’t see them from up here, unfortunately, but we can prioritize them tomorrow.” Adam looked from the eclipse to his
watch. “Okay, three, two and one. Let’s see if your Carly Is Correct Theory is, in fact, correct.”
She tipped an imaginary top hat and he seemed to suppress a smile.
They could’ve continued to watch in silence, but she wasn’t good at those. So to distract herself, Carly asked, “What have
you told your parents about all this? Aren’t you usually with them?”
“They know about you,” he hedged. “I’m not good at lying. They don’t know about the experiments, just that I’m hanging out
with someone new.”
“Someone new . . .” She wasn’t new, though, just rediscovered, she supposed.
“They’re intense,” he said. “I don’t really have close friends. Dean was my best friend, but if my mom and dad met you, they’d
want you to come over for dinner. They’d ask you every detail about your life. They’d try and make you part of the family,
the way they did with Dean. It’s never simple with them.”
She gaped at him. “Adam, you mean to tell me that all I have to do to get a home-cooked meal is meet your parents, and you
denied me that?”
He gave her a surprised look, but she realized that Adam was a guy who seemed to take the small things for granted.
Where he saw his parents as a burden, Carly would give anything to still have even just one of hers around.
She’d lost her mom at a young age, and now her dad.
From what she could tell, these were people who cared for him, and not everyone got to have that.
As such, she had no problem being honest.
“All my life I’ve dreamed of having a family where we got to eat dinners together. The way movies tell you families are supposed
to be,” she said. “The closest I got was if I visited my dad on set and we both ate from the craft services catering at the
same time. What you have? That’s special. I wish I’d been able to have that with my dad.”
She wasn’t trying to make him feel bad, necessarily, but maybe she was.
“Tell me about your dad,” Adam said gently.
Tell me about your dad was a simple request. She’d known the guy her whole life, until recently. He’d raised her. She should be able to talk about
him.
But the truth was she didn’t know where to begin. She knew his daily routine: wake at seven, eat oatmeal and drink black coffee,
open the movie theater at noon, close at 10 p.m., heat up a frozen meal for dinner, watch an episode of Jeopardy before bed. She knew he used a 2-in-1 shampoo. Knew that he liked to weed his garden every Saturday. She knew his favorite
kind of beef jerky. She could remember the feel of his hugs, and how his scratchy chin rested on the top of her head. She
could hear his voice mail greeting in her head, the hesitant way he said, If you’re calling for Bruce, leave me a message, like he hadn’t been sure he was working the recording correctly. She missed hearing his voice.
But those were all super-specific sense memories that kept him alive to Carly. So Adam’s tell me about your dad question wasn’t as simple as he might have thought.
“Look, the eclipse.” Carly pointed out the window and hoped this would be a smooth transition away from talking about herself.
“Not quite yet,” Adam said. And she wasn’t sure if he meant the eclipse timing, but then he continued with, “Three, two and
one.”
Adam lingered on his watch.
“Well?” she nervously asked.
“Four minutes, two seconds.” He licked his lips and locked eyes with hers. “No change.”
“No change?” Carly stared at him.
He stared back. And as she studied him, something in her gut told her not to give up on this wild theory of hers. But now
that the evidence was stacking against her favor, how would she convince Adam?