Chapter 18
Adam
Even in his darkest moments, Adam had an inkling that the loop wouldn’t last forever. A hope that came from his understanding
of physics and Newton’s laws of motion. Because every action had a reaction, and eventually the action of the time loop would
have an equal and opposite reaction.
What he couldn’t account for, though, was what would happen to all of them once the loop came to its end. He’d hoped that much like a scratch on a record, they would simply return to the exact spots where they’d left off and carry on as if
nothing had happened. But more than likely, they wouldn’t simply be returned the way they were. There would be changes—the
reactions—to the loop. If they even survived it . . .
All of these thoughts swirled in an unsteady mix that was hard to silence. But then Adam felt an intense pressure on his hand,
which grounded him back to the present. He was at his parents’ house. Sheila and Bill sat across from him at the kitchen table.
And the pressure he’d felt was Sheila’s nails digging into the top of his hand.
“Mom,” he said and pried her fingers off.
“What?” Sheila asked, then snapped out of her haze. “Oh, sorry, honey.”
Adam hadn’t had a conversation of this magnitude with his parents since the day Shireen imploded their marriage. This time, however, wasn’t about Adam’s life—it was about all of theirs, and the gravity of the situation was not lost on them.
“So,” Bill started to say, “do you actually think we’re all about to vanish? The woman you spoke with—”
“Dr. Song.” Adam sipped the coffee in front of him. The world might be ending, but he still needed caffeine.
“She’s a scientist who believes this is where the loop is headed?” The fear was etched across his dad’s face.
“I mean, it’s where I think the loop is headed.” Adam tried to keep his tone even and calm.
“And she does, too?” his dad asked, like he didn’t buy what Adam was selling.
“Why does her opinion matter more than mine?” Adam was annoyed. “I’m telling you I’ve looked at the evidence.”
“Her opinion comes with a doctorate,” Bill said.
“Can you two knock it off?” Sheila put a hand between them.
Of course it was only natural that his dad would want to know what the scientist thought. When getting a professional opinion,
you wanted the doctor to tell you if you were going to live or die, not the guy who buried people for a living. But still,
something in Adam was really bothered by all of this. Because if he’d gone to Caltech, then he’d be the doctor in this scenario.
“Sorry.” Adam wasn’t used to fighting with his parents. In fact, he never did. They occasionally bickered, but those quickly
resolved. He tried to smooth things over with, “This is all a little stressful for me.”
“Of course it is.” Sheila stood, crossed to the fridge and pulled out the coffee cake.
Instead of cutting them slices, she brought the whole thing to the table with three forks.
She stabbed a piece with a heavy serving of frosting.
“So, we might only have a few more loops, huh?” she said through a bite.
Adam swallowed. Yes, a few more loops might be all the time they had left in the world. He wasn’t the optimist, and he didn’t
have Carly to pull him out of his spiral.
Carly. She’d looked almost pained when he said he’d tell his parents on his own. Maybe he should’ve brought her, but he also
needed to process his own feelings. He’d hid his deepest fears from Carly, not wanting to scare her. But he didn’t plan to
give his parents false hope.
“I think it’s time you painted that mural.” Sheila pointed the cake fork at Bill.
Bill waved her off. “I’m not going to spend my last moments smelling like paint. I want to spend it . . .” Bill raised his
brows in a deeply suggestive way.
“Give me a break. You love painting. You’ve always dreamed of having a mural in town,” his mom tried again.
“You have?” Adam looked at his dad, who gave a small shrug. Obviously, he knew his dad’s hobby was art. Maybe he’d even call
it his passion. But a mural?
“Who doesn’t dream of that?” Bill asked.
“I don’t,” Sheila said as she speared more cake onto her fork. “I dream of a lounge chair on the beach and being massaged,
like normal people.”
“Why didn’t you ever go for that, then?” Adam asked. “We’ve had all this time in the loop. You could’ve painted a mural every
day.”
“I can’t just go and paint a mural, Adam.” Bill’s voice was almost accusatory.
Sheila raised her eyebrows at Adam, almost suggesting she’d had this conversation with his dad before. Then she said to Bill,
“Okay, honey.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound upset. There’s just a lot to unravel here.” Bill’s face had gone red. Adam wondered what he was suppressing, and what had held Bill back from accomplishing this one thing.
“I still have to tell Shireen.” Adam stood from the table with the sudden need to leave this conversation. He couldn’t meet
his father’s eyes. His dad had a dream that was right in front of him, but he wouldn’t even try to achieve it. The whole thing filled Adam with a mix of sadness and frustration, and he didn’t want to project those onto
his family. Not when their time here had an expiration date.
Sheila followed him to the door. “Don’t worry about your dad,” she said in a whisper. “You know he doesn’t like change. For
him, the idea of painting a mural is as overwhelming as going to space without a suit. He doesn’t even know where to start.”
Sheila opened the door for Adam, but stood in the frame to suggest they weren’t done talking.
“It’s sad,” Adam said. “Dad has this very attainable dream, and he won’t even try?”
“You’re right. It is sad. I hope he tries.” Sheila rubbed the apple of Adam’s cheek with her thumb. “But you should think
about what you want, too. You have a handful of loops left. How are you going to spend them?”
A handful of loops left. Those words were as heavy as stones, but when Adam thought about how to spend them, there was Carly, all light and vibrant.
His mom had asked him a question, and instead of shielding her from the truth, he decided to be brave, the way Carly had taught
him. “I want to show Carly the constellations,” he finally said.
“That sounds really lovely.” Sheila kissed him on his forehead. “I’ve noticed a nice change in you since Carly showed up.
You seem . . . I don’t know, more confident, maybe? Kind of like you have some energy again. I’m happy about that. I hope
you’re making her feel the same way.”
Was he making her happy? Maybe parts of their day were spent on Carly’s desires, but he worried he’d been steering them more toward what he preferred. The planetarium, the timing of the eclipse. Had he stopped to ask Carly how she’d wanted to spend this time?
“I know you often look to your dad and me for the answers, but I’m glad you’re finding some of your own. And who knows? Maybe
this wormhole isn’t an end, but a different path.”
His mom hugged him, and Adam hugged her back. He started to wonder if she was right—maybe he’d looked to his mom and dad for
guidance so much that he hadn’t bothered to find himself. If time was running out, that meant he only had so much to try and
course correct.
As Adam walked to the hearse, he knew he had to find Shireen. He was done holding on to the anger around the end of their
marriage, and he owed her the opportunity to find happiness before the loop ended, too. Adam would always care about Shireen—she’d
been part of his life for so long that it was impossible not to—but he was done trying to punish her for what happened.
That was another reason he’d wanted to have these conversations on his own. If he was going to spend more time with Carly,
he wanted to do that with a clear conscience. Having a conversation with his ex was the only way forward.
The alarm on his watch signaled the start of the eclipse was near.
Adam got into the car, put on his eclipse glasses and waited.
He easily spied the shadow bands along the dirt road just off the driveway.
If he’d had infinite loops, would he ever be able to solve their origins?
He’d never know. The last eclipse had been a full minute shorter, and as the seconds ticked on, he just hoped for more time.
He’d had 248 loops to resolve his issues with Shireen, to find who he was, but he’d squandered all that by remaining firmly lodged in the past. Whatever the outcome, Adam just had to try to embrace what he wanted, and he hoped Carly wanted to be part of that, too.
When the moon slipped off the sun and Adam checked the time, it was 2:37. Ten seconds shorter. He was unsure of what that
meant but ferreted the thoughts away because his priority would be finding Shireen so that the next loop, when he had his
chance to see Carly, he’d be able to start with a clean slate.
Perhaps the only good thing about Adam’s former best friend, Dean, was that finding him was quite easy. His vintage Mustang
convertible was painted cherry-red, so Adam’s mission was to find that car. He was grateful when it wasn’t parked outside
the cabin where he and Shireen used to live. The car wasn’t outside the duplex where Dean lived, either. When he didn’t spot
the car around Main Street, Adam gritted his teeth. Julian wasn’t a big place, but there was a possibility he could spend
all night trying to track Shireen down, only to have to chat with her in the morning, which wasn’t his plan. He wanted his
morning with Carly to be all about her.
Dean worked as a sommelier at one of the Julian wineries. Set in the hills on over a hundred acres of land, the Lyon Vineyard
was owned by a renowned chef who sold the wine exclusively from her Michelin-starred restaurant but also served those who
came through the town. As Adam drove up the long, sandy driveway to the top of the hill, Dean’s fiery red car practically
winked at him.