Chapter 19
Carly
When Carly restarted in the funeral room, she immediately pushed herself up from the chair. She and Adam had unfinished business.
He’d all but fled from her one minute, then acted as if he’d done nothing wrong the next. She wasn’t about to let him flip-flop
all over the place.
“Dad, I think my good deed for today will be standing up for myself.” She tapped the lid of the coffin as a farewell, then
hurried down the aisle of chairs.
When she came to the hall, she nearly collided with Shireen. “Oh, sorry,” she mumbled.
Shireen gave her a kind look. “Don’t stress. We don’t have time for all that now, right?”
Carly stilled. Adam really had told Shireen, then. “Right.”
Shireen nodded, then headed for the exit. Carly glanced to the office, where Adam emerged, wringing his hands.
“Can I just say something before you let me have it?” he asked her.
“I don’t know. Is it going to annoy me?” Carly asked back.
“It’s not that I didn’t want you with me this last loop.”
Adam must think she was truly gullible to use a line like that. She’d let him know where he stood. “That’s the thing about
leaving someone behind. The someone doesn’t feel great afterward. I’m the someone, to be clear.”
“I get that.” Adam tucked a strand of red hair behind his ears and she had to stop herself from reaching out to feel the softness
of it. “I’m scared, okay? I don’t know what the eclipse changing means for us. I’m scared of just disappearing into nothing,
but I’m mostly scared of losing you. When I went to my parents’ place, I didn’t want to sugarcoat anything for them, and I
didn’t want you to hear how terrified I am. Because you’re holding it together. You have hope, and I love that about you.”
Carly instantly blushed, which was annoying. He’d said he loved something about her. She wanted to be annoyed with Adam, but that was sweet.
“I didn’t want to bring you into the mess that is my brain,” he added.
He was proactively apologizing. On the one hand, Carly could milk this situation for a bit. Really let Adam stew in the idea
that she was livid. But then again, they might not have much time left. She’d already mucked up the ending with her father;
did she really want to spend the rest of wormhole eternity beating herself up for her final words to Adam?
“First of all, that’s maybe the longest you’ve ever spoken without stopping. It was impressive,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“Second, I ate probably the equivalent of two pounds of cheese yesterday. I was a mess. I was miserable, actually. And yes, it’s because you left me behind, and I thought you hated me, basically.
” She crossed her arms and gave him an even crosser look.
She wouldn’t milk the situation, but she wouldn’t make it easy, either.
He should know that he hurt her feelings, at the very least.
“I don’t hate you,” he quickly said.
“Just mildly dislike me, then?” She echoed a conversation they’d had early on.
“Something like that,” he replied with a smile.
He walked toward her, all smooth and confident, slipped his hand behind her head and began to bring her toward him.
But Carly still had the niggling feeling about Shireen. “Wait,” she said. “Did you and Shireen . . . ?”
He rubbed his thumb across her cheek. “I told her that I understood our relationship had been over for a long time. Long before
the affair. And that I was moving on with my life.”
“Do you mean that, though?”
“I do. And Shireen told me she hopes I find happiness, too.” Adam inched closer to Carly, then ghosted the words across her
lips, “I think I have.”
Carly exhaled a shaky breath and was surprised by how relieved she was by those words.
“There’s another thing,” he said. “The eclipse shortened yesterday, but just by ten seconds.”
“So what do you think this means . . .?” She drifted off. Was the eclipse still shortening because of her Together Theory?
Was it tied to the shadow bands, like Adam thought?
“I don’t know, but to be honest, what I realized last loop was that if all we have is the time left, then I want to make the
most of it—with you.” He licked his lips. “And more importantly, you should spend these days however you want. So, I will
leave you alone if you tell me to. But the last loop really opened my eyes to what I want, and it’s you.”
Adam was choosing her? She’d reset ready to fight, but he’d managed to get right to her big feelings before she’d had time for any of that anger to fester. And maybe Adam’s superpower of knowing how to calm her was why she felt drawn to say, “I want to be with you, too.”
Adam closed the distance between them and kissed her. Carly let out a tiny gasp of excitement as he nipped her lower lip and
wove his fingers through her hair to massage her neck.
There was no Shireen. No eclipse. No loop to escape. Just this moment where Carly was Adam’s, and Adam was Carly’s.
“Let’s get out of here,” Adam said as his thumb traced a line across her shoulder.
When they got to his car, Adam opened the door and Carly tucked herself into the seat. This was like so many of the loops
she’d spent with him, except now they were together. Dating? Who knew? But they were a thing.
“We’ve spent all this time participating in one giant science experiment, which obviously makes me happy,” Adam said as he
started the car engine. “But you mentioned you haven’t been writing. I just wonder if there’s some way to bring that back?”
Carly was sure her entire body had turned red from the heat of this attention squarely on her. “I don’t know that I want to
spend the last loops, or hours, we have working. We could be trying to solve the eclipse or doing anything else.”
“But writing isn’t work, right? I mean, it is in the sense that it’s what you want to be doing long-term. But also, I imagine you have fun when you do it? The way I look
to the sky to escape.”
Yes, writing was Carly’s escape. Had been, at least. She could drift in and out of fictitious worlds, characters and scenes.
She could transport herself into someone else’s thoughts to avoid her own.
She turned to writing to process certain things in her own life.
And, to Adam’s point, it didn’t feel like work.
Putting together the pieces of a script felt as satisfying as finishing an actual puzzle.
Getting to step back and look at the finished product gave her a sense of pride and excitement.
Because once a script was done, she was that much closer to having it turned into a movie.
“I haven’t written in a long time.” Not since her dad died. She hadn’t sat down at her laptop since the phone call from the
hospital, asking her to confirm that she was Bruce’s next of kin.
“Look, I’m not going to force you to do something that makes you uncomfortable. But I’m just wondering if sitting still with
your thoughts might help you reconnect with who you were before the loop,” Adam continued.
“Didn’t we try sitting still at the library?”
“You and I both know scientific research isn’t the same as being creative.”
Maybe she could start slow. “I don’t have a script I’m working on that’s really speaking to me.” Carly drummed her fingers
on the armrest.
“Where do the ideas come from?” Adam’s knuckles ran up, then down her arm. “Do they just pop into your head?”
She was having a hard time focusing; his knuckles caused yummy friction across her skin. She cleared her throat and said,
“I have these brainstorming exercises I do. They’re kind of ridiculous, actually.”
“I like ridiculous. Specifically seeing you being ridiculous.” Adam gave a side smile. “Should we do one? The incentive being
that I don’t have a creative bone in my body and will likely humiliate myself.”
Carly considered her options. She could continue to deflect and hope that Adam moved on to something else. Or she could just embrace that today would be about her. After all, she needed comfort. He needed comfort. The five-senses brainstorm was usually just that.
“Okay,” she acquiesced. “Let’s go find a cozy spot.”
The spot they found was an apple orchard down the road. For all the loops Carly had spent in Julian, she hadn’t bothered to
spend a day in one of its iconic orchards. She was a city mouse, unsure of what to do in a field. Sure, there was the obvious
act of reaching up and eating an apple from a tree. But how many times could a person do that? Twice? 249 times?
“You said you wanted cozy, picturesque.” Adam swept his hand to the view around them. “There’s a spot just up through the
trees that has a great lookout point. We could sit and see the valley below?”
“Yeah, that sounds obnoxiously idyllic. Let’s do it.” Carly began to follow Adam up the small hill. “You sure do seem to know
your way around an apple orchard. Is this what people in Julian do for fun, normally?”
Adam shielded his eyes against the sunlight as he said, “Dean used to work here in the summer when we were in high school.
I’d come visit on his lunch break and we’d sit up here and shoot the shit.”
This was maybe the first time Carly had heard Dean’s name mentioned without hateful vitriol attached. She wondered about that.
“Must be weird to not be able to talk to your best friend anymore,” she said.
“I still get these urges to text him. Like, if I’m reminded of something from childhood, or even now, being here . . .” He
drifted off. “It’s just harder with Dean, because so much of my life and my memories involve him.”
They got to the clearing, and Adam pointed out to the valley.
When Carly looked at the stretch of green hills dotted with trees, and the sun lighting all of it in a glow, it was almost impossible to imagine any of it was real.
“This looks like a simulation of a countryside,” she said.
“Do you think there’s a glitch in the matrix?
Maybe we’re just all looping because someone’s video game is faulty?
It’s a much better option than, you know, the wormhole. ”