Chapter 15 NoelleSeptember Cam
15 Noelle
June 20, Version 57-ish
When I wake up, it’s still June 20. As always, I add Avery to my contacts and text her to confirm that she too is still in the loop.
We decide to make another attempt at traditional Chinese medicine, but our efforts are unsuccessful once more.
The following day, Avery suggests we go to a fancy salon and get makeovers. I opt for a pixie cut again, and at her insistence, I also have my hair dyed pink.
“You look really good,” she says as we look in the mirror.
“Are you sure?” I ask doubtfully.
“It’s a great look for you,” the stylist says.
To be honest, I’m not sure it’s me .
But that’s okay. It’ll disappear tomorrow.
“Time to see Cam?” Avery asks.
“Yeah.” I pause. She wants to meet him, and the plan is that she’ll accompany me to the brewery, but I’m not sure I want to do the initial flirting in front of her. “Maybe it would be better if I get there first, and you arrive later?”
She decides to pop into a store, and I head to Leaside Brewing alone. Once again, I’m met by a sea shanty. I smile, but then my worries get the best of me.
What if Cam doesn’t like women with short hair? Or women with pink hair? Maybe he liked me as I looked before, but—
“Hey.” He tilts his head. “Have we met before? You look really, really familiar, but I can’t recall your name.”
“Cam, right?” Deciding to mix it up a little, I say, “I’ve come here a bunch of times before, though it’s been a while. I’m Noelle.”
I say nothing about being an heiress, and it makes me a touch nervous—I’m going further off script. But I don’t want to have exactly the same encounter every time. Although we may only have the one day, I can still use it to learn different things about him.
He shakes his head. “I can’t believe I forgot. I’m usually good with names. Especially…”
“Especially what?” I ask, leaning forward.
The silence that follows is heavy, and I’m very conscious of how much I like the look of him. His easy smile and those gently sloped shoulders.
He laughs and shakes his head again.
“When it comes to women with bright pink hair?” I supply.
“Yes. Exactly.”
“I only got it done today. Perhaps it’s throwing you off.”
“Perhaps.” He gestures to the chalkboard with the tap list. “What would you like to drink? I seem to think that last time you had the Corktown.”
“Can’t remember my name but you remember my beer,” I tease.
I could never flirt like this before my life started repeating. Knowing he won’t remember tomorrow—not fully, anyway—is a double-edged sword. If I screw this up, I’m the only one who has to live with the embarrassing memory beyond the next twelve hours. And if I don’t screw this up and we go out, I’m the only one who will remember our date.
“So it seems,” he says as he starts filling a pint glass.
“The important things in life.”
He returns with my beer. “I think names are important too, but I won’t forget it now.”
Oh, but you will.
“Do you serve food?” I ask, suddenly realizing I haven’t eaten since breakfast. After getting my hair done, I was too focused on arriving here at three to think about the food situation, but now, my stomach is growling. I hope he doesn’t hear it.
“We’ve got a few things.” He motions to a QR code for me to scan. “On the weekends, I try to arrange a food truck around the corner—going to talk to someone about that later, actually—but this is what we have now.”
I take a quick look. “The meat pie sounds good.”
According to the menu, it’s made by a company that specializes in pies. I’ve had their pies before and enjoyed them, though it’s been a while. My stomach growls even louder than before.
“Sorry,” I say.
“How about this? The pie will take twenty-five minutes, but it comes with chips. I can get those for you now.”
“That would be great. Thank you.”
He leaves and returns a moment later with a bowl containing some kettle chips.
“Can’t have anyone dying of hunger in the taproom,” he says.
“Yeah, that would be unfortunate.” I scramble for something else to say, and somehow land on, “Though I don’t think there’s much danger of that happening. Before I die of hunger, I’d shape-shift into a, uh, bear. Then I’d eat all your customers, which would probably be, uh, worse for you.”
Oh god. What is wrong with me?
I can’t think of clever things to say on the spot. Sometimes I just make things awkward. Like when Dave gave me a cute card with koalas, and I wondered aloud whether these particular koalas had chlamydia because apparently a lot of wild koalas do. I don’t think that was quite what he’d intended to discuss on Valentine’s Day.
I consider running out of the taproom and writing this day off as a loss—I can try again tomorrow—but I really am hungry, and I want to eat those chips. And that pie. Hopefully the rest of my food arrives soon, and then I can scarf it down and meet Avery at another location.
“Luckily,” Cam says, “you’re my only customer right now.”
It takes me a moment to figure out what he’s talking about. Wow, he actually responded to my bizarre comment about turning into a bear. He might just be trying to keep his only customer happy, but maybe I should keep talking. After all, flirting is mostly about confidence, right? And I can hardly hide in the corner when I have bright hair.
“Very true,” I say smoothly. “I guess I’d just have to eat you instead.” I give him an assessing look. “Yep, I think you’d do nicely. So it’s lucky for you that I have these.” I point to my chips before grabbing a handful. I wash them down with beer.
At that point, his colleague returns, and they start singing “Unwell.” A moment later, Avery enters and takes a seat beside me.
“That’s him?” she whispers, nodding toward Cam.
“Yeah.”
He’s bopping his head along with the music. When they finish singing, Avery and I clap. The other man heads to the back again, and Cam asks Avery what she’d like to drink.
She shrugs and points to my glass. “I’ll have that.”
“Good choice,” he says.
“What would be a bad choice?” I ask.
“Deciding you don’t like anything here and going to another bar.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not doing that,” Avery says.
He pulls her pint, then says to me, “I’m going to get your pie. Can’t have you turning into a bear.”
When he leaves, Avery turns to me. “What was that about?”
“An inside joke.”
“An inside joke? You only—well, he only just met you.”
“What do you think of him?” I ask.
“After what happened with Joe, you should know I’m a terrible judge of men’s characters, but he seems nice. Fun.”
“And cute,” I say.
“And cute.”
But hearing her repeat those words makes me bristle.
“Don’t worry,” she says with a laugh, “he’s all yours. He’s not my type, but I understand what you see in him.” She tastes the Corktown and makes a face. “Really? You like that?”
“Try the Annex next time,” I suggest.
Cam returns with my meat pie, and I eagerly dig in. I’m not quite as ravenous after finishing the chips, but I’m still hungry, and the pie is full of rich braised beef and veggies.
As he serves other customers, I watch him out of the corner of my eye. His fingers curled around a glass. His easy laugh. The dimple that occasionally makes an appearance.
At one point, he catches me looking and shoots me a smile that would make my knees weak if I were standing.
“What do you want to do now?” I ask Avery.
“Well, you’re going to get his number and meet him tonight—”
“I don’t have to do that. I can spend today with you instead.”
“Nah.” She shakes her head. “Have fun. I’ll be fine.”
This time, I slip Cam my number rather than waiting for him to provide his.
Once again, we meet at the market, but as I look around at the crowds and the familiar booths, I can’t find any enthusiasm for it. I’ve been here so many times before. Yes, there’s lots of good food, but I’ve tried much of it, and the benches aren’t the most comfortable places to sit.
“How about we grab something small here?” I suggest. “Maybe taiyaki? Then we can wander up Yonge and find somewhere else for dinner—a place where we can sit at a table. Heiresses are too refined for crowded markets.” I attempt to toss my hair over my shoulder, then remember my hair is too short for that.
He furrows his brow. “What?”
Right. There were no heiress jokes today. He has no idea what I’m talking about.
“Ignore me. But what do you think of finding a restaurant?”
We buy some taiyaki and walk up Yonge. The first restaurant we enter is small and has nothing available, but a bustling izakaya miraculously has a table on the patio. I select a cocktail with plum wine, and Cam goes for one with yuzu and sake. We order a bunch of food.
“So, what do you do, Noelle?” he asks.
“I’m a mechanical engineer.”
“An engineer who doesn’t work on Fridays?”
“I banked a lot of vacation days, so I’m working four-day weeks this summer.”
We talk a bit about our jobs, and I learn some things I didn’t know before: Cam’s plans for the brewery and how you go about getting the LCBO to stock your beer, for example. I’ve never given much thought to what it takes to run a brewery, but it sounds difficult to survive in this crowded marketplace. Cam’s easygoing temperament belies the fact that he has a wealth of knowledge.
Our drinks and edamame beans arrive.
“Cheers,” he says, clinking his glass against mine.
“Cheers.”
He takes a sip of his drink. “Mm. That’s good. We have a yuzu wheat beer. It’s not on tap right now, though we do have cans. You might like it.”
“I’ll get some the next time I come in.”
“You should. Or I can bring you a can sometime.” He pauses. “If you didn’t give me your number, I was planning to slip you mine.”
“Is that something you do a lot?” I tease. “Handing out your number to cute women who come into your brewery?”
“No,” he says, uncharacteristically serious.
My skin tingles, and I swallow hard.
Why am I special? What exactly does he see in me?
“I really can’t believe,” he says, “that I met you before and forgot your name.”
I could attempt to tell him the truth, but that seems too weird. Instead, I say, “What would you do if you were stuck reliving the same day? Like, June twentieth, for example.”
“What’s everyone else doing in this scenario?”
“They’re not aware that the same day is happening over and over. Only you remember the previous iterations of it.”
“Sounds like a video game.”
“Yeah. Except you don’t die. You just keep waking up in the same day.”
He gives me an odd look.
“I’m reading a novel,” I say, “in which something similar happens.”
He taps his chin. “Hm. I guess I’d find the best possible day, and I’d just keep living it again and again. This one, for example?” He gestures between us. “It’s pretty good.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re such a charmer.”
“No, just with you.”
“See, there you go again!”
He chuckles. “Today is a pretty good day. I wouldn’t want to relive Tuesday.”
“What happened on Tuesday?”
“Oh, what didn’t happen on Tuesday? Our air compressor had a leak. Then there were supplier problems… accounting problems… raccoon problems… It wasn’t a fun day. And Darrell desperately needs another assistant brewer/cellarman.” But Cam’s smiling now. “It would probably take a little while to find the best version of the day that I could, but then I’d repeat it over and over.”
“You wouldn’t get sick of it?”
“I’d change it up a little,” he says. “I wouldn’t eat exactly the same meals every day.”
“Now let’s say, hypothetically, that this first date was part of that day, but when you woke up the next morning, I didn’t know who you were.”
“Then I’d get to know you all over again. It doesn’t sound like a hardship.”
I don’t ask how many times the day would have to repeat for him to see it differently.
No, I just smile at him over my drink.
And when he kisses me later—in a parkette this time, rather than against a building—I sink into the moment and enjoy that I get to have a first kiss again.
The next day, after Cam and I eat at the market, I suggest mini-golf, something I haven’t done in a long time. We take an Uber to a place in the suburbs.
“You are so going down,” I say before the final hole.
Big talk from someone who’s losing, but we’ve been playfully smack-talking each other the entire time.
He grins. “Is that so?”
I set up my shot. My ball goes under the kraken and bounces off the edge of the pirate ship, then off a plastic wave. I cheer as the ball stops remarkably close to the hole. Despite my confident words, I didn’t expect to get this one in fewer than three shots, but I’ll be able to manage it.
“Well, I can do better,” Cam says.
He spends even longer preparing and shoots with a flourish. The ball goes beneath the kraken… and doesn’t come out.
“Dammit,” he says good-naturedly.
“Told you.”
“You still haven’t won yet. Pressure’s on.”
I make a show of shaking out my limbs, getting myself ready for this very important—and easy—shot. My ball manages the six inches to the hole without any difficulty, and I whoop.
Cam lifts his hand for a high five, and when our palms make contact, he pulls me into his embrace. Then he places his putter along the green and jabs under the kraken. The ball emerges, just barely, and it takes three more shots for him to get it in the hole.
Which means I’m the winner. Apparently, that earns me a kiss on the cheek.
“Congratulations,” he says. “What do you want to do now?”
We didn’t eat a lot at the market, so we go out for poutine. The regular kind, with just cheese curds and gravy. No bulgogi or green onions. We claim a picnic table outside in the darkness and sit on the same side of the bench.
It’s a very cute first date.
“I’ll text you tomorrow,” he says as we begin our trip home.
“Yes.” I swallow. “Tomorrow.”
The next day, I find myself wondering how Cam starts his June 20. I’ve never seen him before noon. When does he wake up? What does he do before bubble tea?
I have no idea, but I do know where to find him at 3 p.m.
That evening, we go bowling, and Cam beats me handily. I haven’t bowled in years, and my performance is honestly embarrassing—it certainly doesn’t hold a candle to my mini-golfing—but I don’t care. It’s just fun to hang out with him.
I settle into a new routine of sorts, where I see Cam every day. I also get rather good at crocheting and start to find it frustrating that my creations don’t survive the night, but I enjoy the act of creating something with my hands, however fleeting.
Though I’m often occupied with Cam, I make sure to devote time to Avery each day. Sometimes she breaks up with Joe, sometimes she doesn’t—I understand it would be exhausting to keep doing that. We brainstorm ideas to get out of the loop and give them a try, but we’re completely unsurprised when none of them work. We discuss whether it would be cheating if she were to kiss someone else, if she hadn’t officially broken up with Joe that day—I say that the fact that she’s broken up with him multiple times already (and never taken him back) has to count for something.
I find I’m not too bothered by our inability to escape the loop anymore. I start to feel relaxed for the first time in… I don’t know how long. My life consists of first dates, talking to a friend, reading novels—mostly Avery’s recommendations—and crocheting in front of the TV.
“What do you think happens when we get out of this?” she asks one day when we meet at a coffee shop.
“I assume it’ll be June twenty-first,” I say, “and the version of June twentieth that everyone else remembers will be the most recent one we lived.” After all, that’s what happened in the last book I read.
“That’s what I figured, but what if the rest of the world is proceeding without us?”
“I don’t know. Somehow, it just makes more sense to me that we’d wake up on June twenty-first.”
But Avery brings up a good point. What is happening with the rest of the world while we’re stuck? Is everything else frozen?