Chapter 7
Carly
Carly sharply exhaled as she appeared in the funeral service room. She stared at her dad’s coffin. Her back was healed and
now she could go about her day—this time blissfully Adam-free. She clasped her hands and silently thanked the loop gods, whoever
they were.
“So you’re dating that girl now?” Shireen’s muffled voice floated through the air like a piece of bait on the line.
Well, that girl had to be Carly. The last time Shireen had addressed her, she said she’d liked Carly. Now, though? Her tone suggested the
opposite. Carly instinctively slid down in her chair. What had she been thinking by kissing Adam? Er, stage kissing him. She could definitely be impulsive, something she got from her dad—he bought old movie theaters; she tried to
rescue men she barely knew . . .
She was only trying to do the guy a favor while simultaneously fulfilling her good deed quotient for the day. She’d helped
him. She was the Good Samaritan of smooching. She hadn’t meant to hurt Shireen, though. Adam’s ex had clearly moved on with
Dean, right?
“You gave me such a hard time for the whole Dean thing, but all it takes is one suicidal leap and you’re with her?” Shireen tried again. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”
“The eclipse was shorter,” Adam said. “Ten seconds shorter.”
Carly rolled her eyes. Adam was odd. He was a funeral director, overly tall and obsessed with the eclipse, apparently. The
only thing stranger was how soft his hair had felt between her fingers. She unexpectedly got goose bumps and rubbed her hands
over her arms. Was she so desperate for human touch that she was now getting excited by someone’s hair?
Shireen let out a disbelieving, “Okay, whatever.” Then, as was always the case, the office door slammed open and her footsteps
filled the hall. Carly was tempted to turn in her chair to watch Shireen leave, but had learned her lesson about interfering
with these two. When the space went quiet, Carly stood. She came to the hallway and froze as she saw Adam.
He leaned against the office door frame and gnawed on his bottom lip, lost in thought.
She should leave. She should run, actually. Carly was going to be Adam-free today, meaning she shouldn’t interact with him.
So she put one foot in front of the other and started toward the exit.
Ten seconds shorter. Adam’s words echoed in her head. What had he meant by that? Was he saying something in the loop had changed?
The alarm bells blared inside Carly’s mind as she turned back, took a breath and said, “You okay?”
Of course he was not okay. This was a man who was perpetually sullen. And hadn’t she asked a similar question during the other
loop and been met with nothing but a withering glare?
Carly shook her head. “Never mind,” she muttered, turning to leave.
“Your back is fixed,” Adam said.
She stopped walking. She’d opened the door, and he’d come through it. What else had she expected to happen? She turned to
Adam. “What were you telling Shireen just now? I heard you mention the eclipse.”
Adam’s expression changed into something more genuine. “I study the eclipse.” His gaze met hers. “Or, it’s kind of like a
hobby. Just something to pass the time, like your good deed thing.”
Passing time was everyone’s prime motivation, as far as she could tell. Apparently, he spent his days fixated on the eclipse.
“So you . . .” She wasn’t even sure what to ask. “Something happened?”
“I time every eclipse, and without fail it always lasts four minutes and thirty-two seconds, but yesterday it changed.”
“Ten seconds?”
“Yes, it was ten seconds shorter,” Adam confirmed.
It was disturbing but true that Carly thought his eyes had softened and that they looked . . . nice.
“If it had been a smaller number, I’d chalk it up to an error,” he continued. “But I’ve been doing this for so long . . .
I didn’t make a mistake.”
No, Carly could tell by his manicured fingernails that he wasn’t the messy type. He was probably one of those people who had
a closet full of crisp, ironed shirts and alphabetized his books.
And then the briefest image of Adam, with his button-down untucked, his hair mussed and those intense eyes directed at her
flashed through.
“Carly?” His concerned tone cut in.
She shook her head and the thought of him away. Clearly, she was unwell. “Sorry, you were saying?”
“This is the first time I’ve noticed anything change in the Julian sky since the loop started.
I can count on the sunset occurring at seven twenty-nine, a shooting star at eleven twenty-three and the eclipse lasting for four minutes and thirty-two seconds.
” He ran a hand through his hair as he paced the room.
“So if the eclipse is shorter, that means that something about the loop is changing, too.”
“That’s not possible, is it?” Carly eventually asked.
“It is, apparently.” He tilted his head, and a hopeful expression crossed his face.
“What do you think this means?” Carly could think of a million things it could mean. If the eclipse was shorter, maybe the
loop was getting shorter, too. Maybe shorter meant that it would eventually just disappear. “Like, the loop might stop? We
could get out of here?” She thought of Burbank and her apartment. Waking up early to work on a new screenplay and going for
a self-congratulatory bear claw at The Donut Hut. Somewhere out there, Marilyn Montgomery was waiting for Carly to reply to
her email . . .
“The loop might stop, yes,” Adam said.
He was a man of few words, she realized, but Carly always had plenty of those. Because now that she’d heard this thing about
the eclipse, there was no unhearing it. She wouldn’t be able to just go about her loop like everything was normal.
“This is amazing,” she said. “What should we—should we do something? Should we start telling people? I mean, this is huge. This is the most exciting thing to happen since that time the mayor got everyone to fill a swimming pool with Skittles.”
When there was no response, just Adam’s trademark judgmental scowl, Carly added, “Do you have any idea how many Skittles it takes to fill an entire pool? This was an all-day team effort that ended in everyone getting to belly flop into the pool. I got to taste the rainbow face-first, Adam.”
And to her shock, he laughed. A small hiccup of a thing that he quickly suppressed, but still . . . a laugh. He screwed his
expression back to grumpy as he said, “I shouldn’t have told you anything.”
“Why?” Carly was suddenly self-conscious. Sure, she’d just regaled him with a story about jumping into a pool of candy-coated
snacks, but was that reason enough not to tell her about the eclipse? She could be a serious person. She was deeply serious
about getting the fuck out of this loop, for one. “You know what, don’t answer that. It’s too late. You already told me. I
know about the eclipse changing. And now, whether you like it or not, I’m going to help you. Consider me your partner in breaking
the loop.”
That made him snap out of it. “Hold on, we can’t control the loop.”
And this was where Carly saw her opportunity. “I don’t think the time just randomly changed. Something probably happened to cause the
change, and we need to figure out what it was.”
“You have a point. I see that,” he started to say. “I just don’t totally understand how my observations and your . . . What
is it that you’re adding to this endeavor?”
“My people skills, you unfeeling robot.” Carly accidentally leaned toward him, despite her words. She made an effort to pull
back.
“Ah, yes, your ability to charm,” Adam joked.
“So, we have a deal?” she pressed again. “We’ll work together so we can both stop the loop and never have to see each other
again.”
Adam swallowed, then extended his hand to hers and said, “To never seeing each other again.”
As he took her palm, Carly was surprised by how the warmth of his hand traveled through her. And when she pulled away, her whole body tingled from it.
Maybe he’d felt it, too, because he’d gone quiet. But then he started to worry his lip, like he was holding information back.
The man was infuriating.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?” Carly asked. “Something that, I don’t know, is causing you to nearly eat your
own lip off?”
“I’m thinking,” he quickly said. “Not all of us just open our mouths and let whatever is in our heads pour out.”
“Uh, rude.” She crossed her arms to reinforce her stance.
“Look, I don’t know what to do here.” Adam finally met her gaze. “This is . . . It’s significant, for sure.”
“Yes, significant!” she said, because this was the closest thing to enthusiasm she’d get from him. And she’d promised to come
up with ideas, so she spit out the first one that popped into her head. “What if we check in with the people still working
to break the loop? Like Rick Gaines?”
The mayor had mentioned Rick was in need of a good deed. Rick, who was part of the small contingent still trying to find a
way out of Julian. They’d certainly want to know if there were changes with the eclipse.
Adam stopped the chewing. “Rick is . . . I don’t want to say, strange, because that doesn’t seem fair, but he’s the kind of guy who has a bunker filled with doomsday supplies.”
“Well, we’re the ones stuck in a time loop. Maybe the bunker wasn’t such a bad idea.”
Adam cracked his neck as if winding up. “He once ran for mayor, and his platform was that he’d been abducted by aliens who
instructed him to run for public office because, if he didn’t, they’d come back to abduct him again.”
Carly didn’t say anything. She dug the toe of her boot into the floor. “Again, we are stuck in a time loop. Maybe the aliens are real.”
“They very much are real,” Adam said. “I’m just not wholly convinced of why they’d need Rick to be mayor.”
Carly’s initial instinct was to argue. She wasn’t normally the type, but there was just something about his know-it-all face
and his innate ability to put her in a bad mood that made her want to throw verbal punches. But was she really about to argue
that maybe Rick—whom she’d never met—had something the aliens wanted? Was that an argument she’d win? A hill she wanted to
crawl up and die on?
No, as it turned out, it wasn’t. But Carly had a hunch about Rick, and roughly a bottomless pit of motivation she’d inherited
from her dad. Bruce had blind faith in moving his entire life to Julian, and Carly had blind faith in going to see Rick. Maybe
this fact about the eclipse shortening, coupled with a theory of Rick’s, could give them a way out.
For the first time in a very long time, Carly saw a light at the end of this infinite tunnel. Her whole body was awake, like
when the hot summer weather finally shifted into fall and the cool air pricked her skin back to life. Wouldn’t it be nice
to experience a new season? All she had to do was convince Adam that this was a good idea.
“When I’ve stopped the loop, you’ll look back on this moment and thank me.” She gestured for Adam to follow her. “Come on,
let’s go see Rick. What could the harm be?”
The harm was that Rick’s “house,” as it turned out, was an airstream parked in the middle of the forest with over a hundred
plastic pink flamingos in the makeshift yard.
“Oh,” Carly said, but thought, maybe Adam was right.
Adam leaned across her and pointed out the passenger-side window. “Looks like he got a new bird feeder.”
“The bird feeder?” she asked. “You’re focused on the very ordinary, very small, bird feeder and not the flock of pink flamingos?”
“Look at that, a little bluejay.” Adam smiled at the bird feeder and completely, maybe intentionally, ignored Carly’s comment.
“Like I said, Rick’s a bit eccentric.”
“Yeah,” she said. “He’s like John Waters on steroids.”
“Who?” Adam asked.
“Just one of the most important filmmakers of all time.” She rubbed a spot on her forehead where a headache now bloomed. “What
do they teach you in funeral school, if not the classics?”
Much to her surprise, Adam looked amused. And Carly was rather pleased about that.
Bizarre, she thought, and got out of the car to avoid Adam’s wry expression. Carly started for Rick’s door, but about halfway there,
a voice from a loudspeaker blared.
“What do you want?”
Maybe she’d tripped some alarm system. Carly was surprised a net hadn’t swept her off the ground and left her dangling upside
down under the flamingos’ watchful eyes.
Carly looked to Adam. What did one do in a situation like this? The only weapon she had was her combat boots—could she throw
one at the airstream and run?
Adam stepped out of the car and yelled, “Rick, it’s Adam Rhodes! I’m here with a friend. She just wants to meet you.”
They both waited.
“Adam?” the voice sounded.
“Adam Rhodes, yes.” He shut the car door and came to stand next to Carly, and she was suddenly glad Adam was so very tall.
A series of metal locks erupted near the door and it swung open. There was Rick—a breadbox of a man, with a cropped haircut, trim beard and goggles so thick it was hard to see his eyes behind them. He held on to the frame to show how he absolutely didn’t want them in his space.
But it was hard to ignore the power ballad blaring through his airstream, Bette Midler’s “The Wind Beneath My Wings.”
Carly was nosy and couldn’t help but comment. “Great song.”
To her shock, Rick’s chin began to wobble. “It really is,” he said. “I apologize. Every time I reset, I’m in the middle of
watching Beaches.”
“Beaches?” Adam asked.
In her head, Carly also thought, Beaches? As in, the classic friendship movie? This man with the bunker and the aliens coming after him was watching . . . Beaches? She didn’t say any of that, though, because now she sensed a way in.
“It’s my go-to when I need a good cry,” Carly said, adding to the camaraderie. Maybe if she could be his friend, Rick would be willing to talk to them.
“Me, too,” Rick said. “I just wish every day didn’t start like this.” He reached out a hand, and Carly immediately took it
with a supportive squeeze. Bingo.
“I know what you mean,” Carly said, and she really did. “What if I told you there might be a way out of the loop?”
Rick narrowed his eyes at them. “I’m listening.”