Chapter 5 #2
“And you didn’t tell me?” Amie asked, pouting.
“He made me promise not to!”
“Anyway,” David said loudly, “I will not be trying to solve Savannah’s murder, thank you very much. Especially if someone’s trying to make me look guilty. I think it’s best if I stay as far from the situation as I can until it all blows over.”
He stretched his arms out over his head, yawning. After a moment of silence:
“That was my polite way of saying ‘Get out.’ ”
“Feel like there’s something in between yawning and ‘get out,’ ” Amie muttered as Ziya laughed. A cold wave of reality washed over her as the other two said their goodbyes. Just thirty minutes before she’d been trying to convince Ziya to leave, and now that she was faced with it, she …
Well. It didn’t feel good.
“Did you eat?” Amie blurted out as the door to David’s apartment closed behind them.
Ziya looked at her, amused. “No. Between leaving the restaurant early and coming here, I didn’t get the chance.”
“Right.” Amie winced. “I meant … do you want to eat?”
“Good god,” came David’s muffled voice from the other side of the door.
“Go to bed!” Amie yelled, feeling her face growing warm.
Ziya was smiling. “Are you offering me dinner?” she asked.
“Depends on the contents of my fridge.” Amie didn’t know why she said that. She was very familiar with every single item in her refrigerator, down to the last slightly moldy jar of salsa in the very back corner. “I can’t do fettuccine alfredo, but I have boxed mac and cheese. Or—”
“Say no more.” Ziya lifted a hand to stop her. “Take me to the mac and cheese.”
As they walked down the hallway, Amie frantically tried to remember the state of her apartment when she left earlier that evening.
“Hang on,” she said, fishing her keys out of her purse as they stopped by the door. “Just … give me fifteen seconds.”
“We basically lived together for months,” Ziya said as Amie unlocked the door. She followed Amie inside. “Can’t imagine how bad it’d have to be to top your towering pile of dirty laundry.”
“It’s not bad … I’m just making sure. Wait here, please.” She ran down the short entrance hall, leaving Ziya by the door.
“You have until my shoes are off, and then I’m coming in.” There was a grunt. “The straps are fucked, so … you’ve got time.”
Amie ran through the living room, giving it a quick once-over before moving on to the kitchen.
One plate in the sink … that was fine. She dashed across the kitchen and into her bedroom, giving herself a sniff test on the way.
Not bad, but she still gave both armpits a preventative swipe of deodorant, just in case.
“Here I come!” came Ziya’s voice from the other side of the apartment.
Amie took one quick glance in the mirror, ran her fingers through her hair, immediately regretted doing that, debated putting on a hat, realized Ziya might think she was waiting for her in the bedroom, and bolted out.
Ziya was standing in the living room, a teasing smile on her face as Amie shut the sliding door to her bedroom.
“All clear?” she asked.
“Yeah.” Amie walked back into the kitchen. “I mean, I was just …” She gestured behind her toward the bedroom. “… trying to fix my hair.” She hated admitting that, but the truth was better than her ex-girlfriend thinking she was preparing the bedroom for post-dinner activities.
“Mm.” Ziya closed the distance between them, her fingers going to Amie’s hair. She brushed a few strands to one side before leaning back to assess her work.
“Perfect,” Ziya said.
“Hnghh,” came Amie’s strangled response.
Ziya laughed, pulling out one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “You’re very cute when you’re flustered.”
“I’m not flustered,” Amie said indignantly, turning to the cabinets and retrieving a pot to boil the pasta. “And you shouldn’t be trying to fluster your friend. Especially if she’s your ex-girlfriend.”
Ziya propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin on the backs of her hands. “I wasn’t trying to do anything,” she said with faux innocence.
“Oh, sure.” Amie stuck the pot under the sink, hitting the faucet. “You weren’t trying anything when you put your face inches away from my face and played with my hair. That’s just regular friend stuff.”
“I wasn’t playing with your hair, I was fixing it!”
“Next thing I know you’re gonna show me how to make mac and cheese ‘the right way’ by standing behind me and guiding my hands.”
“I’m not going to Swayze you.”
“Well now you’re not, because I’ve called you out.”
“Your pot’s overflowing.”
“Oh, shit—” Amie shut off the sink and poured out the excess water. She deposited the pot onto the stove and switched on the burner.
“I’m sorry if I’m making you uncomfortable,” Ziya said, growing serious. “I’m still … figuring out how to do this.”
“I know.”
“Would you rather I not touch you?”
“No, it’s okay. It’s just the flirty stuff. I mean, I know you kind of do that with everyone, but—”
“It’s different. I get it.” Ziya began counting on her fingers. “No flirty hair touching, forget everything I know about you—”
“Don’t offer to feed me a bite of your food,” Amie added.
“Well, okay, we’ll be here all night if we’re gonna make up scenarios.”
Amie’s instinct to defend herself outpaced the rest of her brain. “I didn’t make that up. You did that!”
Ziya gave her a confused smile. “When?”
“To—” Amie stopped. No. Ziya hadn’t done that tonight. That was during their time loop date.
“Are you okay?” Ziya asked as Amie buffered. “You keep saying strange things. And the panic attack at the restaurant—”
“I’m fine,” Amie assured her. “Really. I just had a long day. I found out about Savannah, and then I was scrambling to finish an article before our friend date, and then David and the police … it’s just, it’s been a long day.”
Ziya hummed with understanding. She reached over to where Amie’s planner was sitting open on the table, pulling it to her. “So what are you reacclimating to?” she asked, tapping a pink manicured nail on the word Amie had written in giant letters.
Amie’s shoulders stiffened. She’d been so busy looking for any mess to tidy up that her gaze had slid right over the planner during her lightning round apartment inspection.
“Do you feel like you need to reacclimate to me?” Ziya looked hesitant. “I know we gave it a few months, but if it still feels too hard, we could … we could give it more time.”
“No,” Amie blurted out, a memory flashing through her mind of Ziya standing outside of a restaurant on a day that didn’t happen. “No,” she said again.
“So why is this weird?” Ziya asked, her voice strained.
Amie lifted her hands in exasperation. “Well, you can’t expect things to be perfectly normal right away, Z,” she said. “It’s not something you can rush; it takes time.”
“It’s been three months.”
It was much longer than that, for Amie. “Right, but now we have to get used to actually being around each other again. I mean, I barely know anything about what you’ve been up to for the past three months. How was Iceland?”
It was a dangerous move, but she needed to get Ziya away from the topic of Amie’s strange behavior.
Ziya’s expression went cloudy. She closed Amie’s planner, not looking at it as she pushed the book away. “I didn’t go,” she said. The mood of the room shifted to that of an audience watching a tightrope walker, as if one wrong step could lead to disaster.
“Oh,” Amie said. This was news to her. On all the September 17ths she spent with Ziya, neither of them dared to bring up Iceland. “I just figured—”
“I got a partial refund, so.” Ziya’s shoulders slumped. “I know you think this has been easier for me than it’s been for you, Ames. I know you do. And I don’t know what it’s been like for you, but it hasn’t been easy for me. Okay? It’s been really fucking hard.”
Amie stayed silent.
“It’s fine if we’re weird for a while,” Ziya continued. “I can live with that. And if Savannah’s murder messed you up to the point of panic attacks, I want to be there for you. Can you let me do that?”
Amie’s heart squeezed at the declaration. She spoke cautiously, giving herself as much time as she could to change her mind. “It’s not … it’s not just about Savannah. Or you, or David. Something happened to me.”
Ziya watched her quietly, her dark brown eyes inviting Amie in.
“I … was stuck in a time loop.”
They stared at each other, silent, for several long seconds. The silence was interrupted by a loud sizzling as the boiling pot of water began to overflow onto the stovetop.
“Shit!” Amie whipped around and lowered the flame. “Shit, shit, shit …”
When she turned back, Ziya was rubbing one side of her forehead, her eyes closed.
“Can you say something?” Amie pleaded.
“Put the macaroni in the water.”
“But—”
“Don’t make me Swayze you.”
Comforted only a tiny bit by the joke, Amie returned to the stove and dumped in the noodles.
Ziya’s eyes were open by the time Amie was done.
“So …” Amie prompted.
“I’m not sure what you want me to say.”
“Do you believe me?”
Ziya laughed.
Nodding to herself, Amie clicked her tongue. “Guess not.” She grabbed a spoon and gave the macaroni a stir.
“I’m sorry,” Ziya said, still giggling. “But you’d be the worst person to get stuck in a time loop.”
Amie was prepared for a variety of responses, but that had not been one of them.
“Why?” she demanded, feeling slightly miffed. She thought she’d handled the time loop pretty well. She’d gotten out of it, hadn’t she?
Ziya was still smiling as she searched for words. “What would you do in a time loop, Amie?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Ziya said carefully, “I think a lot of people would take advantage of being given infinite time to do as many things as they could with no long-lasting consequences. Do you really think you’d do that? Sorry—did you do that?”
Amie frowned. Somehow, even though Ziya clearly didn’t believe Amie, she was still right.