Chapter 15 #4
“I snapped at him first,” Ziya said. “And I’m not surprised he made you mad. He’s, like, the anti-Amie.”
“Because I’m a young woman with very little savings?” Amie joked.
Her companion stayed silent as the elevator continued to descend.
“What?”
Ziya sighed. “Amie … I—”
Ding. The elevator settled to a stop, and the doors slid open.
“What?” Amie asked again as Ziya walked into the lobby. She stood there until the doors began to shut. Realizing Ziya wasn’t pausing, Amie put out an arm to stop the doors and followed her.
“Miss!”
Amie stumbled to a stop as she watched Ziya push through the static exit next to the revolving doors. She turned to see the man at the desk holding out a hand.
“The card?” he prompted.
“Oh.” Amie scrambled to remove the elevator key card from her pocket, practically throwing it at the poor man before running to the exit. “Sorry. Thank you!”
Pausing at the revolving door, she watched it for a moment before jumping in.
Its speed had seemed too quick as she waited to enter, but once inside, she urged the doors to move faster, visualizing Ziya disappearing around the corner as she finally emerged onto the sidewalk.
Amie looked around wildly to see where Ziya had gone, only to find the subject of her search standing off to the left, arms crossed as she gazed at the darkening sky.
“Need a ride home?” Ziya asked. She looked away from the clouds above, though still not at Amie. “Seems like it’s about to rain.”
Amie had been eagerly awaiting her first post-loop rainstorm. The light sprinkle on her first day had only left her wanting more. But now the impending weather was the last thing on her mind.
“Is everything okay?” she asked. “We haven’t talked about last night, and I know I’m probably overthinking it, but …”
She trailed off as Ziya glanced at her, brows knit with sadness as their eyes locked for a brief moment. Then she was gone, looking away down the street as she dropped her arms, thumbs rubbing the side of her fists.
“Oh my god,” Amie said softly. “I’m not overthinking it, am I?”
“Ames …” Ziya said, her voice heartbreakingly gentle.
She had that expression on her face, that look that Amie would never forget, no matter how much time passed, no matter how poor her memory got.
The look that haunted Amie so much she’d become determined never to ruin things with Ziya again, even if it meant going on the same exact date day after day after day.
“No,” Amie blurted out, shaking her head. “No. That’s not fair.”
“You don’t know what I’m going to say.”
“Yes, I do. You’re going to say we should give it more time.” She stared at Ziya, willing her to say she was wrong, to laugh and tell her not to be silly.
Ziya didn’t do any of those things. She just sighed. The sound ripped through Amie as frustration and desperation welled up inside of her.
“What did I do?” Amie asked in a small voice, horrified as her voice cracked a bit.
“You didn’t do anything,” Ziya said quickly.
Her hand lifted as if to reach out for Amie, but she pulled it back to her chest in one fluid motion.
“I’m sorry. I wanted to think about this some more, and then talk and maybe figure things out together.
But then you said you were coming here, and I didn’t want you to go alone—”
“I just don’t understand what there is to think about.
” Amie felt a petulant whine creeping into her words.
Her mind was racing to figure out how to save things.
There would be no restarting. If Ziya walked away, she could be gone forever.
“Last night you said you wanted this. I thought we both wanted this.”
“We did. I did.”
“So what happened?”
“The time loop.”
Amie’s stomach dropped. “You don’t believe me.”
“Oh!” Ziya’s eyes widened. “No, of course I do. I … admittedly didn’t really know what to make of it at first, but last night, when you told me everything …
of course I believe you. You went through something that was so …
” She shook her head in disbelief. “I don’t know what I would have done.
And I know you did what you felt like you had to do to keep going. ”
“I’m okay,” Amie said, her insides warming from the confirmation that Ziya really did believe her.
She knew what this was about. She could save things.
“I understand. You feel like I need some time on my own to recover, but I’m really okay.
For now I have to take a different route to the grocery store, and last night I moved my bed, and I’m still not convinced that I’m not technically thirty, but eventually I’ll be back to normal. Everything can go back to how it was.”
She gave Ziya a tentative smile, holding out a hand. Ziya took it, her eyes not leaving Amie’s face as she studied it.
“Why didn’t you do anything?” Ziya asked.
Amie gave her a puzzled look. “When?”
“In the time loop.”
“I did things in the time loop. I told you.”
“You did the same things. Over and over again. You were the only person who could change their actions each day, and you hardly ever did.”
Amie nodded. “I do regret that.”
“You do?”
Exhaling heavily, Amie said, “I think … I think maybe I was supposed to prevent Savannah from being murdered. If I had just known, I would have done something about it. I don’t really think David’s in danger of being arrested. I just feel so guilty for letting Savannah die so many times.”
“Oh …” Ziya squeezed her hand. “It’s not—”
“I know you’re going to say it’s not my fault.
” Amie set her shoulders, giving Ziya a half smile.
“It’s fine. All I can do now is try to make things a little better by figuring out who killed her.
And I need you with me to do that.” She laughed.
“I mean, imagine how different things would have been if you were in the time loop with me, telling me what to do. I need you, Z.”
Ziya’s eyes flicked away. “Amie …” She gave Amie’s hand another squeeze, then released it. “That’s the problem.”
Amie blinked with surprise. She didn’t know there was still a problem. She thought she’d fixed it. How was there still a problem?
“I was thinking about why we broke up,” Ziya continued.
“I missed you so much that it made everything in the past feel so small. I thought maybe after three months apart we could figure out how to make it work. I saw how invested you were with Savannah’s murder, and sure, you said it was for David, but I knew you weren’t telling the whole truth.
I just thought the truth might be that in those three months, you’d finally figured out how to try something new for a change.
To follow a passion instead of staying the course. ”
She took a shaky breath. “And then I found out that for you, it’d been more like two years.” Ziya looked desperate for Amie to understand what she was trying to say. “And you didn’t … you didn’t do anything.”
Amie scrambled for words. “What exactly was I supposed to do? I was in a time loop. It didn’t come with instructions.
I was just trying to keep some sense of normalcy in a very not-normal situation.
I’m sorry I didn’t go to every club within eighteen hours of here, or try not to go to the same restaurant twice even if I loved the food—”
“I don’t want you to do those things!” Ziya exclaimed.
“I don’t want you to be like me. I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do.
But you never do anything you want to do, Amie.
Nothing new, nothing different. You hardly ever do anything for yourself, especially if no one is telling you to do it. ”
“What are you talking about?” Amie asked, dumbfounded.
“I spent two years going on the same date with you, having the same conversations, eating the same fettuccine alfredo, just so I could see you and know for certain that at the end of the night, you were gonna smile at me and say, ‘Let’s do this again soon.’ I didn’t do that for you; you never even remembered it happening. ”
“You put yourself through the same motions because you know they’re safe,” Ziya argued. “You’re so afraid of wasting your life that you never do anything more for yourself than what you already have.”
“Going to see you was me doing something for myself!”
“You already had me!” Ziya burst out. “You had me. I wasn’t going anywhere.
But you’re always just going through the motions until someone asks you for help.
If someone suggests you try something different for yourself, you twist yourself into knots trying to calculate if it’s worth risking your time for.
And by doing that, you’re letting your whole life pass you by without doing anything for yourself, and it killed me to watch you live like that. ”
“I did things,” Amie insisted, her mind racing for examples. “Concerts. Paint and sip. Diwali—”
“Those were all things for me,” Ziya cut in. “You’d only ever do things I wanted to do. I knew you’d be hesitant about going to Iceland, but I thought, Maybe if I ask this of her, then she’ll do it.
“But you couldn’t. Because even though I was asking, you knew it was for you, not for me.
Even when I bought the tickets and planned everything for you, you just couldn’t do it.
And I don’t love how I handled it, and some of the things I said, but I realized that even if you had gone, it still wouldn’t have fixed things.
Because I can’t spend the rest of my life telling you how to live yours, Amie.
I can’t do it. I have my own shit to figure out, my own life to lead.
I want us to be in each other’s lives, but I can’t be in charge of both of them. ”
Ziya wrapped her arms around herself. “So after you said no to the trip, I decided that as much as I loved you … no, because I loved you so much, I couldn’t stand to watch you do this to yourself. And none of that’s changed. I thought maybe it had, or that maybe I could make you understand …”