Chapter Twelve
It’s only one thirty in the afternoon. Which means that before I go to save Cesca I have enough time to find someone. Well, to find him. Tyler Adams. I need to know if he’s made any progress with potential ways to get me home.
Except … for fuck’s sake! He won’t know me, won’t know what is happening. This Tyler will have no idea that yesterday we spent six hours in my office drawing up all the potential ways we could think of to send me back.
FUCK!
It’s like Groundhog Day but where you can’t learn from all the repetition. Because it isn’t the same day being repeated, it’s a brand-new day in a brand-new universe and the rules are different and no one is the same as they were in the last place.
Argh! This is so frustrating.
Okay, I tell myself. Calm the actual fuck down. You can do this.
But can I?
Yes, you can. You have to.
And that right there is the crux of it. I have to go and find this Tyler and get him to help me because if I don’t?
Well, I have no idea what happens then. It’s like when people say ‘Oh, I don’t know how you cope with …
’ well … anything they think is difficult.
Like when I was doing my PhD and working two jobs on top and then Dad got sick and I spent a lot of time driving up and down the A303 to help him and Rachel out and visit him in the hospital.
‘Oh, how do you do it all?’ one of the other PhD candidates asked, awe in her voice. ‘I can barely get through my studies and I don’t even have a job.’
Yes, I’ll admit that part of me was jealous about the wealthy family she came from.
But there was only one answer to her question.
Because I had to. Because I didn’t have a choice.
Because we all just muddle through our lives, doing what we need to, hoping that maybe one day we’ll get a chance to settle down and rest for a few moments.
I just hope I have enough resilience left to solve this.
There isn’t another choice.
I decide to engineer a meeting with Tyler.
By which I mean I hang around outside the office he keeps at Imperial College, hoping that he isn’t working from home.
Actually, knowing my luck right now, he’s probably been jetted off to some far-flung place to film something pointless on a beach, looking pretty with a tan and with a cocktail in his hand.
I chastise myself, partly for being negative, which never helps, and partly because the last Tyler made me think perhaps he isn’t quite the dick I’ve always assumed him to be.
Perhaps the universe has decided to throw me a bone, because at four thirty I see him leaving the faculty building and I follow him.
I stalk him as he heads towards a small supermarket and then I decide to hang around in the biscuit aisle until he happens upon me – he told me yesterday he loved a custard cream and so this is where I’m standing.
‘Excuse me,’ he says, as if I were just another shopper.
I stay put, forcing him to look at me. To actually see me.
‘Oh, er …’ he stammers when he realizes who I am.
‘Tyler,’ I say, tipping my head towards him.
He clears his throat. ‘Bethany,’ he says.
‘I need your help.’ I’ve decided not to bother with preamble and nicey-nicey bullshit.
I’m in dire straits here and he’s literally the only person on this planet who can help me.
Eugh … it sounds so awful when I say it like that.
Like I’m a pathetic damsel in distress who needs the big strapping man to swoop in and save her.
I feel like a terrible feminist. Plus, despite how nice he might have seemed in one iteration of the universe, he’s still Tyler fucking Adams. He still blanked me that morning in the hotel.
I need to make sure I remember that, and that I don’t let myself get sucked in by his green eyes and oddly helpful demeanour.
‘Um … okay.’ He sounds hesitant.
I hand him a pack of custard creams.
‘Um … thanks,’ he replies, staring at them.
‘They’re your favourites,’ I say with authority.
‘Yes?’ He phrases it like a question.
‘You eat one half and then lick off the cream and then dip the final half into your tea, holding it for just the right amount of time so it’s soft but maintains enough structural integrity to not fall apart on its journey to your mouth.’
He frowns. ‘How do you know how I eat my biscuits?’
‘Because yesterday you sat in my office and did exactly that.’ I’m matter-of-fact.
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Yes, you did.’ I nod a few times.
‘I can assure you I didn’t.’ I can see he’s starting to get irritated now. ‘Look, Bethany. I don’t know what’s going on, or why you are trying to mess with me in the biscuit aisle of Tesco, but I can absolutely, one hundred per cent guarantee I did not see you yesterday.’
So, I’m going to be honest and say that I did not think this through.
I don’t know what I expected; did I really think he would go, ‘Oh right. Yes, of course. Now let’s go and save the world together’?
I should have remembered he’s stubborn and somewhat boorish and busy and thinks he’s God’s gift to all of science – and possibly even all of mankind.
He raises an eyebrow at me as if to ask me what the hell I have to say for myself and I shrink under his gaze.
‘It wasn’t you you,’ I say, but the words come out in a jumble.
‘It was a different you. You, but not you.’ It sounds like gibberish to my ears and – judging from the look on his face – he’s even more flummoxed than I am.
‘We were in another universe,’ I say eventually, spreading my fingers out in apology for the sheer magnitude of a truth bomb I have just put in front of him.
‘Right …’ he says in a way that makes it clear he thinks I’ve totally lost my mind.
‘Seriously,’ I say. ‘I’m not really Bethany Raven. Well, I am Bethany Raven. But I’m not this Bethany Raven. This isn’t my universe.’
‘I think you’ve been working a bit too hard,’ he says, not entirely sympathetically. ‘I think you need to take a holiday.’ And with that he puts the biscuits back on the shelf and walks away from me, leaving me standing dumbstruck in the aisle.
Did he just dismiss me? Dismiss me like a stupid little girl making up stories for attention.
What the actual fuck?