Page 51 of Time Loops & Meet Cutes
He rests his arms on the bar and regards me. “Have we ever…?”
“No. It didn’t feel right, when I hadn’t been honest with you—like I said, this is the first time I’ve told you about the time loop. And you—”
I snap my mouth shut when the next group of customers enters. Cam taps the bar in front of me twice before he goes to serve them.
He believes me.
If I’ve gotten him to believe once, I can get him to believe again. I wouldn’t want to do it every day, but it’s nice to know that.
Cam returns. “Have you tried to get out of this loop?”
“Yeah. Without success, obviously. It’s hard to know what to try when I don’t really understand how it happened.”
Considering everything I’ve told him, he doesn’t seem terribly rattled. A little, yes, but not nearly as much as I’d be in his position. Is it another sign that he’s special, that he’s somehow the missing piece in this time loop? Perhaps his subconscious’s vague memories of previous June 20s made it easier for him to believe me.
I down the rest of my beer. “It’ll get busy in here soon, but I know you’re only working the bar for a few more hours. I’ll text you and we can meet up at the night market, okay?”
“You need my—oh, you must already have it in your phone.”
“No, because it resets every morning. But I’ve got your number memorized, having entered it into my contacts dozens of times.”
“It’s still hard to wrap my head around how this works.”
“Yeah, it takes a while. Even now, I occasionally forget.” I set down a twenty.
“Let me get you some change.”
“No need. The bill will be back in my wallet tomorrow morning.”
And with that, I exit the brewery.
19Noelle
“I guess I should try something else today,” Cam says when we meet up at the market, “since I always have the bulgogi poutine.”
I sigh. “I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you. This is weird.”
“It’s fine, I promise. You know, I’ll just get the poutine. It’s not like I remember what it tastes like, after all.”
I smile weakly. “It might be easier if we pretend this really is our first date.”
“But surely there are conversations you’re tired of having by now. What don’t you want to talk about?”
“My career. I have a degree in mechanical engineering. I do HVAC, fire protection, stuff like that for buildings. But I haven’t bothered working in a while now, since it’s pointless when everything I do gets erased. Uh… that’s the main one. My family, my childhood, my travels, my education—I guess those are up there too. We’ve covered the basics a bunch of times.”
Yeah, there’s no way to avoid this being weird.
But Cam simply says, “Okay, got it. What are you going to eat today? Surely you haven’t tried every single food here.”
I decide to go for tteokbokki.
Food in hand, Cam regards the benches. “Is there somewhere else to eat around here? Somewhere less crowded?”
“If we wait about a minute, some space will open up.”
“But nobody looks like they’re close to finished eating.”
“Trust me.”
