Page 90 of Time Loops & Meet Cutes
“Of course you can,” she says, pressing a kiss to my cheek.
34Noelle
“How was your date?” Avery asks as soon as I enter the apartment. She pauses the TV. It looks like she’s watching some kind of action movie, and a man is frozen midleap.
“Good.” I take off my jacket. I tried to brush off as much snow as I could before I entered the building to minimize the mess. “Good, but weird.”
I’d been on many first dates with Cam—including at the same izakaya—but never one in winter. It was fun, though disorienting. In fact, at the end I was so mixed up that I told him about the time I got sprayed by a skunk, which doesn’t seem like great first-date conversation. But he asked if he could see me again, so it couldn’t have gone too badly.
A second date. We’ve never had a proper second date before.
“At one point,” I say, “we walked by Mel Lastman Square, and he mentioned the night market. I had to restrain myself from telling him about all the times we’d been there and all the bulgogi poutine he’d eaten.”
It’s not like a woman over thirty needs more problems with dating, but here I am, struggling not to talk about all the times we hung out on June 20.
“How was your evening?” I ask Avery.
“Oh, not too exciting.” She gestures to the TV, then the bowl on the coffee table. There are a few chips at the bottom.
I open my mouth to ask how she’s feeling about the demise of her relationship. Then I close it, not sure if she’d want to talk about this now and not sure how best to be a friend.
After Saturday comes Sunday. Such a basic idea—the end of one day and the beginning of another—yet I’m still not used to it.
Avery is running some errands, and I turn my focus to cleaning. The Lunar New Year is coming up, and I’ve been conditioned to start the New Year with a clean apartment. It doesn’t feel right otherwise. And cleaning is more enjoyable than it was before, because it’s still exciting that my apartment doesn’t reset itself each night. In the loop, there was simply no point in mopping the floor, for example.
Sometimes, the Lunar New Year feels like a do-over. A chance to restart the year in late January or mid-February and actually stick to those resolutions. But this time, I missed January 1, so it’s the only start to the year I have.
What did the alternate version of me do? Did I stay home and watch a movie, eating popcorn and drinking wine at midnight?
That seems most likely. There are no pictures from that night on my phone.
It occurs to me that I could look at my viewing activity on Netflix, check if I was watching something there on New Year’s Eve. But it doesn’t seem important compared to the other things I’ve missed.
As I pull down the curtains and take them to the laundry room for their twice-a-year clean, my mind turns to the dumpling woman. Where is she now? Is she still selling magic dumplings? What made her choose me and Avery?
I return to my apartment, and before I start cleaning the fridge, I do a quick search. My previous attempts to find her were unsuccessful, but maybe something has appeared online in the last several months.
However, I still don’t have any great search terms, since her booth didn’t have a name, and I can’t find anything.
Hmph. Maybe I’ll just have to accept that I’ll never understand what happened, but that doesn’t sit well with me. I like understanding things.
My thoughts drift to Cam, and I wonder if he experienced déjà vu yesterday. He didn’t mention it to me, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t feel it.
After taking the curtains out of the washing machine, I look at my phone. There’s a text, and I feel like I summoned Cam by thinking about him.
CAM: Again, just wanted to let you know that I had a great time last night. I won’t be able to do next Saturday, but I’m free on Sunday, if you’re interested.
Telling me that he had a good time last night? It’s not something he used to be able to do. I read the words again and again, feeling almost giddy.
Then the worries set in.
I have no experience navigating our relationship once it gets to this point. And before Cam, I hadn’t dated in years. I met Dave in university, and dating was different then.
I set my phone on the TV stand and continue cleaning, my thoughts whirring.
This feelsrealin a way that it didn’t before. It’s scary, but I don’t want to completely hide from life, like I did for years. It’s worth it, right?
Maybe I should make that one of my resolutions:Don’t hide from life and strong emotions.I’m not sure it’s a great resolution—it’s rather vague—but it feels important.
