Page 20 of Not You Again
“Ten seconds?”
“Yes, it was ten seconds shorter,” Adam confirmed.
It was disturbing but true that Carly thought his eyes had softened and that they looked... nice.
“If it had been a smaller number, I’d chalk it up to an error,” he continued. “But I’ve been doing this for so long... I didn’t make a mistake.”
No, Carly could tell by his manicured fingernails that he wasn’t the messy type. He was probably one of those people who had a closet full of crisp, ironed shirts and alphabetized his books.
And then the briefest image of Adam, with his button-down untucked, his hair mussed and those intense eyes directed at her flashed through.
“Carly?” His concerned tone cut in.
She shook her head and the thought of him away. Clearly, she was unwell. “Sorry, you were saying?”
“This is the first time I’ve noticed anything change in the Julian sky since the loop started. I can count on the sunset occurring at seven twenty-nine, a shooting star at eleven twenty-three and the eclipse lasting for four minutes and thirty-two seconds.” He ran a hand through his hair as he paced the room. “So if the eclipse is shorter, that means that something about the loop is changing, too.”
“That’s not possible, is it?” Carly eventually asked.
“It is, apparently.” He tilted his head, and a hopeful expression crossed his face.
“What do you think this means?” Carly could think of a million things it could mean. If the eclipse was shorter, maybe the loop was getting shorter, too. Maybe shorter meant that it would eventually just disappear. “Like, the loop might stop? We could get out of here?” She thought of Burbank and her apartment. Waking up early to work on a new screenplay and going for a self-congratulatory bear claw at The Donut Hut. Somewhere out there, Marilyn Montgomery was waiting for Carly to reply to her email...
“The loop might stop, yes,” Adam said.
He was a man of few words, she realized, but Carly always had plenty of those. Because now that she’d heard this thing about the eclipse, there was no unhearing it. She wouldn’t be able to just go about her loop like everything was normal.
“This is amazing,” she said. “What should we—should wedosomething? Should we start telling people? I mean, this ishuge. This is the most exciting thing to happen since that time the mayor got everyone to fill a swimming pool with Skittles.”
When there was no response, just Adam’s trademark judgmental scowl, Carly added, “Do you have any idea how many Skittles it takes to fill an entire pool? This was an all-day teameffort that ended in everyone getting to belly flop into the pool. I got to taste the rainbow face-first, Adam.”
And to her shock, he laughed. A small hiccup of a thing that he quickly suppressed, but still... a laugh. He screwed his expression back to grumpy as he said, “I shouldn’t have told you anything.”
“Why?” Carly was suddenly self-conscious. Sure, she’d just regaled him with a story about jumping into a pool of candy-coated snacks, but was that reason enough not to tell her about the eclipse? She could be a serious person. She was deeply serious about getting the fuck out of this loop, for one. “You know what, don’t answer that. It’s too late. You already told me. I know about the eclipse changing. And now, whether you like it or not, I’m going to help you. Consider me your partner in breaking the loop.”
That made him snap out of it. “Hold on, we can’t control the loop.”
Andthiswas where Carly saw her opportunity. “I don’t think the time just randomly changed. Something probably happened to cause the change, and we need to figure out what it was.”
“You have a point. I see that,” he started to say. “I just don’t totally understand how my observations and your... What is it that you’re adding to this endeavor?”
“My people skills, you unfeeling robot.” Carly accidentally leaned toward him, despite her words. She made an effort to pull back.
“Ah, yes, your ability to charm,” Adam joked.
“So, we have a deal?” she pressed again. “We’ll work together so we can both stop the loop and never have to see each other again.”
Adam swallowed, then extended his hand to hers and said, “To never seeing each other again.”
As he took her palm, Carly was surprised by how the warmth of his hand traveled through her. And when she pulled away, her whole body tingled from it.
Maybe he’d felt it, too, because he’d gone quiet. But then he started to worry his lip, like he was holding information back. The man was infuriating.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?” Carly asked. “Something that, I don’t know, is causing you to nearly eat your own lip off?”
“I’m thinking,” he quickly said. “Not all of us just open our mouths and let whatever is in our heads pour out.”
“Uh, rude.” She crossed her arms to reinforce her stance.
