Page 25 of Not You Again
She turned, and he shouted, “Twenty seconds shorter! Four minutes and twelve seconds.”
Carly didn’t react the way he’d expected. Instead, she gave him a simple thumbs-up, then kept walking until he could no longer see her.
Chapter 9
Carly
Carly rubbed her hands together as she made the walk back to town. The air had cooled, just as it did every loop around sunset. She usually prepared for this moment with a jacket, but she hadn’t anticipated fleeing on foot from Adam.
Crying was Carly’sthing,but even she’d been surprised by how easily it’d happened at the mention of the first loop. She supposed she hadn’t expected the question to trigger the image of hurling a popcorn bucket across the movie theater lobby.
Carly skidded on a rogue pebble in the road and momentarily struggled to regain her balance. She took a sharp breath in, then released it as she steadied herself.
She was at the top of Main Street and considered doing what she did every night—which was making the most of the last few hours. She might tag along in the nightly conga line, or find the mom with the litter of puppies so she could cuddle with Apple, or hop onto the naked karaoke bus, strip down and belt out whatever was on tap.
Tonight, though, Carly didn’t want to be around other people. Maybe Adam was rubbing off on her. She wished she had a tree house to escape to. Admittedly, when he’d first brought her inside that thing, she was 50/50 on the possibilitythat he might try to unalive her. She listened to podcasts and understood good things didn’t come from following a man to a secluded location. But then she’d looked around and, well, the place was sort of sweet, in a time capsule of a teenage nerd kind of way. Just by walking in, she’d almost immediately gotten a sense of who Adam had been growing up. In his own little world, chasing the stars.
She hadn’t been like him, exactly, but Carly did get lost in stories. She’d spend hours on movie marathons of her favorite filmmakers: the Wachowskis, Nora Ephron and Karen McCullah/Kirsten Smith. And then there were the characters and situations that came to her—movie scenes she’d flesh out and ask her dad to read.
Nerd recognizes nerd.She’d seen a sliver of herself in that tree house. She’d also witnessed how embarrassed Adam was to have her in his space, the blush that spread across his cheeks as he looked everywhere but at her. She barely recognized the aloof jerk she’d painted him as a few loops prior. Suddenly, he’d become a self-conscious human, just like she could be.
So much had changed in a very little amount of time. Not only the relationship between her and Adam, but the loop itself.
Is it somehow connected?The thought flicked into her like a lit match, a flame that danced across her mind, but then quickly extinguished as another cool breeze blew through.
There was an abandoned pickup truck, which wasn’t a tree house, but would have to do. Carly walked over and found a blanket in the bed of it. She stepped onto the large tire and hoisted herself in, bringing the blanket up and around her shoulders. She leaned back in the cab and stared at the sky.
She’d told Adam something had happened to change the loop—but what? Twenty seconds shorter. She snuggled deeper into the blanket and retraced the steps she and Adam had takenthe day the loop changed. His fall on her, her busted back, being wheeled into town, the terrifying cows, the fake kiss...
She had to be logical. She had to channel Adam so that she could get out of Julian and respond to Marilyn fucking Montgomery’s email. Carly was going to be a screenwriter one way or another.
So what would Adam do? He’d focus on what was in front of him. In Carly’s case, the loop happened to change on the days when she’d spent time with Adam. And her good deed both of those days had been tied to him... Were her good deeds finally making a difference? Maybe Adam was like Ebenezer Scrooge, and her kindness melted his heart so much that the world around them was shifting as well?
If Carly was really going to help them get out of this loop, then maybe it was time for her to test a theory of her own. After all, she and Adam were a team, and she had to contribute something to their pursuit of getting the hell out of Julian. If she tried to tell Adam about her idea in advance, he’d just tell her she was being ridiculous.
So the next loop, she’d avoid Adam. If the eclipse time didn’t change, then she could present her findings.Shewas a scientist, too, as it turned out.
Chapter 10
Adam
Day 241
The loop restarted, which meant Adam’s hands were on Shireen’s shoulders. He used to love looking at the beauty mark on her nose, those thick lashes and the gold highlighter she’d brush across her forehead during her morning routine. But now being in the same room as her made his stomach twist in knots.
Instead of dramatically jerking out of Adam’s reach and away from him—as she did in each reset—this time, she simply looked up, and her eye contact was so jarring that Adam took a step back.
He searched for hidden meaning and, to his surprise, Shireen said, “I’m sorry I reacted so harshly the last loop. I was just surprised. You know I don’t do well with those.”
Adam didn’t do well with surprises, either. Like the surprise of her and Dean, for example, but he kept that thought to himself. “Okay,” he opted for instead. “Thanks.”
What else was he supposed to say? Still, this was maybe the nicest reset they’d had in a long time. Usually, she made quick work of leaving, but now Shireen was talking to him, like they’d been married for a decade and... she respected him.
“Adam, I...”
His heart began to race. What was she about to say? Was she going to tell him she’d made a mistake in running to Dean? Was Carly right? Had their fake kiss actually worked so well that Shireen wanted to have another chance?
Not that he’d take her back or anything, but still... he was anxious. Shireen’s lips parted, which is exactly when a door slammed shut so loudly that they both looked toward the entrance.
