Page 45 of Not You Again
While they timed the shadow bands and the eclipse, Adam kept chancing looks at Carly to get a read on how she’d feltabout the whole thing. He anxiously fiddled with his wristwatch to avoid saying something he couldn’t take back like,Do you want to try that kissing thing again?
“And now,” Carly said.
Adam nearly fell sideways at the sound of her voice, then he quickly focused his attention on the watch. He let out a shaky, hopeful breath as he registered the time.
“Two minutes and forty-seven seconds,” Adam said. His eyes flicked to Carly.
She slid the eclipse glasses off and her jaw dropped open in shock.
2:47 meant the eclipse had shortened again—but this time, by a full minute.
Adam was a logical person. He understood that the loop shortening was a good thing. While he’d planned to research ways to block the light from the sun in order to completely end the loop, maybe they didn’t have to. At the rate the loop was changing, they could just wait for the eclipse to end. If it shortened by a minute each loop, that would only be three more times.
Only three more times to see the shadow bands. While he’d wanted this moment to come, he thought he’d have more time. He’d have to use the next three loops wisely if he wanted to actually discover what caused the shadow bands in the first place.
“This is totally bonkers, right?” Carly asked as she bounced from one foot to the other. “I mean, it’s aminuteshorter? How is that possible? Am Ithatamazing of a kisser?”
Adam laughed. He didn’t mean to, but she was funny. She gave him a little punch in his arm, and that was fair.
“Don’t make fun of me, I’m serious!” she said. “What else could be happening here?”
“Honestly,plentyof other things.” Adam fisted a handthrough his hair. He wished that he was a more creative person so he could come up with alternative ideas, but he just didn’t have that particular skill set. “But whatever is happening seems to be leading us in the right direction.”
Carly gave him a look, like she was annoyed that he wasn’t completely agreeing with her. And even when she was irritated, she was still so pretty. So damn pretty. He was a sucker for her glasses. He wanted to watch her take them off, put the tip in that pretty little mouth of hers and...
“Adam, you’re doing the staring off into the distance thing again,” she said.
He shook the fantasy from his head. “We should head out before the madness sets in.” Adam warily eyed the main road. In the center was a drum circle, and about a dozen people wearing cat masks danced around to the unmistakable beat of Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space.” Fairly harmless, really, but he wasn’t super interested in seeing what else the night would bring. “Let’s get our stuff and go.”
He could drive them back to the tree house, or to the lavender field he liked to watch the stars from. And then they could talk through the change in time and spark some ideas for the next few loops. Adam headed for the library, and Carly kept in step.
“Here’s an idea,” she said. “Why don’t we consider kissing again.”
Her bluntness nearly caused Adam to trip through the sliding glass doors of the library. Instead, he walked through and kept his eyes trained on the desks where they’d just been. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to kiss Carly. Hereallydid. But the kissing couldn’t be what was causing the change—it just couldn’t. Yes, the evidence might lean that way, but more likely was that they hadn’t found the real cause, and the timing was coincidental. So he didn’t want to pretend otherwisejust to get the chance to kiss her again. That would be taking advantage of the situation, and of her, and he really wasn’t interested in either of those things.
“The kissing isn’t the direction we should be pursuing,” Adam firmly said as he shoved keys and a notebook into his tote bag. “The kissing is coincidental to the loop ending.”
“How can you say that?” She planted her hands on the desk, as if in a challenge. “I had a theory, we looked for evidence and found it. We’re on the right track.”
Adam slung the tote bag onto his shoulder. He gathered all his strength because, really, turning down a perfectly good offer to make out with Carly was not easy. “I’m not about to pretend that your Together Theory has any kind of logic—whyus? Why physical contact? It makes zero sense.”
She gritted her teeth. “Plenty of things happen in the world that can’t be explained. People are powerful. What’s that phenomenon called, where the moms push cars off of their kids?”
“Hysterical strength,” Adam said. “Caused by a massive rush of adrenaline, which is somethingscienceexplains.”
“Ah, but what about the magic of a hot dog-eating contest? How do you explain one person eating seventy-three hot dogs?” She put her hands on her hips in triumph, but he shook his head and looked up to the sky.
So she tried again. “You don’t know everything just because you own a telescope.”
“Two,” he said.
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“I own two telescopes.” He always leaned into the facts.
She licked her lips, which drew his attention to her sweet little mouth. He was deeply annoyed by the fact that he’d just vowed not to kiss her. “Despite the fact that you’re a pretentious asshole, I want to kiss you again. I liked kissing you. Fuck the science.”
His breath came out shallow as he processed what she’d just said. Carly wanted to kiss him, even without scientific reasons? No, that wasn’t possible. She barely tolerated him. Then the gears in his brain clicked together and he finally understood her motivation.
