“All that partying the reporters say you do must really be killing your brain cells.” He pinches the bridge of his nose right below his frames and closes his eyes before taking a deep inhalation of breath, unstiffening a tad. “At least I can rest easy in the knowledge you still haven’t figured out how to color-match your wardrobe.”
“Never too late to try the sticker thing,” I half-joke, attempting to shake off the stinging insult, even if those presumed partying ways weren’tmydirect actions. This is somehow still my life, and if I don’t figure out how this happened or how to fix it, it will remain that way. I’ll be saddled with the consequences of my own mistakes plus the mistakes of another me.
Drew’s face corkscrews into a new quizzical expression. “You remember that?”
“Like it was yesterday.” Because in my reality, it practically was.
He drops the defensive posture, instead choosing a level of open exasperation I’ve only seen from him when a book marketed as a romance defies the HEA rule. “When I said that I didn’t want us to be in contact anymore, I meant that. Full stop. Now, please leave.” When he turns to go back inside, I’m hit with the image of him turning to leave our hotel room after admitting he needed to figure out what he wanted without me.
Those emotions still fresh and surging inside me force me to plead, “Drew, wait. Please. Can we talk?”
His headshake is instant and resolute. “No, Nolan. We talked six years ago. You had your chance.” The door jingles closed behind him. Of course Drew would put twinkling welcome bells on the door to his murder shop, a small remnant of what could have been.
The memory of whatwecould’ve been, had I been braver and less stubborn and hadn’t prioritized my career over everything else, wills me inside after him. I was right in my assessment from across the street. There is not a single living soul in here. Not even a curmudgeonly bookstore cat leaving hair wherever she trots. Everything has a pristine, untouched quality about it. Not unlike the castle library inBeauty and the Beastbefore Belle’s arrival. “What happened to Eight, Three, One Books?” I ask as he whips back around ready to roar at me.
His visible anger falters but he avoids my question. “No dogs allowed in the store.” He points to a sign behind me with cartoon drawings on it, a circle with a slash through them.
“Is it a safe neighborhood?” I ask. “I can tie Milkshake up outside if you have, like, a bowl of water I can give him.”
“Great, but what do we do about you?”
“Good one,” I say, wishing I knew what the hell I did to deserve an insult like that. Aside from skipping out on my sister’s wedding and basically standing him up, which admittedly was not my brightest moment.
His gaze is fierce as he says, “There’s an urgent care in the neighborhood if you need help tending to that burn.” Time has made him sassier.
“Like the one you met me at when I fractured my nose?” Instinctually, I reach up to touch my face to remind myself how real this is. How my nose is completely healed and a different shape. My features have been reorganized into camera-ready symmetricity.
I wait for Drew to comment on this, but then realize he won’t.My image is splashed across subway stations on old posters announcing dates for my last tour. He’s seen the changes in me gradually over time. I, on the other hand, haven’t had a chance to come to terms with them. “Remember when you said I’d look good with an Elizabeth Taylor nose? Is this one closer?” I ask, hoping to shuffle up his memory deck to happier times.
“That was seven years ago. Why would I remember that?”
“You remember how many years it was,” I counter. The number seven has been rattling around in my head all day, leaving me breathless with wonder and taunts ofwhy. Why that many years? Is it because I’m thirty now? New decade, new career, neweverything… “You also knew how many years it’s been since we’ve spoken.”
He flips up his hands. “Not everyone is rich and famous and has people to keep their calendars for them. I run a business. I do tend to know what day, month, and year it is on top of being able to do basic math.” Leaning against a book display, as if my presence is making it impossible for him to stay upright, he stares up at the ceiling. “It’s kind of hysterical that you remember I said you’d look good with an Elizabeth Taylor nose when we were in our early twenties but conveniently don’t remember when I told you to fuck off and never see me again.”
In our previous years of friendship, I got on Drew’s bad side only once. Shortly after we moved in together, I accidentally forgot to pick up a package from the mailboxes—a one-of-a-kind collectors’ edition of one of Drew’s favorite romances with sprayed edges and a foiled cover. They had printed a limited run that Drew had paid a pretty penny for and woke up extra early to secure a copy online.
Too bad by the time I remembered, the package had been stolen.
Drew didn’t curse. He didn’t even yell. He calmly told me how he felt, which was almost worse. It made me look inside. Investigate the selfish parts of me. The ones that seem overblown in this timeline.
Milkshake sits at my feet and lets out a whimper, as if he knows this conversation is going poorly. That my mind is moving in a million directions. “I wasn’t there…”
Drew scoffs, disbelieving. “Really? I distinctly remember standing in your new apartment across from you when you got back from your first tour with Clive, telling you that I never wanted to see you again, and you saying I didn’t know how to take a joke.” Hurt crisscrosses in his eyes, magnified by his glasses. “I suppose a hallucination of you said that? Maybe a hologram? Your Madame Tussauds wax figure with a voice box?”
I shake my head, unable to grasp the right words. “No, it was me,” I say, motioning to my body, “but it wasn’tme.” I point from my head to my heart, praying he gets the message.
“What? Are you trying to tell me you’ve changed since then? I don’t believe that,” he spits out. “I don’t believe that one bit.” He moves farther from me, putting the register between us and nearly knocking his head on a severed-hand decoration dangling from a nearby shelf. The whole place has the vibe of a half-assed escape room where all the clues are lodged inside hollowed-out books.
“Well, this is going to be even harder to believe,” I say. Then, I pretend he’s still twenty-three-year-old Drew and I’m still twenty-three-year-old Nolan and we’re high on the fire escape of our old shoebox apartment, and I confide in him. He may hate me, but I attempt to appeal to our history. I call on him to help, or at the very least tell me I’m not losing my mind over a set of crystals.
All he does is blink. And blink. And blink some more.
Bang.He slams his hands down on the counter, making Milkshake jump and move to cower behind me. “Where are they?” Drew asks, head turning every which way.
“Where are what?”
“The hidden cameras. The crew. Where are they?” he asks.Clearly, he’s assuming I’ve bugged his shop for a prank show, which,wow. “I refuse to be the butt of another one of your jokes. Haven’t you hurt me enough?”
