“What the hell was that?” Amber shouts, down on the floor to help untangle us from our man sandwich.
“I don’t know, man,” Jon rasps out, shoving August in the chest as he climbs back onto a seat. “I guess this is what happens when you’re the best Bon Jovi cover band in the world.”
Oh my god.
August didn’t resist or react to Jon’s physical assaults, but now a loud scoff fills the van, and Jon flings his gaze over at him.
“Oh, you’ve got a better idea? Think it was August’s ‘stalker?’”
“I am not fighting you over who has the better stalker,” I snap at him, even if it’s clearly me. Mine doesn’t try to kill me, at any rate.
“We’ve never had a stalker,” Richie says, turning Jon’s eyes to pure flame. “And whatever the fuck that was… Did you see the people?”
“Yeah, what was that?” Shashi interjects. “The audience was completely frozen.”
“Should we go back?” Amber asks. “What do we do? Is he shooting all those people?”
“Police.” Richie’s whipped his phone out, turning away as much as he can in the cramped, hastily driven van to try to hear them.
“It was me he was after,” Jon insists, typically. “Why else would he be there?”
“I don’t know, a terrorist attack?” August snipes. “Not unheard of in London.”
“Then why did he followme?” asks Jon.
And he has a point, stopped-clock style. A point that drags my eyes up to August’s, which are veering from angry at Jon to worried on me.
“Do you know what happened?” I ask him. I don’t just mean the shooter, and I know he knows that by the way he flinches away from me.
“No.” The word’s small, and for the first time since yesterday, I feel the tingling reminder of how I didn’t entirely trust him at the start. But one day of maths and talking astronomy, one kiss, and it’s all been thrown out the window.
That same old shame taps at my shoulders. My all-or-nothing way with relationships. My jumping in two feet first. I don’t even know him. Even though he’s me.
What am I doing with this guy from another universe who’s me?
“Or maybe…” he says, words soft, “I might.”
“I know what happened,” Jon says, leaning forward. “You kissed my boyfriend.”
“He’s not your boyfriend,” August snaps, his shoulder pressing into mine as he, too, leans forward.
Jon’s tone strikes at August. “I can’t believe you’d betray me like that.”
“Ibetrayedyou?” August half laughs in disbelief.
“You knew I was trying to get him back. You pulled that in the middle of my song!”
“August doesn’t want you!”
“August doesn’t know what he wants!” Jon shouts. “He’s confused, and you took advantage of him when it was me he was thinking about.”
August throws back, “He wasn’t thinking about you, I guarantee it.”
But Jon’s words are in my head.
August kissed me. Hekissedme, and it was fucking incredible.
But that’s exactly when everything stopped. It’s when all the world ground to a halt. And we fell into a time loop when he held my hand today. And we fell into a time slip when I grabbed him yesterday. And now all I can think about is him telling me I shouldn’t touch him, that it would make things worse.
