Amie stopped the alarm, eyes darting to her phone screen. Of all the mornings she would wake up in the time loop, she would rarely ever again feel such relief at seeing the date remain unchanged.
Chapter FourLast First Friend Date
Day 1 A.L.
It took Amie eight whole minutes to convince David that she had actually been stuck in a time loop.
“You can say it was a prank. I won’t be mad.” He was sitting at his kitchen table, a box of miscellaneous batteries at his elbow. Someone he’d found online had sold him the box for five dollars, and he was using a voltmeter to test the juice on each of the batteries. So far, none of them were the least bit juicy.
Amie briefly closed her eyes, trying to find patience. The text from Ziya had been sitting, unresponded to, for fifteen minutes. The more time she let pass, the more opportunity Ziya had to say, “Never mind, you lost your chance! Bye forever!” (She knew that would be very uncharacteristic of Ziya, but that knowledge didn’t do much to ease her worry.)
“Again,” she said, “whywould I prank you?”
David shrugged, extracting another battery from the box. “I dunno. Nutty old man living alone in his apartment gets convinced that his neighbor is stuck in a temporal loop. Hilarious.”
“Does that sound like something I’d do?”
David sighed heavily. “No,” he admitted.
“Besides,” Amie added, planting her hands on the table, “how else would I have known about Genevieve?”
She’d used David’s code phrase regularly during the time loop, giving her regards to the fabled Genevieve any time she needed to convince him that what she was saying was true. He’d been right; the line always worked. David would stare at her for a moment, nod slowly, then ask if she wanted to change the music.
“Yeah, you did know about Genevieve, didn’t you?” he grumbled. She knew the grumbling was less toward her and more toward the voltmeter, which was once again showing an unwelcome result. He tossed the battery into the bag at his feet and reached into the box again.
“How else would you expect a time loop to end, anyway?” Amie pressed, wanting to make sure he was convinced before moving on to the next order of business. “It’s not like you would’ve noticed anything different. I was the only one who was aware of it.”
“Could’ve been a big flash in the sky,” he said. “Or an earthquake or something.”
“Okay, well,” Amie said, “I’ll pass on your critique for the next time loop.”
“That’s all I’m asking for. Damn. This one’s dead, too.” Another battery dropped into the bag.
“Sooooo …” Amie slid into the chair across the table from him. “Now that we’re back on the same page, I need your help.”
David was busy pressing buttons on the voltmeter, but momentarily flicked his eyes up at her to indicate that he was listening.
“Ziya wants to hang out tonight, but I’m not sure if I’m ready.” Amie paused. “Are you listening?”
“You only said one sentence.”
“I know, but you don’t really look like you’re listening.”
David cursed as a battery slipped from his hand and rolled across the table. “Weren’t you supposed to get dinner yesterday?”
“Yeah, but I canceled.”
He paused. “Did you ever go?”
“Sometimes.” Amie had stopped the runaway battery and was absently rolling it under her fingers. “I tried to keep it the same every time. Doing things differently based on how it went in previous loops felt … unethical.”
“Because you want to win her back.”
Amie’s mouth fell open in shock. “No I don’t.”
David rolled his eyes, returning to the batteries.
“Idon’t,” Amie repeated. “I’m very determined to make this friendship work, and so is she, clearly, since she made time to reschedule our dinner to tonight.”
