“Your pot’s overflowing.”
“Oh, shit—” Amie shut off the sink and poured out the excess water. She deposited the pot onto the stove and switched on the burner.
“I’m sorry if I’m making you uncomfortable,” Ziya said, growing serious. “I’m still … figuring out how to do this.”
“I know.”
“Would you rather I not touch you?”
“No, it’s okay. It’s just the flirty stuff. I mean, I know you kind of do that with everyone, but—”
“It’s different. I get it.” Ziya began counting on her fingers. “No flirty hair touching, forget everything I know about you—”
“Don’t offer to feed me a bite of your food,” Amie added.
“Well, okay, we’ll be here all night if we’re gonna make up scenarios.”
Amie’s instinct to defend herself outpaced the rest of her brain. “I didn’t make that up. You did that!”
Ziya gave her a confused smile. “When?”
“To—” Amie stopped. No. Ziya hadn’t done that tonight. That was during their time loop date.
“Are you okay?” Ziya asked as Amie buffered. “You keep saying strange things. And the panic attack at the restaurant—”
“I’m fine,” Amie assured her. “Really. I just had a long day. I found out about Savannah, and then I was scrambling to finish an article before our friend date, and then David and the police … it’s just, it’s been a long day.”
Ziya hummed with understanding. She reached over to where Amie’s planner was sitting open on the table, pulling it to her. “So what are you reacclimating to?” she asked, tapping a pink manicured nail on the word Amie had written in giant letters.
Amie’s shoulders stiffened. She’d been so busy looking for any mess to tidy up that her gaze had slid right over the planner during her lightning round apartment inspection.
“Do you feel like you need to reacclimate to me?” Ziya looked hesitant. “I know we gave it a few months, but if it still feels too hard, we could … we could give it more time.”
“No,” Amie blurted out, a memory flashing through her mind of Ziya standing outside of a restaurant on a day that didn’t happen. “No,” she said again.
“So why is this weird?” Ziya asked, her voice strained.
Amie lifted her hands in exasperation. “Well, you can’t expect things to be perfectly normal right away, Z,” she said. “It’s not something you can rush; it takes time.”
“It’s been three months.”
It was much longer than that, for Amie. “Right, but now we have to get used to actually being around each other again. I mean, I barely know anything about what you’ve been up to for the past three months. How was Iceland?”
It was a dangerous move, but she needed to get Ziya away from the topic of Amie’s strange behavior.
Ziya’s expression went cloudy. She closed Amie’s planner, not looking at it as she pushed the book away. “I didn’t go,” she said. The mood of the room shifted to that of an audience watching a tightrope walker, as if one wrong step could lead to disaster.
“Oh,” Amie said. This was news to her. On all the September 17ths she spent with Ziya, neither of them dared to bring up Iceland. “I just figured—”
“I got a partial refund, so.” Ziya’s shoulders slumped. “I know you think this has been easier for me than it’s been for you, Ames. Iknowyou do. And I don’t know what it’s been like for you, but it hasn’t been easy for me. Okay? It’s been really fucking hard.”
Amie stayed silent.
“It’s fine if we’re weird for a while,” Ziya continued. “I can live with that. And if Savannah’s murder messed you up to the point of panic attacks, I want to be there for you. Can you let me do that?”
Amie’s heart squeezed at the declaration. She spoke cautiously, giving herself as much time as she could to change her mind. “It’s not … it’s not just about Savannah. Or you, or David. Something happened to me.”
Ziya watched her quietly, her dark brown eyes inviting Amie in.
