“Okay, no, I wasn’t embracing every day like it was my last, Z. Is that what you want me to say? We’ve already established that I’m the worst person to get stuck in a time loop, I get it. You’re right. I spent two years doing a whole lot of nothing. Par for the course for me. But what I need to know isam I fucking thirty?”
Ziya laughed, and Amie’s frustration rushed away like a receding tide. “Do you want to be thirty?”
Amie untensed, resting her head against Ziya’s as she thought about it.
“No,” she finally said. “I don’t think so. Not yet.”
“So you’re still twenty-eight,” said Ziya with the confidence of someone who had read the oh-so-elusive time loop rulebook that Amie had so desperately wished she could get her hands on. “Simple as that.”
“Simple as that,” Amie echoed. “You make it sound easy.”
“Itcanbe easy,” Ziya said softly. Her fingers curled against Amie’s waist, as if she was having trouble catching hold of her. “You make things so hard for yourself sometimes. It doesn’t always have to be so hard, Ames. It can just be easy.”
Amie wasn’t sure what to say to that, and Ziya once again looked like she’d gone somewhere far away. So she didn’t say anything, just held Ziya close, pressed a kiss to her forehead, and hoped that she’d come back to her soon.
Chapter FourteenThe Sacred Rule of No Take Backsies
Day 4 A.L.
Ziya had managed to silently remove the bells from the doorknob and slip out. It was also possible that the bell removal was not silent, and Amie was a heavier sleeper than she’d thought. Either way, silently or not, Ziya had left.
Amie tried not to read into it as she climbed out of bed and got dressed. She tried not to read into it as she went into the bathroom. She tried not to read into it as she picked up her phone and read the text from Ziya, which just said:Had to get to class. Talk later!
She wasn’t reading into it. Everything was fine. It had to be. And Amie was capable of being alone with her thoughts and emotions without feeling like she needed some sort of distraction to—
Knock knock. Knock. Knock knock knock.
“Oh, good,” David said upon opening the door. “You’re alive.”
Amie gave his retreating back an indignant frown. “After all your freaking out last night, that’s what I get?”
“Well, I figured I would have heard about it by now if you were dead, so it wasn’t all that surprising.”
Lingering in the doorway, Amie said, “Do you wanna go to Eons? Get some breakfast?”
“I already ate.” David was breaking down his machine from the day before. He seemed to be taking meticulous care to decide where to store each item, which was ironic considering half of his storage boxes were simply labeled “Miscellaneous.”
“Oh. Okay.” Amie stayed where she was, closely studying a chip in the paint of the doorframe.
“Where’s Ziya?” David asked, lowering the tube of toilet paper rolls into a box.
“Gone.” Amie sighed heavily, trying to garner sympathy. “Kind of felt like we got somewhere last night, and then she just left.”
David stopped what he was doing to raise his eyebrows at her. “You ‘got somewhere’?”
Amie suppressed a smile. “I don’t kiss and tell.”
“Thankgod.” David rubbed his face with both hands like he’d just been through an exhausting ordeal. “Took you two long enough. All your pining waskillingme.”
“I wasn’tpining.”
“You were pretending not to pine, which was even worse than if you’d just been doing it outright.”
Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, Amie said, “But this morning she left without a word. Well, she texted. But still. No goodbye or anything.”
She pretended to have a sudden thought. “If I went to Eons to get a blueberry bagel and a tea, that might take my mind off of things. But I don’t know if I can handle the journey alone.” Slumping against the door frame, she added, “Maybe I’ll just stay here and pine on the couch. You don’t mind, do you?”
David shook his head, using his foot to push a box under the work table. “Everyone thinks you’re so nice and sweet,” he said accusingly, pointing at her. “But you aremanipulative. I’m beingmanipulated.”
