‘Hi, Tyler,’ I say, deliberately keeping my voice light and breezy. Oh, and trying not to think about the way he’d braced himself against the wall as he leaned into me last night.
‘Hi, Bethany.’ There’s a question there.Why are you being so nice?he’s asking.Why aren’t you being a bitch to me?
Lily has now rolled onto her back so he can tickle her tummy and her cuteness erases all the doubt from his demeanour as he fusses over her.
‘She likes you,’ I tell him, wondering if Lily is normally like this or if Tyler has a magic touch.
‘Dogs are good judges of character,’ he replies. He’s trying to be flippant, but I can still hear the edge there, the silentaccusation that perhaps my dog is a better judge of character than I am. He might just have a point, to be fair.
I contemplate my options. It’s obvious that I need him. Whatever my views on fate and the last Tyler’s mythical personalization of the ‘universe’ as a somehow sentient being, I can’t fight it any more. Tyler and I need to work together. But first I have to tell him the truth.
‘If I tell you something, do you promise not to have me committed?’ I ask, turning the words into something akin to a joke.
He’s still on his knees and Lily uses this moment to climb into his lap. ‘If I had you committed I could take this beauty home,’ he replies. ‘But seriously, what’s going on? You seem …’
‘Different,’ I answer for him. ‘Because I am.’ And then I tell him everything and once again he’s quiet and contemplative as he listens to the madness.
‘So, how long do we have?’ he asks, immediately taking control of the situation. That’s one of the things I love about him, that ability to take what I’m telling him and – despite it sounding utterly fantastical – just rolling with it. Taking it all in his stride as if this kind of thing happens to him every day.
I glance at my watch. ‘Well, I personally don’t have anything more pressing for today.’ Does he think I would have? ‘So how much time can you spare?’
He cocks his head and appraises me, those green eyes so perfectly focused, as if he’s trying to figure out who the hell I am. ‘I meant how long until you skip again?’
‘Oh.’ Well, I guess that makes more sense. ‘I don’t know,’ I say, spreading my arms out wide in a gesture of defeat. ‘It’s random.’
‘Random?’ He pauses for a moment to give me a look that is somewhat disappointed. ‘Dr Raven, you know better than anyone else that nothing is truly random.’
Perhaps he has a point.
‘How about I go grab us some coffees?’ He points to the coffee hut in the distance. It’s the same one I’ve already been to in another world with another Tyler. ‘Then we can sit and figure it all out?’
I nod in reply and flop onto the grass. Lily stares at Tyler as he walks away. ‘He’ll be back, doofus,’ I promise her and she wags her tail.
Is there a pattern to when I skip? I root around in this Bethany’s bag and find what appears to be a slim notebook with a pen tucked into a loop of elastic and a keyring with a token attached. Looks like this Bethany is the kind who likes to be organized because I open it to reveal it’s a special shopping list pad. I dig deeper inside and find a tiny folded-up shopping bag and a mini nail care kit. A very organized Bethany indeed. I rip off a piece of the shopping list pad and turn it over to reveal a plain sheet. It’ll do.
I carefully make a list of all the times I’ve skipped, wracking my brain to ensure I haven’t missed any. At the beginning I was skipping every day, but now it’s more like every three to five.
Tyler returns with the coffees and I show him the list. He squints at it in that frustratingly adorable way. ‘Have you tried to run the sequence?’
I give himthe look. Like I wouldn’t have already thought to run it through a programme designed specifically to look for patterns in data. ‘Well, no.’ I’m forced to admit that I had in factnotthought to run it. In my defence I have had rather a lot going on recently.
He raises an eyebrow at me, only slightly, almost imperceptibly. But it’s still irritating as hell. Then he reaches into his backpack and pulls out his laptop. He opens it, unlocks it and then taps a few times. Then he hands it overto me, the screen showing a range of analytical programmes developed by various clever shits.
I sigh deeply as I balance the laptop on my knees and then navigate to the programme I’m most familiar with.
‘You know I wrote that one,’ he says, pointing at the screen.
I sigh even more deeply. I wish I’d picked another programme. Becauseof courseI know he wrote this one. And not recently either; he wrote an algorithm to look for patterns in short data series when he was fifteen years old and then sold it on to the university. He is the epitome of a clever shit. I tap slightly more forcefully on the keys as I enter the data.
‘You’re doing the days?’ he asks.
‘I’m doing the gap between them. I can’t be any more accurate because I always skip when I’m asleep.’
‘So it could happen at any point in that eight hours,’ he adds, nodding slowly.
‘Eight?’Who gets eight hours’ sleep?
‘Well …’ He blushes. ‘I like my bed.’ The tips of his ears turn red.
