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“Or maybe we don’t have to do this right away,” he says. “Maybe we could wait.”
“We’ve done enough waiting.” I tap on the wall with a few knuckles. “We don’t even know what’s going to happen when we hit the subbasement. Like Dr. Devereux said, it might—it might be nothing.”
Only when the words leave my mouth do I realize how devastating nothing would be.
“It’s not just that.” He rakes a hand through his hair until it’s properly mussed. The fiddling is out in full force now. “We don’t know what happens tomorrow, period. It’s one big question mark.”
“We know some things. I’ll go to my psych class, and you’ll go to your freshman seminar and report back to me what, exactly, a freshman seminar is, and we’ll see what Olmsted serves for lunch on a Thursday.”
“Those can be easily predicted,” he says. “But Max… it’s still so early.”
His fear, even unspoken, hangs heavy in the space between us. He said it back when we picked up his brother: if he never leaves the loop, then there’s no risk of Max relapsing.
“Miles,” I say, my heart breaking, “I’m sorry. I didn’t think about that.”
He offers up a sad smile. “I know it’s beyond my control, and it’s possible there are a thousand Maxes out there doing a thousand different things. But—it’s not just Max.” A shaky breath. A pause. “I’m worried about us.”
The sentence lands right in the middle of my heart.
Now that he’s found the words, he barrels onward, a determined set to his jaw. “We’re good in this loop, Barrett. You and me. I don’t want that to change,” he says. “Will everything we did together be erased from our memories? Will we have to start over?” He glances up at the elevator ceiling, at that flickering light bulb. “I’m not just worried. I’m fucking terrified.”
In an instant, any of my residual anger fades. Miles is scared. And here he is sharing it with me, trusting me to be gentle with him. Barrett Bloom, the girl who has always had the sharpest thorns.
“We’re not going to start over,” I say, soft but firm, trying my best to reassure him. Because the thing is, I do believe it. I don’t know if it’s science or fate that I trust, but I’m so full of hope that I might burst. I’ve never been more sure of anything, and I can’t explain why. Whatever happens when we hit that button again, my feelings for Miles are as constant as a coastal tide. “We’ve been through too much.”
“But there’s no guarantee. Even with all my posturing, there’s a hell of a lot I don’t know.” Miles from a couple of weeks ago would have paired this with a sly grin, a smirk, but there’s none of that now. “What’s so bizarre,” he says, “is that as maddening as this has been, it’s also been the best few months of my life.”
His eyes meet mine, fearful and hopeful at the same time. Mine too, my eyes tell his.
“If none of this had ever happened, we wouldn’t have become anything but two people who sat near each other in a lecture hall once,” he says. “You’d switch out, and maybe we’d see each other in the dining hall or pass each other in the quad and have a brief moment of recognition, but that’s it.”
“But that’s not what happened,” I say. “We were stuck together. And maybe it was coincidence at first, but it turned into something else.”
He shakes his head. “If we hadn’t had that extra time…” This seems like something he’s been holding on to for a while, maybe even longer than the past few days. “Once everything’s back to normal, we won’t be going on constant adventures. We won’t be flying off to Disneyland or turning swimming pools into ball pits.” He stretches a shy finger toward where my hand rests on my knee. “You’re hilarious, and gorgeous, and sexy, and I’m still half convinced you’re only humoring me here. If you want, you’ll be able to have your pick of guys. I won’t be your only option anymore.”
If I thought structural integrity was hot, it’s nothing compared to what the word sexy in Miles’s voice does to me.
“We’re not together because you were the only option.” My heart hurts, hearing that he doesn’t have the same confidence in himself that I do. I run my thumb over the hills and valleys of his knuckles. “I don’t need to have my pick. I’ve already chosen.”
He clamps his thumb over mine. “See,” he says, gesturing to where I’m touching him, his shoulders relaxing the smallest smidge. “This between us. It’s good. It wouldn’t be the worst life, if we stayed here. We have no idea what’s going to happen tomorrow, but we know what’s going to happen today. And we have each other. If… if you still want me, after all of this.”
Miles has always been so calm and collected, so logical. I never thought I’d be the one consoling him. Convincing him to be part of an experiment with me.
“Of course I want you,” I say. “I’ve wanted you for weeks. But I don’t just want you in September. It’s not enough. I want you in winter, too. I want you in spring and in summer. I want you the whole fucking year, and then I want you in September all over again.”
I try to imagine it, the two of us with long scarves and mugs of hot chocolate, in a field of sunflowers, or on a beach while the sun beams down on us.
His eyes flutter shut, and I can tell he’s imagining it too. I hope it looks as lovely to him as it does to me.
“You thinking about me in a swimsuit?” I ask, nudging his shoulder.
One side of his mouth curves into a smile as he places a hand on my ankle, right where it says RINGMASTER. “Now I am.”
The light bulb above us flashes off for a second longer than usual before falling back into its pattern.
“Even living life to the fullest gets old after a while,” I continue. I’m getting through to him. I have to be. “Sometimes you don’t want every opportunity at your fingertips. Sometimes you just want to be bored, and that’s okay. Sometimes you just want dinner and a movie.
“We know what to expect when we’re here, that’s true. The unknown is scarier. I think—I think you’ve just gotten too comfortable. And I know you’ve changed, and I have too, but it’s easy to fall back on what we know best.”
