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When I head back to the truck, Miles is bent over laughing.
“I can’t believe you’re laughing,” I say as I hoist myself inside. “My ego is bruised. No, worse than bruised. My ego has been maimed.”
“Tell me again how easy it is to find someone to bang it out with?” Miles asks between laughs, clutching his stomach. “You just—what is it, you just go up to them and ask?”
“I was expecting a very different response!”
“And what if he’d said yes?”
“Then obviously I’d have dragged him back to my dorm and had my way with him.” I make a face at that just as Miles stops laughing, because in no timeline does that sound like me. “No, I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m quite at the ‘sleep with a random stranger’ stage of this time loop.”
He nods sagely. “Me neither. Or if I ever will be. Maybe I’m romanticizing it too much, or it’s the period-piece lover in me, but I’ve always hoped that if or when it happened, it would be… meaningful. That I’d be in love, and it would just feel right.”
“I had… kind of the opposite experience.” I pause, fiddling with one arm of my glasses, wondering how much of it I want to share. I settle on: not much. This friendship between us is still so new. Breakable. “I sort of wanted to get it over with, I guess? To know what all the fuss was about?”
Because the fuss couldn’t have possibly been what actually happened. Not enough foreplay on too-white hotel sheets, dimming the lamps because I didn’t want a spotlight on my stomach or my thighs. “First time?” he said with his mouth on my throat while he pawed at my breasts, and my body quivered as I told him yes. A rustling of fabric as he shoved off his suit pants and positioned himself on top of me. It wasn’t bad, exactly, but it wasn’t good, either. When he asked if I was finished, I just said, “Mm-hmm,” because he’d already been so generous to me, and then he fell asleep. I didn’t have feelings for him, not really, but I’d still expected to feel more. Part of me even hoped he’d wake up in the middle of the night and reach for me again, just so I could feel wanted for a little longer.
Sometimes I wish I could have a do-over. Erase that experience I was so desperate to have and replace it with something that mattered.
Miles’s face reddens again, but he charges forward. “So. What was all the fuss about, then?”
“Wish I could tell you. I hate to disappoint, but it was nothing to write home about, if I’m being honest. And it was pretty brief.”
“Oh.”
“Look, another rush!” I say as more students head toward us, and I never thought I’d be so excited to plunge my hands into frozen tubs of dairy.
Chapter 24
AFTER I WASH OFF THE ice cream, sweat, and overanalysis of everything I’ve said today, Miles texts, asking if I want to meet back up for dinner. Somehow I’m not sick of him yet, and it’s better than sitting in my room and dreaming up ways to avoid Cole.
I show up in front of his room, freshly showered, curls scrunched. JUST KEEP SWIMMING—AND LEARNING!, the Finding Nemo bulletin board tells me.
“I’m trying,” I mutter.
When Miles opens the door, he’s wearing a button-up and nice slacks. I have on a striped tee and my perfect-imperfect jeans, because one silver lining of being stuck in time is that I’m really getting my mileage out of them. He’s just showered too, water droplets clinging to the collar of his shirt.
“Should I change?” I ask, worrying the hem of my shirt. “Are we going somewhere with a dress code?”
“No, no,” he says, pulling the door wider so I can see inside. “We’re staying right here.”
He’s rearranged the furniture, moving one of the desks away from the wall to serve as a dining table. In the middle are two plates, a serving bowl, and long twin candles, some takeout containers peeking out of the nearby recycling bin. The lights are dimmed, and what might be an instrumental Britney Spears mix is playing from a speaker on the other desk.
Suddenly I have to grip the wall to keep my knees from buckling, because they’ve turned just as melty as the leftover ice cream.
I’m certain Olmsted has never looked lovelier.
“I know it’s not Friday, but you said you wanted to go to Hillel, and I thought, well, if we couldn’t go… then maybe we could do Shabbat ourselves. Just for us. On a Wednesday, but…”
Just for us. It’s a simple statement, but there’s something so sweet in the way he says it.
“Miles.” I can’t remember the last time anyone not related to me did something this nice for me—quite possibly because it’s never happened. My heart doesn’t know how to process it. And on top of that, I mentioned this to Miles once? A while ago? And he remembered. “Miles. This is…”
“Is it too much? We can’t risk lighting the candles without setting off the smoke alarm,” he says. “But I, uh, made these. I thought maybe we could tape them on, or something?” He holds up a pair of flame cutouts, made from orange and gold construction paper. “I wanted to get fake candles, but couldn’t find any nearby. I guess could have tried harder, or maybe I could have tried to disengage the smoke alarm….” He’s fidgeting now, flipping the flames over in his palm. “Or maybe—”
I cut him off with a hand on his arm, his skin warm beneath the smooth poplin fabric. “It’s perfect. Thank you. Thank you so much.” There aren’t enough words to describe how I feel about it, so I just have to hope he knows. “Shabbat shalom.”
“Shabbat shalom,” he echoes, visibly exhaling.
