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Miles’s face is pained. “Somewhere between the two.”
Okay. I can handle this, I think. Maybe.
“And it was just the one time? That one iteration of the party?” When he nods, I fire off more questions. “When was it? When in your timeline?”
“Maybe a month in.”
I do some quick mental calculations. That means it happened about a month and a half ago for him. He and I have been stuck together for three weeks, and he’s kept it hidden this whole time.
The person I thought was worth my worst secret, keeping one of his own.
“What has all of this been, then?” I ask. “You buttering me up so you could hook up with me?”
He looks horrified. “No,” he says firmly. “Not because you’re not—I mean—you’re—” Fumbling for the right words, he crushes a hand into his eyes. “Fuck.”
I know enough about him to know that’s not something he would do, and yet I can’t stop myself. “Well, it worked. I’m properly buttered, Miles. We were just about to kiss, so you obviously did something right. Well done.”
“Barrett…” Miles scrapes a hand through his hair. The hair I just touched. His mouth, the one I wanted to kiss, is twisted to one side, like he’s trying to let only the right words out. He clears his throat, charging forward. “Just a moment ago, we were talking about wanting it to be special. Being with someone. And this wasn’t—it wasn’t that, it wasn’t anything more than kissing, but it also wasn’t—” As though realizing he’s dug himself into a hole in the most roundabout of ways, he breaks off.
“It wasn’t special? Should that make me feel better?” I snatch up my bag and get to my feet, unable to sit politely in this park a moment longer. “You should coach elementary school soccer because you are just an endless well of positive reinforcement.”
With that, I turn and weave my way through families and couples and flash-mob members toasting how great their routine was. And it was. If I weren’t a jumbled, furious mess, I’d stop to tell them how much I loved it.
“I meant—I thought it was special at the time,” Miles says, jogging to keep up with me, backpack over one shoulder, blanket trailing on the ground. “Romantic, even. You seemed so cool, and you felt… I don’t know. Unattainable, maybe. But I didn’t know you then. Now that I do… well, things are different.”
Unattainable. Surely, no one has ever used that word to describe me. I try to see myself through his eyes, but I don’t get any more flashes. Whoever I was that night feels utterly, hopelessly lost.
It’s the strangest betrayal, because it’s not just that I’m angry with him. I’m angry that he felt something for this person during an event that, by all logic, did not happen to me. There might even be a flicker of jealousy, even if somewhere deep in my neural network, I am connected to that other Barrett.
“If this is your way of asking for a redo, you’re doing a really shitty job,” I say as we reach a gravel path, dodging a bicyclist. “So you were going to kiss me again and pretend that first time never happened?”
“I wasn’t going to.” He’s breathing hard, his cheeks flushed. “I wouldn’t have let myself do that without telling you first. I wanted to tell you, but things were moving too fast.”
Moving too fast. We haven’t been moving for weeks. Months.
“But you waited so long, Miles! You pulled away at the literal last second. We’re not just two people randomly stuck in a time loop together anymore. We’re friends, and—” I thought we were becoming more? I wanted to press my mouth against yours and shove you down onto the strawberry-patterned picnic blanket? I decide not to finish the sentence. “Why are you only telling me now?”
“I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. Which I realize now was a bad call. I thought you wouldn’t trust me. Or worse, that you’d think I was making it up to try to get you to do something you didn’t want to do. To get closer to you, especially when we didn’t instantly click.” He shoves out a breath. I’m not used to seeing him flustered like this, so clearly aware of his mistake. “I’m so sorry. I should have told you. I fucked up.”
When I don’t say anything, he keeps going. “It hurt, at first. That you didn’t remember anything, since it didn’t happen to this version of you. I had to be the one with those memories, but you… you didn’t have to carry it with you. You didn’t have that moment with someone you were certain was too good for you, a moment that turned out to be—yep, too good to be true.”
Someone you were certain was too good for you. I can’t linger on that, and yet it breaks the small part of my heart that isn’t already wrecked by Miles’s confession.
“You want me to feel sorry for you?” I say. “You kept this from me for weeks, and you want me to feel sympathy because you had this great moment with some other me?”
Miles bunches the blanket more tightly beneath his arm. “This is coming out all wrong. I swear, Barrett. There’s nothing nefarious here. I just—I just want to make things right.”
“Fine. It didn’t happen to me, so I shouldn’t be upset about it.” I hang a left at the sign arrowing toward the parking lot. “Let’s just go home.”
He doesn’t even argue. Originally, we figured there wouldn’t be a point in driving back, since we’d wake up in Olmsted today tomorrow anyway. We were going to stay out all night in another city, another country. This perfect day, now completely shattered.
Part of me might have wanted to kiss him to make myself feel better. Feel wanted. But it’s a good thing we didn’t do it. I shouldn’t have trusted him with my secrets, and now I know I can’t trust him with my heart.
Miles offers to drive, maybe as some small slice of penance, and I’m too tired to fight him. It’s a slow, silent drive. We stop at a gas station in Bellingham, where I go inside and snatch every bottle of 5-Hour Energy off the shelves.
I’m not letting myself go to sleep tonight even if it kills me.
“It’s past midnight,” Miles says when I get back in the car, slamming the door behind me.
