“How did you know I was here?” he asked, managing to sound casual, as if they had been separated for mere minutes rather than months.
“Your mom.”
“But I didn’t tell her I was coming here.” He leaned on his driver.
“I had a feeling,” she said, chasing after the words to describe it. “I was thinking about the fight we had in college, and how we both came to the pier, and I hoped . . .” She drifted off, unsure how to qualify her hopes, which felt too large and weighty for the mere beginning of their conversation to sustain.
He bent to retrieve a golf ball from the worn leather bag splayed open on the stone bench. “Do you remember what that fight was about?”
“No,” she said apologetically, and dug her numb fists into her pockets.
“It was about Brian, actually, of all things. Do you remember? He backed out on that spring break trip with me, and I was out five hundred bucks, and I was so furious with him. I didn’t want to speak to him ever again, but you tried to get me to see his point of view, and I got mad at you for taking his side. It wasn’t really ever our fight to begin with. You were just trying to save me from myself.” Dropping the ball in the flattened snow, he hardly waited for it to settle before whacking it nearly to Picnic Point. Crack. “It’s ridiculous to think about now, but I remember how indignant I felt at the time. But I was clearly in the wrong.”
Olive gave him a wary smile. “Clearly.” As it was also clear that she was the one in the wrong this time. In a major way.
He plunked another golf ball in the snow. “You want to hit some balls?”
The unexpected turn in the conversation threw her off; she hadn’t hit a golf ball since college when he’d taken her to the driving range. She took another step into the clearing. “Sure.”
He handed her the driver. Was this some kind of test?
She accepted the club, the leather grip still warm from his hands. She imitated Phil, positioning her feet shoulder width apart and leaning slightly forward. She raised the golf club over her shoulder, vaguely remembering something Phil had taught her about an L shape, and then took a hack at the ball in front of her. It popped off the hill and then dribbled across the ice about twenty feet.
“That was abysmal,” Phil said, but he looked amused. “You look like you’re playing baseball. I’m surprised you even hit the ball.”
“Is this how you coach your boys?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.
“Most of my boys start off with a little more skill. And besides, didn’t I teach you all this once before?”
Her heart gave an encouraged thump. “It was a long time ago.”
He sighed and passed her another ball. “You don’t remember, huh? Your swing should be like a wheel—not quite vertical, not quite horizontal. Angled. And make sure you follow through all the way. You stopped almost right after you hit the ball, and that’s not going to give it much distance.”
She lined up her shot and tried to follow his directions, swinging the club in a self-consciously angled wheel—up, down, and over. This time she missed the ball completely and sliced the snow instead.
Phil reached for the club. If this was a test, she had failed it.
He strode over to where she was standing and motioned for her to back up. It took her a moment to realize he hadn’t given up on her; he was just demonstrating his stance and swing. “See how I’m pivoting my body? It’s not just my arms—the real power comes from the rest of my body turning into my swing. Come here and try this.”
She stepped closer to him, and he didn’t back away. Instead, he stood close behind her, his chest nearly brushing her back, his arms draped loosely over her arms, swinging the golf club back and forth in a slow, exaggerated curve. Her breath caught in her throat as he gripped her hips, pushing them gently toward the lake. Even through her thick winter coat, his touch felt electric.
“Let’s try it together,” he said. “Okay? Swing on three. One. Two. Three.”
Olive gave herself over to him, letting her arms move with his arms and her torso turn with his torso. The club connected with the ball. The ball flew at least fifty yards in the air this time, rolling neatly into a large, grayish divot in the ice. A frozen-over ice fishing hole.
“A hole in one!” Phil laughed, not letting her go.
She stood very, very still, hoping he hadn’t realized he was still holding her. Or that he had realized it and wanted to. His body felt warm and substantial against hers. She closed her eyes.
“Why are you here?” he whispered into her hair.
She shivered. “I wanted to ask you the same thing.”
He paused, his arms still around her, but his grip loosened ever so slightly. “I guess I came here to escape for a little while. From my family and their chaos. From all the holiday cheer and goodwill to mankind. From you.”
“From me?” she asked, startled.
He grinned sheepishly. “It didn’t work, though.”
She stepped out of his grasp, and his arms fell away easily, like he wasn’t trying to hold on to her at all. She felt exposed. “Do you want me to go?” she asked more coldly than she’d intended.
“No, no. That’s not what I meant. You were here even before you got here.” He gestured to the lake and the snow-buried path behind them. “You’re in every single one of my memories of this place. In the trees, in the sky, in the contours of the lake. There’s no escaping you, Olive.”
Hopefulness swelled inside her chest, but a flicker of anger tempered it. Then why must you try? she wanted to ask. Then why don’t you give in and come back to me? Because he hadn’t last month, and he hadn’t last year, and even now she was the one who had come to him. If he loved her enough to see her in the “contours of the lake,” why didn’t he love her enough to give her a call and make her heart stop aching so badly?
“On my end, it feels like you’ve made a pretty clean break,” she said, looking down at the ground beneath her, where her boots and Phil’s had stamped diamonds and spades into the snow.
“There’s no such thing as a clean break.” He laced his fingers behind his neck, elbows pointed out like wings, as if surrendering. “There’s just hurt and regret. Second-guessing and trying to figure out how such a right thing could go so wrong.”
They stood facing the lake without speaking, together yet also apart. Time felt as thick and impermeable as ice, and Olive wondered if the world had finally slowed. She sought the language that would express how sorry she was and how fervent her wish for their reconciliation, but all she could think of were the three little words that would be inadequate. I love you, but no, he had said.
Phil punctured the silence. “This whole time, I’ve been trying to solve our relationship like it’s some equation that I couldn’t get to balance. I couldn’t figure out if your not-cheating the second time canceled out your cheating the first time, and then if lying to me all year somehow multiplied the whole mess.” He released his interlocked fingers, letting his arms swing at his sides. “And then I realized that I hadn’t even factored in my side of the equation. I know I can be rigid in my thinking sometimes, and I must have made it really hard for you to want to talk to me about all of this. And I know I shut you out and walked away from an otherwise really good thing because that’s what I tend to do. But then I didn’t know which of these was worse, which way the equation tipped.”
She craned her neck to look up at him, her thoughts fluttering around like moths trapped in a jar. Phil’s eyes flashed at her, green as ivy in the wintry light. She stared back, hoping he could read everything she was thinking and feeling in the depths of her eyes. He scrutinized each of her features, as if he’d forgotten her face, as if he’d like to kiss her.
“Laying eyes on you, Olive, makes all of those imaginary calculations fly out the window. I see you, and I suddenly forget why I was keeping score. That’s why I stayed aw
ay, I guess. It was a last-ditch effort to protect myself. Because you totally, utterly undo me.”
Her heart was straining to lift right out of her body like a helium-filled balloon. “I’m going to try to never hurt you again. You don’t need to protect yourself from me.”
“You’re probably right,” he said, “but it’s a hard habit for me to break. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been trying to protect myself. It’s like I’m trying to keep the bad away with one hand while holding on to the good with the other, and it just doesn’t work. It’s stupid. I need both hands. So I guess I just have to spread out my arms and accept the bad with the good.”
She reached for his hand, bridging the distance between them. “I hope there’s more good than bad.”
“You never answered my question,” he said softly. “Why are you here?”
“I’m here,” she started, praying for the right words to come to her, “because I couldn’t bear to let another day pass without you knowing how sorry I am for hurting you. I’m here because our relationship is such an important event in my life that the universe propelled me backward in time to restore our love. I’m here because it only took a few days of being with you again, loving you, and having you love me back so completely, for me to remember how happy I could be.” Teardrops streamed down her face, and she distractedly wiped them away with her free hand.
“I’m here because I could never want to be with anyone but you. I’m here because I could never find someone as compassionate and honest and fun as you, someone who sees so much beauty and good in the world and in me. I’m here because as clichéd as it sounds, I know you’re my soul mate. I’m here because I love you, Phil, and living without you is unbearable. And I really believe we’re both here, drawn to this spot, because we’re meant to be together.”
He squeezed her hand. “I thought you didn’t believe in fate.”
“I still don’t,” she said. “At least not Fate with a capital F.” How could she possibly believe in the Fate of the Greek tragedies, just one path, just one destiny for the hero when there were multiple fates, numerous possibilities, infinite outcomes, so many different routes? Wasn’t her repeat year really just a vehicle for her to see that? To see all the different choices she could make before realizing that Phil had been the best choice for her all along?
“But I believe in us,” she said.
He pulled her into his arms and crushed her to his chest. She could feel his rib cage and beneath it, the steady thump of his heart. The bitter wind whistled around them, but immersed in Phil’s embrace, she felt only protected and warm. Something was loosening inside her body. The burden she’d been carrying for almost two years was dissolving now. Absolution entered her pores, filled her bloodstream, and circulated to every cell in her body. Her happiness and relief were so intense that she felt weak.
Phil bent his head downward to kiss her, still cradling her. Carefully backing toward the stone bench, he pulled her onto his lap. She leaned against him, letting him support her. They clung to each other and kissed desperately as if he were going off to fight a war. Even in the oppressive cold, she could smell traces of the soap on his skin, fresh as evergreen trees and cut grass. She folded back the collar of his jacket and pressed her lips against the bare hollow of his throat. He moaned and smoothed his hands down over her hair. It felt so good, she had to stifle a sob.
“God, I’ve missed you,” she whispered into his neck.
“I’ve missed you, too, Ollie.” He raised her face and stroked her cheek. His fingers sent tiny tingles across her skin. “Your face is really cold.”
“But my lips are warm,” she murmured.
He tightened his grip on her, hugging her closer. “We probably shouldn’t stay here. I don’t want you to freeze. Where are you parked?”
“In the dorm lot,” she said.
“I’m over by the crew house. Let’s head to my car since it’s closer.”
At that moment, she didn’t care if they walked all the way home as long as they were together. They set off through the shin-deep snow, Phil with one arm around her waist, the other carrying his golf bag and club. The snowdrifts seemed like half the obstacles they’d proved earlier, and the blocky crew house was just up ahead.
“So tell me about this alternate reality,” Phil said, lifting her over a particularly deep snowdrift. “Gosh, if you’d told me sooner, can you imagine all the space-time tests we could’ve done?”
She laughed and then started to chronicle the differences between her mom’s two weddings: her opposition the first time and Christopher’s opposition the second, how Phil’s presence had made the events go more smoothly. She told him about Sherry’s battle with breast cancer and her reunion with Heath. She explained why she hadn’t wanted to live at High Pointe Hills, even venturing to mention that she and Alex had dated briefly and unsuccessfully. She divulged the real story behind her rupture with Kerrigan. She told him of all the trials she’d experienced and lessons she’d learned from repeat patients—Sarah Hutchinson, Betty Gardner, the Dodge brothers, Ryan Avery. They sat talking and then kissing in his Mercedes with the heater blowing full blast until the sky turned lavender. She felt empty yet full, spent yet bursting with energy, drowsy yet wide awake. She felt love.
Chapter 24
The new year was only an hour away. Olive and Phil stood in Kristin and Brian’s crowded living room. The TV was on; New Yorkers were already celebrating the arrival of the new year in Times Square. Kristin passed out glasses of champagne while big band music filled the room. A silver-lettered banner expressed the deepest desire of Olive’s heart—Welcome, 2012! Phil must have caught her anxious look because he squeezed her hand. “It’s going to be okay,” he reassured her.
They had enjoyed days of bliss before the cruel possibility had dawned on her. What if—like Sherry in 2005—she was forced to relive the year yet again? She had struggled to evaluate the year’s failures and successes, but for some events it was difficult to decide under which column they should go. Had she been good enough to her mom, Harry, and her brother? Though she had won Phil back, she had caused him and herself an unnecessary amount of pain and sorrow by lying for so long. Also, by saving Ryan Avery’s life, she had subjected him to a life of paralysis. And what of her ruined friendship with Kerrigan? Did her successes outweigh her failures, and who was the judge of all this? She hoped whoever it was, he or she was much wiser than her.
If she was sent back . . . she didn’t think she could bear to wake up in 2011 again, in bed beside an unknowing Phil. It would be an innocent Phil who loved her, but not one who had forgiven her and grown with her. The insights she had gained this year were hard-won, and to do it all over again . . . The thought was suffocating, but not as suffocating as the fear that this year was all an elaborate prank of the cosmos—a cruel “this is how your life could have been” gag, before shepherding her back to 2012. The 2012 she had already started constructing for herself—one living all alone at High Pointe Hills, dedicating her every waking moment to her job. Sherry had never suggested the possibility of this to her, but Olive suspected she didn’t know all the rules of time travel. Perhaps the only pitfall of happiness is the fear that it will vanish. Every time she closed her eyes, she imagined everything she had worked so hard to gain being swept away in the blink of an eye.
“Champagne?” Kristin offered with a shrewd smile. She and Brian were ecstatic that Olive and Phil were back together. Because they had kept so much to themselves during their breakup, very few of their other friends even knew that they had been separated for the majority of November and December. But Phil had stayed with Brian and Kristin and then his mom for a couple of weeks before he’d managed to move back into his old apartment.
“Thank you,” Phil said, accepting two flutes. “It’s funny to think that the next time we’ll be toasting will be at your wedding. I guess I should get started on my speech, huh?”
Olive sipped her champagne, enjoying the fizzy bubbles on her tongue. She was trying to live in the moment and ignore the reality of tomorrow, but it was a ridiculous notion. She envied the other carefree party guests moving around them. Phil had persuaded her to come in the hopes of preventing her from watching the clock all night. After listening to her description of both years, he had such renewed faith in her goodness that he couldn’t imagine she would be condemned to repeat again. All the same, she couldn’t help noticing that he seemed particularly affectionate tonight—holding her hand, putting his arm around her shoulders, lovingly tucking strands of hair behind her ear. It was almost as if he were afraid she would be whisked away suddenly, too.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the large gilded mirror hanging across the room. Pretty in her midnight blue cocktail dress, but with the somber face of someone attending a funeral. Standing next to her, looking stylish in his suit coat and dark blue jeans, was the object of her affection. She turned away from the mirror reflection to face the real man. If these were the last few hours she had to spend with the Phil of the present, she was going to savor every second.
A new peppy song was playing. “Do you want to dance?” she asked.
He raised his eyebrows in surprise. They had taken a ballroom dancing class together their last semester of college and been notorious as some of the worst dancers in the class. The concluding unit had been swing dance, and in their final exam, during one of their jumps, Olive had lost her shoe, hitting another dancer in the head with it.
“Sure.” He grinned and held out his hand.
No one else was dancing, but a large enough space was open in front of the sliding glass doors leading out to the balcony. He spun her out onto the empty floor and then guided her into an underarm turn. They rock-stepped and sidestepped, snapped their fingers, and did the occasional spin. Olive smiled to catch Phil mumbling the steps aloud. A short while later, Alistair and Maggie, who proved to be much better dancers, joined them. Maggie rolled across Alistair’s back; he leapfrogged over her body and then pulled her through his legs. Somehow they managed to make these maneuvers look effortless and graceful.
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