by Lydia Sharp
Her smile is tentative. “Yes, really.”
Wow, um … I don’t know what I’m feeling right now. It’s not a bad feeling, though. I can tell that much. Pleasantly bewildered? Is that a thing? Or … cautiously optimistic?
“I’m not saying no.” And I hope that sounded okay. “But why? All the sudden?”
I’ve never thought of Lucy in this way. No, actually, I have … entertained the idea, here and there, given it a quick thought like, maybe, what if, but not often. Not enough to think it would be better than what we’ve already got between us, or worth pursuing. So I’ve never even thought to ask, or try. What we have is perfect, anyway. Why change it?
“That’s what I meant to do first. Explain.” She lets out a nervous laugh. “Then I got it all backward. Just … bear with me here. And don’t tell me your answer until you hear everything.”
“Okay.” I smile as the initial shock of her confession starts to fall away and I think … maybe. Maybe we could try this—whatever this ends up being, it’s got to be better than her breaking us up. “I’m bearing.”
“Good. Because this is a long story. It starts the night we met, three and a half years ago.”
Once Lucy gets going, she talks forever. I sit there and just listen. I know this story. I lived all of this with her, from the night we met and all that happened after that. But hearing it from her perspective is different.
That night of our first high school party, when we heard what became “our song” for the first time together. We both agreed it’s so melodramatic it makes emo music sound clinical, which broke the ice between us, then led to talking for hours about things no one else understood, like how helium is such a pretentious element. “It’s so stuck up,” I said between sips of fruit punch. “Every time helium tells a joke, it goes right over everyone’s heads.”
She was already laughing now, but that was only the setup. I went on, “Like the one about atoms. I’m sure you’ve heard it before, it’s a classic. But helium tells it wrong every time. Why can’t you trust atoms?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her eyes lighting up, focused solely on me. “Why?”
“Because they make up everything.”
Then she laughed so hard, so genuinely, not caring who saw or heard her, this throaty belly laugh that some might call obnoxious and loud. It had her doubling over and snorting, and that was when I knew we’d be really good friends for a really long time.
I remember looking around the room, at all the other people talking and laughing. And kissing—already. Marcos and Chaz included, only an hour or so after they’d met. And I remember thinking what a relief it was that I’d found someone who didn’t put that pressure on me to do what everyone else was doing. Lucy let me be me, simply by being her.
Now she tells me what I didn’t know. She’d been hoping I would ask her out that night because she was too nervous to ask me. She waited and hoped to hear it all night, but I never did. She was disappointed—mostly with herself, for not speaking up—but she decided it was better than not having any kind of relationship at all. We clicked together too well to let it go. And then later, much later, when I’d finally opened up to her about why I don’t date that often, how it takes me a while before I have those sort of feelings toward someone—and I don’t know why; it just does—she figured if it would ever happen between us, she’d simply wait and see if it happened. She would wait for me to make the first move, whenever I was ready, in my own time.
Now, almost four years later, she’s still waiting.
I was wrong, and so was her dad. Lucy is not impatient. She has the patience of a saint.
I open my mouth to tell her this, but she says, “Hold on, I’m not finished.”
“Okay. I’m listening.”
“After that,” she goes on, “I thought if we ever had the chance, I would still be willing to give it a try with us. And in the meantime I really liked being your friend. I liked that we became best friends. But then I found out my dream of going to Italy would really be coming true. I realized that if anything other than friendship was going to happen, this was my last chance to try before there was half a world of distance between us.”
Okay, but … “Lucy, you got accepted into that school over a year ago.”
“I had to make a plan. I had to make sure this was what I really wanted. So after Macy Morris broke up with me for refusing to … do certain things, I stopped dating other people and cleared my head, then focused on what I should do with you. Slowly.”
They broke up after Valentine’s Day junior year. Macy expected their winter date to be a lot hotter than it was. After that was when Lucy started getting closer to me. Slowly, just like she said. Looking back now, it’s obvious. But still I ask, “At the beginning of this school year, when you suggested we go to prom together if neither of us had a date for it … That was all part of this plan?”
“Entirely. Going to prom together. Wearing this dress. Coming here to watch the Eta Aquarids. Then telling you everything and … well, whatever happens next. And I wasn’t sure this would work. You kept throwing monkey wrenches into my plans, like you always do. Chaos personified,” she adds with a light laugh.
My mind jumps back to night one, when she decided it was better to push me out of her life completely. But if this was her plan all along, to take our relationship to a different place, why would she break us up? I’m missing something, and it’s not like I can just ask her, hey, two nights ago when we lived a different version of today and you did this really unexpected thing that destroyed me—yeah, I know you don’t remember, but can you explain it to me, please?
Headshake. “I can’t believe you did all this without me catching on.”
“Heh, well, I almost decided not to tell you anything after we danced tonight. That dance was perfect, and I was afraid I’d lose you if I said all this, if I pushed you too far too fast, and it made you uncomfortable.”
Her words settle over me like a warm blanket on a chilly night, and the realization wraps around me like a hug. With Lucy, in this new way, I’m not uncomfortable. I thought there was a chance I might be, but … “I’m not uncomfortable.”
“You’re not,” she agrees. “You’re the most comfortable person I know.” She snuggles against my chest, and I raise my outside hand to stroke her hair. This kind of physical closeness is normal for us, but suddenly it feels new. Every little movement feels more important somehow. “I’m glad Chaz talked me out of backing out,” she says.
“Chaz knew about this?” Wait, is that why—“Did Marcos know, too?”
“Maybe. I didn’t tell him, but you know how they talk.”
He’s dead tomorrow. They both are. If tomorrow ever comes.
Lucy pulls back to look at me. “So now that you know … what do you … think?”
I think it’s … “Okay.”
“Okay? What does that mean? Okay what?”
“I mean okay, yes. Let’s give this a try.”
“Really?” She practically leaps back into my arms.
I just hold her for a few minutes, a ball of heat in my gut pulsing stronger with every heartbeat, like I’m holding the sun inside me, and it’s bursting with solar flares. I need this. I need her. Always.
We can do this. We can keep being friends and also be something other than friends. Now that I’m on that track, I wonder how I didn’t jump onto it sooner. This feels very … right.
“JJ?” Lucy says. “What are you thinking about?”
She wants me. This beautiful, amazing girl. And suddenly all I want is to give myself to her. What the moon wants the moon gets.
“I was just wondering if … Would it be all right if I kiss you?”
She nods, biting her lower lip, suddenly shy and nervous. She’s not the only one. What if I got this far just to flub it up? Just to find out she thinks I’m a terrible kisser and that ends it?
“Take your time,” she says reassuringly, using my earlier words. “We’ve got all ni
ght.”
Maybe we do. Maybe we don’t. Maybe I have the rest of my life to practice our first kiss over and over and over until I get it perfect, because I might be stuck in this loop forever. But this is the only time it will be first for real, for both of us. One shot, no second chances.
I cup her jaw with both my hands, not sure how to start, buying myself a few more seconds to figure it out. My touch is featherlight, as if she might break if I hold her too firmly, and she closes her eyes. Her lips pout. I don’t know if she did that on purpose, but good God. With that one little move, I am done. All rational thought leaves me and I don’t even remember closing the gap between our mouths, but now I’m very, very aware that our lips are touching. The waxy taste of her lipstick is unexpectedly addictive. Maybe that’s weirder than liking her toes, but I don’t care.
The world tilts in a dizzying, delightful blur, and I hold her tighter to keep my balance, my fingers sinking into her round hips, and then my hands are everywhere, unable to decide what part of her I need to touch more. Her waist, her back, her shoulders, her neck—the smell of her shampoo is intoxicating, giving me a heady buzz—I want it all and all at once, so suddenly that it gives me mental whiplash, and part of me questions if any of this is even real. She’s doing the same, exploring like this is the first time she’s ever had her hands on me, and somehow, in the frenzy, our mouths never break apart. Everything on her is soft, but nothing as soft as her lips. I can’t get enough.
The solar flares in my gut intensify, and I’m hot all over. Now I understand Marcos’s love of poetry. A few verses, stanzas, whatever they’re called, have spontaneously written themselves in my head in the last few seconds.
Don’t get so carried away, JJ, it’s just a kiss.
Right. Just a kiss.
It’s just a kiss that the last three and a half years have been building toward.
It’s just a kiss that, up until now, we both believed would never happen.
It’s just a kiss that lasts an eternity but also keeps us frozen in this moment, like time means nothing anymore.
When we finally pull away, gasping, I actually have the thought that maybe Melody was right—time only exists in our heads. I have no idea how many minutes passed while we kissed, if any at all.
“Wow,” Lucy says.
“Much wow.” The poetry in my head must have gotten lost on the way to my mouth.
I’m ready for more, but she lays her head on my chest and settles the rest of her against my side, looking out at the midnight-blue horizon. “I can’t believe we made wishes on falling stars last night,” she says. “Were we drunk?”
“Yes, on ice cream,” I say, and she laughs. “I didn’t wish on a falling star, though, only you did.”
“But we both wished on the moon. Well, I did. Did you?”
“I did, yeah …” I wish we could stay like this forever.
“You don’t have to tell me yours, but my wish on the moon came true. It was for this. For everything I planned for us tonight to end up right where it is now.” She lifts one shoulder in a barely-there shrug. “It’s completely illogical to think that making the wish for it was the reason it happened. I just thought it was an interesting coincidence.”
“Interesting coincidence,” I say absently, “completely illogical.” Living the same night three times in a row is beyond coincidence, though. “Falling stars and wishes on the moon would have nothing to do with it,” I mutter.
I glance up at the stars, silently wishing this night will never end. Just like I did before.
I wish we could stay like this forever.
Surely one of them has the power to make my wish come true? I never believed in that stuff before, but now, so many impossible things have happened that I’m wavering. At least let this be the last night that repeats. If this night has to end, let me move on to tomorrow with it being the reality that sticks. Because the other nights before this, I lost her. What if that happens again? What if we never get back to this place we are right now?
Please! I almost shout. Whoever is controlling this—do you hear me? My lips tremble from trying to hold it in. Don’t take this version of tonight away. Don’t take her away …
My phone chimes in my pocket, and I pull it out to open a new text from Chaz. It’s the picture he took of me and Lucy slow dancing at prom. Her head is on my chest, with her arms wrapped tight around me, and mine around her. Both of us oblivious to everything but us.
Before I can show it to Lucy, a scratching noise snaps my face to the side, looking for the source.
“That’s odd,” Lucy says. “Woodchucks don’t live up here. It’s too rocky. What’re you doing there, little guy?”
Little? Yeah, right. I spot the fat groundhog a few feet away from us, scratching at the rock like it’s trying to dig a hole. Lucy’s right, this isn’t natural. This is—
No, not again. Not now. I’m finally happy—we’re both happy. Together. No arguments, no conflicts, no breaking up our friendship because of a massive screwup. This night can’t possibly go this well again if I have to do it over. That’s too much to hope for.
You deserve to be happy, JJ, Marcos said.
Not according to this ugly rodent. “Leave me alone!”
It pops its head up toward me, and we start a familiar staring contest.
“JJ …” Lucy pulls back a little. “Why are you yelling?”
“Don’t!” I shout at the groundhog. What can I throw, is there something here I can throw at it? I raise my phone up high, rear my arm back, and—no. I need my phone. But I also need Lucy. I clutch her tight. “Don’t take her—”
The cold black void consumes me, and my suddenly empty hands reach out, first feeling for Lucy, then feeling for anything, anyone to help me. I kick and scream. But there’s nothing. There’s no one. Just me and this impossible curse.
I wake in my bedroom, as expected, the blinding white behind my eyes taking me off guard only for a second before I get my bearings. Briefly, I notice my left eye isn’t red and purple anymore, just before I sag against the mirror on my closet door, all the fight draining out of me. I can barely hold myself up. The bow tie I forgot I’d be holding now drops to the floor.
I can still feel Lucy’s lips on mine. I can still feel her warm, soft body in that dress under my palms. But it’s only ghost sensations now. It isn’t real anymore. It might never be real again.
Not if I can help it.
Blue sparks appear in my side vision, and I calmly straighten, then stamp them out on the carpet. I don’t know if Marty caused this time loop, but right now I don’t care about the reason. Right now I just want to get back to Lucy. Only Lucy.
Tonight will be different—again. I’ve been given another chance—again. Maybe that’s all this is, the universe balancing out all the flubs I’ve made in my life up to now, by giving me as many do-overs as I need to make sure this one night plays out perfectly from start to finish.
Or maybe it isn’t about me having a perfect night at all. Maybe it’s about Lucy.
She planned this out, every detail. Like her dad said, she just wants it all to be perfect. And I can help her with that. She has an itinerary in her head, and the first thing on the list is “picked up by JJ.” On time. Her perfect night starts with me picking her up on time.
I pull out my phone.
Lucy: Where are you?
Me: Leaving soon
It’s 7:31. I’m already late no matter what I do, but I can keep myself from being so late that it stresses her out and starts the night on a sour note. I fasten my bow tie in a flash. It’s crooked, but whatever. That’s not important. My contacts are in this time and my eyes aren’t burning. Excellent. I’ll call Melody’s tow on the way to Lucy’s, and then suggest Jenna get a ride from Autumn because I’m running late. I mean, I am, so it’s not a lie. And Jenna will be fine, like she has been every other night.
I snatch the keys off the nightstand and rush to open my bedroom door. Mom is standing right t
here with her fist raised to knock.
“I have to go, sorry, I’m running late.” I breeze past her and down the stairs.
“Don’t forget the rules!” she shouts from the landing as I’m stepping across the living room. “And get pictures!”
The door slams behind me in my frenzy. I didn’t even see Mama or Shayla this time. Guilt stabs my chest, but I ignore it. I can see them another time. Tonight is all about Lucy.
She wants to try with me. She knows me better than anyone does, and she still wants to try. She never intended to push me away; that wasn’t her plan. She wants me. We have to end this night together, with every step along the way exactly as she expects. Nothing, not even Melody’s incident, will get in the way of it this time. Because this time, I’m going to help Melody without her even knowing.
Dead Man’s Curve comes and goes with no sign of Melody’s Bug. She’s not here yet, and neither is the tow I called. My foot hovers between the gas pedal and the brake, hesitant to pick up speed after coasting down and around the curve. What if she’s left stranded?
I have to trust that she won’t be. I have to trust that everything will happen again just as it did before, and in the last two repeats, the tow I called from AAA showed up with no problems and at the right time. She’ll be fine. She has to be. She’ll be fine without me.
Tonight is all about Lucy.
I hit the gas.
Tonight will be different.
This is my fourth prom night and the third time I’ve picked up Lucy in that dress, and the effect it has on me is no different. My heart stutters and my throat catches and I have to remind myself to breathe. In “my time” I saw her less than an hour ago, but she’s too beautiful not to notice. I’ve always thought so. And I always will, no matter what kind of relationship we have. Even if she breaks us up—but that’s not going to happen again.