Page 102 of Time Loops & Meet Cutes
Mom clucks her tongue. “Why did it take you so long to answer?”
“Sorry, I was cleaning up after dinner, and my phone was in the other room.”
Beside me, Noelle covers her mouth, failing at hiding her laughter. She pulls the sheet over her chest, as though being naked while I’m on the phone is a faux pas.
“You’re still coming for dinner on Saturday, yes?” Mom says. “I’m calling early in the week to make sure there won’t be anybrewing emergenciesto prevent you from coming.”
The thing about emergencies is that you don’t know about them in advance, but…
“Don’t worry, I’ll be there.”
“You know, it has been a long time since you brought a girlfriend to meet us. I was thinking about that the other day. Are you seeing anyone? Tell her to come on Saturday.”
Good thing she can’t see my face right now.
Since I intend to keep Noelle in my life for a long, long time, I say, “I am, but it’s too early for you to meet her.” I speak this as firmly as possible, but I know that won’t matter.
Beside me, Noelle’s eyes widen slightly.
Over the phone, my mom starts asking a barrage of questions. She doesn’t give me a chance to answer before insisting that I bring Noelle to dinner, and I do my best to get her off the phone as quickly as possible, which isn’t quite as quickly as I’d like.
Then I set my phone aside and take Noelle into my arms again.
“I can’t believe you told her about me,” she says.
“She asked if I was seeing someone, and I didn’t want to lie. Is that okay? I promise, you don’t need to meet my family anytime soon. I can deal with… that.” I gesture to my phone to encompass all the questions I will receive in the near future. In fact, I half expect my phone to start ringing again a minute later, but fortunately, it doesn’t.
“It’s fine,” she says, smiling to reassure me.
And before I can ask if she’s sure, she pounces on me.
39Noelle
Once again, I struggle to sleep at Cam’s, but this time, I don’t get out of bed when I’m still awake at three in the morning. Am I doomed to have insomnia whenever I stay over at his place?
Tonight was good. Great.
But in the middle of the night, the worries flood back. Why couldn’t I have met Cam Huang in a normal way? Like on eHarmony or Hinge, or whatever dating sites exist these days. I don’t even know, because before I ate those magical dumplings, I didn’t date.
Dating seemed too risky. I just had to think of how I felt after Dave dumped me out of nowhere, how I sobbed on my kitchen floor and wished I could carve my heart out of my chest with a spoon—because surely that would be easier than dealing with my emotions. Yeah, dating hadn’t held much appeal after that relationship ended.
But in the loop, the lack of consequences made me freer. I started to feel like I’d been missing out on so much. Banter over mini-golf. Laughter over poutine. Lips against lips. Skin against skin. I’d forgotten howvividlife can be.
Big emotions are part of it. You can’t completely avoid them, even if you keep reliving the same day.
I’ve just never been good at such things.
And I’m not dealing with them well now. I watch Cam, his lips curling up like he’s having a happy dream. I feel a strong urge to be honest, like how he was honest when his mom asked if he was seeing someone. You ought to be honest about the big things in a relationship.
But I’m also convinced that Cam, as easygoing and understanding as he is, would not be understanding about the time loop now. I can’t blame him; I sure as hell wouldn’t be. If I hadn’t had personal experience with it, and the person I’d recently started dating told me that they’d repeated the same day over a hundred times, I might ghost them.
The idea of him ghosting me is agonizing.
The thought of not being able to tell other people—like my parents or Veronica—the truth doesn’t bother me as much. Veronica never responded to my text in any version of June 20; there’s no gap in our relationship. As for my parents, yes, I talked to them in the loop, even saw them a few times, but it doesn’t fundamentally change anything.
Cam, however, is a whole different matter.
I scrub my hands over my face and try not to let out a frustrated sigh.
