Page 41 of Time Loops & Meet Cutes
We talk a bit about our jobs, and I learn some things I didn’t know before: Cam’s plans for the brewery and how you go about getting the LCBO to stock your beer, for example. I’ve never given much thought to what it takes to run a brewery, but it sounds difficult to survive in this crowded marketplace. Cam’s easygoing temperament belies the fact that he has a wealth of knowledge.
Our drinks and edamame beans arrive.
“Cheers,” he says, clinking his glass against mine.
“Cheers.”
He takes a sip of his drink. “Mm. That’s good. We have a yuzu wheat beer. It’s not on tap right now, though we do have cans. You might like it.”
“I’ll get some the next time I come in.”
“You should. Or I can bring you a can sometime.” He pauses. “If you didn’t give me your number, I was planning to slip you mine.”
“Is that something you do a lot?” I tease. “Handing out your number to cute women who come into your brewery?”
“No,” he says, uncharacteristically serious.
My skin tingles, and I swallow hard.
Why am I special? What exactly does he see in me?
“I really can’t believe,” he says, “that I met you before and forgot your name.”
I could attempt to tell him the truth, but that seems too weird. Instead, I say, “What would you do if you were stuck reliving the same day? Like, June twentieth, for example.”
“What’s everyone else doing in this scenario?”
“They’re not aware that the same day is happening over and over. Only you remember the previous iterations of it.”
“Sounds like a video game.”
“Yeah. Except you don’t die. You just keep waking up in the same day.”
He gives me an odd look.
“I’m reading a novel,” I say, “in which something similar happens.”
He taps his chin. “Hm. I guess I’d find the best possible day, and I’d just keep living it again and again. This one, for example?” He gestures between us. “It’s pretty good.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re such a charmer.”
“No, just with you.”
“See, there you go again!”
He chuckles. “Todayisa pretty good day. I wouldn’t want to relive Tuesday.”
“What happened on Tuesday?”
“Oh, what didn’t happen on Tuesday? Our air compressor had a leak. Then there were supplier problems… accounting problems… raccoon problems… It wasn’t a fun day. And Darrell desperately needs another assistant brewer/cellarman.” But Cam’s smiling now. “It would probably take a little while to find the best version of the day that I could, but then I’d repeat it over and over.”
“You wouldn’t get sick of it?”
“I’d change it up a little,” he says. “I wouldn’t eat exactly the same meals every day.”
“Now let’s say, hypothetically, that this first date was part of that day, but when you woke up the next morning, I didn’t know who you were.”
“Then I’d get to know you all over again. It doesn’t sound like a hardship.”
