Chapter 31

That sinking elevator feeling is still humming through my body, even as a giddy, happy feeling bubbles up. I know I always feel a little off during the reset, but this is more than that. The lightness seems to radiate from the depths of me. It’s in my shoulders and between my eyebrows. It’s in my chest.

Maybe it’s not so much a lightness, as it is a lack of tightness. I feel not so much relaxed, as I do un-pinched, like some invisible wire that’s been holding me taut has been severed. My body unfurls like the wings of a butterfly to a more natural state that doesn’t make me feel like I’m on the brink of a tension headache or that I need several antacids with my morning coffee.

Much ado to say that I feel relaxed.

Maybe even happy, although I say this only as a whisper in my mind. It feels like too much of a leap and too similar to a prayer that any concrete label will make it crumble underneath.

For some reason, Grant hasn’t yet crashed through the window, so I take the time to wander through the ghost city that was once my safe place. Everywhere I look, I’m haunted by the images of what’s to be and what once was. I see the vases and picture frames that will shatter in a few minutes. I see Dominic’s pristine office that I once trashed. I hesitate—I probably don’t need to do that again. Probably. I see the list on Beth’s desk and snag it again, recalling the joy on her face every time she thinks we planned her a birthday party.

Guilt nibbles at the peripheries of my consciousness like tadpoles nibbling at toes in a lake.

All in all, I’ve embraced with this time loop with an openness that should probably be further examined. In a world where time was my most precious commodity, my best sacrifice on the altar of work, I saw this only as an opportunity to get more of it. To get ahead while everyone else reset.

The days that I spent working on my case are dust. I don’t miss a single thing from those days.

My more recent days, my days with Grant, I do feel some pangs of regret that those days have disappeared for everyone but us. I’m sad that Beth’s joyous face only happened in our memories. I’m sad that his mom and his friends have no idea who I am.

I’m okay that I haven’t been fired, though.

I wonder if this is how most people feel about their days. Do they scroll through their memories like an album of photographs and smile at what they’ve done?

When I think over my last couple of years, I don’t feel joy. I feel satisfaction at the cases I’ve won, the good I’ve done the environment, and my hard work. But satisfaction, I’m learning, is not the same thing as joy.

Kind of like how lust isn’t the same thing as love.

More minutes slip by as I wander the office, lost in my memories and reflections, without any sign of Grant. Weird.

Even weirder, he isn’t here by the time the building belches its first warnings of discomfort. As the building shakes and rumbles, I walk on, unfazed. Wandering the office like a poet in a meadow, I contemplate life.

Seriously, who am I?

Like the building and I are partners in some sort of deadly dance, at just the right moment, I reach for the nearest doorframe to brace myself for one of its angrier shakes. I duck as a stapler hurtles to where my head was.

Do your worst, building. I’m the ultimate fighter pilot. I can dodge these asteroids all night, baby.

I pause.

Did I really just think that? That will require some further introspection for when I don’t have my life hanging on the breaking gravitational line.

Speaking of which, where is Grant? If my watch is correct, the building should have a particularly violent uptick in rumbles any second now.

Sure enough, just as I anticipate it, a trill runs through the air. The sound picks at the back of my skull, the ghost of a memory, the edge of a thought playing at the peripheries of my mind.

Amid the cacophony of breakage and destruction, I can’t help but think it sounds almost like a scream.

The thought interrupts my carefully curated choreography. The sound of a sliding desk, no—a hurtling desk scraping its substantial weight against the floor, pulls me back into the present.

Fuck.

I forgot about the desk.

I go to take a step to the side, but some loose debris throws me off. Instead of dodging out of the way, I instead stumble and fall even more squarely into its path.

True, I’ll take dying over being publicly fired again, but still. Death by desk has to be one of the less cool ways to go, albeit perfectly in character for me. I’m pretty sure someone in the office has money on me dying at a desk, although I doubt this is what they had in mind.

Just before impact, I slam my eyes closed. In the heartbeat between closing my eyes and being crushed, a certain brown-eyed face appears—my last thought before the cycle resets.

Except it doesn’t.

The crushing blow and the elevator-drop feeling never come. Grant’s face continues to shimmer from behind my closed eyes.

When I open my eyes, Grant’s standing in front of me with one hand on his spandexed hip, the other in the air. He’s holding one finger up and spinning the desk on it like it’s a basketball.

“Are you in need of assistance?” he asks in his Garnet Defender voice.

He’s playing this up for all that it’s worth and loving every second of it.

Me? Not so much. Picking up a mug (I think it’s Barry’s World’s Best Grandpa mug), I chuck it at him. It, of course, veers off at the last moment.

Not that Grant even seems to notice. He just keeps smiling on, his cape flying in the non-existent breeze, cool as can be. Granted, it’s easier to be cool now that objects have stopped hurtling at us.

“You’re late,” I scold.

“Miss me?” he asks, dripping with bravado. Then, he falters. “You didn’t get hurt though? I wasn’t that late, was I? It’s just that Marigold pepper sprayed me when I handed her those flowers and asked her to be my girlfriend—which, can I just say was an extremely mean pick for the day. I wasn’t going to make you watch the prequels, but I think you deserve—”

I wave him off. “Did your eyes still hurt? The feeling couldn’t have carried over, could it?”

Dominic’s chair goes hurtling past us and shatters against the wall.

“I know it was all in my head, but I just needed to wash out my eyes. When I got to the pharmacy, I realized I don’t have my wallet on me. I mean, obviously.” He gestures to his skin-tight spandex suit.

I laugh, remembering when I used to find the ensemble dashing.

“I’m sorry. Are you okay, though?”

“I’m fine. Just get me out of here.”

The desk floats up and away off his finger towards the ceiling, away from him as he pulls me through the air towards him. Grant catches me in his arms, his smile widening the second we touch.

“Allow me to sweep you off your feet.”

“Did you just come up with that?” I ask as we fly through the debris field and out the window.

Grant starts to answer and then closes his mouth. “In the spirit of not lying to you—”

“Being honest,” I interrupt.

“I’ll admit that I thought of it in the middle of the movie yesterday and wrote it down.”

I laugh. For some reason, that’s the best answer I could have hoped for. Of course he wrote it down.

“Dork,” I accuse.

“Always,” he promises.

Snuggling in against his heartbeat, I shield myself from the rain. For a moment, I’m awash with the feeling of contentment that this is how I get to start every day—safe and warm against the rain or whatever else comes my way.

Whatever it is, Grant’s got me.

Who needs an umbrella when I have Grant’s arms?

The thought ends as we fly towards my place and the sound of the building coming down echoes through the night. It doesn’t matter how right this all feels, the fact is that it’s wrong.

“Since I was late picking you up, I’ll let you choose for today,” Grant says, taking my mind off the destruction of my former identity. “Got anything in mind?”

I nod against his chest.

“Something new.”

Grant leans forward and breathes in. I feel his long inhale against the top of my head. It’s something he does every time the rain soaks into my hair. “The Garnet Defender is here to serve.”

“I think it’s time to start investigating the time loop and try to find a way out of it.”

Grant’s arms stiffen around me.

“You want this to end?”

Against his chest, I nod.

Although, I guess if I were to be more accurate, I’d say I’m ready for this to begin.