Jasper’s Version

T he last couple of days, I've ignored Morgan. I can't face him. Every time I walk into Wench and see his blank face, I want to walk back out and step in front of the bus that rumbles by. So, instead of going into the diner, I turn around and go home.

"You okay?" Lexi's standing in the doorway of my apartment.

"What are you doing up here?" She's not supposed to climb stairs, especially not dragging her oxygen tank. The exertion is too much so soon after her most recent treatment at Wolfe Tech.

"You didn't come for dinner," she says, wheezing a little as she drags the cart across the room and sits on the bed.

I didn't. Who wants to eat when time doesn't mean anything anymore? I'll just be hungry when things start over again, anyway. I'm always hungry.

"I had some reading to do," I say, closing out the screen on my computer.

Lexi wrinkles her nose. "I thought the whole point of you being done med school is you don't have to study anymore."

I swallow hard. What I was actually reading was about the theoretical physics of time travel, but my family is always worried I'm working too hard. If I start babbling about how I've been stuck on the same day over and over for the last two months, they're going to worry about more than whether I'm eating enough.

"There's always something new to learn," I say, wheeling my chair across the room so I can tug on a lock of Lexi's hair. She laughs, batting my hand away, then coughs on the end of her laughter, making my heart sink. The good news about being stuck here is I get more time with my little sister. With her condition, we never know when things will take a turn for the worse, even with her new treatment. Living the same day almost sixty times means sixty more days with her, and that's something at least.

"We're having a girls' night," she says. "Mom wants to know if you're coming."

I grimace. Jasper and the girls. It used to be one of my favourite things to do—a nice break from studying and clinical rotations. But the last time I came to girls' night, I vanished five minutes into the movie. Must have been one of the nights Morgan got hit by a bus.

"I'm good," I say, faking a wide yawn. "Going to bed early."

She pokes me. "Mom said you'd say that and told me to bribe you with brownies."

Death by chocolate. Better than death by bus.

"I'm just going to get some sleep." I kiss the top of her head. "Let me help you down the stairs."

But we only get down the first two steps before the world goes sideways. The first time it happened, I thought I was falling asleep, like the nights I'd nod off in a study carrel at the library. Then maybe that I was having a panic attack. Now it's more like when you miss the bottom step on a flight of stairs, and every instinct says you're about to die as your foot drops an unexpected six inches through open air.

And I'm back on the street corner. My heart sinks. Should have gone to girls' night. Brownies and laughing with my sisters would be so much better than being here.

As I sulk on the concrete, the bus rumbles by. At least we've dodged that disaster. The short days are the worst. It only reminds me how powerless I am in this whole situation. How powerless I've been since the day Walter Wolfe walked into the hospital and turned my life upside down. Working for him and this thing with Morgan aren't related—probably—but it feels the same. Like all my choices have been taken away from me.

The neon sign over the door at Wench flickers, beckoning. I haven't been in for almost a week. I needed a break from Morgan's obliviousness. But maybe that's the point. He doesn't know me. There are no consequences in this place, wherever or whenever we are. I could tell him anything and he'd believe me—well, except for telling him our blind date is actually a never-ending time loop that has now repeated itself sixty times. He really didn't take it well when I tried to convince him of that, and it's not like I can blame him. But nothing says I have to tell him the truth. I could be anyone and he'd never know.

I pull off my hat and smooth down my hair. Should have gotten a haircut before our date, but too late now. I tuck in my shirt and push open the front door.

Morgan's sitting at our table. His gaze is on his laptop screen, and my heart beats faster at the sight of him, just like it did the first time. Despite everything, I still want him to like me. My career transition from medicine to criminal enterprise hasn't left me a lot of time to date. Hard to make a good first impression when I spent yesterday trailing after the mayor, trying to catch pictures of him in a compromising position with his chief of communications. He owes Walter a favour, and Mr. Wolfe figured a few high-resolution photos in an envelope with our esteemed mayor's home address on them might grease the wheel.

But none of that matters now. For however long Morgan and I have today, I don't have to tell him anything about the mayor or Walter Wolfe or even anything real about myself. I could be a trust fund baby about to jet off to Monaco or an up-and-coming tennis star about to make his tour debut. Morgan has no reason to doubt me because he doesn't know me.

I know him, though. As I approach, Morgan does that thing he sometimes does where he bumps the knuckle of his index finger against the bridge of his nose, like he's pushing up a pair of glasses, even though he's not wearing any. He must have at some point in the past. Maybe he wears contacts now. His sweater and his eyes are exactly the same shade of blue.

When I sit, I can't stop the momentary flicker of hope. It happens every time, no matter how much I tell myself to get over it. I always wait for the instant his gaze meets mine and he says, "Jasper, what the fuck is going on?"

But what he actually says is, "Oh. Hi. You must be—"

"Jasper Jackson, at your service." I stretch my legs out, bumping them against his shoes, which causes him to shift, looking flustered as he shuts his laptop.

He gives me an assessing look. "You're my date?"

I smile, watching the pink creep over his cheeks and up to the tips of his ears. He hasn't always been the nicest to me—and who could blame him when I show up trying to convince him we've met dozens of times before, always here, always on the same day—but before we get to the arguing and the accusations of who's a lying liar who lies, in the first moment he sees me, Morgan is always attracted to me.

Knowing that when he doesn't even recognize my face feels weird, but it's not my fault. Not like I've been stalking him. I remember. He doesn't. Not my responsibility.

"Pleased to meet you," I say. "I've heard a lot about you. Alyssa's told me about you for years while we finished med school."

"You're a doctor?" he asks, tone almost as dubious as when he asks if I'm his date.

I inhale slowly. Here it is. The point of no return...this time anyway. In the past, I've dodged the question, jumping right into trying to make him understand the impossible situation we're in. Today, though, I lean in and smile.

"I am. Pediatrician, actually. I work with kids who have chronic genetic conditions."

That was the plan, back before Lexi got sick last time. Before I had to give up everything for a few more months with my sister.

Morgan taps a finger on the laptop. If I didn't know him, his frown says he doesn't believe me. That even though he thinks we've never met, he knows I'm lying.

"You're here," the server says, coming up to the table. She gives me a knowing smile. I used to wonder if she actually did remember me and this night, but she never does anything else than say, "Can I get you something?" so that hunch is proving to be wrong too.

Also, something about her makes Morgan uncomfortable. He's never said what, but every time she comes to the table, he can barely make eye contact with her.

"Do you want to get out of here?" I ask him without answering her question. "Go for a walk?"

Relief washes over his face, and I can't help my smile as he packs up his laptop bag.

"I don't have a lot of time," he says. "I have to—"

"Get back to work?" I ask. He told me a bit about what he does for a living on our first date, back when we thought it was just going to be one date. I couldn't really blame him for not being more enthusiastic about seeing me again. Not when he spoke so passionately about his climate change research and all I could do was say, "Oh, I'm kind of between things right now," when he asked me about what I did for a living.

His face pinches with annoyance at my question. Morgan doesn't like to be interrupted. I step aside, letting him lead the way out of the diner. Gives me a nice view of the way his tight ass is framed in his fitted trousers. A few years ago, he must have been a delightful twink. Now, pushing thirty, he's the kind of man you want to take a bite out of. In another life, one where I didn't work for a mob boss and this blind date ended like it was supposed to, I might have asked him if he wanted to come back to my place. If we timed it right, Mom and my sisters might not even notice me pulling back into the driveway. We could be up the stairs and out of our clothes without anyone interrupting.

But...I don't know. Having sex with a guy who won't remember you tomorrow feels wrong. I'm way too moral to be a henchman. A real criminal would take whatever he could get Morgan to offer, kick him out before the lube on his thighs even dried, and never give it a second thought.

"So you're a doctor?" Morgan asks. We're standing at the corner where I've watched him get crushed by the bus too many nights. The first time—as awful as it sounds—was almost a relief. For a split second, as he gasped on the pavement, I thought maybe this was it. That he would die and I'd finally move on. No such luck, though. In the second that followed, I was consumed by the falling sensation before finding myself two storefronts up, walking toward Wench like nothing had ever happened.

I clear my throat. No time to dwell on Morgan's mortality.

"Yeah," I say. "Finished med school two years ago. Alyssa was in my class. She talks about you a lot."

He drops his gaze, looking embarrassed. Morgan's clearly a nerd with some self-esteem issues. He probably got bullied in class for being the smart one and now earns more than everyone else combined while he's on his mission to save the world.

"You're a scientist?" I ask when it's clear he can't think of a follow-up question once he's confirmed my profession.

"Yes." He lifts his chin and his gaze brightens. "I work at the Ziro Foundation. We're about to launch our project. It's going to save the world."

"That's great, What does it do?" I ask.

He tells me. More than he told me the first time. Climate change. Energy conversion. The science is complicated, but he talks about it with a contagious passion. I saw some of it the first night, though he was a little more closed off then. Probably because we never left Wench . Now though, as we walk down the sidewalk, he grows more and more animated. A lot of it goes over my head as he gets into the nitty gritty of atmospheres and oceans and why we can't just rely on paper straws and reusable shopping bags. Morgan's smart. Really smart. If I could just get him to believe me, he'd probably have us out of the loop in a half hour.

"With a few modifications," he says, "we could replace traditional power grids. Whole industries would run on the recycled energy for years, and it wouldn't cost them anything." He glances up at me and pulls his bottom lip between his teeth, looking away. "Sorry. I'm talking too much, aren't I?"

I take a risk and bump my hand against his. When he doesn't pull away, I give it a squeeze.

"No," I say. "It's super interesting."

For a minute, our fingers tangle together. He lets me hold his hand, though he glances around nervously. Can't blame him. There's no one on the street, but bigots have a habit of popping up at the worst possible time.

Finally, he slides out of my grasp. He does the knuckle against his nose thing and says, "What about you? Do you only treat patients, or do you do any research too?"

I tell him about Lexi and Emmanuel Stanley syndrome. He asks lots of questions about diagnosis and treatment. I almost tell him about the Wolfe trial but chicken out at the last second. Things are going well. I don't want to ruin the charade now by telling him everything I've said has a passing acquaintance with the truth at best.

"You really care about your sister," he says.

"I really do." When I take his hand again, he doesn't let go.

It could have been like this if things were different. If hadn't had to give everything to Walter Wolfe. If this was the first time we met instead of the fifty-ninth.

"What is it?" Morgan asks. "You stopped smiling. Did I say something wrong? I do that sometimes."

I pull my hand free. "No, it's fine. Just thinking about my sister."

Lexi. All of this is for Lexi, and it makes it worth it.

"Did you always want to be a doctor?" he asks. I appreciate his attempt at getting our happy mood back on track.

"When I was a kid, I wanted to be a tugboat captain."

We both laugh. The earlier tension at the corners of his blue eyes is gone. Whatever was going on at Wench , we don't have to go back there.

Except, somehow, we always do.

I shake off the thought. "What about you? What did you want to be when you were little?"

His face clouds immediately. He's not angry or sad or annoyed. It's something bigger. Deeper.

"I wanted to be a superhero," he says, then hunches into himself, like he's just said something he shouldn't.

I laugh again, but he doesn't. Despite the fact we've been on almost sixty first dates, I hardly know Morgan at all.

His phone rings, and I have a split second to see the name Ezekiel on the screen before Morgan answers the call.

"Hello? What?" His posture changes again, straightening while his voice drops to something official. "A data breach? I'm on my way."

As he hangs up, his expression softens again. "I'm really sorry."

"You have to go?" I don't want him to leave. This is the best night we've had, and all I had to do was pretend to be someone else. It's a relief, and I'm not ready for it to be over.

"Work," he says. He loves his work. It makes his face light up. I wish I had something I cared about like that.

"Maybe we can get together again sometime," I say.

He shakes his head, and my heart drops. "I'm going to be pretty busy the next few weeks, because of the launch."

That's what he thinks. I'd wait for him if that were the truth. Send texts telling him I'm thinking about him and wait until he's not so busy.

But we're not going anywhere. There are no meetings tomorrow. No half-answered questions when my family asks how things went at the hospital. Just today over and over, and Morgan doesn't even know.

I kiss him.

It's selfish. Messy. Desperate. He's leaving and after that—maybe in a few minutes or a few hours—he'll be back at Wench waiting for me, and he won't remember that I'm a doctor or that we had so much in common tonight.

He makes a surprised noise. I expect him to shove me away. His fingers brush against the back of my hand, and the gentle contact is like lightning in my veins. I jerk away, gasping.

"Sorry," I say. "I should have asked."

"No, it's fine." He bites his lip and knocks his knuckle against his nose one last time. "Thanks for tonight. It was fun."

"I'll see you tomorrow," I say, without even thinking.

Morgan gives me a confused frown. "What? Tomorrow? I have to work."

I wave him off. "Forget it. Brain fart. I didn't mean anything by it."

When he's gone, I shove my hands in my pockets and walk back to Wench .

Thanks for reading!