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Deliberately, she sped up and walked two lamps, heading for a third at the same speed, but stopped before she came out the other side of the second lamp.
A man in a gray tee shirt and jeans appeared, and Gemma stopped in her tracks.
“You!”
Jack turned and saw her out in the open. His face flushed at having been caught. He recovered and calmly held up his hands. “Yes, me.”
He approached, and she immediately turned away.
“Gemma!”
Gemma realized she had lost count of how many times he had chased after her that day. Clearly, he was not going to give up.
She stopped walking and turned around to confront him right in time for him to crash into her. The heat of his body sent a shock wave through her. She remembered her frustration and shook it away.
“What are you doing here, Jack? How did you know where to find me?” She folded her arms and glared at him. Unless he had waited outside her father’s house to see where she’d gone, he had no way of knowing, and since he didn’t even know who her father was until that morning—and it was an even slimmer chance that he knew they were neighbors—Gemma suspected something else was at play.
Jack’s eyes softened. He reached for her but closed his hand into a fist and dropped his arm instead. Gemma wondered at how she could miss the feel of his touch already. “I knew you were upset with me, and Lila would be the only person you have to talk to. I know she livestreams at this time every day because I’ve seen it, so I knew where to find you.” The sadness in his eyes suddenly made Gemma feel like he was pitying her.
She grumbled at him and turned away. “Stop acting like you know me!”
He reached for her shoulder and made contact this time. He quickly stepped around her so that they faced each other. “Idoknow you, Gemma! And I love—” He stopped himself and cleared his throat with a shake of his head. “I care about you a lot, Gemma, and I’m really sorry for what happened at my house. Let me explain, please. You have to trust me.”
Gemma chewed her lip and felt warmth at the backs of her eyes. She didn’t know if the tears were happiness from the words that he had almost said or anger that he’d reminded her of what happened at his house, but she would not cry in front of him. She swallowed it all down and took a breath.
“How can I trust you if I don’t even know you?”
Pain washed over Jack’s face. He closed his eyes for a second, and Gemma took the opportunity to slip away.
She made it two lamps down before he caught back up. She kept walking straight ahead, refusing to look at him. He skipped to the next aisle over and walked sideways,touching each pole between them as they passed so he didn’t crash into one while not looking.
“Okay, I realize how unfair this is to you. In testing my theory, I’ve been trying to gauge what you remember all day. I’ve been withholding information, and I see how one-sided that is now.” He expectantly cut off as they kept walking. Gemma took a sharp turn to the left.
“So, what? That’s supposed to make everything better?” she asked, and started a new path through the poles.
“No! Of course not. I just want to say that I’m sorry, and that you can ask me anything. Get to know everything you want about me. Right now.”
Gemma glanced sideways at him, still upset but unable to deny that it was a tempting offer. She had spent most of the day with him, but most of that time had focused on her. She had only begun to learn about him before everything derailed. But she wasn’t in the mood for twenty questions. She turned her head forward and kept walking.
“Fine, if you don’t want to ask, then I’ll start listing random facts,” he said. He kept disappearing behind the lampposts and reappearing as they walked like the strangest game of peekaboo. “I’m an only child. I grew up in Vermont. My mom’s name is Pamela and I talk to her every Sunday. My dad died in a car crash when I was eighteen, and I still think about him every day.” He held out his arm and kept walking. “This is his watch. I know today is real because this watch is never wrong, and the date hasn’t changed for one hundred and forty-seven days now.”
Gemma risked another glance before taking a right turn.
Jack didn’t miss a beat. He reappeared the next aisle over, popping in and out of view again. “I majored in creativewriting in college. I wanted to be a novelist. I even moved to New York after school to live out the cliché. Turns out writing books is not my strong suit, so I took up screenwriting and moved to L.A. for the West Coast version of the cliché. I’ve lived here for ten years and have never been to Disneyland. I think In-N-Out is overrated, but I would fight someone for a California burrito. Hockey is my favorite sport, though I can’t play it worth a damn. I met Tom Hanks once and he’s every bit as nice as you’d hope. I love classic films more than anything contemporary but would rather read a book than watch anything at all. Given the chance, I think I would visit outer space. I can’t read music, but I own a piano. My first pet was a beagle named Barney. I don’t think I can ever live in the snow again after L.A., but I still miss it each winter. I’ve never seen a whale, I’m terrified of heights, I know every word of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ I secretly love romantic comedies despite what I said earlier about classic films, and I think I was a miserably unhappy person until I met you.”
He grabbed a lamppost and swung around it to stop in front of Gemma. She bounced on her toes to prevent herself from running into him just in time. They had zigzagged their way through the grid and ended up back where they started. Gemma could see Lila’s back only a few lamps away.
They stood inches apart, him gazing down and her gazing up. His eyes matched the sky coloring in the gaps between lamps. She felt like the two of them were tiny bugs in a grove made of iron trees. He reached out and gently tucked her hair behind her ear. He looked like he wanted to kiss her, and Gemma was about to let him, but she realized thatin everything he’d said, he hadn’t answered one very important question.
“What happened between you and Angelica?”
His soft smile went slack. The light in his eyes faded. “She cheated on me, and we broke up.”
The words were cold and harsh, and Gemma knew they were true by the way he said it.
“It happened a few days before the time loop started.” He sighed and swiped a hand through his hair. “I actually caught her with someone else, and it all imploded. That’s why she said what she said at my house. But the truth is, we were terrible together. We should have broken up ages ago, but she’s really persistent, as you saw today.”
The memory of Angelica dangling from his neck put a sour taste in Gemma’s mouth.
