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Sarah was drunk at her own sister’s wedding. And why not? It wasn’t the worst thing she’d done in the last twenty-four hours. Dodging her dad as much as possible? Not great. Forgetting to write a speech as her maid-of-honor duties? Worse. And sleeping with the groom, her sister's partner? That was a level of terrible that she barely wanted to think about. On that scale, being drunk was a blip.
The night air was cool as she staggered away from the party. She’d picked a different direction initially, one that she thought would probably bring her back to her room, but a guy she didn’t recognize was crying quietly as Misty yelled at him, and Trevor stood by in that stupid outfit of his and gave Sarah a how-you-doing nod, and there wasn’t enough drunk in the world to deal with that mess.
Sarah ended up stumbling out toward the desert. It was cool, almost cold, even though it was warmer than it was in Texas. Was the cold from how dry it was? Because her mouth felt like the landscape around her, and she was pretty sure it had been that way before she got drunk. It could have also been how ungodly hot it had been that day. Ninety fucking degrees in November, and she was sweating in her bridesmaid’s dress during the ceremony. But the sun had set, and the air felt chilly on her skin.
She was sober enough to think that she might be in trouble if she didn’t make it back to her room. She was definitely drunk enough not to care, though, and she’d pilfered a wine bottle from the bar, so she was going to be even more drunk before she was done.
That meant, by the time she saw a red glow radiating out of a hill, she thought she got turned around and was back near the wedding. Her eyes weren’t focusing well enough to see as she moved toward it. She could feel herself trip and fall, and she waited to hit the ground, waited…
Sarah jerked up in bed, painfully sober.
No. Not painfully. She didn’t have any kind of hangover. She should have had a hangover. She felt…achy? Not from falling. Like she’d been exercising.
That’s when she heard the shower, and her stomach dropped.
Looking back, Sarah would know this as a moment of pure intuition. She knew for a split second exactly what had happened, and where she was now. But then basic, logical denial set in, and she ran to the bathroom to disprove her theory.
Abe stood under the shower.
“Sarah, about last night…”
She ran out the door.
Sarah spent so much time out in the desert, she could feel sunburn prickling her skin. She felt the earthquake, the same earthquake at the same intensity at the same time as the day before. She felt the stupid ninety degree heat. But whatever red light she had imagined? She couldn’t find it.
She stayed out in the desert all night, until she was too exhausted to move, and leaned against a rock to rest.
Sarah jerked up in bed. The shower was running in the bathroom.
She put her face in her hands and screamed. She started out saying “fuck” loud and in volume, but it quickly devolved into a wordless shriek.
It took her five more repeated days to find the cave. The third time, she realized that she’d be able to see the cave better at night, and she stopped heading out at the beginning of the day. On day four, she realized the earthquake probably had something to do with it, and she ditched the wedding midway through to keep searching.
The wedding was so surreal after another repetition. Sarah had first driven to Austin (unsuccessfully) to see if she could get out of the loop via proximity, but on the second day, she’d tried to go along with the wedding to retrace her steps. And gotten drunk again. That had been the fatal error because she had gotten too drunk too fast, and when her father nudged at her to give a speech, she’d lit the wedding cake on fire in protest, fallen headfirst into a table, and woken up on day three.
But she’d found the cave! It was glowing and red and weird. No matter. If she had gone through once and survived, the worst that could happen was that nothing would happen, right?
As it turned out, the worst that could happen—waking up yet again in the bed where she’d helped her sometimes-brother-in-law cheat on her sister—was worse than death.
That was the point where Sarah went through with a couple of innocuous suicides. It was all in the name of science, okay? It didn’t mean anything. Stepped in front of a truck: nothing. Walked out the wrong time at the shooting range: nothing. Fell into a hole that she swore wasn’t there when heading out to look the cave again (this one was an accident): nothing, but she swore she heard the falling music from Looney Tunes when it happened.
She maybe also tried drowning in the pool at the resort, but people found her and she found out one thing slightly worse than the waking-up thing: dying slowly in the ICU.
As terrible as that one was, it did give Sarah the clarity she needed to try a different approach. Obviously, she was having a hard time thinking outside the box. What if she asked for advice from someone else? She could ask everyone at the whole damn wedding if she wanted to, and they wouldn’t remember tomorrow! Surely, someone had to have some kind of perspective.
The question she asked was this: “Totally theoretical, but say you were repeating the same day over and over, and you didn’t know how to make it stop. What would you try?”
Unfortunately, asking the people at the wedding was a complete waste of time, considering everyone thought (probably correctly) that she was a joke of a human being. The people she barely knew didn’t want to talk long enough to get to the point where that question would seem like part of the conversation, and the people she knew had a good idea of what a disaster she was.
It occurred to her that maybe family would make more sense. Sarah started to go up to Tala, but she was dancing with Abe, and even if the day wouldn’t matter tomorrow, Sarah was too raw about the ICU experience to ruin things. More than she already had, anyway.
She went up to her dad instead. Sarah was confident. If he wouldn’t believe her, she could take him to the cave! He was too chicken to go in, so the risk of someone else in the loop (frightening, once she gave it some thought) was small.
But that crashed and burned. Dad wanted to go off to do his…singing thing, so he didn’t hear her out, and when she asked about the cave, he said, “Today is about your sister, okay? I’ll look at your cave or whatever tomorrow.”
Sarah sighed. She slumped off toward the rooms and found Crying Guy walking the same way. (He was currently dry-eyed, but the crying he'd done in past loops was so pathetic that the moniker wasn't leaving her mind.) Crying Guy nodded politely her way, and she sighed.
“Bad night?” he asked.
“Don’t suppose you have a doctorate in quantum physics or something, do you,” Sarah said.
“No, but I have a very shaggy dog. Does that help?”
Sarah, despite her best efforts, smiled. “Not really, but I’d love to see a picture.”
The guy pulled out his phone and tapped the screen. The wallpaper was, as advertised, a very shaggy dog.
“Nice,” Sarah said. “What’s his name?”
“Shaggy Dog.”
“Original.”
“Thanks. I came up with it myself.” Crying Guy smiled. “I’m Nyles. Misty’s boyfriend.”
Sarah had seen Nyles a few times over the repetitions, almost always crying. She’d also seen Misty getting head from Trevor once. (Wrong room, wrong time.) Funny how she hadn’t gotten Nyles’s name until now, or been able to put the pieces together.
“Do me a favor,” Sarah said, instead of doing the obvious thing of giving her name.
Nyles looked politely confused, but he shrugged. “What?”
“Stay out at the wedding for another…” She tapped the screen of his phone. She wasn’t sure how much time it would take for Misty to finish cheating on her boyfriend, but even if she was skeptical they had good stamina, it seemed kinder to Nyles to be more generous. “Hour.”
“Why?”
She patted his arm as he lowered it. “It’s better if you don’t know.”
With that, she turned around and went back toward the wedding.
Sarah’s second idea of “drag Dad far enough out toward the cave that he’ll give up on trying to get back to the wedding” almost worked. But he finally broke away a few feet from where the cave was visible and bolted, yelling something over his shoulder about how they’d talk about it tomorrow. Typical. Sarah didn’t go back to the wedding herself; she went to the cave again. She might as well start the next day fresh instead of walking all the way back.
She was about one step away from the light when she heard a voice yell, “What the FUCK.”
Sarah turned. Standing at the front of the cave, with his hands in his hair, was Nyles.
“What the fuck?” Sarah echoed, more high-pitched. “Did you follow me?”
“Of course I followed you! You gave me a cryptic message about staying at the wedding and then dragged your own dad out of it…I thought you’d put C4 in the cake or something.”
“I wasn’t trying to kill you, asshole! Your fucking girlfriend’s cheating on you, and I didn’t want you to see it!”
Nyles’s face went from shocked to hurt almost instantly. “She’s what?”
Sarah groaned. “Just go back to the wedding or your room or…fucking Mars, whatever.”
“What? Without knowing what this is?” Nyles waved at the cave.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Why not?”
Sarah had spent all night being rejected on this, and she was done opening herself up to further debate. "Because!”
“Come on, try me.” Nyles took a step forward.
"Stop, you idiot!"
Nyles took another step forward, a smile spreading on his face.
"Will you stop if I tell you?"
He stepped forward again. "Maybe."
Sarah stepped back, hands outstretched. "I fell into this…light or whatever and I’ve been stuck in November 9th for like a month. Happy?"
Nyles frowned. "What do you mean, stuck?"
"I fall asleep, and I wake up the morning of the wedding."
"So…like a time loop."
"I guess."
“Huh.” Nyles crossed his arms. “That’s kinda Groundhog Day.”
“What?”
“Groundhog Day. Bill Murray?”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “I've heard of Groundhog Day. It's just a stupid movie.”
“But the way he got out of the time loop was by being a good person. Maybe you could try that.”
Despite Sarah's bone-deep knowledge that she sucked as a human being, she sucked in an offended breath. "I am a good person!"
Nyles flinched. "No, totally! I just meant—"
"Fuck you, and fuck this day. I'm done." Sarah walked toward the light briefly before pausing to point at Nyles. "Do not follow me in."
She let the cave suck her back in.
Sarah grabbed a beer and went out to the pool to stick her feet in. It felt nice. Abe's groomsman Jerry was doing laps, and he gave her a friendly wave. She sighed, but she waved back.
Okay. Help from the party wasn't a thing. Probably should have guessed that. Maybe she'd take a couple more cycles to clear her head and—
"Morning!"
Oh no.
Jerry stopped his laps and looked in the direction of the voice. Sarah didn't dare look over.
"I don't think I got your name last night. Tonight? How does this work, exactly?"
"You didn't," Sarah hissed through grit teeth.
Nyles plopped down beside her, sticking his feet in the pool. "What's the alternative? I learn my girlfriend's cheating on me like I never knew it, over and over again?"
Sarah put her head in her hands and allowed herself a small scream.
"Although I guess I upped the chances of catching her fucking some other guy. Huh. Maybe I should have thought this through."
Nyles was lucky that Sarah had died slowly in the ICU. Extremely lucky.
"Is it one guy?" Nyles had sounded almost cheerful through this whole thing, but on the word "guy" his voice wavered. "Or does she fuck her way through the bridal party? I had vibes with her and the bride—"
"My sister." Sarah had never felt so much like she'd had a hangover while sober in her life.
"Right. Shutting up. Sorry."
"It's Trevor, okay?"
"Trevor? Her ex?" Nyles made a quiet groaning sound. "I knew I shouldn't have come to this stupid wedding."
"Shut up." Sarah clawed at the air a little with her hands. "If we're gonna be stuck with each other for a while, I can't do whatever self-pity thing you've got going on."
"Oh." Nyles nodded and got to his feet. "Then I'll go break up with Misty."
"Why bother?"
Nyles put his hands on his hips. "How many times have you seen her cheating on me?"
"Once." It was the truth, if incomplete. "But it happens every time."
"How do you know?"
"I can tell."
"How?"
"Do you really want to know?"
Nyles hesitated before saying, "I'm still breaking up with her."
Sarah took a heavy swig of her beer. "Knock yourself out."
It took about five minutes before Nyles and Misty were outside, yelling at each other and both crying. Sarah got another beer.
Sarah stayed at the pool through the wedding. She had enough of a knack of the schedule to dodge her family every time they'd tried to find her. When she got drunk enough, she could barely hear her sister upset in the distance.
(Nyles loudly yelling and crying every couple hours never got quieter. No matter how hard she tried.)
Sarah bolted out of Abe's room the next morning, but despite her urge to drive as far as she could for as long as she could, she went back to the pool. Nyles was a grown man, responsible for his own decisions, but she knew what it was like to feel alone.
Nyles joined her moments later, sleep-rumpled and in his boxers.
"She doesn't remember," he said.
"Nope," Sarah said.
"It's my fault. Why she cheated on me. I didn't love her enough."
Sarah could hear the hint of weepy in his tone. "Or maybe you weren't good for each other. That happens."
"To you?"
She was not going down this road. Sarah got to her feet and held out a hand. Nyles squinted up at her.
"Come on," she said. "I know a bar."
The trick to Nyles, as it turned out, was getting him drunk enough that he was chill, but not so drunk that he'd start crying again. Sarah failed on day one, to the point where the nearby dive kicked them both out because he "was too fucking loud" (bartender quote). At least he fell asleep not long afterward, snoring next to Sarah on the hood of her car as she stared up at the stars.
It was kind of cool, how she could see the Milky Way in the dark desert night. She'd never noticed that before.
They reached an equilibrium by Nyles's fourth day in, and that's when the fun began. Highlights included:
1. Stealing two big rigs and having a race. (Sarah won, of course.)
2. Nyles daring Sarah to get the entire wedding to follow them to the pool. That most of them jumped in the pool was their choice. (Sarah and Nyles stayed completely dry.)
3. The day Nyles loudly proclaimed he was going to get fucked by Jerry, and appeared the next looped morning looking dazed and happy.
4. The day where Nyles completely disappeared and seemed happier the next day without explaining why. (He hadn't been with Jerry; Sarah had checked, out of curiosity.)
5. The days they drove as far north as they could. (They'd almost made it to Alaska before they both passed out from exhaustion.)
6. A scavenger hunt where they found as many drugs on the property as possible. (Sarah learned firsthand about highs she'd never heard of before.)
The whole time, Sarah wanted to work on getting out of the time loop. She really did. Every single morning, when she woke up in the wrong bed, it felt like someone was peeling her skin off slowly with dull knives. But it had been long enough without another human being who could be on her level that she relaxed a little bit. She let herself exist.
Until one looped day, when she and Nyles went to the wedding wearing silly costumes they dared each other to put together out of all the guests' suitcases, and Sarah looked at Abe and she felt every inch the cheater she was. Unlike Nyles, she wasn't the crying type. She just went into the desert and waited for her skin to burn as a little extra penance for the day.
Naturally, Nyles showed up with an umbrella. He wasn't trying to be sweet; he'd used the umbrella as part of his Penguin-from-Batman costume, and he hadn't stripped his whimsy before coming into the desert like Sarah did. But he gave her shade regardless.
"You wanna tell me why you're so sad?" Nyles asked.
Even though Nyles was blocking the sun from her face, Sarah didn't open her eyes. "No."
"You don't have to talk. I just think Misty didn't like me because I never listened to her. I've had a lot of time to think."
"Sure."
"That's what I'm taking away from this so far. Listening more." The shade disappeared from over Sarah as Nyles sat next to her, and then reappeared again when he sat. "But I always seem to talk more when I'm with you. You're so…"
"I'm not quiet."
"Self-contained, maybe. Like you'd rather explode than let anything out."
Sarah opened her eyes entirely so she could roll them. "Talking isn't going to break the loop, either."
"But I don't think you've tried it. Right?"
"I'm more willing to try the good-person thing."
Nyles shook his head. "Nah, I tried it. I called a couple ex-girlfriends, apologized for fucking things up. I had a good cry about it."
"I'm sure you did." That explained the day Nyles went missing.
"But I woke up, and here we still are. Or here I still am. I guess we could probably break out separately." Nyles held up a hand when Sarah scowled at him. "I left a voicemail in case it worked!"
"How did you get my number? I haven't touched my phone in…" Sarah couldn't remember how long. She'd lost track of time spent in the loop long ago. "Whatever. I'll prove to you this isn't how it works."
"How?"
"By talking. I wake up every single morning in my sister's fiance's bed. Because I fucked him."
Nyles's eyes went huge.
"I was married before. I knew the relationship was doomed to fail before we went through with it. I did it anyway. Moved to Texas. I ruined his life and mine, and then I came here and ruined the last good thing in my life." Sarah got up and dusted sand off her ass. "I'm leaving town. Don't follow me. I'm sure I'll see you tomorrow."
Sarah burst into Nyles's room the next morning and flipped him the bird. "Ta-da! Still here. Fuck you."
She drove east for two days before falling asleep at the wheel.
Nyles found her at the bar three loops after that, close to sunset.
"You know, for someone who quizzed an entire wedding on escaping a time loop, you don't seem to like suggestions very much."
Sarah took a very long swig of her tequila. Straight tequila, from a bottle she'd paid the bartender to give her. She didn't deserve a margarita.
"I'm sorry," Nyles said, plopping down on the stool next to her. "I was so caught up in my life, it was hard to see anything else."
Sarah pointed at Nyles dramatically. "We live in an indifferent universe. None of this? None of this matters. Well, not dying slowly matters."
"Haven't experienced that one yet."
"Good!" At least Sarah had done something right. It was small, but she'd take it. She drank more.
Nyles cocked his head. "Can I show you something? Come on. Leave the bottle. Just let it go…yeah, right there. I'll just grab a water…great, we're ready to go."
Nyles took Sarah to an empty house—"I checked the last couple days, the family who lives here never shows up"—with a DJ booth and lights that he may or may not have stolen from the wedding. This house had a pool too, and a couple of big floaties. No one was around.
"My first idea was to just let you have some time here, with music you like," Nyles said. "You usually have something good on your car radio when we're driving somewhere, so I thought you might like it. But I feel weird about leaving you drunk alone around a pool, so I'm staying."
Sarah smiled despite herself. She stripped to her underwear. "It wouldn't matter if I died, you know."
"It would bother me," Nyles said. He jumped into the pool and made a little noise when he realized it was colder than he expected. "No one else remembers if you live or die, but I do. And you remember me. The universe can't be totally indifferent if that's true, right?"
Sarah smiled wider. She jumped in the pool—huh, it was chillier than she thought it would be—and swam over to Nyles. She kissed him, and it was better than she expected.
He shrank back before long, and she winced.
"Sorry," Sarah said. "My breath probably tastes like ass."
"Worse. But that wasn't it."
Sarah breathed a little into her hand. Yeah, that could probably strip paint. "Well, I enjoyed it."
"Good. But I want tonight to be about relaxing. If you still feel like it tomorrow…" Nyles spread his hands. "You can fuck my brains out."
Sarah snorted. But she took a floaty and drifted, the music throbbing in her skin.
Yeah. Maybe she did need this.
Sarah grabbed Nyles from his room in the morning. Misty gasped as she pulled him away.
"Are you fucking cheating on me?" she asked, getting increasingly shrill with each word.
"Give it an hour," Sarah said.
Nyles yelled over his shoulder as he left the room. "I'm breaking up with you, bye!"
Sarah heard a "You can't break up with me! I'm breaking up with you!" as she walked away, Nyles on her heels.
They went back to the empty house and fucked in the pool. Sarah hadn't had sex since the loops started, and it turned out, sex with someone who actually liked her was better than the mutually-self-loathing sex she'd shared with Abe.
Nyles was as playful in bed (or in pool, but they did both) as he was the rest of the time. It seemed to surprise him as much as Sarah. ("Misty and I maybe had problems longer than I thought," he said, after a round of strip poker that left him with his shirt and one sock on and Sarah wearing everything but her bra.)
The pillow talk was good, too. Sarah found out Nyles and Misty had met at his cousin's wedding—he had been a groomsman, she had been a friend's plus one, they'd been the only ones who had been dancing to a prank song and having fun with it—and Sarah realized that fucking Abe had been some kind of last-ditch attempt to feel something after her divorce.
"I couldn't not come to the wedding, you know," she said as they snuggled in the main bed in the broken-in house, poking at the freckles on Nyles's skin. "Any other wedding, I would have sent a nice gift and completely ignored. But I love Tala! Enough to fuck her fiance."
"But it isn't fair," Nyles said. When Sarah frowned at him, he held up his hands. "He's the one getting married. He should be the one who has to wake up every day with this. Not you."
"I think I would even without a time loop," Sarah said. "Besides, it takes two to…ruin an innocent woman's life."
"I haven't seen her life ruined once."
"You missed a few loops."
They turned back to other pursuits.
On the fourth loop with whatever they were doing, Nyles said, "Would it be too weird if I said I was in love with you?"
In most circumstances, no. In the current circumstance, they had stolen Trevor's douchy Tesla and were seeing how fast it could go in the middle of nowhere. Nyles had had some idea about closure, and Sarah wasn't sure grand theft auto would get him there, but it was kind of fun. She figured she'd drive until the battery was drained and then they could lower the seats and really pay Trevor back.
"You are?" Sarah asked. "Doesn't that seem kind of fast?"
"I think I fell in love with you when you asked if I knew anything about quantum physics. So, yeah, a little. But it was just so random."
Sarah brightened. Quantum physics. She slowed the car down, and Nyles looked over his shoulder, worried.
"Are the cops on our tail?" he asked.
"Do you want to get out of here?" When Nyles looked confused, Sarah said, "Out of the time loop. I don't need to ask anyone else for advice. I have my laptop. I can just…learn."
"Oh." Nyles looked a little uncertain. "Do we have to now?”
"I can't keep waking up like this." If Sarah felt nothing else, she felt that urgency under her skin.
Nyles sighed. "Me neither."
Sarah turned the car and started driving again. "I think I'm in love with you, too.”
She felt his grin like the sun on her skin, and she thought, for the first time in a very long time, that things just might be okay.