Page 29

Everyone was shouting, falling over each other, the waves picking up a little, the moon high overhead, and as Tressa Fay buried her face in Meryl’s neck, she was surprised to feel her chest catch with grief.

She’d seen her mom. Her dad. Her friends, so many ways and times, and she missed them already. There hadn’t been enough time with any of them. Her whole life was moving so fast, she almost wished she could live it like she had been, in more than one direction at once. That way, she wouldn’t miss anything . She wrapped her arms around Meryl tighter. “I love you.”

“I love you.” Meryl pulled away, and Tressa Fay took her in, her spikes of wet hair and glasses and perfect Merylness. “We should get out of the water. Go home.”

She felt like she’d only just walked into the water. She wasn’t even cold, certainly not cold enough for the hours from twilight to midnight to have passed. Time had collapsed, just as they’d hoped it would.

Gayle ran up to the both of them and pulled Meryl away from Tressa Fay, wrapping her arms around her. “I’ve missed you so much. That’s how I feel, like I missed you, and now I’m seeing you again. Where have you been? Don’t ever do that again.”

Meryl buried her face in Gayle’s neck. “Thank you for waiting for me. You’ve waited for me so many times, and for so long.”

“We waited for each other.” Gayle pulled herself away but kept her hands on Meryl’s shoulders. “And now we’re here. Let’s keep it that way.”

“Meryl!” James ran up, wrapping Meryl in a huge hug that Mary piled into, and Guy’s arm caught Tressa Fay’s waist, until they were all there, hugging, laughing and ecstatic to have made it to the other side of this scary thing that had brought them together.

By some mutual agreement, they started trudging toward the shore, and Tressa Fay’s limbs felt heavy and useless on solid ground as she toweled off and shivered and laughed. Everyone had a story to tell about what they’d seen in the water. None of the stories made sense, exactly, but it didn’t matter. That was life. Things happened every day that didn’t make sense or didn’t fit together. Time rippled and warped, crossed over itself in the course of its cosmic dance, and showed you new possibilities.

Or that was the story Tressa Fay had decided to tell herself. The love story she’d conjured up.

With one last hug and a promise of brunch after they’d all had a chance to sleep, finally, finally, she was in the passenger seat of Meryl’s snug Toyota, the dark roads by the bay rising up in front of the headlights until they were pulling into Meryl’s driveway.

Once they were inside, witnessing the miracle of a lamp on in the living room, of Epinephrine and Spring snoring together on the sofa, Tressa Fay felt shy. She wasn’t sure what to do with her whole, wild self.

Meryl laughed. “Um. How about I shower down here, and you use my bathroom, and we meet somewhere in the middle after we’ve unweirdened ourselves?”

“Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.” Tressa Fay nodded. “I hear that, agree, and admit to having enweirdened.” She waved awkwardly at Meryl and raced up the stairs, her bare feet still wrinkled from the water. She relished the rough texture of the staircase carpet under her feet, how ordinary it was, and when the warm water poured from the showerhead and melted into her bar of soap, she started at her toes and lathered everything deliberately, all the way up.

She wanted to be the next Tressa Fay when she stepped out from behind the shower curtain, blotchy and pink, her surfaces buffed, the last layer of skin she’d worn swirling down the drain.

When she walked into the bedroom wrapped in a towel, her phone on the bedside table buzzed.

I love you. You’re taking me swimming now. I’m saving this to send it in the morning, and when I do, I know you’ll get it. Wherever you are.

She looked at the text for a long moment, and she remembered that part of the exuberant joy she’d felt exiting the lake had arisen from the moment she looked at Meryl and discovered she knew everything about their falling in love—and not just from the moment Meryl had walked into Tressa Fay’s salon on that pretty day in May until she was in her arms in the water on . Everything. She knew the Meryl who’d sent her the misdirected text in October. She remembered all their late-night sessions texting and sexting and falling in love, every single one of them. Tressa Fay under the covers in the dark. Cold nights of autumn and winter, missing Meryl’s touch. Meryl in sunny May, and Meryl in the summer with all of their friends.

It seemed absurd that she had ever been jealous of future Tressa Fay. Maybe she hadn’t felt —not yet—that she was falling in love with Meryl from every timeline at once, but she had been.

She came down the stairs in a T-shirt and underwear to find Meryl in the kitchen in her robe. “What are you wearing underneath that?” She was delighted with the cold tiles of Meryl’s kitchen under her bare feet and the half-damp fuzzy mess of Meryl’s new hair.

“The point of a robe like this is I don’t have to be wearing anything underneath it, and no one will ever know. So that I can pick up a package off the porch or answer the door for the Avon lady.”

“No one would know? Really?” Tressa Fay asked with false incredulity. “That sounds like a challenge.” She stepped closer and put her hand on Meryl’s robe tie. “If you’re naked under here, it means you have ideas, because I know you have spare loungewear in the downstairs bathroom closet. You are a painfully organized person.”

Meryl took a step back and picked up a glass of water from the counter. She sipped it, very cool, looking Tressa Fay over. “It could be that I have ideas. You would have to investigate.”

Tressa Fay reached out, quick as lightning, and deftly untied Meryl’s robe, pulling the fronts apart. “Oh my God! You are naked under there!” She dropped to her knees and pressed her mouth against Meryl’s freckled stomach, kissing her, then blowing a raspberry while Meryl laughed and pushed at the top of her head and tried to put her water glass safely on the counter.

“How did you do that so fast?!”

“I have so many talents.” She dipped her tongue into Meryl’s navel and trailed kisses down her stomach to the tops of her thighs.

“Tressa Fay.” Meryl was clearly trying to make her voice intimidating, but it was not a successful effort. “Get up off the floor.”

Tressa Fay slid her body up Meryl’s as slowly as she could, making sure as much of herself touched as much of Meryl’s self as possible.

“I’m standing up. Now what?” Tressa Fay kissed Meryl’s neck, slow, with lots of tongue and soft bites.

“Upstairs?” Meryl sounded a little far away.

Tressa Fay raked her fingers up through Meryl’s soft, much shorter hair, gratified to feel Meryl shiver against her. “Now we’re on the same page. But first.” Tressa Fay reached into Meryl’s robe pocket and extracted her phone. She’d felt its weight when she’d pulled open the robe. Now she yanked off the charger and smacked it on the counter. “Why don’t you send a brunch time to the new group chat? The one I just put myself into?”

Tressa Fay watched, fascinated, as Meryl opened her mouth to say that Tressa Fay couldn’t get a text from her. But then a spot under each eye went pink, and she swiped open her phone, pushing a tear away. She poked her phone. Tressa Fay watched her look at the text she’d sent her that Tressa Fay had just received while upstairs, the one that Meryl had meant to go to a worried Tressa Fay in the future.

Meryl looked up at Tressa Fay. “You’re you.” Meryl held up her phone. “I don’t know how to explain it, but you are you .” Her eyes were dark and wide as she waved the phone back and forth, starting to grin.

Tressa Fay’s body recalled the moment in the water when everything smoothed out, tugged into place. “I remember. You couldn’t help doing one last experiment, huh? Writing a text to send in the morning. Clever, you goose.”

“You remember ,” Meryl whispered. “How?”

“You were right. I was always me. I don’t know what to tell you, honey. Time doesn’t play by the rules. When I walked out of the water, I could remember alllll the texts, even if technically , officially, none of them has happened yet.” Tressa Fay felt warm and alive and afraid of nothing. “But you know how I told you that when the memories double, they start to fade and blur into a single story?”

Meryl nodded, her eyes big.

“We’re just us. You didn’t lose her. I’m here. Turns out we always have been.”

Meryl shook her head and looked back at her phone. Her thumbs flew over her screen.

The phone that Tressa Fay had set down at the end of the counter when she came into the room buzzed. The group chat.

She took a deep breath and let it out, one second at a time.

“I don’t know what happened for you in the lake, but you were there with me,” Meryl said. “In the water, the whole time, you were there, and it was the first time I truly believed it was all you. I was so afraid of losing all the different times of you. The you that I pulled over text, somehow, like a miracle, and the you who seduced me at your salon.” Her laugh was shaky. “But you were there, all of you, and I got it. We got it. We saw what we needed to see and felt what we…” Meryl swallowed and opened her eyes. “Anyway. You were always there, and it was easy to trust that I wasn’t running away. I wasn’t taking myself out. I had faith. It was easy.”

“I think it’s supposed to be easy,” Tressa Fay said. “I’ve had so many clients in my chair tell me ‘the timing was wrong’ for some epic romance, and I’m thinking, I don’t know, it sounds like maybe you guys just didn’t get your shit figured out, and that’s what blew everything up.”

“Is that stylist wisdom?”

“It’s vintage Tressa Fay wisdom, in fact. Choose love over fear. Figure your shit out. Give yourself what you need so you can have what you want. Watch the mailbox on your way out.”

Meryl snorted. “You’re feeling big with yourself now.”

“I bent time to get to this moment. The least you can do is meet me upstairs. You won’t need a robe.” She skimmed off her underwear and shirt and, grinning, ran away to the bedroom.

Meryl came into the room and knee-walked onto the bed and put her hand on Tressa Fay’s hip. Tressa Fay pulled her down and over until she was in contact with Meryl’s skin. So much skin. Not a stitch of clothes on either of them, and her body so warm, Tressa Fay’s eyes drifted closed.

Meryl pushed on Tressa Fay’s shoulder and rolled her onto her back, and then she was above her, her hard thigh coming between Tressa Fay’s, her mouth finding Tressa Fay’s, kissing one corner, her chin, her jawline. “I like my hair.” Meryl’s hand slid up Tressa Fay’s side, following the dip of her waist, the curve of her breast.

Tressa Fay laughed. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. It will be so much easier to deal with when I’m out on jobs and in the field.” She kissed behind Tressa Fay’s ear, her hand wandering up over her nipple, making her gasp and arch up, but Tressa Fay ruined it a little by laughing again.

“I don’t think anyone has ever liked a haircut I’ve given them because it was practical. I’d say my dad did, but I can’t, because I have no idea if he likes the haircut I’ve been giving him for fifteen years. He’s never said.”

“Shh.” Meryl hushed her, laughing too, then slid her fingers down Tressa Fay’s belly, urging her thighs apart. “Let me touch you.” Meryl moved her hand without hesitation, sliding through where Tressa Fay was warm and wet, making her mouth fall open and her hips lift. “Turn on your side.”

Tressa Fay was very lucky that outsmarting the multiverse made Meryl feel bossy.

She turned, and so did Meryl, facing her, so she raised her leg to hook over Meryl’s hip and dropped her shoulder to reach down and find the damp juncture of Meryl’s thighs, the slide of her fingers so fast and easy that she felt her eyelids get heavy at Meryl’s sharp inhale. Their mouths met, a little uncoordinated, more than a little urgent, and Tressa Fay forgot about how she’d teased Meryl in the kitchen, in the bed, and got lost in Meryl’s body, the way she gasped and moaned, the way she felt against the pressure of Tressa Fay’s fingers, the way her own body wound tight and tighter as Meryl touched her and she forgot to pay attention, absorbed in Meryl’s skin, licking over Meryl’s mouth, until all of a sudden she felt every sensation she’d failed to notice at the same time—Meryl’s breasts, her hard thigh, her clever fingers pressing right where Tressa Fay needed them.

“God. God. Meryl.” Tressa Fay shifted to take Meryl’s fingers deeper, hitching up her hips, then biting down on Meryl’s shoulder when everything got tighter and tighter and closer until she was coming, or she was coming and coming, she couldn’t exactly tell. It was good, though, it was so good, and as she was floating down, she realized both of her hands had moved up to Meryl’s breasts and Meryl was shifting restlessly, her thighs moving, kissing Tressa Fay’s shoulder and neck a little frantically.

“I forgot about you,” Tressa Fay breathed. “Oh no.”

Meryl laughed into her neck. “No worries. I’ll just suffer.”

Tressa Fay moved over Meryl’s body, and Meryl looked up at her, her skin doing that thing where it revealed layers and layers of freckles under her flush, as if Tressa Fay could see every sunny day that Meryl had ever had, all the way back to when she was little.

Maybe she could.

“I don’t want you to suffer, though. At least, not like that.” She gave Meryl a very soft kiss that made her frustrated, if she was going by how tightly Meryl gripped her hair when Tressa Fay pulled away.

“Tressa Fay.” Meryl reached up and took her face in her hands. “Please fuck me. It’s an emergency.”

“Should I fuck you with my fingers some more, or should I fuck you with that very terrible vibrator you’ve got in your second drawer that I saw when I was looking for the lip balm you said was in there?”

“You found Pinky?”

“That is a surprising name for something so awesomely intimidating.” Tressa Fay leaned over and opened the drawer, and her fingers knocked into a bottle of lube she had also noticed. She put both of them on the bed, and Meryl pulled her knees up by Tressa Fay’s hips, so Tressa Fay kissed her.

Meryl’s mouth was clever and desperate, and every time their tongues met, Tressa Fay felt every muscle in her body go loose and then start to tighten up again in a delicious unending sensation that was going to lead to something.

But first, Meryl.

She took a long time, stroking and kissing her way down, before she pulled one of Meryl’s nipples into her mouth and they both made a noise.

“Tressa Fay,” Meryl breathed. “It’s so good.”

She smiled against Meryl’s belly, running her hands over every inch of skin she could reach, scratching her nails down Meryl’s sides and over the fronts of her thighs, watching the muscles clench. “I want to taste you,” she said. “Just a little.”

Meryl laughed. “Just a little.”

But then Meryl slid her hands into Tressa Fay’s hair and bossed her around more than a little, and Tressa Fay was humming against Meryl, tasting her, feeling how hot and wet she got against her mouth, getting close again, leaning into the sting of Meryl using her hair as a handle.

Tressa Fay reached over and grabbed the bottle of lube, and Meryl eased up. Tressa Fay met her eyes and licked up her center as she clicked open the lid and then made Meryl wetter, so wet Tressa Fay couldn’t resist sliding her fingers through Meryl’s rosy curls just to feel everything like this.

“I love you,” Meryl panted.

Tressa Fay kissed Meryl’s thigh and turned on the vibrator. “I love you, too.”

It was so hot—how her hips moved, how the bright pink vibrator looked against her clit and then sliding inside Meryl, then back up again, every time harder and deeper until Meryl was fisting the blanket and Tressa Fay kept everything exactly the same, over and over, praising her, kissing every part she could reach, and when Meryl came, she laughed at the peak of it, her head thrown back, one of those oh my God laughs that comes from amazement at one’s own body and what it’s capable of.

Tressa Fay moved to her side, next to Meryl again, glad when Meryl started kissing her as she shuddered, glad when Meryl took Tressa Fay’s hand that was still holding the vibrator and eased it between her legs, kissing her softly until she fell over the edge in a lush second orgasm.

“Whoa,” Tressa Fay whispered against Meryl’s mouth. “Mercy.”

Meryl rolled onto her back. “Never. But maybe a merciful break. I can grab up a snack. Then maybe a nap.”

She smiled and reached out to hold Meryl’s hand. “We’ve got time.”

They dozed. Tressa Fay felt Meryl shift to pull the covers up over them. “There’s a pond my coworker told me about that I’ve never been to. It fills from the water table below and has the clearest water he’s ever seen. Up in the woods near Minocqua.” Meryl’s voice was sleepy, and she moved Tressa Fay into her nook.

“We’ll go.”

“It’s a couple of hours away.”

“I love road trips.” Tressa Fay could feel sleep coming over her again. She squeezed Meryl’s hand. “I love you.”

“You do. You will, too, I think,” Meryl whispered back.

“I have. Lots and lots of times I’ve loved you.”

They fell asleep and slept until they woke up suddenly, together, realizing how late it had gotten, and then Tressa Fay was rolling out of bed and laughing, tossing clothes at Meryl and pacing the floor to find her own, and they had barely gotten dressed when Gayle knocked twice and walked in with a bag clinking with champagne bottles.

It wasn’t long before the rest of their people had arrived, and Tressa Fay couldn’t imagine wanting to be anywhere else except right inside this moment.

This very, very one.