34
Brynn
I can’t breathe.
My legs. I can’t move them.
Am I injured? Am I paralyzed?
Am I…bundled up like a burrito?
I roll my head to the left out of habit, expecting to see the view of the beach from Sloan’s bedroom window. But I’m not looking at the beach.
I’m staring at bright-red block letters that spell…Netflix?
I blink. Shake my head to clear the brain fog.
I’m wrapped in my fuzzy blue blanket.
On my couch.
My couch back home in Toronto.
“What the actual fuck?”
I can swear.
“Fuck!
“Shit!
“Damn!”
I can voice all my profanities as loudly and as filthily as I want.
And I utter them with abandon as I maneuver my arms out of the fuzzy blue straitjacket, but by the time I am completely free, I’m 100 percent certain I am in my living room and on my couch back in Toronto.
But how did I get here?
My last memories are of my conversation on the roof with Spencer. Then climbing into Fletch’s bed.
I run to the full-length mirror next to the front door. I’m still wearing my black lululemon leggings and tank. The ones I went to sleep in on my thirtieth birthday.
Could I have been sleeping? This entire time?
My face is marked with indentations from the cable-knit pattern on my throw pillow.
I sink down, my back pressed to the wall, until I crumble to the floor. I feel like I’ve been hit. My soul is battered and bruised because everything I felt, everything I went through, was fake? A hallucination? I don’t even know.
My eyes flick to the first room down the hall.
Josh’s room.
If Carson’s Cove never happened, then we didn’t either.
My heart clenches. The pain is so sharp that I wonder if I’ve just felt it break—as if the term heartbreak isn’t just something made up by Hollywood romantic comedies. It’s a real medical condition, and I just experienced it.
No.
You can’t dream up entire days in the type of vivid detail that leaves memories imprinted on your brain forever.
There must be another explanation.
My phone.
I scramble to my feet and search the living room until I remember I lost my phone at the bar.
I find my laptop, and as the home screen appears, I have to stare at the date in the corner for a moment to fully process.
It’s June 22.
I’ve been gone for a week.
My eyes land on the coffee table, where the wedge of white cake is still sitting uneaten on a plate. The candle with its singed black wick still in it.
It happened. All of it.
“Josh!” I call, making my way down the hall to the door of his room. “Josh, are you there?”
I bring my fist to the door, but as my hand hits the paint, the door swings open with the force of my knock.
His room is dark.
And empty.
I glance around for clues. His dresser drawers are pulled open, as is his bedside table. It’s as if he left in a hurry.
Then it clicks.
“The auction.”
Relief washes over me. He made it back too. He’s on his way up north. Wait! No, the auction would have been yesterday.
With no phone to call him with, I sit back down on the couch, resigning myself to waiting until he returns home. The Netflix still of Carson’s Cove is still on my television screen.
I last exactly thirty-two seconds before I decide I hate this plan.
I can’t wait for him to come to me. I need to go to him.
I get changed as fast as humanly possible.
I skip running a brush through my hair and return to my laptop and Google. Josh grew up in Orillia, Ontario, and the bar’s name is Buddy’s. The town is small, and I find an old Facebook page with the address.
I fling open my front door with the heart of a woman ready to get her man, but I halt at the sight of a male body blocking my path.
Holding a bakery box.
“Fuck. No.” I point a very stern finger at Sheldon. “Did you hear what I just did? I swore at you. And I will think about you every time a profanity leaves my lips from now until the end of time.”
Sheldon holds up the box. It’s red. The words Tim Hortons Doughnuts are written in familiar script across the front. “This is a peace offering. There are two Boston creams, a honey cruller, and a maple dip. No funny business, I promise.”
He moves to step inside, but I block him. “Forgive me if I refrain. What exactly are you doing here? Reminding me that I broke your perfect Carson’s Cove?”
He pauses before answering. “Maybe. Or maybe you fixed it?” He holds up the doughnuts again. “I came to explain. Can I have five minutes?” He opens the box, pulls out a Boston cream, and takes a bite. “See. My intentions are noble.”
I step aside slowly. “You have two. I have somewhere to be.”
He sits down on my couch and stares for a moment at the television screen. “It was my happy place too, Carson’s Cove,” he says to me. “Five beautiful years. They were the best of my life. I was relevant. People recognized me. There was a whole website dedicated to me. It even had a newsletter.”
He takes a wistful bite of his doughnut.
“But then it ended, and everyone moved on to bigger and better, and I was left stuck. It was supposed to be my big break. Working on Carson’s Cove should have propelled me to teen drama fame, but I never got credit for my parts. I couldn’t get another job. My own happy ending never happened.”
My ice heart melts, just a fraction, because I can relate to the feeling—just not the whole altering-reality-to-deal-with-it.
“But your speech made me think,” he continues, “that I’ve been stuck in the past, and it’s high time I moved on with my life too.”
Suddenly the last twenty-four hours make a lot more sense.
“So that’s why I’m home? You changed your mind?”
Sheldon, however, shakes his head. “I wasn’t lying when I told you the magic was bigger than me. You got home because you fulfilled your wish. You gave Sloan the ending she deserves.”
A happily independent woman with a true best friend, running her sundress empire and drinking strawberry wine and dancing on the weekends.
She may be a fictional character, but it makes me feel better to know that maybe somewhere in some parallel slip in time, she’s living her best life.
“So you just came here to clear the air between us?” I ask Sheldon.
He stands. “Am I forgiven?”
He holds his arms out for a hug. I pick up the doughnut box and shove it into his hands. “You’re back in the real world, buddy. You want my forgiveness? You need to earn it.”
I walk to the front door and hold it open. Sheldon sulks past me, and as he steps onto the front stoop, I notice a bright-red Mini Cooper in the street.
“Wait!” I call after him.
He turns.
“Is that your car?” I point at the Mini.
His face reddens. “Technically…no.”
I hold out my hand. “If you give me the keys right now, I’ll consider it a significant step toward reconciliation.”
His face lights up as he reaches into his pocket and then tosses them to me. “Where are we going?”
“I am going. This is a solo mission.”
I run across the street and climb into the familiar front seat.
“Can you at least drop me off at the subway?” Sheldon calls as I pull a U-turn.
“Sorry,” I shout at him through the open window. “No time. I’m going to get my happily ever after.”