Page 33 of Ideal Life

“You sure you can afford to pay for lunch?” Talia asked between bites of her carefully constructed taco. “I mean, forty-eighth place at the tournament…”

He threw a packet of hot sauce at her. “Just for that, you have to buy me lunch for the next three Sundays.”

Talia grinned. “Wow, if I knew I’d be punished financially, I would have rewound time while you were still at the tournament and given you another shot at that hand. Maybe you would’ve made a different choice. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about you buying me tacos, because you would’ve won a bigger prize.”

Sam’s smile fell off his face. He’d forgotten all about that strange watch, partly because he’d just assumed that once Talia had undone the night of the Omni party, the watch thing would be over. Like, maybe it would disappear as easily and mysteriously as it had come.

He stared at her wrist. The watch was just peeking out from under the sleeve of her sweater.

“I didn’t do it, Sam.”

“But you thought about it. You considered rewinding time in order to change something about my life.”

“Yes, but I promised you I wouldn’t. And I didn’t.”

Sam’s eyes met Talia’s. She bit her lip, but she didn’t look away. “I swear, Sam.”

He held her gaze for a long moment. Then he shook his head. “Okay, yeah, I know you didn’t. If you had used the watch, you would never have left it at me losing before the final table.” He tried to say it like it was a joke, because he didn’t want to ruin the limited time he had with Talia. But part of him knew there was some truth to it. Talia truly wanted the best for everybody—that’s why she’d invented Ideal Life—and that desire certainly extended to Sam. He was, after all, her best friend.

“But you know,” he said, “even if you’d used the watch, maybe I still would have made the same choice on those cards, over and over, and you would have been stuck rewinding for eternity with nothing ever changing, yet feeling like you had to keep trying, just in case the next time worked.”

Talia laughed awkwardly. “I guess that would serve me right.”

He smiled. Not quite normal, but getting there. “Yeah.”

She looked out the window toward the water, and Sam took in her profile, silhouetted against the sunlight outside. It was the same face he’d fallen in love with seventeen years ago—round cheeks and small pink mouth and long, straight eyelashes that made her crazy because they refused to take a curl (she’d vented to him and Libby many times in college).

But even when Talia was a hundred years old and covered in wrinkles, he would feel the same way about her, because it wasn’t really the outside that he loved. It was her intelligence and passion and the deep empathy she felt for others. And those hazel eyes lit golden from the ever-optimistic, idealistic flame that burned within.

Most people didn’t have a purpose for the greater good like Talia did, and that was okay. But it was wonderful to get to bask in the secondary glow of someone who did.

She turned back toward him. “I’m sorry I even considered using the watch.”

“It’s okay. We’re good, Tal. I know you meant well.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay, then I can bug you about what—or who—was in your apartment when I showed up that made you close the door so fast behind you?” Talia smirked.

Sam groaned. “If I had known where this was going, I wouldn’t have agreed that we’re good.”

“Was it the caterer again? Is it getting serious? You’ve gone out with her a few times now…” Talia took a big bite of her taco.

Sam rubbed his hands over his face. He didn’t want to talk about Kayla. Yes, they’d gone on a few dates and she’d spent the night. But it was only because he knew Talia didn’t feel that way about him, so after pining for too many years, Sam had told himself it was time to stop being pathetic and move on. It didn’t mean he wanted to talk about other women with Talia, though.

“Well?”

Sam sighed. “Yes, it was Kayla from the local catering shop, but no, it’s not serious. And that’s all I’m going to say because gentlemen don’t kiss and tell. Now, I’m going to eat some of this food that has gotten cold, okay?”

Talia laughed. “You’re so old-fashioned sometimes, Sam. But I love you, you big weirdo.”

He threw another hot sauce packet at her. “I love you, too.”

Talia

On Monday morning, Talia gawked as she stepped foot onto Omni’s campus. It would’ve been inaccurate to call it anything less than that, because it wasn’t a single structure—it was a sprawling network of twenty different buildings across acres of manicured grounds, as if the tech behemoth had grown up like mushrooms in the middle of a lush park. There were paved paths that connected everything from the main headquarters to the engineering quad, from the biotech labs to the cafeteria, and from the outdoor amphitheater to the meditation and yoga space.