Page 80 of Ideal Life

“My parents are waiting at the lighthouse to take me out to dinner. I have to go.”

“Sam, please.”

He turned back around slowly. “You promised not to rewind my life without telling me. But I’ve been here at this tournament, too, apparently replaying every level whenever you decided to undo it and try again. Were you even going to tell me? Did you think I wouldn’t notice at some point that the woman I love was on the leaderboards?”

Talia’s mouth fell open.

“The… the woman you love?” Talia frowned. “But when I kissed you, you didn’t kiss me back. I thought—”

“When you kissed me?” Sam’s brows knit in confusion for a split second. And then his eyes went wide as realization dawned.

Oh, fuck.

Talia reached for her watch.

“Don’t you dare.” Sam wrapped his fingers around her wrist so she couldn’t wind the crown. “So today isn’t the first time you’ve undone my life?”

“Sam, I—”

“Who are you anymore, Talia?”

She looked at the ugly carpet at her feet and shook her head. “I’m the same person you’ve always known. I’m just… I’m trying to make things better, but sometimes I do it wrong! Let me rewind today. Please, Sam.” She looked up at him now. “Let me go back to the beginning and tell you that I’m going to play in the tournament. Let me make it right.”

He closed his eyes for a long moment.

When he opened them again, the light that usually danced in them was gone. He let go of her wrist and said quietly, “Ideal Life made you obsessed with the future, but the watch opened up that same addiction to the past, too. And now you’re suspended in the middle.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Sam sighed. “You can’t move forward, because you keep rehashing the things that just happened. And even when you aren’t, you’re incapable of being in the present, because you’re always thinking about how you can be better in the future. But when are you going to stop trying to optimize every situation, Tal? When are you going to stop rehearsing for life and actually live it?”

“I am. It’s just… wouldn’t you want the best version of your life if you could have it?”

Sam shook his head sadly. “I liked my life exactly the way it was.”

And with that, he finally did turn and walk away.

Sam

He hadn’t meant to let it slip that he loved her.

But if he hadn’t said it, he wouldn’t have found out that she’d been rewinding his life.

Sam’s knees almost gave out as he left her; it was difficult even to stand when the one person in the world that you thought you could believe in turned out to be a lie. The Talia he thought he knew was really just a story he’d told himself, a version of a woman who no longer actually existed.

And yet, that wasn’t the worst of what Sam felt. No matter how Talia had deceived him, he couldn’t simply turn off a switch and stop loving her. He’d loved her quietly for his entire adult life. And now she was losing her way, and it hurt him to watch it happen.

Every night at 11:11 p.m. for the last couple of weeks, he’d wished for that watch to disappear.

But it hadn’t.

Sam cursed himself. He should have tried harder to intervene, rather than relying on a fickle wish. Maybe you only got one wish granted your entire life, and he’d gotten his when he was eighteen, when Talia had shown up at his dorm room door.

How could Sam have stopped Talia from using the watch, though, short of ripping it off her wrist?

Halfway through the Magnolia Hotel parking lot, he stopped short. A car honked and swerved to avoid him.

Maybe there was something Sam could do.