Page 28 of Prime Time Romance

For most of season four Poppy was casually dating the captain of the football team, Chad Michaels, until she got bored and dumped him. Chad then asked Luce to be his date to the watermelon festival. Poppy was not thrilled about Chad no longer pining after her, so she invited Spencer—the only person on the Carson Cougars basketball team with a higher points-per-game average than Chad—to be her date. The two guys spent the entire episode trying to one up each other until Luce got so pissed off that she left, and Poppy got Chad back. Could that same logic work here?

To pull off the same setup, I’d need a date.

“I’d love to come,” I tell Spencer. “But is it cool if I bring someone?”

9

Josh

The front door to the Bronze is locked.

It’s a mystery as to whether it happened automatically when I came out of it this morning or if someone’s been here since I left. Either way, I’m stuck out here on the sidewalk.

Great, just great.

I glance around the main street. The bald-headed grocer is still outside his shop, and there are a few people leisurely strolling along the sidewalks. I could probably ask one of them if they know where the bar’s owner is, but I’m not like Brynn—ready and willing to jump into someone else’s life. I need some time to process.

For a moment, I consider the half-broken brick at my feet. The place has enough cracked and broken windows. One more won’t make much of a difference. But my conscience won’t let me do it. So instead, I walk to the corner, find a three-foot gap between the Bronze and the building next to it, and follow that all the way to the back until it opens up to a single-lane alleyway.

As I step out onto the pavement, a flash of orange jumps from the blue metal dumpster beside me and lands at my feet.

“Hey there, little buddy.” I bend down to pet the orange tabby, but he dodges my hand and skitters away, hopping up onto a black wrought-iron staircase. My gaze traces the path of the steps that seem to extend all the way up to the roof, with a brief stop at a tiny balcony right outside an open window.

“A fire escape, huh?” I say to the cat, who does nothing but blink back at me.

My memories from this morning are still a bit muddled from all the cross-dimensional travel, but the view from that window looks an awful lot like the one I woke up to. If I were a betting man, I’d bank that it leads straight into Fletcher’s apartment.

“Well, that’s rather serendipitous.”

The cat hops off the step as I grab the handrails and start to climb. Sure enough, when I reach the top, the window is open a few inches and slides the rest of the way easily when I lift it.

As I climb inside, I hear the low groan of creaking wood somewhere from within the building and pause.

Shit.

I’m a strange guy climbing through an open window.

What if I have the wrong apartment?

I freeze half-in, half-out as my eyes adjust to the dim lighting.

There’s not much to the place. A bed. A nightstand.

There’s a narrow hall that acts as a walk-through closet, with bars of clothes on either side and a door that opens into a small bathroom with a sink, shower, and toilet.

Yup. It’s definitely the same room I woke up in, right down to the crinkled sheets.

My heart settles back into an easier rhythm as I climb the rest of the way in and survey the place for the second time this morning.

I walk through the closet and find a few pairs of jeans and some T-shirts. Basics. “You are no fashionista, are ya, Fletch?” I say, picking up a simple gray hoodie that looks as if it would fit me perfectly. But I set it back on the shelf, not quite desperate enough yet to wear some other dude’s clothes.

I stare at the bed for a few seconds, torn between the urge to make it and the stronger desire to dive back in, with the hope that I’ll somehow wake up back in Toronto with one hell of a story. But there’s another sound—this one coming from downstairs. Maybe Brynn has already given up on her search?

I take the same route as this morning, out of the apartment’s door to a second set of stairs that leads directly down into an open warehouse with a large U-shaped bar right in the middle.

The place looks even more run-down now that I’m coherent enough to give it a second look. The lighting is dim, but there’s just enough of it to tell that the floors are gray polished concrete and the walls are the same red brick as the outside. The windows are big and airy, but every third pane appears cracked. I can’t see through them, and it’s not evident if they’re intentionally frosted or just in desperate need of washing.

Brynn is nowhere to be found.