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The first time Nyles woke up next to Sarah, he almost cried.
She was already awake, lying on her side and facing him. She smiled a little as he opened his eyes.
“Good morning,” Sarah said, quiet, nothing like Misty.
“Hey,” he said, voice cracking a little. Fuck, it had been so long since he hadn’t woken up alone. And here was Sarah. And she was beautiful, and he was warm, and Sarah’s sheets were so much softer than the ones at the wedding cottage and it had been years, decades, maybe, since Nyles had been this comfortable and happy. He turned onto his stomach and smiled into the pillow and tried not to start sobbing.
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Living out of the time loop was weird.
Sarah was an astrophysicist now. Also, she and Nyles were dating, which was nice. He’d had a panic attack when he walked into his old house (it all seemed so unfamiliar, but it shouldn’t be), so he quit his job moved down to Austin. Not into Sarah’s house, but his own, separate one. They’d agreed it was too soon to move in together. He still slept in her bed more often than not, though. Neither of them liked waking up alone very much.
Things were permanent, now. He could die, now, outside of the loop. He could die and stay dead.
Sometimes he thought about killing himself.
Not in a serious way! Just, like, in a what iffy way. Like sometimes his brain told him to kill himself, just to see if it would stick. To see if he would wake up in Palm Springs again. To see if this, if November tenth and November eleventh and all the days that had passed since they got out were real.
Once, in a panicked frenzy alone in his house, he got as far as holding a knife. His hands shook as the edge hovered above his wrist.
He moved the blade away from the big vein in his wrist and cut himself once, just to see if it would stay, sliding the blade across his skin quickly. Blood oozed lazily from the wound. He winced.
He put the knife away, and the cut was still there when he woke up, not in Palm Springs with Misty, but in Austin with Sarah. It left a scar when it healed, and he ran his fingers over it whenever he doubted that things were real. It faded over time.
It was things like that, fading scars, little changing things, that kept Nyles grounded in reality. Sarah got plants, and they grew slowly and died slowly, but they were different every week. Hair grew, and Nyles had to shave again, which he hadn’t done since before the loop. Sarah got new freckles as summer came and Nyles’s smile lines deepened. His weight was different every time he checked it. The paint chipped off the doorframe of his new house. Things changed.
A year out from the loop, the first November ninth since the hundred thousand times they lived the last one, Nyles and Sarah stayed home and watched movies together.
And the next day was November tenth.