Chapter 208
Summer's POV
It was past midnight when I noticed Mia's phone screen. She'd just checked the time, and the lock screen wallpaper made me sit up.
"Wait. Who is THAT?"
A guy in a wetsuit, standing on a surfboard, sunset-lit ocean behind him. Mixed race, maybe eighteen or nineteen, with wet hair plastered to his forehead and a smile that could sell toothpaste.
Mia's face went scarlet. She tried to grab the phone back, but I was faster.
"No one! Just... a guy I found on Instagram."
I zoomed in on the photo. The username read alex_leung617. Boston area code. "He's hot. How did you find him?"
"He's a local surfer," Mia mumbled, pulling a pillow over her face. "Posts a lot at Revere Beach. I just... you know, like his pictures. It's like having a celebrity crush, except he's... real?"
"So you're basically Instagram-stalking him."
"I don't stalk!" The pillow muffled her protest. "I just... appreciate from a distance. Very far distance. Like, he-doesn't-even-know-I-exist distance."
"That's literally the definition of stalking, but go on."
She swatted me with the pillow. "Says the girl who has a whole time-travel love story with a boy she barely talks to at school."
"That's different."
"How is that different?"
"Because—" I hesitated. "Fine. It's not different. We're both disasters."
"Cheers to that." She held up an imaginary glass and clinked it against mine.
I laughed and handed her phone back. "You should message him."
"Absolutely not." She peeked out from behind the pillow. "What would I even say? 'Hi, I've been liking your surfing photos for six months, want to grab coffee?'"
"Yes, actually. Exactly that."
She threw the pillow at me. "You're insane."
But she was smiling, and I felt that warm glow of friendship, of normalcy, of just being two girls talking about crushes at one in the morning.
Then Mia turned the tables.
"Okay, your turn," she said, settling back against the headboard. "Spill. What's really going on with you and Kieran?"
I pulled my knees up to my chest. The moment stretched out. I could deflect. Make a joke. Change the subject.
Or I could tell her the truth.
---
"Mia, what if I told you something completely insane?"
She shifted to face me, curious now. "Like what?"
I closed my eyes. Here goes nothing.
"I died. In another timeline. I was twenty-seven, and Kieran was my husband. We went to Walden Pond, and there was an accident. He drowned saving me. And then I died in a car crash on my way to therapy, and I woke up back in my seventeen-year-old body."
The words tumbled out faster and faster. I told her about the marriage that wasn't really a marriage. About the coldness and the distance and the way Kieran had controlled everything. About the bankruptcy and my mother's arrest and Maya's betrayal. About the final moments in the water, when Kieran had used his broken body to shield me, kept calling my name, wrote SOS in the water with his blood.
"I didn't understand until it was too late that he loved me," I said, my voice cracking. "In the only way he knew how. And now I'm back, and I'm trying to change everything. To save him, save my mom, save everyone."
Silence.
I opened my eyes. Mia was staring at me with this weird expression.
"Wait," she said slowly. "Did you... did you write this? Like, as a story?"
I blinked. "What?"
Her face lit up. "This is amazing! It's like an AU fanfic about you and Kieran. Second-chance romance, time travel, redemption arc—Summer, you should post this on AO3 or something!"
"Mia, I'm serious—"
"I know you're serious about Kieran," she said, patting my shoulder like I was a confused puppy. "And honestly? This story makes sense. It explains why you're so... intense about helping him. Like, you've built this whole narrative where you're his savior. It's actually really romantic."
I stared at her. She thought I'd made it up. She thought it was a fantasy, some elaborate daydream I'd constructed to justify my crush.
"Forget it," I said, diving under the covers. "Just... forget I said anything."
"Hey, no judgment." Mia's voice was warm, affectionate. "We all have our fantasies. Yours is just more elaborate than most. Kind of like my chest—all imagination, no substance."
I let out a muffled laugh despite myself. Even now, even when I was aching inside, she could make me smile.
"Seriously though," Mia mumbled, half-asleep now. "You should write it down. I'd read it."
I smiled despite myself. Alone in the dark, with my best friend beside me and the weight of two lifetimes on my shoulders, I felt the strangest mixture of loneliness and comfort.
She didn't believe me. But she was still here.
And for tonight, that was enough.