I pull a tube of gloss out of my black sequined clutch and glide it over my lips, thinking about what I could have done differently with the wishes I’d been granted. Obviously it had been a mistake to use them to try to help Jules and Liam, my efforts to make their lives better completely backfiring. If I did decide to do this all over again, I wouldn’t have any more wishes, which means I would have to rely on my own power of persuasion to convince my best friends I had traveled through time. And Liam was so skeptical, I wasn’t confident I could make him believe me on my own. Or that I’d even want to try. It might be better not to tell them at all—not to involve anyone else in my inability to get my own life right.
Yes, I decide as I push open the bathroom door, the bass from the band’s speakers vibrating in the hallway. Traveling back again will be worth it because it will solve two major problems: Jules will hopefully be satisfied with her marriage and Liam won’t be at the center of a celebrity cheating scandal. Those two reasons alone are enough to convince me to do it. Even though I know I’ll be back to square one with Max and Courtney—but I’ll just have to figure out what I can do differently so my actions don’t keep pushing them together instead of pulling them apart.
I’d definitely need to go back further in time. Maybe two months? Six? When had their friendship shifted to something more? Was it when I sent Max to pick her up after her car broke down on Sepulveda Boulevard? Or had it been when Courtney scored backstage passes to meet the members of Toad the Wet Sprocket, Courtney sweet-talking her way onto their tour bus where she and Max partied with the band? What had been the exact moment that had changed the course of all of our lives? If I could pinpoint that, I might have a chance.
I make my way through the crowded ballroom, trying to keep my composure as I pass the entire cast of my favorite sitcom, finally spotting Max sitting with Ben and Jules in a lounge area in the corner, Jules cocking her head in the direction of the dance floor where Courtney is still gyrating with her date. I throw my hands up and shake my head, refusing to look in her direction again. As I start to make my way toward them I spy Liam’s lanky body sitting at the edge of the party where the dimming lights and darkness meet.
“Hey,” I say gently, and sit beside him as he raises a bottle of tequila to his lips, his hair now rumpled, his bow tie loose around his neck, looking so much like the old Liam that my heart jumps—I hadn’t realized how much I had missed this version of him.
“Hey,” he echoes, and passes the bottle of Patrón to me.
I hesitate before taking a large swig, coughing slightly and wiping my mouth with the back of my hand as it burns my throat. “Damn, Liam. How much of this have you had?”
He shrugs his shoulders. “It was full when I snagged it from the bar.”
I look at the bottle, a little over a quarter of the liquor gone. “You okay?”
“This night has not turned out at all like I thought it would.”
“Tell me about it—check out who ended up on the guest list.” I point the bottle to where Courtney is on the dance floor.
“What are the odds of that?” Liam says, shaking his head.
A gazillion to one.
“You should have seen Max’s face when he noticed her.” My stomach curls as I remember the look, one I wish I could erase from my mind. “It was like he’d seen a ghost,” I say, a single tear escaping from my eye, and I reach up to brush it away, but Liam beats me to it, his fingertip dissolving it.
“Come here,” he says, and pulls my chair closer to him, wrapping his warm arm around my shoulders.
“I found out I have one more wish. I’m thinking of using it to go back in time again. But I’m planning to go further back—maybe as far as six months.”
Liam takes another long drink from the bottle. “What if you don’t? What if you stay here? If you saw him look at her that way, after everything, maybe it means it’s time to let him go.”
The tears begin to fall more rapidly and I turn my face into his chest and wipe them away with his shirt. “I’m worried that I don’t know who I am without him.”
“That’s funny.”
“What?”
“I don’t know who you are with him.”
I pull back, startled by his reaction. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing.” He shakes his head. “Forget it.”
“No, tell me.”
“I don’t even recognize this version of you—you’ve had tunnel vision this entire time, so closed off from everything that you can’t see what it’s done to you. You’ve changed, Kate.”
Stunned by Liam’s words, I try to formulate my response. I knew I was different, but I wasn’t sure that was a bad thing. My eyes were wide open this time. I wasn’t letting my relationship slip through the cracks while I paid attention to all the wrong things.
“And what about love?” he asks before I can respond.
“Love?”
“I tell you to let him go and the first thing you say is you don’t know who you are without him. Why didn’t you say it was because you loved him?”
“I don’t want to live my life without him. That is love.”
Liam shakes his head. “Not in my book. I say that’s fear.”
With each hurtful word Liam throws at me, anger begins to build up inside me like logs being stacked to make a fire—I’m worried I might erupt into flames if he struck a match against me. “Since when did you become a relationship expert? Aren’t you the guy whose buddies take over/under bets on how long before you find a flaw and dump the girl you’re dating? The man who’s Nikki’s puppet?” He flinches slightly when I say the last part.