Ethan flopped onto the couch, stretched until his back cracked in a way that felt amazing, and stared at the ceiling like a man with zero regrets.
"Hand on heart," he said. "Jake and I were in the study room the whole time. You can literally text him."
His dad's voice came from the kitchen where he was helping clean up. "Nobody's accusing you of anything."
"Mom was giving me the look."
"I give everyone that look," his mom said, poking her head in from the doorway with a dish towel. "It's just my face."
Ethan sat up a little. "Okay, so. Hypothetically. If someone were to score way higher on their next exam than ever before—"
"How much higher," his dad said.
"Hypothetically."
"Ethan."
"Fine. Like, top of the class range. Hypothetically."
His parents did that thing where they looked at each other across the doorway and had an entire conversation in about two seconds without saying a word.
His mom turned back to the dishes. "Wash your hands and come eat. We can do hypotheticals after dinner."
"I just want you guys to be ready for when the neighbors start asking you for parenting tips."
"Wash. Your. Hands."
Ethan grinned and went to the sink.
Dinner was his mom's chicken soup — the real one, the kind that took most of the afternoon and used some specific mix of vegetables she'd never actually written down. Ethan had two full bowls and most of a third before he remembered he was supposed to have some self-respect.
They talked about the usual stuff — his dad's hardware route, his mom's office, some ongoing drama with a neighbor and a tree that was technically the city's problem but whose branches were very much not. Normal. Comfortable. The kind of evening he would've been too checked out to appreciate in another life.
He helped clear the table without being asked, which made his mom give him a quick look he couldn't totally read.
"Shower," he said, heading for the stairs. "Then studying."
"Don't stay up past midnight," his dad said.
"I won't."
He absolutely might.
The shower was hot and he stayed in way too long and sang through most of it — some old rock song he'd actually learned properly in his late twenties but had been stuck in his head basically forever. The bathroom acoustics were genuinely great and he wasn't going to waste that.
He came out in sweatpants with a towel on his shoulders, sat on his bed, and picked up his phone.
Four notifications.
He opened them.
First one was from Jake: that electromagnetic induction explanation was actually genius. mia texted me asking if you tutor.
He read that last sentence twice.
Word got around fast.
He typed back: Tell her yes. $35 a session. Two sessions before finals.
Jake: bold pricing for a 17 year old
Ethan: Results-based. She'll see.
Jake: ok napoleon
Ethan put the phone down, grabbed his notebook, and added Mia's name to the People to approach list. Then crossed it off, because she'd come to him first.
One down.
He flipped to a fresh page and thought about the other two notifications.
They were from an account he'd messaged earlier — kind of a long shot, a loose end from his previous life he'd been mulling over since Sunday. Back then there'd been a girl he'd spent about a year talking to online before life got busy and the conversations just kind of faded the way they do when you're on different continents with different schedules.
Her name was Sofia. Ukrainian, studying in England at the time, sharp and funny and into everything — the kind of person who'd jump from football to art history to arguing about architecture in one conversation and somehow make it all feel connected.
He hadn't thought about her in years. But he remembered the account. Remembered how she talked, the jokes she made, what made her actually respond.
He'd taken a shot earlier.
She'd replied.
He opened the conversation.
"Hello — who is this? Your tone feels weirdly familiar and I can't figure out why."
He smiled at his phone.
He typed back: "We've never met. Never talked before. This is genuinely the first message. I know that makes the familiar thing weirder, not less."
Three dots showed up almost right away.
"That's either really interesting or a really strange opening line."
"Probably both," he typed.
And then it just went, the way he remembered it going — easy, no awkward warm-up period, just straight into it. They went from introductions to time zones to whether Cambridge was actually as rainy as everyone said (her verdict: worse) to the World Cup, which she had strong opinions about that were mostly wrong, which he found kind of great.
He checked the clock at some point: 12:47 AM.
Two and a half hours.
"Okay," he typed. "This has been genuinely really fun, but I have to sleep. Finals in three weeks and I should at least pretend to be responsible."
"Finals — how old are you?"
"Old enough to know better, young enough to be up at one AM talking to strangers online."
A pause. Then: "Fair enough. Good luck with your exams."
"Good luck with your thesis."
"How did you know I was finishing a thesis?"
He'd said that without thinking. He course-corrected fast: "Cambridge, almost done — seemed like a pretty reasonable guess."
Another pause. "Hm. Okay. Goodnight, mysterious American."
"Goodnight, Sofia."
He closed the app, put his phone face-down, and lay back staring at the ceiling feeling genuinely good in a way that had nothing to do with exams or World Cup brackets or tutoring money.
Some things, he thought, were just worth doing.
He was asleep by quarter past one.
Alarm went off at six.
He killed it on the first buzz, sat up, and blinked at the room.
Someone was already moving around downstairs.
He pulled on a hoodie and shuffled toward the bathroom. He stopped in the living room.
Jake was on the couch.
Not Jake — for a weird half-second his brain glitched and both timelines sat on top of each other, and then it sorted itself out: it was his neighbor's kid, Marcus, who crashed here sometimes when his own house was a lot, and who was—
No. Ethan shook his head.
He was still half asleep.
He went to the bathroom, ran cold water over his face, and looked at himself in the mirror.
Right. Columbus. May 2014. Three and a half weeks until finals.
He was good.
What he actually found when he came back through was Jake — the real Jake — sitting on the porch steps with a Gatorade and a stack of flashcards, looking way too awake for six in the morning.
Ethan opened the front door.
"What are you doing here?"
"I told you I'd be serious," Jake said, not looking up from the cards.
"I said be serious. I didn't say show up at my house at six AM."
"I got up at five and ran out of stuff to study at home." He held up the cards. "These are the vocab words from your pattern sheet. I made flashcards."
Ethan just looked at him.
Jake glanced up. "What."
"You made flashcards."
"Is that weird?"
"For you? Yeah, a little bit."
Jake stood up and pocketed the cards. "I thought about what you said. About habits versus ability. I think you're right, I've just been doing it wrong, not—" He stopped. "Anyway. Can we go to that breakfast place?"
"Sam's?"
"Yeah."
Ethan went back inside, grabbed his bag and jacket, told his mom through the kitchen door he was heading out, and came back.
They walked the four blocks to Sam's in the early morning quiet — streets mostly empty, the air still cool from the night, birds just starting to go off in the trees along Henderson.
Jake got eggs and toast. Ethan got the same plus coffee, because two years of heavy caffeine in a past life had apparently left his body with strong opinions about going cold turkey.
They ate and went through the flashcards. Jake was remembering more than he thought — his problem was confidence, not actual knowledge. He'd second-guess right answers and change them. Classic.
"Stop changing your first answer," Ethan said.
"What if it's wrong?"
"Your first answer is right more often than your second one. That's not just a thing people say, that's literally how memory retrieval works. Trust it."
Jake looked at a card, wrote his first answer without hesitating, moved on.
"Exactly like that," Ethan said.
They finished up around six forty and walked the last two blocks to Jefferson, getting there with about four minutes before the bell.
They almost walked straight into Mr. Henderson coming around the corner, thermos in one hand, fixing his glasses with the other.
He looked at them. Looked at the clock on the wall. Looked back at them.
"Hm," he said — which, coming from Henderson, was basically a speech.
He kept walking toward the faculty lounge without another word.
Ethan and Jake looked at each other.
"Was that approval?" Jake said.
"Closest thing you'll get from Henderson."
They headed into the classroom.
Ashley Whitmore was already at her desk by the window — she'd been in the top five academically for three years and didn't make a thing of it, just the kind of person who showed up early because that's how she was. She looked up when Ethan came in, and something in her expression shifted for just a second before going back to normal.
"Morning," she said.
"Morning," Ethan said, dropping into his seat.
She held his eye for just a beat longer than the word really needed, then went back to her notes.
Ethan got his stuff out and thought, not for the first time, that the next three weeks were going to be a lot more complicated than just figuring out a World Cup betting strategy.
There are some advance chapters ahead in my Patreon. If you are interested can check it out.
patreon.com/B_A_3439