GROUNDHOG DAY mixed with SIXTEEN CANDLES and a splash of DOCTOR WHO. A boy forever reincarnated as himself meets his soulmate for the 200th time, but can she solve the puzzle and break the curse to make herself his last?
*****
Martha Beckett's life...
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"Okay, let's hear it," Martha said.
"Hear what?" James teased as he drove out of the parking lot.
"You already did that joke."
"Sorry." James slowed to a stop at a red light. "Let me get you home first."
"Seriously? What – it's going to blow my mind so much you're afraid I'll jump out of the moving car?"
He shrugged his shoulders and said, "It's... pretty mind blowing." The light turned and he accelerated.
"Now you're just being mean." Martha crossed her arms and turned her head away from him in a mostly playful show of protest. "I am so pouting the rest of this drive."
"No. Please. Anything but that," he responded with a deliberate lack of enthusiasm. His tone normalized. "You'll be fine. I just want to give you my full attention and if I did that right now I'd crash into something. Do you want me to crash into something? Because if you do, you're the one being mean."
The banter was helping to pass the time. In fact, the banter was the point. Eventually, he would tell her the secret to his trick, she would be impressed, then life would go on. She already knew he was clever. But talking with him, joking with him, effortlessly gliding on the same wavelength with him... As with Plato's cornball myth, she felt mended somehow.
Finally, they reached her street. He pulled to a stop in front of her house and turned off the car. Martha stared at James. James stared at the steering wheel.
"Here we are," Martha said impatiently.
James was unmoved.
"Yo!"
He turned to her. "Yes... Here we are." He took in and let out a deep breath. Something seemed off to Martha. He appeared to be nervous. She didn't know it was possible for James Quinn to be nervous. And this was supposed to be his moment to shine, to gloat, to bask in the glory of his grand machination. "Okay," he began. "So there doesn't seem to be any rational explanation for the two predictions I made."
"True."
"And you've wracked your brain trying to devise some way I could have gained advance warning of these events or orchestrated them somehow and you've come up with nothing."
"Also true," Martha said with growing annoyance.
James took another deep, slow breath.
"Oh my god stop stalling and just tell me!"
"I am," he said calmly. "The explanation is going to sound crazy. You're not going to believe me, at first."
"How do you know I'm not going to believe you?"
"Because... you never believe me."
"Huh? What are you talking about? I... always believe you, I think."
