Begin Again | ongoing

thirty-one

"This is so not how I expected to be spending today," Viv says with a yawn as she sheds her clothes and stands in her underwear rooting through her drawer for fresh pyjamas. Sunny's already under the duvet, pinned in place by the cat on her stomach. She usually sleeps on her front but she can't bear to disturb Britney, so if that means sleeping on her back tonight, so be it. She'll manage.

She has come a long way over the past couple of weeks. From not even recognising her girlfriend to sharing a bed with her, sharing a cat with her. No longer can she imagine going back to 1999. Getting those lost months back is not worth losing what she has now, because, really, she has exactly what she asked for, doesn't she? She has a girlfriend who loves her. A girlfriend she loves. A girlfriend who, although it is still early days, she can picture spending every day with. So she'd rather not think about what Astrid and Celeste said, about how time is an elastic band. They don't know for sure, she tells herself. They have a test pool of two: one woman who died, and one who was flung back to her original timeline by the force of her trauma.

Neither of them is Sunny. Sunny does not want to leave. She does not want to lose Viv. She doesn't even care so much anymore about the fact that, four weeks from today, she will turn twenty-five. She has been fast-tracked to a quarter of a century and in this moment, as she lies in bed and watches Viv change, she decides to let it go. The past is gone. It's done. And the present is looking pretty fucking good.

There's a small, fat square of a television on the dresser at the end of Viv's bed, with a curved screen and a built-in video player. Viv may be up to date with her laptop and her mobile phone, but she has not yet made the switch from video to DVD, two stacks of VHS tapes on either side of the telly. Some are old, dating back to the eighties, but some are brand new. Before getting into bed, Viv picks one up and shakes the case at Sunny. This is one of their rituals, apparently: they get into bed, all soft and cosy and close, and they watch a film.

"I bet you haven't seen this one," Viv says. "It came out a few months ago and I just got the video last week. This is hot off the press, baby."

"What is it?" Sunny squints at the cover – the light is dim in here, and she may be due an eye test too – but all she can make out is what looks like a rat. "Is it horror?"

Viv guffaws, her hair spilling over her face when the bobble tying it back snaps and pings off. "Oh my god, no. It's Stuart Little. It's a family comedy about this couple who go to adopt a kid and end up adopting a mouse."

"The fuck?"

"It's good, trust me. It has Hugh Laurie and the tall woman from Thelma & Louise."

"Geena Davis?"

"Yeah!"

"Have we already watched it together?"

"Mmhmm. We went to the cinema with the boys just before Christmas. It was a laugh. Quite weird but really good. It made you want a pet mouse." She pops the tape out of its case and slots it into the TV, folding one leg under herself to half sit on the bed as she fiddles with the settings to get to the right input.

"Wouldn't you rather watch something you haven't already seen?"

Viv wrinkles her nose. "I'm not in the mood to find something new," she says. "I'd rather put on something I know I like. It's so much effort, finding new stuff." Nodding at the first stack of films, most of them titles that Sunny recognises, she says, "That pile is old faithful. The safe ones that I know I like. I can't count how many times I've watched them."

Sunny gets that. She totally gets that. She knows how, sometimes, it is so much easier it is to turn to a book she's read and loved already than to risk picking up a new one and wasting an afternoon. It makes more sense to her to listen to the same album over and over because it makes her brain feel good. The enjoyment comes from familiarity and safety, knowing that no disappointment lies ahead. Sometimes she finds a song that speaks to her soul, and she listens to nothing else for days on end. Once, when she was eleven, she finished a book in two hours flat and then proceeded to reread it in its entirety every day for a week, until her parents had intervened.