"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.

Martha had thought she was trying to force herself to finish a book she wasn't enjoying. Sylvia had thought she was having a quiet breakdown. Both had been wrong, of course. Sunny was totally fine. It was just that she had found a book that felt like she was scratching an itch deep inside her brain when she read it, so it made sense to read it again and again. Martha and Sylvia had been overjoyed when she had explained that – their daughter was not hating her book; she was not struggling to read. She was simply learning how to pander to the whims of her brain.

So yes, Sunny understands why Viv wants to watch a film she has watched before, and she is happy to watch one she has no recollection of watching before. Viv crawls into bed with the remote in her hand once the screen is showing the video menu. She finds a sturdier scrunchie and ties her hair into a fat bun at the nape of her neck (she has enough hair to turn it into her own pillow, though like Sunny, she prefers to sleep on her front) and snuggles under the duvet, her limbs cool against the sheets that Sunny has warmed up.

"Look at her, all settled in already," she muses, reaching over to stroke Britney. Her hand comes to a rest on Sunny's stomach. She lies on her side at a slight angle so she can rest her head on Sunny's shoulder and still see the screen as the film starts rolling.

"You mean me or the cat?" Sunny is only half joking. To her, of course, this is only the second time she has stayed over – and yet it is all so familiar. Not because she can remember it, but because of the way Viv is touching her, the way her stuff is strewn all over this flat.

"Both of you." Viv turns her head slightly, just enough to press her lips to Sunny's neck, nose grazing her jaw, and lets out a happy sigh that tickles Sunny's skin. "What're you up to tomorrow?"

"Hmm." She catches the cat's attention when she clucks her tongue in thought, and then she recalls the piles of stuff in her room, all the stuff she went through a week or so ago. "I have a bunch of stuff to catch up on," she says, and explains to Viv about the music and photos and books she can't recall, things she has consumed in the fourteen months she missed, the snippets of her life she has found in her bedroom that she's been avoiding.

"Are you gonna bring it all over here?"

"Um, if you want?" Sunny hasn't really thought about it. It just struck her in the moment. She has a day off tomorrow, no work until Friday evening, and not much to do otherwise except read and needle Delilah for more details about her dates. "I mean, I've got to do laundry too, 'cause I've been avoiding that for a while as well." That thought makes her sigh inside because ugh, she fucking hates laundry. She hates having to bag up all her dirty clothes and drag them to the launderette down the street and she hates having to scrounge enough coins for a wash and a dry, and she hates having to sit there for two hours because she doesn't trust anyone not to nick her clothes.

"You can do that here, too, you know. You usually do." Viv hits pause, the screen stopping on an animated mouse. "I was just thinking that, seeing as I'll be out at half eight, it might be best if someone's around for Britney, for her first full day in a new place? And if you have stuff to do that could be done here, maybe you could bring it over?" Her palm is flat over Sunny's stomach, her fingers playing with Britney's tail.

"There's a launderette in your building?" Sunny asks. She doesn't recall seeing one but she hasn't explored.

"More like there's a washing machine and a tumble dryer in my kitchen," Viv says, "which you hog every Thursday."

"Since when do I have routines like that?"

Viv laughs. "Since you come here after work on Tuesday and on Wednesday you tend to realise you forgot your clothes so you go home and bring back a suitcase full of dirty washing, and then you put off doing it until Thursday."

"Ah. That sounds more like me." She can't help but wonder how many little things like that there are, if she will ever learn everything she's lost. Impossible, surely. But she has Viv, who remembers for her. There's a pause before she retrieves the thread of conversation, remembers why they're talking about laundry, and she says, "Yeah, I can do it here. As long as that's okay with you? Me being here alone?"

"Bambi," Viv says in that soft and tired voice. The one that says how many times must I remind you? The one that also says don't be daft, you silly bugger. "Just because you don't remember the last year doesn't mean you're not the same person who spends, like, five days a week here. You're here alone all the time. Of course it's fine."

"Okay."

"And you won't be alone. You'll have Britney."

At that, Britney stretches, her little claws piercing Sunny's t-shirt. Sunny tucks her chin into her chest to grin at the cat. "I'm pretty sure she's the smartest cat. She already knows her name."

"Cats don't learn their names," Viv scoffs. "They're way too superior to humanity to allow themselves to be labelled by us."

"And yet she looks up every time I say Britney."

Britney blinks one eye slowly. Sunny gasps. "She winked!"

"She blinked."

"Shush, don't listen to her," she says, scratching Britney under the chin. "I know how clever you are. Clever little kitty."

"So I take it that's a yes? You'll stay here with Brit tomorrow?"

"Yes. We're going to have some important bonding time."

"I think you bonded just fine when you rescued her from the side of the road and took a week off work to nurse her back to health." Viv shifts position and ends up closer to Sunny, her knees pressed against her girlfriend's thigh. "She sees you as her mother already."

"I took a week off work? Seriously?"

"Yup. You told Mack you needed time for a family emergency and threatened to quit if he said no, and he was like, whoa girl, calm down, you can have the time off, I wasn't gonna say no."

"I never take time off," Sunny muses. It's a bad habit of hers. She forgets about her four weeks of annual leave until Mack forces a request form into her hands and tells her to please take something because it doesn't roll over, and the place might fall apart if she leaves it all to March and has to take the lot at once. Not that she'd ever do that. She needs the structure work gives her. Being off for a week makes her feel weird; anything more than a few days feels unnecessary luxuriant.

"Yeah, he couldn't really have said no. Although, technically, you're supposed to request time off at least two weeks in advance. You were more like, I'm sorry, Mack, but I won't be in until next week because I'm using my annual leave to see to a family emergency. Not sure you ever told him it was about a cat."

"A cat who is family," Sunny corrects. "You're my little baby, aren't you? My gorgeous little fluffy baby."

With tomorrow's plans sorted, the film goes back on and Sunny gives in to the weirdness; she goes with the flow when the couple looking for a child end up adopting a mouse, and she laughs when Britney goes all fluffy at the sight of Snowball. Britney eventually moves to the dip in the duvet between Sunny and Viv, leaving Sunny free to finally roll onto her front when the tiredness hits. She's still awake when Viv falls asleep and she watches her for a moment, wondering how many times she has done this before. How many films have they fallen asleep to? How many nights have they shared this bed? How often does she come here after her shift instead of going home, sneaking into bed with her girlfriend instead of climbing between the sheets alone?

She can ask all this tomorrow. For now, she scoots down the bed and curls around Britney, resting her ear in the dip of Viv's back. It's a surprisingly comfortable position, allowing her to idly stroke the cat – her cat, not just one of her parents' strays but her cat – and watch the film. It's just the kind of intimacy she likes: she is connected to Viv, their bodies fitting together like a puzzle, and there is no pressure of anything more.

As the film comes to an end, it's with a sinking feeling that Sunny realises it won't be long before she has to have a conversation with Fenfen, because after the last couple of nights, she can't bear the thought of crawling back to her flat and sleeping alone.

This is, after all, the life the universe has decided for her. She might as well jump in with both feet.

*

writing sunny's journey has been such a journey for me too, i hope you're enjoying it!