I wake up in an unfamiliar place. In an unfamiliar bed. Wrapped in the heat of someone's embrace, and all I can remember is last night's dream.

Great. Another one night stand. Maybe Nessa can fall in love with this one, too.

I can tell it's a man by the hard press of his chest against my back. That and the iron grip around my waist. Women are much less clingy, even in their sleep. It's a much more equal exchange.

In terms of bed share, too. Because right now, I'm mashed against a wall. How much room does this guy take up?

I groan loudly as I roll over, hoping I wake him up. My head pounds once, filling my ears with fuzz for a brief second. I squint through the stabbing lights at the clock on the bedside table.

11:00. I fall back with a sigh, savoring the stench of irony.

Then my eyes fall on the sleeping man next to me, and I scream.

He finally jerks awake, yelling wordless blobs of sound right back at me, and shoots out of bed like a startled bird.

I watch him flail around in the tangled sheets, struggling to stay upright, and when he finally steadies himself we stare wide-eyed at each other for a solid thirty seconds.

"Connor?" I breathe.

No. This isn't happening. I did not sleep with my best-friend-slash-crush's husband, who she met as he was leaving my bed the first time, on their wedding night.

His eyes close, and he lets all the tension out of his body in one small breath. "Thank god you remember."

"What are you doing here?" I ask, sitting up. My head protests again, but I ignore it. I have to know. "You're supposed to be—"

The room comes into focus, and I realize I was wrong about one thing. The place is familiar. Two single beds, two desks, two tiny wardrobes packed to bursting. The one on the right is more abused than the one on the left, just like I remember it. Tacky Christmas lights that I know stay up year-round are pinned to the tops of the walls, draped like laughable echoes of last night's white streamers.

I've been here before.

"Where are we?" I whisper. I don't mean it literally. I know exactly where we are. I just can't believe it, nor can I fathom how we got here. Or why it looks just the same as it did five years ago, when I called this tiny dorm room home.

"You told me this was your place." I sense a note of panic in Connor's voice and look up to find it in his eyes, too. He clutches the sheets around his body, then looks at them as if wondering whose they really are.

"It is," I say, then correct myself. "It was."

I focus on his ringless fingers. At least he didn't have the nerve to wear it while he was in my bed. In my old college dorm room.

"You're a dick," I blurt, climbing out of bed and rummaging around for my dress. "You're a cheating son of a—what is this?"

I straighten up, an old, fraying green tank top dangling by one strap from my index finger.

"Your shirt?" Connor provides, shrugging.

"I wasn't wearing a shirt last night."

"Not for the last part of it, no."

"Shut up." I hurl the old piece of crap at him, and he catches it easily. Maybe there's something in the closet I can steal, because I'm not wearing that thing. I'm not a stretchy fabric kind of girl anymore.

I slide the closet door back and freeze again. I recognize every single outfit. The one my grandmother insisted on sending with me, even though it looked like something a nun would wear and I wasn't about the nun life. Countless worn, faded jeans—the one facet of my wardrobe that has never changed. A pair of three-inch heels that Nessa had convinced me to buy once, and I had obliged because I never could refuse her. I still can't.

Mechanically, I pull a t-shirt and some sweatpants off their racks, slipping into them as easily as I'd slipped into this trance. Nothing makes sense. I turn back around slowly, flipping my hair out of the shirt's collar, and stare from Connor to the clock. Connor, clock.

"Are you okay?" he asks.

On a whim, I reach around him for my phone. It's an older model. I wake the screen and stare at the date.

March 17, 2013.

2013.

I hold the phone at arm's length, but the date stays the same.

"What day is it?"

"Sunday?"

Why is everything out of his mouth a question? He's not the one asking, I am. And of course it's Sunday, because he got married on a Saturday and that would make the morning after Sunday.

It's just a funny coincidence that St. Patrick's Day that year fell on a Saturday, and so the morning we woke up was also a Sunday, too.

I wave the phone at Connor. "You think this is funny?" It must be some sort of joke. Maybe he's known this whole time and he's arranged all this as an elaborate prank.

He grabs the phone from me. "That's mine."

I hesitate. Connor and I did have the same phone back then, but I'm not sure he was ever aware of it.

He checks the time for himself, and his eyes bug out of his head. "Shit. I'm late for work."

It's the exact same thing he said five years ago, before he—

"No," I object, but I'm too late. He drops the sheets from around his waist in favor of recovering last night's clothes.

I whirl away, facing the door just as the handle turns. This must be the part where the whole wedding party walks through the door and shouts "Surprise!" or just laughs at me. It would serve me right for ruining last night.

"Look, if this is some kind of revenge for what I said," I begin.

The door swings inward, and Nessa takes two oblivious steps before noticing the half-naked man behind me. Her jaw falls open. I think I hear it hit the floor.

"Um, hi."

Again, exactly the same thing she said five years ago. I blink. She blinks. Strange noises come from the back of the room as Connor trips over his own pant leg and grapples for balance.

"I, uh...." My words have dribbled away like a dried-up stream, just like during my toast last night.

The toast. My confession. "I'm so sorry about last night," I blabber. "I didn't mean it. I mean I kind of meant it. I did mean it. But I should have kept it to myself."

Nessa's eyes move slowly from me to Connor. "Party?" she asks.

He nods.

"Were there drugs involved?"

"I'm starting to wonder that myself." Still shirtless, but finally wearing pants, he steps forward. "It's nice to meet you...?"

"Vanessa," she answers. "And you are?"

I watch him shake her hand, as if they've never met before. But I also can't mistake the way he lingers before letting go.

"Leaving," I provide, grabbing him by the shoulders and steering him into the hall. I pull the door shut and turn him around to face me. "You're going to tell me what is going on."

He raises his eyebrows. "I thought it was fairly obvious."

"What's obvious is that you either cheated on your wife, or—"

"What? I—what?" he backs off a step. "Where did you get the idea I've got a wife?"

"Because you have one," I say like it's obvious. And it is, because he just married her last night.

"No, it's like we said last night. Never getting married."

I have no retort as he walks away. I did say that last night, in the dream. But I never said it in real life, so there's no way he should have known.

It dawns on me as I watch him pull his shirt over his head and disappear into the stairwell. I step back into my room, grinning stupidly at Nessa as she unpacks her travel bag.

"I know what's happening," I announce triumphantly. "I'm still in the dream!"

Her side-eye makes me proud. "What dream?"

"The dream where I relived the night Connor and I met! Why are you looking at me like that?"

"You're not dreaming, Lana," she says. Then, slyly, "So his name's Connor?"

I laugh. "Don't change the subject, it's my dream."

She reaches out, grabs the skin of my forearm between two fingers, and pinches hard.

"Ouch!"

"See? Not dreaming." She turns back to her bag.

"But...." I look down. My feet are planted firmly on the bowed wooden floor. I've heard that in dreams you don't actually walk, just float. I take a step forward. I am definitely walking.

But if it isn't a dream, then it's really 2013. And if it's really 2013, then last night, with Connor, at the bar, really happened. And if it really happened, then I had a chance to undo everything last night and I blew it on the same misjudgment I'd made the first time.

"What have I done?" I whisper.

Nessa shrugs, inspecting a blouse and then tossing it into the hamper. "Nothing half of campus hasn't done. But at least you did it with someone good-looking."

"No!" I groan. "You're not allowed to think he's good-looking! Or cute, or hot, or anything! You're not allowed to think about him at all, okay?"

She arches one elegant eyebrow. "Relax, it's not like I'm going to marry him."

I sigh. She really has no idea.

But neither do I. Apparently I can time travel. Or I accidentally did, somehow. And I can't face the prospect of reliving the next five years, watching her and Connor fall madly in love all over again. Because I know he'll show up at our door in a couple days' time, with some bad excuse, and they'll fall to talking like old friends. And I'll sit there like the third wheel I am.

The exhaustion hits me like a freight train, and I flop back down into my bed. I'll deal with the time travel thing later, but after last night's late...activities, my eyelids are fighting the same magnetic attraction that I'm battling between Connor and Nessa.

Not bothering to retrieve the sheet from the floor, I roll over to face the wall and close my eyes, trying to block out the lingering smell of my roommate's future husband.

I hear Nessa's soft laugh from behind me, and a smile steals my lips. It's the best lullaby I could ask for.

"I'm ordering a pizza, you want any?" she asks.

"No," I mumble, already losing consciousness. It's almost a shame. I remember that pizza, and it was heavenly. But Nessa's rustling as she unpacks lulls me into a stupor.

As I drift off, I let myself imagine that it can stay this way, just the two of us.

* * *

Hello and a huge THANK YOU to everyone who's stuck with it so far. You're awesome and you all deserve cookies! 🍪

Things are just getting started for Lana. But in the meantime, I'm curious. If there was one day in your life that you wish you could do over again, what would it be?

Come and hang out in the comments if you'd like. (If you're too awkward for comments, no worries—so am I! We can be socially awkward in the comments together.)

As always, happy Wattpadding and Happy Pride! 🌈🌈