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Mira wakes up gasping, feeling like she’s been struck by lightning. For a second, she’s half convinced she’s still asleep, lights and noise flashing behind her eyes, playing out in her mind like a movie that she feels like she’s seen a thousand times.
The smell of dirt and earth; the brush of fingers across her knuckles; the weight of a shovel in her hands; the quiet hum of an open fridge interspersed with talking; soft music playing from another room; the heat of stage lights; sunbeams from open windows, spilling past a chair; fresh strawberries; pen ink smudged on her palms; silent promises ghosting across her temple; potted plants lining the hallway; snow on her face; I hate leaving; come back to me.
When the pain subsides, fading away almost entirely as if it was never there in the first place, Mira finds herself doubled over. She grabs at her chest, her heart hammering behind the palm of her hand, thoughts racing so hard and so loud that it’s almost impossible to make out any of them. The world seems to shift on its axis, and for a moment, Mira almost expects to fall with it. Everything swirls and swirls until it collides inward on itself, noise and lights and memories and smells and tastes burning away at the back of her throat, settling deep inside of her chest where something—
Tugs.
And then the entire world is alive, not just inside of her head, and Mira feels the exact moment her thoughts sharpen and shift, allowing for one to come through the loudest.
Zoey.
Mira swears to god she’s never shot up faster in her life.
It hits her like a train, another gasp being forced from her throat. She feels like she breathes for the first time in—she doesn’t know how long, and Zoey never tells her, and this...this has never happened before. This has never happened before, she realises, feet hitting the floor of her apartment. That makes her dizzy to think about, and she has to stumble back, collapsing onto her bed for a second, waiting for her vision to stop swimming. Mira has the distant thought to grab her glasses, which helps with the blurriness, but the black spots along the corners of her peripherals take a little longer to disappear completely.
Mira quickly replays the last twenty-three years of her life. She moved in here three years ago, she took a gap year before going into accounting, she—
She’s also not twenty-three, she realises, blinking at her alarm clock. It’s midnight. She’s twenty-four.
Mira squints.
And then she starts to laugh, tipping her head back as she drags her hands down her face, shoulders shaking as she tries to get herself back under control. It takes longer than it has any right to, and by the end of it, Mira feels almost more exhausted than she had been when she went to sleep. She breathes out, shaking her head as she pushes herself up to her feet, grabbing her phone a second later, because she needs to talk to—
Rumi. Who...
Right. Of course. She met Rumi three weeks ago, and was suspiciously enamoured with her from the moment they met. Mira had chalked it up to her stupid grin and wide-eyed, deer in headlights look that she offered every single time Mira so much as complimented her, which is suddenly ridiculous, because she already knows she’s said all of that a thousand times, so why is Rumi still like that?
Mira groans, throwing her head back again as she starts to pace. How does Zoey do this? Mira’s been at it for all of three minutes and she’s already tempted to just slam her skull into the nearest wall and then sit there and wait for Zoey to come back to her. Mira pauses after that thought, slowing her movements. Last time, she had been with Rumi, which she’s still beyond proud of, and this time she’s...not. Not exactly, at least. But Zoey, before her and Rumi had managed to work something out, had always found Rumi first.
Maybe she should text?
Mira has the distinct realisation that it’s currently after midnight, that Rumi’s birthday—the same as it always is—was only a few months ago in February, and she knows that Rumi would have mentioned Zoey by now. Mira can remember the dozens upon dozens of times Zoey has led them to each other, how it took no time at all before Zoey was pulling them back together after only a week or so. If Rumi had found Zoey first, or if Zoey had found her first, Mira would know.
She stares down at her phone for a few beats of silence, chewing on the inside of her cheek. Is it still weird to text Rumi and flat-out ask? Would that even do anything? Mira dives back into the memories she has of Zoey sitting her and Rumi down, easily detailing everything that they’ve been through, who they are, who she is to them, who they are to each other. It’s always made perfect sense, and Mira has never not believed her, but that’s because it’s Zoey. Zoey, who has had all the time in the world to practice that speech. Zoey, who has always been so naturally good with words that it leaves Mira breathless. Zoey, who is perfect and amazing and is one of the loves of her life, who always seems to know exactly what to do.
Mira purses her lips, staring a little harder at her phone. She promised Zoey two forevers ago that she would find her alongside Rumi, and that came true. She remembered her early one forever ago, before Zoey even had the chance to say or do anything other than accept coffee, even if Rumi beat her to the punch that time. Not her fault she was busy making for-you-hot-chocolate.
She promised that she would find Zoey again. Zoey has been doing this for an unknowable amount of time, and she always says it doesn’t matter, that the years disappear to her as soon as she finds them, but it makes Mira’s chest hurt so horribly that it nearly makes her sick to think about. She knows that Zoey is telling the truth, that no amount of time could ever be too long for her, that she’d wait forever if she needed to, but Mira hates it. She hates making her wait.
Mira sighs, biting the bullet as she unlocks her phone, padding out from her room into the kitchen, hovering at the window. Her apartment has always been a place she’s liked being, nice and homey and space for just her, but it’s painfully cold and quiet and all too big suddenly. Rumi and Zoey should be here. If Rumi was here, right now, she’d be sprawled out on the beanbag in the living room, and Zoey would probably be sitting on the table, and...
“Okay,” Mira hisses out, dragging a hand down her face. “It’s fine.”
She pulls up Rumi’s contact, staring a little too hard at the screen. Mira screws up her whole face, letting out another groan as she forces herself to start typing.
She immediately deletes her first attempt, and the second, and the third, all the way up until it feels like pulling teeth would feel less miserable than this. In the end, Mira decides to just man up and take the first step for all of them, typing out a simple Zoey and hitting send.
Plausible deniability. If Rumi asks, she can just lie and say that she meant to text someone else. And if Rumi remembers, then, great! Everything works out just fine! Mira winces as that thought comes and goes, feeling a little too hopeful to be accurate. Then again, Rumi has always been stubborn, and so has she. That’s part of her charm, Mira supposes. Or at least the reason she’s been able to stick around for so long. She doesn’t think there’s a world in which she doesn’t fight every possible force, cosmos or not, to get back to Zoey and Rumi.
Mira jolts when she feels her phone buzz in her hand, staring down at the text from...Rumi.
Zoey?
It makes Mira’s stomach drop, her chest aching again. How does Zoey go through this? How does she handle them not remembering right away? Mira doesn’t know how long it’s been, some of her older memories too distant and foggy around the edges, but she knows that the last two forevers ago have been different. Her and Rumi finding Zoey first, her and Rumi being more insistent on it. That’s new, and then they managed, and then they remembered her immediately, and now...
Now, it’s just Mira.
She wonders if Zoey still has her old number. Mira sighs as soon as she has the thought, rolling her eyes. That’s a bit too hopeful even for her, so she shoves that away from the forefront of her mind. She has no idea how long it’s been, but there’s no way Zoey still even has that phone, let alone the number.
Mira starts to pace again, keeping her phone in her hand as she tries to figure out what she should say. Really, she should play it off like a joke and then start to religiously search up Zoey’s name on every platform she can think of—Zoey needs to start making public accounts for this exact situation, Mira thinks—and go from there, but it feels like a betrayal to just drop this. She knows it’s hardly Rumi’s fault for not remembering, given how Mira didn’t even know until fifteen minutes ago at best, but it still hurts. It still makes her sick to her stomach.
Mira almost drops her phone when it starts to ring, her face screwing up in confusion and then panic when she sees that Rumi is calling her. She draws in a deep breath, quietly muttering to herself that she’s strong enough for this, and then picks up.
Before Mira can even get a word off, Rumi is practically gasping for air, and—
“Zoey!” Rumi whisper-yells, and she sounds like her. “Is—Mira? Is she there? You remembered?”
“You—you’re asking me that?” Mira demands back, but the giddy, breathless laughter that gets tugged from her chest immediately softens the words. She grins so hard it nearly splits her face in two, the weight of the world sliding right off of her shoulders, fading away into nothingness.
“Well!” Rumi giggles back, sounding just as breathless as Mira. “I guess—okay, fine, whatever. Answer me! Is she there? Did you find her?”
Mira shakes her head, pausing when she remembers Rumi can’t see her. “No. I just remembered. Like, um, maybe fifteen minutes ago? I woke up and felt like I was dying, like—like the coffee shop,” Mira says, listening as Rumi hums along to her words, a familiar noise that sends a shiver down her spine. “Hey, actually, aren’t you forgetting something?”
Rumi is quiet for a few seconds. “No? I also just remembered, your text, like...it woke me up, and then, you know. Just like the coffee shop,” she mutters. “Felt like I got hit by a bus. It’s nicer when Zoey eases us into it.”
“Yeah, well, she deserves the break,” Mira says, smiling as she settles into the soft lull of Rumi’s voice, her heart slowing down just enough to be manageable. “You are forgetting something, though. And it’s super fucked up.”
“No, I’m not,” Rumi shoots back. “I remember you, and Zoey, and the last time, and literally every other time. And my head hurts,” she grumbles, “So I’m going to take something for that, and you can either tell me what I’m apparently forgetting, or you can be quiet.”
Mira grins, ducking her head as a familiar warmth spreads throughout her at Rumi’s teasing. The slight pitch to her voice, the way Mira can see her perfectly in her mind—not flustered, but getting riled up enough that it would only take another few jabs before she starts to sputter. “Take your time, tiger,” Mira murmurs instead, choosing to be the bigger person.
And maybe she just says it to hear Rumi’s content sigh from the other end of the phone, because it’s been an entire forever since she’s gotten to hear that, gotten to have her like this, and it’s always too much time in between where Mira is forced to go without. She’s always been selfish like that; she’s sure that has to be part of the reason Zoey was willing to be the one to stay. Mira doesn’t know how she could handle this being her role in everything. It’s nothing short of a miracle to her that Rumi remembered, though it’s equally unsurprising, given how Rumi has always been stubborn and competitive, just like her.
Mira listens to Rumi’s quiet movements from the other line, hearing the clink of a glass, the distinct sound of Rumi shifting and then swallowing, the soft pause in between as she settles back down wherever she is.
“Okay,” Rumi murmurs, sounding just as at ease as Mira feels. “I’m lost. What am I missing?”
“I’ll take it easy because you have a headache,” Mira teases, grinning at the affronted scoff she gets after that. “What’s today, Ru?”
“The 14th,” Rumi dutifully reports. “Well, it’s, like, barely the 14th. It just—” Rumi suddenly gasps, and Mira can’t help but laugh, throwing her head back as she does her best to get herself back under control. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! It’s—actually, you know what? It’s barely the 14th! It’s—you just woke me up! You just woke me up! And then I got hit by a train! A bus! Both! I’m, I have the—the worst headache in the whole world, worst the world’s ever seen, and you—whatever! That’s not fair!”
Mira has to clamp her free hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking so hard she swears she’s going to fall over or pass out from how hard she’s laughing. After another second of listening to Rumi’s frantic sputtering and remembering how to breathe, Mira eventually manages to rasp out, “Sure, tiger. Make all the excuses you want. You just forgot.”
“I was busy remembering our long-lost soulmate!” Rumi hisses out. “Whatever, Mira! You’re the worst.”
“Uh-huh,” Mira laughs, swaying back and forth on her feet, managing to force her laughter into something more controllable, a little less desperate and wild. “I love you. I missed you.”
The words are forced out of her chest without her even meaning to say them. There’s a certain kind of desperation hidden under them, woven into each syllable, and Mira can’t help but feel the urge to say them a thousand times over. She knows she already has, that she’s probably said them a million times to both Rumi and Zoey, but she hasn’t this time. It matters in every forever that passes the three of them by. Mira is just making up for lost time, and she knows she has a lot to make up for, even if Zoey never tells her how long.
Rumi’s sputtering immediately stops, and Mira can hear the smile in her voice when Rumi softly says back, “I missed you, Mira. I love you. Should we go find her? Do you think she’s even awake?”
“With Zoey’s sleep schedule?” Mira offers, rolling her eyes. “She could be. I’ve never asked how she spends our...birthdays. Um, after.”
“Seems like an off-topic kind of thing,” Rumi murmurs back. “Not something she’d answer. Or if she did—”
“It would be another ‘it doesn’t matter’,” Mira agrees before Rumi can even finish, smiling at the hum of agreement she gets. “I don’t know how to find her. I’ve never been on this end of it before.”
Rumi makes a noise. “Yeah. We should have been doing this forever ago.”
“Several forevers ago,” Mira corrects. “Fuck Iseul and Nari for not doing a better job.”
“Hana and Eunyeong weren’t doing any better,” Rumi mutters. “Maybe that should be a plan for the morning,” she offers after a second, sounding unsure. “I mean, I don’t even know if she’s, like, here, you know? In the city? She could be on a different continent.”
Mira snorts, pressing her thumb and forefinger to the bridge of her nose, bumping her glasses out of the way. “I can put in our old address. Check to make sure that hasn’t changed. Do you have your key still?”
There’s a beat of silence.
Mira winces. “Right. Stupid question.”
Rumi giggles, sounding far too pleased. “It was cute.”
“Whatever,” Mira sighs, tipping her head back. “Okay. Morning plan. Can you come over? I’m not going to sleep alone.”
There’s a pause. Rumi clears her throat, a long, drawn-out sigh coming out of her. “Can you? I can’t drive.”
“You literally have had all the time in the world to learn. Do you—do you even know how spoiled you are?” Mira demands, but she’s not helping the problem, given how she’s stalking to her room to shove a few pairs of clothes into a bag, plus her charger, plus everything else she needs to effectively move in for the time being. “You’re fucking unbelievable, Rumi. I’ve—I’ve taught you how to drive before!”
“Not this time!” Rumi laughs, clearly completely unbothered. “I’ll see you soon? Please? I miss you.”
Mira feels like she’s been slapped, her heart stuttering in her chest. “Shut up. You know I’m on my way.”
Rumi laughs again, humming softly. “There’s nothing wrong with making sure. I’ll see you in, what, like...twenty minutes?”
“Don’t hang up,” Mira immediately says, tossing her phone onto her bed as she starts to pack in earnest. She doesn’t have time to feel embarrassed about the slight pitch in her voice, because whatever. They’ve done this a thousand times by now. Mira knows Rumi and Zoey better than she knows herself; there’s barely any room for shame in their relationship, not when they’ve had the entirety of the world to get used to each other.
Still, in the early days of a new forever, Mira finds that she still manages to be a little nervous. She thinks it must have something to do with her soul remembering how to be hers again.
“Never would,” Rumi promises. The warmth in her voice has Mira settling completely, letting out a slow, shaky breath as she shoves a few more things into her bag.
It only takes another five minutes for her to get ready, overpacking more than she probably should, but she doesn’t know how long it’s going to take for them to find Zoey. Hopefully not long—if they both already remember, that has to be a good start. Zoey usually finds them pretty quickly, so Mira realistically shouldn’t need this many clothes, but she’d rather be prepared.
She’d also rather not have to come back to her apartment ever again. It feels too big, and she needs Rumi and Zoey here for it to stop feeling like that, and she only has one of them right now. Mira knows based off of a thousand forevers that Rumi is the one who tends to have the smaller place out of the three of them, and she’s banking on Rumi’s tiny apartment to help make the world feel a little less vast.
Mira pulls up Rumi’s address as she jogs down the stairs, ignoring the way Rumi verbally says it just about fifty times, grinning when that riles Rumi up. It’s one of her favourite things to do, and Mira is beyond thrilled that she can still get a rise out of Rumi even after a thousand forevers. She supposes she shouldn’t actually be surprised about it—Rumi is still Rumi, Mira is still Mira. They’ve always been like this, according to Zoey; and, according to all the memories that have become much clearer.
Rumi insists that it’s going to take her twenty minutes to get there. Mira picks up on the undertone of hope in her words.
She makes it in thirteen minutes.
And then she’s racing up the stairs, laughing when Rumi suddenly realises that the random ding noise was from Mira shutting off her car, and it quickly becomes a race to see which one of them can open the door fast enough. Mira only loses because it’s locked, but she was very tempted to start ramming her shoulder into it, and then—
There’s Rumi.
Mira doesn’t waste any time in dropping her bag and phone—the one that’s still technically on call with Rumi—and rushes her. She feels her heart soar when Rumi bursts out laughing, hooking her arms over Mira’s shoulders, pressing up on her tip-toes. Technically, Rumi kisses her first, but Mira is going to ignore that technicality.
“Hi,” Mira whispers, breathless and dizzy. “Missed you.”
“Hi yourself,” Rumi teases, kissing her again before she murmurs, “I missed you. I can’t believe you got here so fast.”
Mira snorts, planting her hands on Rumi’s waist, shuffling them back into her apartment. She kicks her bag into the hallway with her foot, pausing as she looks over her shoulder at her phone, heaving a sigh. She shuffles them right back out, grinning at the way Rumi howls with laughter at that, feeling herself start to laugh when she tries to bend them backward so Rumi can be the one to pick it up so Mira doesn’t have to let go of her.
It mostly works. They nearly topple over each other and die in the hallway, but Rumi does eventually manage to get a grasp on her phone, and then they’re back to shuffling into Rumi’s apartment, slow and steady, like they’ve got all the time in the world.
Mira supposes they do.
They talk for a while as Mira unpacks, finding herself naturally moving around Rumi’s apartment as if they’ve done this a thousand times—which they have, just...never here—and it makes her giddy each time she realises she’s doing it. They go over the game plan for the morning, which is more or less: wake up, go to every cafe in the nearby vicinity to get breakfast fifteen times in hopes of finding Zoey somewhere, travel through the entire city and go to every location where Zoey could possibly be, and generally spend the whole day out and about. Rinse and repeat if they don’t get it the first day.
By the time Mira is done unpacking, loading her clothes into Rumi’s perfectly, meticulously organised dresser, Rumi is sprawled out on their bed with her hands stretched over her head, helpful as ever. Mira doesn’t have it in her to even tease Rumi, not now, not when they’re finally back together.
Instead, Mira slinks to the far end of the room, turning off the lights before she pads back to the bed. She settles under the covers, immediately pressing her face into Rumi’s shoulder, letting out a soft, trembling sigh.
“Missed you,” Mira whispers. “Love you.”
“Love you, too,” Rumi whispers back, her hand coming up to settle against the back of Mira’s head, nails scratching lightly against her scalp after a second. “We’ll find her. She’ll be here soon. Promise.”
“Soon,” Mira agrees, wrapping her arms tightly around Rumi, holding her as close as physically possible.
There’s the slightest ache in her chest that serves as a constant reminder that this isn’t perfect, not yet. Not without Zoey. There’s a space that’s terribly open and empty to the left of her, but Mira knows it’ll be filled soon enough. Zoey never leaves them waiting for long, not like how they do to her, even if she’d never blame them for it.
They’ll find her. Mira knows that they will.
“Okay,” Rumi announces, guiding them through a park that Mira doesn’t think she’s been to before, though it feels weirdly familiar. She’s been diving through her memories all morning to try and figure out why, but she’s come up strangely empty.
“Okay?” Mira asks back, her arm looped around Rumi’s. There’s a distant part of her that thinks that it’s almost funny how they’re already all over each other, as if they technically only met three weeks ago. It’s hard for her to imagine how it used to be from before, back when she was just kind of entranced by Rumi for a reason she couldn’t explain.
Rumi nods, clearing her throat. “Okay. Zoey always tells me that I show up in the worst places for her. So, obviously, we need to go somewhere awful. Downright horrible. What’s the most embarrassing place either of us could go right now?”
Mira laughs, rolling her eyes as she sticks out her foot, grinning when Rumi only narrowly manages to avoid tripping. “That’s your grand plan?”
“Well! What’s your grand plan?” Rumi demands back, scoffing at her.
“Cafes, like we said,” Mira easily supplies, grinning at the eye roll that gets her. “I mean, she’s here, right? You can feel it, can’t you? Like...in your chest? The tug?”
Rumi hums, nodding again after a second. “Yeah. I just don’t know where it’s telling me to go. How does she do this?”
“Practice, I guess?” Mira helplessly offers, though the words sound wrong as soon as they come out of her mouth. “Because she loves us,” Mira corrects a second later.
“Yeah,” Rumi agrees, sighing. “We could alternate, maybe? Like, you know, hit up a cafe, go to a trampoline park, loop back around to another cafe?”
Mira snickers, knocking her shoulder into Rumi’s. “I think you just want to go to a trampoline park. And you know how pissed Zoey would be if she found out we went to one without her. I think she’d actually, like, kill the both of us. You remember how jealous she got when you brought up your awful mountain bike riding from a year before she found us.”
“Awful, as if you weren’t dying to go and do it with me,” Rumi shoots back, which is unfortunately true. Mira still hasn’t done that yet. Maybe this time she’ll actually get the chance. After they find Zoey, obviously. “We’ve already been to five different cafes. No Zoey. A considerable lack of Zoey, actually.”
“Well, that’s five cafes we’ve eliminated,” Mira offers. “There’s like...six more around your apartment.”
Rumi bitterly scoffs again, grumbling under her breath. “I hope they all close down. Why are there so many? There should just—there should be one, and it should be called Zoey Please We Miss You, or whatever.”
Mira cackles, throwing her head back, clutching desperately onto Rumi’s arm to stop herself from falling over. “That’s what you’d name it?”
“It gets the point across!”
“It’s awful!”
“Shut up!” Rumi laughs, shoving her away. Mira just grins harder, wriggling her way right back to Rumi’s side, resting her head on top of her shoulder, batting her eyelashes right against Rumi’s jaw to make her squirm. “Stop! That tickles—you know that! Why do you still do that to me? You’re—you’re awful.”
Mira laughs, finally relenting after another second. “And yet, here we are. You keep coming back, Ru. Seems like you’re into awfulness.”
“Zoey makes up for you," Rumi mutters, but she’s grinning so hard that it makes Mira’s head spin. And then Rumi is kissing her, soft and fleeting, but it’s enough to make Mira melt right into the ground. “C’mon. Six more cafes, or whatever. There’s—actually, there are some really pretty parks nearby. There’s this garden in one of them. Wouldn’t that be, like, super romantic?”
“It’s never romantic with you,” Mira says, completely seriously. “You literally told me she found you in a bodega once. While you were hungover.”
Rumi makes a miserable noise, groaning a second later, dragging her free hand down her face. “Don’t even start, Mira.”
“Just saying,” Mira hums with a grin, forcing the both of them to start moving again. “Maybe we’re getting closer. Like...hot and cold, or whatever. Do you think the tug is usually this fucking useless for her, or is it just because we suck at this part?”
“I think we just suck,” Rumi bitterly admits. “Once again, fuck whoever we used to be.”
Mira nods her agreement. “We’ll get there. We’ll get it this time. Come on. Six more cafes, and then we can start checking out the parks you wanted to go to. I’ve already looked her up literally a thousand times. She has the same name! How can she be this difficult to find?”
“Do you think she’s following us?” Rumi asks, snorting after. “Should I just start posting her name over and over again until she gets the hint? I can turn on my location.”
Mira rolls her eyes. “I think she would have messaged us if she knew. Different last names.”
Rumi waves her free hand. “I’m getting mine legally changed.”
“Sure you are,” Mira teases, pausing for half a second when the tug in her chest twists. “Did you—?”
Rumi stares up at her with wide eyes, face splitting into a grin. “Oh my god.”
Mira stands still, feeling her heart start to pound in her chest so hard it nearly makes her fall over. For another second, the tug dies back out and fades away into the vague pull it’s been for the last eight hours, but then it gets louder again. Harsher. It jerks forward, spinning slightly to the left.
She looks at Rumi. Rumi looks back at her.
Mira breaks off into a sprint. Rumi is right at her side, grabbing at her arm as she urges, “Come on, come on!”
The tug guides them into a strip mall, and Mira almost wants to laugh at the way she can see at least two other cafes. Before she can tease Rumi about being totally right, the tug yanks her forward so hard that it nearly has Mira tripping over her own feet. If Rumi wasn’t clinging onto her arm so hard, Mira would have absolutely gone tumbling forward. She shoots Rumi the most thankful look she can manage, and then they’re back to racing down the sidewalk.
It takes a lot of dodging and weaving throughout the morning crowd, though Mira isn’t being all that careful. They don’t matter, they can live with getting shoved a little—she needs to find Zoey. She needs to see her again, to feel her, to have her, to finally have the last piece inside of her slotted back to where it belongs.
Rumi suddenly tugs them off to the side, and Mira is helpless but to follow, knowing that Rumi would never guide her astray, not with this. Never with this.
She feels her lungs burning the longer they run, every part of her screaming. Mira practically doubles over when Rumi pulls them to a stop, barely able to hear Rumi’s breathless whisper of, “Here. She’s here.”
Mira rapidly nods, blinking up at wherever it is Rumi has led them to as she catches her breath. She squints as she reads the plaque, glancing over at Rumi, who already has broken out into a fit of giggles. “A cat cafe?”
“We should have known,” Rumi solemnly says through breathless pants, still half-doubled over, free hand on her knee. “She’s the one who keeps adopting strays. We have ten Derpys in every life.”
Mira laughs, but she wastes no more time than she already has. She tugs at Rumi’s arm, pushing open the door a second later, almost stumbling over her feet. She’s still a little dizzy, a little lightheaded. The tug in her chest hasn’t gone away—if anything it’s only ramped up significantly—and it’s making it hard to focus on anything at all, walking including. Mira is hardly complaining.
The bell chiming above her is enough to make Mira roll her eyes, the sound becoming something synonymous with love, no matter how ridiculous it makes her feel.
There’s a brief period of time, maybe ten seconds at best, where there’s nothing. Each second feels like a lifetime, like the weight of the world is slowly suffocating her, closing in around her. It’s enough to make her chest hurt, almost as if she’s being torn apart, and then there’s—
Mira watches as one cat bumps against her leg. She’s already got one in her lap—a pretty tabby—and the second one is a deep orange, bumping its head into her leg at least three times before it finally starts to clamber up into her lap alongside the tabby.
And for a second, with Rumi frantically tugging at her arm, Mira thinks that she might be the happiest she’s ever been.
It’s like the world clicks into place. Everything goes quiet and still and soft, and the tug in her chest stops screaming at her. Mira feels like she can breathe for the first time since she woke up at midnight with the distinct feeling that something—someone—was missing.
She can’t do anything other than let Rumi drag her forward, her heart hammering so loudly in her chest that she can barely hear anything else above the noise of blood rushing through her head. Mira almost wants to laugh, watching as Zoey doesn’t even look at them, her gaze focused on luring a third cat over to her, tapping her fingers against the table incessantly, brow furrowed a little.
She looks like she’s waiting.
The cup next to her looks untouched, Zoey’s phone settled next to it. She has a backpack that’s shoved off to the side of her, half-unzipped.
Mira gives Rumi a look, blinking a few times. Rumi just grins, nodding her head rapidly, shoving her forward a little. A silent movement that holds more weight than Mira could ever put into words. She knows that it’s always, always Rumi first. This isn’t the same, it can’t be, given how Rumi is standing just a pace away from her, but it’s enough. A quiet offering, a soft, Find her first.
Mira takes a few strides forward, forcing herself to remember that this is Zoey, one of the loves of her life, and that there really shouldn’t be any nervousness with her. That doesn’t completely work, and Mira swears she’s going to die by the time she eventually gets within speaking distance, or touching distance, really, her heart in her throat.
“Making friends?” Mira eventually settles on, her voice sounding too quiet in her head. “Without us?”
Zoey’s head snaps up so fast that it has to hurt, and Mira almost wants to rush out an apology, but she has exactly zero time between thinking that and then being stunned into silence at the way Zoey’s mouth rapidly opens and closes, her eyes widening.
“...Mira?” Zoey whispers, blinking about a thousand times. She twists her head to the side, a soft laugh escaping her lips, followed by an equally soft, “Rumi?”
“Hi!” Rumi cheerfully laughs, coming up to loop her arms around Mira’s shoulders, resting her head atop her own arm a second later, knocking their heads together. “Found you!”
Mira lets out a nervous bark of laughter, feeling a little less terrified at the stupid, ridiculous way Rumi says it. “It’s not hide and seek, Ru.”
“It was basically like hide and seek,” Rumi immediately disagrees. “The worst game of hide and seek ever.”
Zoey jerks up so fast that the tabby on her lap makes a displeased noise, and then Zoey is rushing out frantic apologies to the cat, and then Zoey is charging her, and Mira only has three seconds to prepare before Zoey is launching herself right into her arms, practically spidermonkey-ing around her. Mira buries her face into the side of Zoey’s neck, feeling herself melt in between both Rumi and Zoey, distantly making out the sound of the two of them laughing.
All she can do is hold Zoey tighter, drawing in too-fast, shaky breaths as she tries to keep herself from crying. How does Zoey live with this? If Zoey hadn’t said her name, if she hadn’t looked at Rumi and recognised the both of them, if she had just—if she hadn’t known, Mira thinks she wouldn’t have been able to survive it. How did Zoey do this for so long?
Mira doesn’t have very long to think about that, not when Zoey is busy peppering her face with a thousand kisses, laughing against her jaw, the corner of her mouth, kissing her directly a second later. Mira can hear Rumi’s groan behind her, which whatever, she kissed Zoey first last time, she can wait her turn. It doesn’t take long for Zoey to shut her up, twisting her head around Mira’s. It can’t be the ideal position to kiss Rumi, but Zoey makes it work, just like she always does.
After another few seconds of this, Zoey wriggles out of her grasp, hands still gripping onto Mira’s forearms, eyes huge, tears shining in the corners of them.
“How did you—?”
Rumi comes up to stand directly beside Mira rather than half-behind her, looping an arm around her shoulder, her other hand reaching out to take one of Zoey’s. “Mira texted me last—well today, I guess.”
Zoey blinks. And then the tears really start coming, and Mira finds her chest tightening with the sight. She knows they have to be happy tears—she’s had a lot of practice with being able to tell—but she still hates seeing Zoey cry at all. Zoey just shakes her head after a second, quietly laughing, burying her face in her hands.
Mira gently reaches out, taking Zoey’s hand again, swiping over her cheekbone with her thumb, wiping away some of the tears that have already made their way down. “We’re here,” she whispers. “We’re here. We found you. We’re not going anywhere.”
The words hurt to say. That’s not completely true. They’ll leave eventually, and this will happen again—Mira is going to make it happen. This will happen again, Mira swears to god. She doesn’t care what she has to do, or what her soul does in the downtime between forevers. She’ll fight whatever she has to fight to make it stay like this, to force herself into remembering, into finding Zoey first, into never making her wait for longer than she already has. She knows Rumi will, too. She can see the look on Rumi’s face, the slight furrow of her brow, the concentration in her eyes as she reaches out to wipe away Zoey’s tears from her opposite side.
Zoey eventually laughs, again, nodding rapidly. “Happy birthday, Mira. I’m sorry I missed yours, Ru.”
Rumi makes a noise, shaking her head. “It’s overrated, anyway.”
“It is,” Mira agrees, smiling at the jab to her ribs that gets her. “What are you doing out here, Zo?”
Zoey sniffles, but then she’s grinning, beautiful and bright and so stunning it makes Mira’s head swim. “Waiting for you. I felt the tug,” she explains, softly. “It brought me here, and, y’know, Rumi. Figured it would be her. And then you both weren’t here, but it was...” Zoey shakes her head, laughing softly. “It was, like, insistent. So I stayed. And you found me.”
There’s a brief moment of silence before Zoey whispers again, “You found me.”
“Of course we did,” Mira murmurs, leaning in to press a kiss to the corner of her mouth. “We always will.”
“Always,” Rumi quickly agrees, voice just as soft. “We found you last time, right? And this time.”
Zoey nods, pressing her head against Mira’s chest. “I literally don’t get how you keep doing this,” she says with another laugh. “You guys are ridiculous. Stubborn. Stubborn. I love you,” Zoey whispers. “I love you so much. Both of you, I love you so much.”
Rumi comes up behind Zoey this time, gently wrapping her arms around her, flashing Mira the softest smile in the world before her head comes to settle against Zoey’s shoulder. “We love you, too, Zoey,” Rumi murmurs. “I told you that I wanted you to find us together, and, you know. I like getting what I want.”
“Demanding,” Mira agrees, pressing a soft kiss to the top of Zoey’s head. “Spoiled, actually. She still doesn’t know how to drive.”
“Why would I drive when I have you? And Zoey?” Rumi demands, scoffing. “You’ve never liked it when I’ve driven. I know you grab onto the stupid safety handles, and I’ve literally never even gotten us in an accident before!”
“‘Cause you’ve driven for a total of twenty minutes across forever,” Zoey giggles, pulling back from Mira, grinning so widely that it has to hurt. “You can keep coming back, but you can’t manage a three-point-turn?”
Rumi screws up her whole face, sticking out her tongue. “One of those is easier than the other.”
“And it shouldn’t be!” Mira laughs, rolling her eyes. She gently tugs Zoey back to sitting down, making her way to the opposite side of the booth, hand snapping out to grab at Rumi’s wrist, pulling her to sit down, too. “You’ll be pleased to know,” Mira starts, setting her arm down on the table, face-up. “The burn is from hot glue this time. Not cooking.”
Zoey’s eyes immediately light up, her fingers tracing over the scar. “What were you hot glueing?”
“My chair,” Mira mutters, her shoulders sagging in defeat when Rumi starts to laugh at her. “It was—it was a temporary solution! And clearly it didn’t work!” She laughs, feeling her heart thrum in her chest. “But whatever. What about you?” Mira asks, nudging Rumi. “Another Jinu?”
Rumi shakes her head, gently tugging at her shirt, pulling it to the side to reveal the slightly discoloured skin there. “I actually fell all by myself this time! Sidewalk burn. It hurt a lot.”
Zoey laughs, eyes soft, crinkling at the sides. “Clumsy. Both of you,” she adds after Mira starts to cackle, shooting her a look. “Don’t think I forgot you, Miss I-Tripped-On-This-Sidewalk-For-Years. I know you.”
Mira sticks out her tongue. “I don’t think that’s true.”
That gets Zoey riled up, as expected, and Mira gets to spend the next ten minutes of her life being lectured about her life, which she dutifully sits through, grin getting bigger and bigger the longer Zoey speaks. That only makes Zoey huffier, but Mira doesn’t miss the way she starts grinning halfway through, eventually shifting her lecture to Rumi, who sputters about ‘doing nothing wrong’, but she sits there and takes it, too.
The tabby eventually comes back. It ignores Mira and Rumi entirely, coming back to settle around Zoey’s shoulders. The dark orange one does the same thing, taking its place in Zoey’s lap. It takes a lot of huffing and puffing from Rumi before the cat Zoey had been trying to coax over—a pretty black cat with two white spots on its chest—leaps up into Mira’s lap. It doesn't stay there, moving to sit between her and Rumi. It rumbles louder than both of Zoey’s cats, which Zoey pouts about.
They talk for hours. Mira barely remembers a time in this life where it had just been her. The world finally feels like it’s pieced back together as the hours stretch on, filled with stories from these lives, from their past forevers, little bits and jabs traded between all of them, laughter flooding the air.
It’s nothing short of perfect, and Mira silently makes the promise to keep giving this to Zoey, for as many forevers as she needs.