Danny couldn't look up. His hand looked the same as ever, tanned a little from early morning runs, neat nails, a hint of dark hair peeking from the cuff of his hoodie. What had he been wearing on the plane? It seems like something he should have remembered, but the feeling of Mindy's fingers brushing the skin on his neck lingered, and the hand that had held Mindy only a moment ago and now just looked old, and empty. He shut his eyes. "You were right. The door thing is better than being pulled out of it."

"I know," Erica replied.

"How?" He finally met her eyes, green and serious and a little sad. "Are you an alien? How do you do this?"

Erica's lips tightened briefly. "You're Catholic, right?"

"Yeah."

Her serious look gave way to something a little more matter-of-fact. "Well, you're just gonna have to take this one on faith. You were hurt, and I could help. Well, I could offer help. What you do with it is up to you."

"Free will?" he asked.

"I guess so."

Danny sighed and rubbed his eyes tiredly. "She kissed me. I stayed in my seat and she came back and she kissed me. Doesn't that mean it was supposed to happen?"

"I don't know." She gave an infuriating little half shrug.

"Why did you do this? Why did I have to live through everything again if it was just going to end the same way? Is everything just up to fate?" He felt like he should be angrier, but that tank was empty. All he had left was tired. And sad.

"Do you believe in fate?" she asked.

"No." Danny lowered his head and ran his hands through his hair, resting his elbow on his knees. "Maybe. I believe you make your own fate."

"So what happened?"

"She did." A realization about what had happened settled heavily on his chest and he looked up. "She made her own fate."

"Free will." Erica's response was firm.

He wondered what it was like to be that sure about anything. He'd messed this up so badly. "Yeah."

She got that solemn therapist look on her face. "So is everything just up to fate?"

"I don't know." He felt even further from a real answer than he had only a minute ago when he'd asked Erica the exact same question. If nothing changed no matter what he did then surely it was fate. Or maybe it just meant that he would always make the same decisions. Or that Mindy would.

Except he hadn't.

Mindy hadn't.

"Maybe she wanted the same thing I wanted." He blew out a harsh breath and asked the question he'd been trying not to think about. "When I go back is anything going to be different?"

Erica shrugged again. "I don't know. You made your decisions and she made her decisions and you just have to find out when you get there. The same as any day."

"Why? Why did you do this? What was the point? To show me that I'll always fuck up and I'll always hurt her?"

Her eyes flickered a little. "When I was training for this, this thing I do, I got a free pass for 24 hours. The doctor who trained me told me I could change how time and space worked for one whole day. I could have done anything, spent the whole day walking through Barcelona, or visiting friends I don't get to see anymore because I'm busy or far away. Or they are. Anything." She licked her lips. "What I actually did was spend the whole day trying to change how this one fight with my boyfriend turned out."

Danny wondered which fight with Mindy he'd want to change. There were too many. Maybe this was fate. "Was it a bad fight?"

"It was. He wanted to take a job and I thought he should just finish school, and it felt like a small fight until suddenly it wasn't. I thought he was just being shortsighted, and too proud. He didn't think I was listening to what he wanted. Anyway, it was bad. I fixed it though, a couple of different times, but it kept ending the same way."

Danny could feel the sadness pouring off of her, this woman he didn't really know, but who for some reason had decided that he needed her. "So what happened?"

"I told him what I'd done. That I'd changed the day because our fight had gotten so bad, and that I was trying to see where he was coming from instead of being a bulldozer."

"Did it work?"

"No. He said I took away his free will. And I guess I did in a way, changing my story without acknowledging that it was his story too."

"So is that what you're doing here? Trying to help me avoid the same mistake you made?"

"No." She shook her head before meeting his eyes. "My mistakes are mine, and your mistakes are yours. But there are people who love us, and people we love, who are the stars of their own stories. We can't force our version of events. We'll make choices they hate, and they'll make choices we hate and we can't just keep approaching a relationship like our way is the right way."

"I don't understand her way. I don't think I can be what she wants."

"I don't think anyone knows how to do or say the right things to make someone love them and stay with them."

"What do I do?"

"You go back and live your life. You'll probably screw things up again anyway, but don't stop trying, and don't ever forget you're not the only one in this situation. You're going to forget that sometimes, but try again."

"Try again."

The cold isn't a surprise this time.

. . . .

Danny could hear the TV through the door. He hadn't expected to be dropped back into his life in front of her apartment, but since that's where he was going when he'd been pulled away to make the same mistakes on a plane, it seemed only fitting.

His knuckles flew across the wood, a tiny, too-quiet tattoo that he wished he could take back. He could turn away if she didn't hear him. He wasn't ready. He might never be ready.

"Danny?" The sun streaming through the windows behind her as the door swung open struck her at that perfect angle again, and he was reminded of a halo and a kiss from a version of last night that never happened to them. Remembering all that followed made his heart stutter in his chest. It never happened though, not for her, and her puzzled look broke his train of thought.

"Hi. I, uh. I locked my keys in my apartment. Can I get the spare I gave you?"

She opened the door wider. "Sure. Come in. I ordered way too much food."

"You always do that." He smiled at her, trying to push away memories of falling asleep on the sofa with her, a warm little raft in a sea of white boxes and abandoned chopsticks. She never quite got the hang of chopsticks. "Wok Box? You got diarrhea last time we ate there."

"You don't know that. I'd also eaten that hotdog, and we haven't seen that cart since that day. I think he poisoned everyone and had to move to Baltimore or something."

"Serves you right for buying a hotdog from a guy dressed as a hotdog." He watched as she up-ended her purse on the counter and poked at the debris with a little frown.

"Rude." She walked over to the door and jammed her hand in the pocket of a denim jacket and took it him a minute to remember why it looked familiar. He'd always kind of loved her in denim. It made her seem realer somehow, something as plain as denim against her electraberry dress. She dropped the keys in his hand. "Here."

"Thanks."

She looked uncomfortable, suddenly stripped of a task that allowed them both to pretend this was as simple as a favor. She stood very slightly too far from him, like she was afraid he'd lunge at her again. "I'm glad you came by. I kinda wanted to talk to you after last night. I think maybe I should move back to this place." She cleared her throat. "I think I got all my stuff this morning, but you should check."

Danny nodded and swallowed the stay stuck in his throat. "Okay."

"It was really nice of you to offer, but maybe I'm not ready to buy a place yet. And maybe we're not ready to be neighbors yet either."

"Whatever you want. I guess I didn't think about how that might backfire."

Mindy's brow furrowed. "Really? I feel like you did. I think you wanted to put a pin in me in case you changed your mind."

The keys were sharp against his palm. No matter what happened or didn't happen last night in his other apartment or in this place or on a plane, this was real. And she was right. "Maybe. I guess I owe you an apology. We were good at being friends and I thought maybe we could just be like that again and it would be okay. Or something."

"Were we friends, though? Or were we like Harry and Sally and the friendship and the attraction were two sides of the same coin?"

"What?"

"When Harry Met Sally." Mindy rolled her eyes and he knew they were out of the woods for now. "Danny, I've made you watch it like 22 times at least."

"Yeah, I know the name of the movie. I guess I didn't pay attention."

"Well you should. Nora Ephron taught me like half of everything I know about love. She was like an oracle."

"Yeah, maybe."

Danny wondered who taught her the other half of everything she knew about love. "You're wrong though. We were friends. Or you were my friend, even when I didn't deserve you." The corners of her lips twitched into a little frown that was gone almost as quickly as it appeared. "Anyway, I'm gonna get going. I'm sorry, Mindy. I hope I didn't mess up your date or anything."

"No, it was actually kinda great. Not 13 Going on 30 great, but at least 16 Candles great."

He knew they were movies, but as always she was speaking a language he didn't understand. Maybe she had taken Charlie home last night. Maybe not. It wasn't his business, and that was his own fault. He looked away. "Well, you deserve it."

"Thanks." Her small was smile, but it was real and it was for him. He didn't know if he really could figure out what it would take to make her happy, but he had to try.

. . . .

He took the long way home. Less than 12 hours ago he'd been flat on the pavement, trying to claw his way back to consciousness, his lungs pulling hard at the city scents of oil poured into pavement and damp leaves that never quite blew away. He walked by the very spot where it had happened and it just looked like a any city street. He wasn't sure what he'd expected. A chalk outline might have been something, if they did that kind of thing for men who'd cracked their head open because they couldn't look at where they were running.

The door wasn't there. Could you dream something like that? Dr Erica, or whoever she really was, had said she could change time and space, but how much could really change? He still wasn't sure if he could believe anything that happened, but maybe it wasn't for believing, it was just for knowing. He knew something now that he hadn't known – that Mindy been attached. He hadn't seen it, and maybe he hadn't wanted to see it, but she'd been in as deep as he'd been. That was real enough for him.

He passed his own door and went straight for the extra apartment. (Definitely his now, never hers.) The apartment was colder than the corridor, and quiet. No one would ever know she'd been here. The kitchen was clean, but that was more or less what he expected. She'd eaten with him most nights. (I'll cook for you tomorrow, she'd said as she sat behind him stealing cherry tomatoes from the salad while he grilled fat slices of halloumi, and again the next night while she traced curse words in flour and watched him feed dough into the pastamaker, and the night after that as he kept an eye on the mushrooms so they wouldn't burn.)

The bathroom was blessedly clear of her paraphernalia and, and nothing of the warm vanilla and lavender scents from the night before lingered. Bile began to burn his throat as he approached the bedroom, but he pushed the door open and found that it too was neat as a pin, which said more about his mistakes last night than anything she'd said aloud to him. She must have wanted to erase herself from this place, his place (not hers) and forget this even happened. He breathed slowly as the churning in his stomach slowed to be replaced by an emptiness that matched his perfectly clean, perfectly quiet, perfectly Mindy-less apartment. He checked the windows, which were for once shut and locked tightly, and unplugged everything before moving back into the living room. He had turned the TV to reach behind and unplug everything on the entertainment stand when he saw it, You've Got Mail.

She'd made him watch it two nights ago, the night she'd sauntered into his bedroom and taken a pair of his grey socks and rolled them over her own socks and then shoved both her feet under his leg and resumed drinking wine while lying down, her revenge for his refusal to turn the heat on. He couldn't remember the names of the characters, but he remembered how Mindy punched him with her curled toes excitedly when someone opened email. And he remembered the way Mindy had smiled at him through real tears when Tom Hanks took his dog to the park to meet Meg.

Whatever Meg Ryan was feeling in that scene was beyond him, but it wasn't beyond Mindy. She felt it, and he knew then that he had to find out why.

Mindy had to know that it was more than missing her that made him try to kiss her, more than wanting that made him say such stupid things when he was around her. It wasn't loneliness that made him reach for her, or fear. It was just Mindy. She didn't have to do or be anything to make him love her. He'd never been able to say it, and if he stood any chance of giving her the kind happiness she deserved he had to find out what made her her squeal indignantly when Tom Hanks ate caviar, and what made her eyes glisten with tears when Meg told the stupid kid at the book store about shoe books. He had to learn her language. He pushed the disc into the player and turned the TV on.

A computer generated New York swept across the TV screen, and Danny Castellano said a little prayer. He'd never been very good at loving someone the right way, but if anyone could teach him something about loving Mindy it was Nora Ephron. As he leaned back against the sofa a little lavender wafted up from the pillows, and something a little like hope lifted the heaviness from his chest for the first time in a very long time. She'd been here. Whatever happened last night, or the night before or on a plane, they'd been here. And he was going to get her back.