CHAPTER ONE

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2020

Chapter Song: 'New Year's Day' by Taylor Swift

"I still wanted to go to Times Square."

"Stop complaining." Steph snapped quietly at Cori as the Core Four continued their walk around the perimeter of the party, trying to see where they would be able to find a guy to kiss at midnight. "Kiera still has panic attacks over what happened in the Uber last year."

"Yeah, but it's breaking tradition—"

"You know I can hear you both, right?" Kiera rolled her eyes as the four continued to search out eligible men, "I'm fine with going to Times Square, I told you guys that."

"We don't believe you." Rose replied, "So don't worry about it. Everything's fine."

"Speaking of everything being fine, how's our mysterious cute politics guy?" Steph grinned as she looked over at Kiera, "Any news?"

Kiera shook her head, checking her phone again out of habit. She and Taylor Walker had texted every day, all day, for the previous two months. And yet he still hadn't asked her out.

Taylor Walker and his gorgeous, too-good-to-be-true girlfriend had split the previous February, and according to Taylor's long laments in their spring semester Public Policy class, the overarching reason behind the split had been the distance between the two. One going to school at NYU and one at UCLA didn't quite add up to a whole lot of quality time together.

So, the two had split. It had been amicable at first but then slowly drifted into her friends convincing her that Taylor had cheated on her while at school. She believed them, Taylor adamantly denied it, and all communication between the two had been cut off.

Taylor and Kiera had parted ways for a brief moment in time. The semester ended, Kiera stayed in New York for the summer while Taylor went home to California, and when fall semester started, Taylor started an internship at Capitol Hill in D.C. working for the chief of staff of one of New York's senators.

Kiera wasn't sure how it happened, but the two decided to catch up over the phone one day, and they started texting constantly afterwards. She felt her overwhelming crush she had had on the guy come back in full force, and yet he had been slow-moving in the department of actually asking her out on a date.

But then again, Kiera knew the exact date and time he was going to ask her out. She simply couldn't let on about it to any of her friends.

"Nothing interesting to tell." Kiera laughed off her friends' curiosity, "I think he's just shy or something."

"Shy? You guys have been talking constantly for like a year."

"Two months, Cor."

"Same thing," Cori rolled her eyes, "The longest a guy's ever texted me for was like two weeks back when I was in the running for Miss New York."

"You were never in the running for Miss New York."

"Yeah, but he didn't know that."

Midnight came and went without a hiccup. Kiera watched as the ball dropped on the TV instead of right in front of her face and grabbed the face of the guy she had selected to kiss and ring in the new year. She drank her champagne and tried not to watch the clock as everyone around her started to disperse, away from the party and towards the new year.

Kiera's phone buzzed as she heard her friends head out of the front door.

Dad: Did your sister call you yet?

She ignored the message and looked up to see that the other three were gone. She rolled her eyes; they always seemed to forget other people existed when they were drunk.

Her phone buzzed again and she looked down, surprised at the name. It wasn't time yet.

But it wasn't the message she had been expecting.

Taylor Walker: Nah, I don't think it's a big deal. I'm kinda over the whole dating random girls thing tbh

Kiera typed out her response before quickly sending a screenshot to Steph.

I feel that. Dating random people is overrated. Plus, we're so close to graduating.

Another buzz.

Core Four Group Chat: Cori van Syckle: can someone let me into the apartment I forgot my keyybyis

Kiera raised her eyebrows in surprise. She doubted Cori was at the right apartment; there was no way she could have stumbled there in five minutes.

Rose: Dude where are you guys, I'm back at the apartment.

Or maybe someone could have stumbled back there in five minutes.

Mom: Did you guys have a good time tonight?

Steph: Wait, tell me what he says next!

Against her better judgement, Kiera checked the time.

12:21.

She started walking out of the party and headed for home, hoping she could find her way to her own apartment in the dark. It shouldn't have been too hard; the party was only a few blocks away. If Rose could do it so quickly, Kiera was sure she could do it as well—

12:22.

Kiera's phone buzzed.

She took a deep breath and pulled it out of her pocket, just reading the message from her lock screen.

Taylor Walker: Well, how about I take you out sometime when we get back to school?

She felt her heart beating out of her chest and nodded to the phone despite the fact that she knew he couldn't see her response. Kiera tucked her phone back into her pocket and practically skipped the entire way home, fighting the urge to break out in song as if she were in some poorly-produced movie-musical.

She had been in love with Taylor Walker for over a year. And he had just asked her out on a date.

And if the pictures she had been receiving once a day, every day, for the past year had been any indicator, this date was not going to be their last.

They had started on New Year's Day of 2020 and had continued every day since. One picture a day, at varying times of the day, would be texted to her phone. It was never accompanied by any message, and the times that Kiera had tried to respond to the number had resulted in an automated reply that was some strange paragraph about credit card statements.

Eventually, after she received a picture on February 14th of a dinner plate decked out with an assortment of expensive-looking food and a man in a shirt and tie in the background, she had figured it out: someone, somehow, was sending her pictures of what she was going to be looking at exactly a year in the future.

Some of the pictures were screenshots from a phone. Some of them were photos at eye level of her friends or family. Some of them were blurry or smudged at the edges. But some of them were clearer than any camera could feasibly capture.

On January 24th, 2020, she had received a screenshot of a random text message from Taylor Walker, except his contact name had changed from 'Taylor Walker' to 'Taylor' with a red heart next to it.

That had been the day that Kiera Arlington suspected that someone, somehow, was sending her images of a part of her life exactly a year into the future. It was also the day that Kiera Arlington realized that if she was going to lead a normal life from then on, she was going to have to see the pictures and then do absolutely nothing about them.

It was like those TV shows from when she was younger. The shows where someone visits from the future and says that they can't change anything because even one little alteration would change the very fabric of space and time. Receiving the pictures felt like cheating somehow. They felt like getting some kind of helping hand along the path of life, and Kiera was convinced that if she used them to her advantage, she would end up screwing everything else up completely.

But on New Year's Day 2021, staring at her phone as if she had never seen anything quite like it before, Kiera was pretty sure that if she hadn't seen this text coming a year in advance, she would have very easily passed out on the sidewalk outside of her apartment building.

She shrugged off her excitement and started walking up the stairs to the second floor, typing quickly as she went.

I guess I'd be alright with that.

"Kiera! You're home! Do you have a key?"

Kiera rolled her eyes at Cori standing outside the door to the wrong apartment, banging on it loudly.

"You shouldn't be allowed to wander off when you're drunk." She muttered as she took Cori's hand and walked her two doors over to the correct apartment.

"Didn't you hear her banging on 25's door?" Kiera asked in exasperation as she walked into the apartment to see Rose munching on an apple and watching Grey's Anatomy at an absurdly loud volume. "I could hear her from three blocks away, I swear."

"Yeah, I heard her, but that doesn't mean I wanted to help her. She couldn't even find the right apartment door; it was funny."

"You're a sucky friend." Stephanie stated matter-of-factly, walking into the living room dressed in a pink fluffy robe and matching slippers, her hair tied up neatly in a bun and her face green with a mask. "You should have at least shouted to her from the couch."

"I wouldn't be able to hear it over the TV," Cori muttered, stumbling her way towards her bedroom. "Don't wake me up tomorrow, I wanna sleep all day."

The other three shouted a chorus of "good nights" to Cori's retreating back until the door to her room closed with a bang.

"So, Kiera." Stephanie grabbed the remote from Rose and paused the television, ignoring the other girl's half-hearted protests, "Did political science boy say anything else? Set a date? A time? A place? A wedding venue?"

"Oh, shut up." Kiera rolled her eyes, still unable to hide her grin. "He hasn't said anything else past that, and I don't want to be pushy. Everything is going so smoothly, and I don't want to bug him when he was just in a committed relationship—"

"You're acting like he was married to a woman yesterday. He and California girl broke up like a year ago."

"Eleven months ago."

"Eleven months ago!" Steph laughed, shaking her head. "I don't think I've ever taken that long to get over someone, and it's not like they dated for a decade. He's ready to move on, and he's ready to move on with you."

"I'm going to bed." Kiera announced loudly, walking towards her room and stumbling over her feet a bit, "Don't wake me up either, I want my beauty sleep."

"You need your beauty sleep."

"Shut up."

"Goodnight!"

"Goodnight."

()()()

FRIDAY, JANUARY 1, 2021

In the movies, the main character always seemed to wake up to the sun streaming in through their slightly open bedroom window, birds chirping in the distance and a room that looked like something out of a Pottery Barn catalogue. Perfectly color-coordinated, with aesthetically pleasing decorations and usually a cute dog or two running in to wake up the protagonist along with the sun.

The dogs were usually also color-coordinated with the room. There were never ugly dogs in the movies.

But Kiera was a senior in college, fresh off of winter break with her family, and had just gone to bed in the wee hours of New Year's morning.

She woke up with drool stains on the shirt she had worn out the night before, her hair tangled and reeking of vodka, her pillow stained with makeup that she had forgotten to take off, and the entirety of her closet strewn across her floor. Her bedroom had been the site of the girls' pregame from the night before—bottles and cups littered her vanity, along with discarded tubes of mascara and eyeshadow palettes.

Her sheets were tangled around her ankles and there was no cute dog to run up and greet her. The sun wasn't shining; rain could be heard pelting the window across the room and faint thunder sounded in the distance.

A happy new year indeed.

Kiera blinked open her eyes as the rain continued to fall, shivering as she fumbled around for her blanket. She pulled it up to her chin and cuddled up underneath it, closing her eyes again before remembering that she had fallen asleep without checking to see if Taylor had responded to her.

The message was marked at 1:03 AM.

Saturday. 6 PM. I'll pick you up.

Kiera flipped over in her bed and held her phone up, staring at the message as if it were the only thing she needed to live a happy and successful life.

She checked the time. 12:54 PM.

An acceptable time for her to respond. Didn't want to seem too clingy or excited about the possibility of going on a date with a guy she had spent over a year falling for.

I'll be ready.