Unable to fathom a busy Tube ride, Evie walked the four hours it took to get back to her parents’ place. Then she paced around her bedroom until her dad called her down for dinner, where she mindlessly ate around the giant heap of Bolognese her dad had spooned onto spaghetti for her (apparently, she wasn’t a vegetarian yet) as her parents bickered and Meg asked if she could finally help her with her essay.

Still in a daze, she mumbled to Meg that she was feeling under the weather and dragged herself to bed. Pulling the covers all the way up to her chin, Evie willed herself to fall asleep. Maybe she would wake up understanding what the hell she was doing here, and—most importantly—how she could get back to her real life.

But despite all her deep breathing and mindfulness exercises, Evie’s mind continued to chase itself round and round in circles. How had she ended up ten years in the past? Was it really Maximilian’s doing or had she fallen out of bed and concussed herself? Was she in a coma? Was it all a dream, and had it never really happened? Had she taken a bad batch of psychedelics? Was this some elaborate, belated April Fool’s joke? She wondered whether she still existed in the future. And whether the different decisions she made here in the past—present—would have an impact on her future self.

She racked her brain for every film she’d seen with a time travel plot twist for some kind of explanation, but absolutely nothing made sense because, well, she was a rational human who lived in the real world.

The one thing she kept coming back to was that Maximilian had to have something to do with her current situation. She’d talked to him about her desperate desire for love—true, all-encompassing, raw, sweep-you-off-your-feet cinematic love—and a greater sense of who she was really meant to be. She’d called out the chorus from ‘Somebody to Love’ while she was mid-orgasm (absurd, right?) and now here she was, trapped in a past dimension.

But why had she been sent here? To this very moment in time?

They say your twenties are your selfish years—the years of chasing new and exciting experiences, no matter how fraught or out of your budget. What if Evie now had the chance to make more of them? To be more discerning about the men she dated. To work really hard on her screenplay. Floss her teeth more. Wear sunscreen, even in winter. Be less awkward and complacent. Because she’d learned, just a little bit too late, that you couldn’t assume life would take care of itself. She hadn’t, in the end, had all the time in the world.

Until now.