“August, you and I…” I drop a hand to his chest. “We’re an impossibility. We can’t exist in the same space. The universe will try to right itself. That’s just the way it goes. In all of existence. Because what happens if we can’t merge? When one thing takes the space another occupies?”
His hand falls on mine, his face downcast. “Spillover.”
“Spillover. Every second I’m here with you, I’m taking up space where something else should be. I’m shifting particles, and I’m changing very real things into something else. This space didn’t evolve to hold both of us.”
His clear and piercing eyes rise to meet mine. “But then, by the logic of infinite realities, there has to be one that can hold you. One where the conditions are exactly right to stabilise theeffect, to crush it. Somewhere you’re missing, that needs you… Somewhere you’ll merge perfectly.”
My breath catches in my throat. Here I am, in the arms of this beautiful man, the safest and most tender place I’ve ever found. And he is perfect. He’s utterly perfect. And he’s just announced why I can’t ever have him. “Told you, you’re a super genius.”
His smile is melancholy, but it’s there. He lowers his head, looking for the confirmation in my eyes. “Then that’s it? That’s what we need to find?”
“That’s what I’ve been searching for. Here, this whole mess.” Shakily, I reach for the wall to support myself as I pull away from him, the last thing I want to do. I walk over to the furthest blackboard and crouch down to look at my writing, which I must have gone over a billion times. “I’ve been trying to figure out where that place could exist. How I could get there. What I can do to restore order. And I think I must be missing something. Because every… ‘estimate’I make, there’s another August already there.”
He comes to my side, sits down next to me, but he doesn’t touch me now, only stares hard at my work. “You can calculate that?”
No, I cannot. I only know it from in-person experience. “It’s not an exact science.”
“Will you teach it to me? We can go over all of it, start to finish. I might not be much help, but I can let you know if I see anything?”
When he squeezes my knee, I have to hold myself firm to prevent my whole being melting into him.
He could never understand what a small gesture like that means to me. Even if all his affection comes to me under false pretences.
“You’re already helping me, August. More than you know.”
So we work. We work for hours. He listens hard, comes up with brilliant ideas, by anyone’s standards. But it’s never enough.
I tell him all my hopes and daydreams. If I could crack time travel here somehow, how would that even work with a nonexistent universe there? Because itdidexist. If I go back here, does it exist there?
He says it’s a little overambitious for one man in a basement to try to crack time travel all by himself. And maybe he’s right. And maybe there is no solution. But we work on anyway.
With no concept of day or night in this basement, it’s the squeezing of our stomachs over acid emptiness, the ache of our tired eyelids, that eventually suggest to us it must be evening.
There’s nothing but pot noodles here, and it’s a miserable enough place without that added indignity, so I attempt to send him home. This takes some time and more arguing than any of the work today has inspired.
“You can’t imagine I’d leave you here by yourself without a decent meal.” He gives my stack of pot noodles such a scathing look that I almost feel guilty for having them.
“I’m fine. This is where I live. I’m used to it.”
“Not tonight. Let me buy you dinner.”
I know he can’t afford that. Which makes the offer doubly kind. And makes me want even more to buy him dinner. “No. Let’s meet tomorrow, fresh?—”
“Come on. Please? Nothing fancy, just, let’s…” His eyes practically dance with a sudden plan to convince me. “You know, maybe we need a change of scenery to crack this. What if we just grab some takeaway, or go for a walk? And-and that way, we’re still working.”
He isn’t going to stop. I can see it. He’s one step away from curling up on my air mattress so he doesn’t have to leave me alone in this hovel. And if he does that…
If he were in my bed, next to me, wearing that tight shirt…
“Let’s go. I’ll walk you home, and we’ll grab something over your way.”
It actually hurts, the way his eyes light. That, accompanied by his blush and his nervous movement as he shoves his hands into his pockets to try to hide his excitement.
I would worship this man given half the chance.
But I can’t.
This is not a date. Not in this universe or any other.
