I could never explain how happy I am to hear him say that. I thought this was going to take a lot more explaining, but we’re already off. “That’s right.”
“LikeBack to the Future?”
“Sort of.”
“OrThe Avengers.”
“Not really.”
“Or, or?—”
“Stop trying to think up pop-culture references to explain this. It’s very complicated, and it’s very scientific.”
“Um. Okay.”
Two glasses and some water plonk down on the table. August latches eyes with the waitress. She nods severely at me while looking at him, and he blushes in response. When he nods back and fakes a smile, I can tell he’s faking because that’s my fake smile. Tight, upturned on the left. And when she walks away, his fingers tap across the table anxiously.
“Is she your girlfriend?” I ask.
“No. No, she um…” He takes out his phone, looks at the blank screen, then puts it down on the table with a shake of his head. “I can’t. I can’t deal with this right now. With any of this. What the fuck is going on?”
He’s about to lose it, so I pour him a glass of water and push it over. “Like I said, I’m you but from another universe.”
“Okay, but why are you in this one?”
“Because mine was destroyed.”
“What? Why?” He shifts in his keenness for an answer, and his foot hits mine beneath the table.
I wrench mine back dramatically. “You’re not supposed to touch me.”
“Well, fuck!” he exclaims entirely too loudly. “What’s going to happen now?”
“I don’t know,” I say, instructively quiet. “I don’t know. Just that… clearly this isn’t supposed to happen. You and I were never supposed to meet. We should be in different worlds, on different timelines. And… here’s the thing.”
Two coffees land on the table. August looks like he’s about to cry when he glances up at Kelly again. He gives her another overt nod, and she smiles, then skips away.
What the hell is going on between them?
Maybe they have a thing. He is cute, actually. Cuter than me. Cuter than I thought he could be. Who could blame her? His skin’s so soft and clear from all those workouts I’ve seen him doing. And there’s a healthy leanness about him. About his nice cheekbones. Could I look like that if I exercised more?
“What thing?” he asks, a touch of irritation in his whispered tone.
“The ‘thing’ is,” I reply heavily, trying to remember the thing, “that… um… it’s…” He blinks his long lashes, and this is truly so strange. I’ve seen him so many times, but not up close. NotthisAugust. It’s only natural I’d be thrown, because he’s me, again, but he’s so…
Damn, he’s cute.
“The thing?” he prompts.
“Thething…” I’m the one who needs a drink of water. I take a sip, as much to stall as to wet my dry mouth, to give myself a second to bend my mind back around this mess. “Look, I’m sure you know all about butterfly effects and timelines. That onesmall thing you do can set off any number of possible future realities. For example, you choosing to drink that coffee sets off the reality where August spends an hour in the bathroom with diarrhoea and misses the bus where he would have found the golden lottery ticket sitting on the empty seat.”
He eyes his coffee suspiciously, and I try to backtrack to something more pleasant. “Or you spill that coffee on your jumper, and, and, have to go to the laundromat, where you get mugged and shot and fall into a coma for the next thirty years.”
His brow falls, and I’m pretty sure I’ve turned him off his coffee completely. “Or maybe you drink it, and it’s nice, and…” What the hell am I doing? “Listen, the point is, all those futures, all those possible realities exist. They exist side by side, sometimes so close together that they’re actually overlapping. They’re touching. But it’s all in balance. Okay? Good coffee.”
He nods a slow and unsure nod.
“Then I come along.” I pick up my black coffee and pour it right into the middle of his cappuccino froth, more and more in a steaming, steady stream, until the whole thing overflows onto the saucer below.
