“Fine. But have you found one piece of evidence to suggest these realities could intersect? That could lead us to how we got here and how we can get home?”
Mallory’s entire demeanor fizzles. “I’m still looking.”
Aubrey rolls the beads between her fingers. Unsettled is a familiar feeling for Aubrey, and she’s accepted it the way some people accept that their skin burns in the sun and don’t go to the beach without an umbrella and a gallon of sunscreen. Some things just are. The more you fight them, the more aware you are that you have something to fight, something to lose.
But Mallory? She’s never unsure. If she was, she’d surely never let it show.
Aubrey starts slowly, “So what does that mean? We’ll simply be these versions of us?” Vegan Aubrey who has one-night stands with her subordinates and does yoga and watches birds and who’s apparently “Autumn” to the man she may or may not have been supposed to marry.
“No,” Mallory says quickly, her eyes darting like a corneredcat, her fingers digging into her forearm. “We won’t. If the worlds intersected once, they’ll do it again. We just have to figure out when. And avoid the police...” Mallory’s voice unexpectedly cracks. “Until we do.”
Ilena places a hand on her stomach, silent.
Aubrey’s hands shake as she sets Kai’s bracelet on the floor beside her. She faces the truth: They don’t know anything. Which means Aubrey may have her entire life here or mere hours. She can’t wait. She has to figure out if she and Ethan were meant to be together. If her world was right or if this one is.
A flutter of nerves hits like when there’s a late bug in an about-to-launch feature. But when that happens, she doesn’t let the feelings overwhelm. She doesn’t panic. She knows the steps to take to narrow it down, to locate it, to fix it. She has to treat this the same way. A calm, methodical approach. And that starts with a do-over.
Her skin glows orange from the tint of the neon sign screaming Laser Tag. She’s outside a brick warehouse that holds all manner of games that let grown men act out their insecurities by shooting at one another.
She chose the arcade perhaps because of the past, because it had been the location of her first date with Ethan. She’d been disappointed then, not because she isn’t into games, but because she’s always wanted to be more like Mallory, a woman whose profession doesn’t define her. As if being into computers means Aubrey isn’t into wines that need to breathe and herbs set in place with tweezers. And maybe she isn’t, but she could be. Still, she’d liked Ethan, and it wasn’t his fault that her white sneakers and zip-up hoodies screamed “tech,” prompting him to assume she’d be into the arcade. So on that first date, she’d grabbed an oversize cup of some blue fizzy drink and an enormous tub of kettle corn and played paintball with him eventhough she doesn’t really like anything that involves a weapon. Maybe when this Aubrey went on their first date, she didn’t do any of that.
Her phone buzzes.
Kai:Sorry, mud moves faster than the T! Almost there!
Aubrey checks the time. One minute past the hour. Kai’s one minute late for meeting her. She’s only on time because this Aubrey helped her by labeling all the hangers in the closet according to activity. She tried on the three labeled “date night” before breakfast. And again before lunch. And then an hour before she set the alarm to leave.
Aubrey:You’re good.
Kai:Something left to aspire to then.
Aubrey:What?
Kai:Because I aim to be great. In everything.
Heat creeps up Aubrey’s neck. Kai’s confident in a way that both unnerves and excites her. It makes her wish she could remember their night together, just a little. And even though she can’t, here comes a tingling between her legs and a clamminess on her palms. She can’t do this. She can’t be picturing a naked twenty-two-year-old and especially not a naked twenty-two-year-old who works for her.
She grips her phone and starts to draft a new text when his comes through.
Kai:Let me show you. I’ll teach you to surf. They’ve got a killer sim in this place.
Oh no. No, no, no. What did she say when she asked him to meet her here? She looks back at their text chain. She’d told him she’d found the bracelet and would bring it to the office on Monday, to which he sent about a billion happy emojis before asking if he could swing by and get it tonight. She’d said she wouldn’t be home and countered with aWe could meet outside the arcade in Southie at 7.
Does that sound like an invitation? For a date?
Her fingers remain paralyzed over the keyboard on her phone. She looks up.Ethan.Her actual date. Her breath hitches, the sight of him too much to bear after the image of him still and waxen under the shadow cast by the hospital sheet.
He hasn’t noticed her yet. He’s pushing back those black-rimmed glasses that make him look both a little nerdy and a whole lot sexy at the same time. And she’s kinda glad he didn’t get LASIK surgery here. He’s fit but not overly so, like someone who goes to the gym out of a love of pasta and ice cream rather than adrenaline and testosterone.
He’s early. He’d said “seven fifteen” when she’d gotten up the nerve to search this Aubrey’s contacts for his number. He sees her, and she waves, just as Kai rounds the corner, holding a giant pink swirl of cotton candy. Kai reaches her first. He pinches a section of the delicate sugary fluff and presses it above his lips like a moustache. That he twirls.
She bursts out laughing, and when he stands before her, she doesn’t react quick enough to dodge his kiss. A kiss she feels in her toes. His hair’s loose, free of its bun, and she gets a whiff of her eucalyptus. That he hasn’t washed his hair since he did so in her shower sends a strange but pleasant feeling through her.
They part, she steps back, and then her waist is warmed by something. Ethan’s somehow at her side and somehow pressing his hand to her lower back. He didn’t do that at home. Thenagain, at home he hadn’t seen a strikingly hot guy stick his tongue down her throat.
“Oh, sorry,” Aubrey says. “Ethan this is Kai, my, uh... he works for me. At AIM.”
The heat in her cheeks must be making them ten shades darker than the cotton candy.
