She hangs up before he can say anything back. She knows how he feels. But hearing it seems like too much of an invasion of privacy for all of them.
Mallory swallows and heaves herself out of the lumpy couch just as Harley flips his bowl over, scaring himself. She scoops up the trembling dog, opens the door to her condo, and waits just inside as two sets of feet echo up the stairwell. Ilena and her inflated stomach stand in front of a waxen-faced Aubrey.
“We have to go back,” Ilena says without any preamble.
Mallory wonders if this is some trick. Ilena wouldn’t wear a wire, would she? “So I’ve been saying.”
“So now I’m agreeing.”
“Then you’ve found the portal, time machine, wormhole, universe Uber to take us there?”
“Yes.”
Mallory snorts, but Ilena doesn’t laugh. “You’re serious?” She looks around Ilena to Aubrey. “She’s serious?”
“She’s Ilena,” Aubrey says.
Our Ilena.
Who was going to leave AIM. Without cushioning anyone.
Mallory clutches Harley tighter, her dad’s words about consequences echoing in her head. “Everything we left will still be there. All the problems. Everything we did and didn’t do...” Mallory looks into Ilena’s eyes, searching, making sure she truly wants to go back to that world. With Jonah, without this baby, with AIM in peril. If the glitch is exposed, they’ll lose everything.Mallorywill lose everything. She’ll lose the self she became because of AIM. The money and the prestige and the designer clothes and the guest spots onTop Chefand the money, the money, did she mention the money? She’d be back where she started, in her small bedroom in her mom’s apartment, stripped of the armor that made the no father and no partner and no goddamn furball of a dog okay. Even if the glitch never comes out, she still loses because she’ll know that in another world, her company hit the same milestones honestly. A lie—that’s the world she’s returning to. That’s the risk she’s taking. But Ilena and Aubrey are taking risks too. They’re losing too.
Ilena steps into Mallory’s condo. “We get a second chance, not at all of it, but maybe enough of it. I’m not turning that down.”
Aubrey gives a hesitant nod as she follows Ilena into the living room.
And Mallory lets her fingers massage Harley’s stomach, exhaling all that’s weighing her down. Who’s framing who for murder, Mack Weldon, Officer Middlebury’s sunglasses, her parents’ sexagenarian foreplay, Grayson. If she gets home, it will all be someone else’s problem.
You can’t expect to keep lying without consequences.
In Mallory’s arms, Harley releases a barely perceptible whine, and unexpected tears spark in her eyes. Ilena’s words aren’t the same as her father’s, but the combination along with this ridiculous stuffie of a dog finally make them ring true.
She tucks her chin to the furry orange head. “I’ll fix it,” she whispers. “I’ll set things right. And I’m sorry.” He lets out one more whimper, and her heart breaks just a little. (Actually, a lot.)
46
Aubrey
Wednesday Morning
Six DaysAfterthe Outing
They’re going back. Back to a world with no Ethan and with a Kai who doesn’t hate her and to an Aubrey who hasn’t done all of this—lied and cheated and made a mockery of this other-world Aubrey’s life. She needs to let this Aubrey return to her yoga and succulents and the small apartment with the pink chair and the cloud of a blanket and the perfectly organized closet that Aubrey hasn’t earned.
Aubrey fluffs the pillows on the bed and scans the apartment to make sure she’s leaving it as she found it. With no trace of her left behind, just as Mallory said. Aubrey hopes everything’s erased—everything she did, gone from this Aubrey’s mind. She wants this Aubrey to be able to live her life without the knowledge of what her genetic match is capable of.
Aubrey pauses in front of the Women Who Code poster. Even if this Aubrey doesn’t remember, everyone else here will. There will still be consequences. All Aubrey can do is try to lessen them.
She hurries to the closet and pulls out the outfit she labeledfor today. Dark-wash skinny jeans and a coral T-shirt. Yesterday, the day the world found out Grayson was dead, the day the news and social media blew up about what that means for AIM’s stock price, the day pundits and critics asked if AIM’s bubble had finally burst, relegating it to the rest of the troubled tech world, the day that should have seen her, Mallory, and Ilena not collapsing under the pressure and instead putting out a thousand fires to save the company they built over the past eight years, that day—that day instead saw them shopping.
Aubrey runs her hand along the AIM logo freshly embossed on this brand-new coral shirt. It’s not the AIM logo of here. It’s the AIM logo of home. Aubrey had nearly forgotten they weren’t the same.
She slips her feet into a pair of flip-flops, peels off the price tag, and grabs the tote by the door. It’s full of all the ingredients for a strawberry mule, a bottle of sparkling wine, and a facial serum made of lactic acid, which supposedly attracts mosquitos. She slides the rock Ilena painted last night into her pocket. A white daisy with “believe” written across it, a duplicate of the one she had at the outing in their world. It settles beside the glass octopus from Kai. Then she says a silent goodbye to this life she shouldn’t feel this sad to leave behind.
Aubrey’s finger hovers over the buzzer. Just as she presses the button beside “Lauren Stevens,” the woman herself appears on the other side of the glass door. Aubrey knows it’s her thanks to her pictures on social media, but also, Ethan’s at her side. He freezes when he sees her, his lips thinning, his eyes full of anger. Full of threat.
Drops of sweat prickle the space between Aubrey’s breasts, and she’s sixteen again listening to the tapping of the pool skimmer against the wall of the shed that wasn’t really the pool house the boy said it was, having a first time she would foreverregret, twenty-four and hiding in the bathroom stall at the start-up program, thirty-one saying yes to marrying a man who made a list of her flaws before proposing. She doesn’t want to be any of those Aubreys.
