‘And what about all the other Bethanys? If you don’t stop this, more and more Bethanys are affected. Yes?’
I pause for a moment. Because he’s right. Not that I’m going to tell him that. But if I don’t try to stop this and find a way home, then I keep skipping, jumping in and out of these Bethanys’ lives, more and more of us – them – being dragged into this nightmare.
‘Help me,’ I whisper and raise my eyes to meet his.
‘Of course,’ he replies, and his face softens and there he is.MyTyler.
‘Don’t you think it’s a bit odd that we match on Tinder just as this is all happening?’ he asks later that night. We’ve left the pub and decided to take a walk through the park in an effort to clear our heads.
‘I swiped right.’
He looks at me. ‘Yes, thank you, Bethany, I do understand the mechanics of the site.’ He’s deadpan and the extra wine I drank makes me giggle slightly. ‘I mean isn’t it odd that today was the day Tinder served you to me and vice versa. Why today?’
‘You think the universe is trying to bring us together?’ I can’t help myself; my words are tinged with scorn.
His fingers brush against mine in the dark.
‘I think it’s fate,’ he says softly.
We walk on in silence. I can’t stop thinking about that sentence. I can feel myself being pulled towards him in every single life. But fate?
Fate is such a cop-out excuse to explain some phenomena we don’t understand. Like calling something magic when it’s just basic science. Rachel, my stepmum, always used to say stuff was magic. Or impossible. Or unfathomable. Like why a balloon sticks to the wall after you rub it on your hair, even though I’ve understood static charge since I was three. Or the bottle of water trick when really it’s just surface tension.
Cesca and I used to take it in turns to tell her increasingly bizarre real science facts, to see who could blow her mind the most. I won when I told Rachel that time moved more slowly at the top of a skyscraper than at the bottom. I mean it’s just gravity but still Rachel just couldn’t process it as a fact. ‘Magic,’ she whispered. ‘Magic. Or just some kind of clever hoax.’
Tyler walks me home and we stop outside the door to my block of flats. ‘I know you don’t believe in fate,’ he says as he turns to face me. He’s standing close enough that I can feel the warmth of him, a hint of his aftershave scenting the air.
‘I—’ I start but he cuts me off.
‘I get it. I really do. But if it isn’t fate then it has to be science. There has to be some force pulling us together. You know as well as I do that the universe is chaos, pure random chaos. There is no way we could keep coming together if it didn’t mean anything.’
‘But—’
Again he interrupts.
‘So either posit a new hypothesis or accept that fate is real.’ He smiles, and there’s a knowing look in his eye. He knows he’s got me, that I can’t help but engage with his stupid theory if he phrases it that way.
‘Failure to present a secondary option doesn’t make the first true by default,’ I tell him primly. But I take a small step closer to him.
‘Maybe not. But I need your hypothesis, Dr Raven.’
He’s never called me Dr before. I’m super proud of my academic achievements – come on, getting a PhD is pretty fucking hard – but I don’t tend to bandy around the title like some of my peers. I tell people it’s because it feels a bit gauche, but the truth is I’m terrified someone will shout across a crowded room, or on a flight, or a train, to see if someone’s a doctor and I’ll put my hand up as if I could actually save someone having a heart attack.
‘I’m waiting,’ he says tapping his foot loudly.
‘What if …’ I start, trying to buy myself some time. I have nothing. No other explanation. No other question to even ask.
‘Yes?’ I can see that he is itching for me to prove him right. Competitive teasing. The cornerstone of every nerd’s dating rulebook.
‘Yeah, I’ve got nothing,’ I admit.
‘I knew it,’ he exclaims and punches the air in a deliciously dorky way. ‘So it’s fate.’
I take a deep breath. I hate losing, even though this is all in jest. ‘But if it’s fate, then why? Why you and me?’
He takes a step forward, closing the space between us, his arm reaching out to brace his weight on the wall behind me. ‘Why you and me?’ he repeats, his voice dropping an octave and turning my insides to jelly. He touches my waist with his free hand and my breath catches in the back of my throat. I break the moment by stepping away and inviting him up for coffee. Just coffee. You know the deal with anything physical. Even though it’s almost impossible to keep to the rules when he makes me ache for him like this.
I take a few minutes to cool down as I make our drinks.
