Doppelbänger

Chapter 14

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

BAD AUGUST

AND THE PRETTIEST ASPECT IN THE ENTIRE GALAXY

August’s anxious excitement is contagious. He wears his heart on his sleeve, and his vulnerable sweetness makes every passing second a special kind of torture.

He talks and he makes jokes, but I know deep down he’s waiting for me to say something, or do something, that will confirm I feel the same way he does.

That I’m alive to this fire burning between us.

He must know. I can barely keep my eyes off him. But that bizarre shyness and self-doubt his ex has stuck in him must be blurring his judgement.

I’m trying so hard to walk this line. I can’t hurt him. I won’t. But only a moron would reject a guy like this. He should know that. He should know how clever and funny and beautiful he is.

I also don’t want to lead him on. And I’m very bad at that last bit.

When we get out at St. John’s Wood station, we get some takeaway kebabs, at my suggestion, because it’s probably smarter than sitting down in some cute cafe or warm pub where we could easily spend hours talking. Then we start for his house.

We’re a few blocks deep into the quiet neighbourhood when he asks, “Do you mind if we walk the long way? I’m still kind of wired from all that… everything we talked about.”

His house isn’t far. The ‘long way’ can’t be far either. And it’s not as though I’m inclined to leave him. “Sure.”

The wind’s died, and though it’s still crisp, it’s no longer frigid.

“I was wondering,” he says. “Why didn’t you fall for Jon?”

The sound of his ex’s name fills me with a jealousy I’ve got no right to feel, but it’s there anyway, hot and bitter. “I only just met the man.”

“No, I don’t mean that.” He laughs. “Didn’t you go to his show? Over in your reality?”

Good point. I’m trying to think back to that time, to what could have happened that stopped me from meeting Jon.

“I was thinking,” he goes on, walking slowly, “because your Desperately Seeking Susan probably sucked, it feels like maybe you never fell for music the way I did?”

“Yeah. That’s true. I mean, I do like music. Or I did. When I had more time. I picked Kentish Town so I could be close to everything.”

“So you did go see bands before you got all caught up in study?”

“I did.” I can’t help but laugh at his idea of me. There was a time I was so much like him. “I used to go out all the time, see bands on a whim. I’d watch almost anyone.”

“Same.” His smile is bright when he looks across at me.

“That’s how I met him, actually.” We’ve come upon a dark expanse.

A park. But he’s not stopping, setting foot on dewy grass as though he knows where he’s going.

So I follow, listening. “I was walking down the street, saw the tickets on sale and just thought, why not? I wasn’t even super into Bon Jovi back then.

And they were kind of expensive. So I almost didn’t buy it. ”

I’m right on the edge of changing the subject, because as fascinating as it is trying to learn where our lives split, what the exact differences between us are, the last thing in this reality I need is a play-by-play of how he fell for someone who isn’t me.

But that’s when the story gets interesting.

“And then when I got there, I barely made it to the show. I went in, walked through the bar, and someone turned around and spilled their drink all over me. A whole pint!”

Time stills in the breath of a London park, arresting me and all but the words, “What did you say?”

“Um.” He’s aware. This is it. This is the moment. “Someone spilled their drink on me?”

“A snakebite?”

“A snakebite.” His eyes double in size. “Wait, you were there? You did go to that show?”

“I must have.” I stare hard at the grass, trying to remember. “I-I did, because that drink got spilled on me. I remember that bit like yesterday, just not who the band was.” Our eyes lock. “Because I never made it in.”

“You left. Because of the drink.”

“Yeah. I did. But you didn’t? August, do you remember who spilled that drink on you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember. I think it was some girl.”

“Sarah. Her name was Sarah.” My heart’s pounding in my chest now. I’m half with him, and half back there, that night, sticky floor ripping at my sneakers, the smell of stale beer and musty old couches. My white shirt, purple, stuck to me. The way she took my arm. “She wanted to help me clean up.”

He turns to me, eyes narrowing over the memory. “That’s right. I remember her being so insistent.”

“And we went into the women’s bathroom with her—”

He shakes his head vigorously. “No. No, I didn’t. That was when… I was going to be late for the show. I was going to be late, and I thought I could go see the band, or—”

“Or you could call it quits and just get cleaned up.”

This is it. The air comes alive with the electric realisation, the lives that reached across universes until this one choice snapped the thread.

“I went to that show,” August says. “I told her, thanks but no thanks, I’m fine.

And I thought, fuck it. So what if I smell like snakebites?

I was by myself anyway. And I remember it.

I remember all of this because that stain was the very thing that made Jon notice me.

I was in the front row with this purple sticky mess of a shirt.

And he kept looking down at me. Then he got one of his people to invite me backstage afterwards. ”

We recommence our walk deeper into the park, me needing to do something with my legs to work off the energy of the revelation. “Right. And while that happened in your world… I was off with Sarah, in mine.”

“The whole time? So you… She was…” The way he stumbles over his words draws my sharp attention. “Was she… special?”

“She was very special.”

He looks down at his feet, hiding his eyes for a moment. When he turns his face to me again, it’s that lopsided smile. A smile he’s forcing. “Did you go out with her?”

“A few times. Like that.”

“Wait. You’re bi?”

“No,” I laugh, half scoff. “No. And that’s… That was my last try. She was cute. You probably don’t remember, but she was very pretty. And she was kind. And she was funny. And… I don’t know, she liked me, so I thought, why not? I’ll give it a go.”

“I’ve been there.” He laughs too, then quiets, nothing but the sound of two sets of feet on wet grass. “So it didn’t work out?”

“Not that way. No great surprise there. It was maybe two dates, and I had to tell her. It just wasn’t working.

And she was so good about it.” I pass him a genuine smile, one I wish I could give to her.

“She became my best friend. Ever. My absolute best friend in the world. We did everything together. I loved her deeply.” Walking up some hill now, deep in the black of this park, I’m glad to have the cover of night to hide my emotion as all the memories come back. “I miss her a lot.”

“I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what it’s like for you. Your whole world, everything you knew, gone like that.”

A fresh shard of sadness and guilt stabs at me. “No, she died before that. She was already dead. When that place existed.”

“Christ, that’s so sad,” he says. “She would have been so young.”

“And it was such a stupid death too. It wasn’t noble, or poetic, or poignant.

It was a brain aneurysm. That was it. Just some random thing that happened one day for no reason at all.

And she was dead. And in the ground. And she was twenty-five.

And she was my friend.” He doesn’t say a word as we trudge up the hill.

Maybe he knows on some level how rarely I can think about her now.

That I never talk about her. That she’s locked away with every other horror I’ve faced since that time.

“I found out on social media. Of all things. RIP Sarah Sunderland. And there was her face. A whole lifetime, my whole way of life, gone overnight.”

“And after our parents…” He trails off. He doesn’t need to say any more than that. He’s reached straight into me and squeezed my insides black.

“It was hard. Really hard.” The memory’s top-heavy, the air thick with melancholy, so I try to lighten it a little. “I’m not going to say I’m glad you met Jon instead. But I’m glad you didn’t meet her. So you never had to go through that.”

“I guess I would have liked her.” Of course he would have. He’s me.

“She would have adored you. But it was a long time ago now. And I’ve seen a lot of death since then. And I’ve learned to cope.”

He lets the words sit between us, perhaps deciding whether he wants to delve deeper into all of that, or let me lick my wounds.

He decides on the latter. “So that was it, then. We found the moment. One spilled snakebite.”

“One spilled snakebite. And it changed everything.”

“So rock and roll saved me?” His expression is good-humoured, but the words pierce.

“I guess it did.” Because he’s not broken.

He’s not careless. He’s warm, and he’s like the home I’ve spent years wishing I had.

Because he fell for music, and he fell for Jon, and somehow, even if that hurt him, that’s also protected him.

And standing here on the crest of this hill, I could fall into his arms so easily if he’d only reach for me one more time.

Instead, “Turn around,” he says softly.

I do. And there’s all of London spread out below. Me and August, at the top of this hill in the dark, surveying a million shining jewels, the whole city in the distance and all around, sparkling.

“And look up,” he says.

And there, the night crisp and clear, every cloud swept away, reveals an expanse of flickering stars, glowing, pulsing, existing, just for us.

If this were a date, if he’d planned this, he couldn’t have done it better.

Because of all the stars in the sky, and all the lights of the city, and all the winter air and the grass and the trees and life all around, everything pales in comparison to him up here on this hill. To August, sweet and warm like a song.

When he steps a little closer, the heat of his body is like a quilt I’m desperate to wrap myself in.