Doppelbänger

Chapter 31 Bad August

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

BAD AUGUST

IN FREEFALL

He is so… fucking… adorable.

We’re in the van, and he’s sitting opposite, holding the gun on Asshole August next to me.

I’m not sure he even knows how to use it. His finger isn’t on the trigger, but that’s most likely because his ex drives like a maniac and one bump might end us both.

I won’t pretend I don’t feel awful for everything I’m putting him through. But he’s handling it incredibly well. And all I can think about is how much I adore him.

Literally no man has ever disarmed a gunman and beaten him up on my behalf. It’s the single hottest thing I’ve ever witnessed. Well, besides fucking August last night, but that goes without saying.

August with a gun is next-level sexy. When he shoved it into his waistband, that flash of washboard abs… He’s so much better looking with it than Asshole August. What’s that even about? That guy isn’t anything compared to him.

I shouldn’t be thinking like this. But I’m going to be dead soon, so I may as well enjoy ruminating on the best thing life ever had to offer.

“What’s your world like?” August asks Asshole August. It’s a simple question. I know how much August cares about me, so I shouldn’t be jealous. But I still am.

“It’s quite different to this one,” Asshole August replies.

Jon takes a speed bump too fast, and Asshole August’s shoulder slams into mine.

“Much more advanced,” he grumbles, shoving me back to settle against the window again.

“You’re still driving around on roads. We did that for a bit.

Now they’re all gone. We’ve got transport systems that are automated.

Everything’s automated back there, really.

It does away with so much daily time-wasting. ”

I can’t help the scoff. He’s such an asshole, with his fancy world.

He glares over at me. “From the short time I’ve spent here, it seems we’re more advanced in a lot of ways.”

“You’re already the most insufferable August I’ve ever met,” I tell him.

That gets a smile from my August. “So how many have you met?”

His vulnerability from earlier presses my ribs. It makes me ache all through that he could think I’d ever look at another one of us the same way. “Hundreds,” I tell him with complete honesty. “I’ve met every version of us. Just about.” I return the glare at my excursion partner.

“What were they like?” August asks.

It’s a deep and loaded question. I try to explain to him as succinctly as I can.

“Some are similar to us. Some are vastly different. None are like you.” He blushes lightly, and I take the opportunity to press my foot against his outstretched ankle.

“I’ve met nice Augusts and prick Augusts.

I’ve met August who was a rich stockbroker, who chased me off his lawn with a golf club. ”

My August laughs, while the asshole turns his head to listen in. “I’ve met straight August, with his beautiful wife and kids. But I couldn’t stand to tell him what was going to happen to them.”

He doesn’t move his foot away, keeping his earnest eyes on me. “I met fucked-up heroin addict August. He went through a lot, but didn’t come out the other side. He died while I was there. But the world broke all the same, like it always does.”

The memory of the stinking piss and mouldy cardboard of the alley I found his body in comes back to me, so I speak over it. “I’ve met coffee-shop August, who worked in that cafe we first sat down in together.”

“What?” August gasps out, his face a perfect picture of awe. “So that explains why you knew how to speak to the barista!”

I send him a smile of acknowledgement. “I’ve met pro-footballer August, scam TV psychic August, real estate asshole August, bat biology expert August, psycho-killer August—which is why I had to stalk you a little.”

He laughs. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. It was bad. And one time, I even met an August who was a bit like us, from London, normal guy. His parents didn’t die.”

August’s face turns melancholy. “How was he doing?”

“Really well. It was nice. I left him the fuck alone too.”

Asshole August is looking us both over, doing whatever calculations he’s doing in his head, so my August asks him, “Did your parents die?”

“Parents? No, I was born in a lab.”

“You what?” We both swivel slightly to stare at him.

He explains with a small shrug, “We don’t have parents where I come from. Total waste of time. Who wants to be pregnant?”

“Yeah, okay, maybe…” August muses. “But what about all the rest of it?”

“What? All that childcare? This kind of shit you two are talking about? No. We go straight into education of one type or another. I’ve seen this format in a few worlds now, living with parents, and it’s very strange to me. No wonder your world’s so backwards.”

“No wonder you have no empathy,” I stab at him.

“I have empathy.” The accompanying eye roll does nothing to convince me of that.

“It’s not like I want to kill you. Do you know how much happier I’d be back in my own reality, not dealing with any of this?

And if you want proof, I could have shot you yesterday.

I could have gunned you down in the street. But I didn’t.”

“So you’re not completely evil. Congratulations.”

August cuts in, looking like he’s the one who almost got shot. “What happened yesterday?”

And feeling like I’m the one who almost shot him, I say, “He slightly… tried to kill me.”

“What?” he shouts.

“Hey, I’m not the supervillain here,” Asshole August responds, raising his shoulders.

“So you tried to kill him yesterday?” August’s eyes shift to me. “Before you came over?”

“Yeah. And the other night at the concert.”

The car shudders with the hard touch of Jon’s foot on the brake. “Wait, what? That was you?”

Christ, this guy. “Try to keep up, Non Bon.”

“But then…” Jon’s busy muttering to himself. “You both have stalkers?”

“It’s alright,” August calls back with a smile. “They’re only other Augusts. Not real stalkers.”

“Yours is a supervillain and everything,” Jon sulks.

“I’m not—could everyone stop calling me that?”

“You are a supervillain,” Jon yells from the front. “Certified. By me.”

August grins at me, and the moniker is almost worth it just for that. “You have had a bit of a villain moment.”

“Just snuffing out millions of lives, yeah,” the asshole mutters.

“It would be nice to move on from the topic now,” I suggest.

But Asshole August turns to me, anyway. “What I don’t get is, why did you do it? I still can’t wrap my head around it. You say you have empathy. You must have foreseen what would happen.”

What can I tell them? This time, the plain and shitty truth. “I didn’t. I didn’t think it all the way through. Not to this extent. I hate to tell you how many scientific advancements come about that way.”

“Not in my world, they don’t,” he grumbles.

“You and your perfect bloody world.” I slide a little deeper into my seat.

“Look, I was just really depressed. That’s all I can tell you.

A friend died, my best friend, and I wasn’t sleeping well, and I was down.

And I was working a lot, and I just thought…

what if I slipped through? What if she didn’t die in the next world?

What if I could visit her, be friends with her?

What would that be like? And you know, what would that be like for all of us who have ever lost someone? ”

The gentle pressure from August’s foot against mine catches me somewhere between wanting to disappear and wanting to go through it all again, just to feel that.

“I did a terrible thing. I know. And since then, I’ve devoted every waking moment to trying to undo it.

It’s not like I’d do it a second time if I could turn back the clock. ”

August’s eyebrows rise a little, and I’m pretty sure the thought occurs to us both: what we’d lose if I could actually master time travel.

I’d be resetting the clock on all of it.

On us. We’d never meet. Everything he’s been to me, whatever I might have been to him, would be wiped.

We’d go back to August minus August. Incomplete Augusts.

“Then again, maybe I would do it again.” His smile widens, even if stays a little melancholy. “Maybe I’d go real supervillain and destroy every universe there is just to be close to you.”

The corner of his mouth rises higher in the most satisfying way I’ve ever seen.

I take the opportunity to lean forward and place a hand on his knee. “Billions of them. One word from you, and I’d take them all.”

He drops his hand, his little finger toying with mine. “It’s really nice in theory. But in reality, I’m going to need you to put them back.” Just as fast as my face falls, his hand scoops mine up. “Then we’ll talk. About what happens next.”

I’m not expecting to be alive this time tomorrow. Truly. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind of talking. Of thinking about any possible future. We’re still so far apart. He’s clinging onto this sinking raft, and I’ve already drowned.

He sounds so sure when he says, “We’re going to figure this out. I’m not losing any of it. None of the people, none of the worlds. And especially not you.”

At my pull of his hand, he eases forward, and his lips find mine. A small kiss, a gentle one, that brings my hand to his jaw to hold him close long enough to steal another. He raises his chin slowly to break the kiss. “You’re going to fix this. I know you can do it.”

And I know then that I’ll give it everything I’ve got. All the weariness, the years of hopelessness and apathy… It all goes now. I’ll try.

Unfortunately, the poignancy of the exchange is broken apart by the asshole. “Do you live in a constant state of denial, August?”

August leans back with a chuckle. “I try to, yeah.” He stretches his leg out onto mine, his ankle resting on my knee. “But not in this case. August’s brilliant. With two of you, this can’t go wrong.”

“Three,” I tell him. He gives me another of his enchanting smiles.

“And also me!” Jon calls from the front. “August’s former love interest. Did you know that, August? Augusts tend to like me.”

I glare at him in the rearview mirror, only to catch Asshole August cracking his first ever smile.

Whatever the fuck is wrong with him.

But my gaze finds my own August, and it fills me up to know he only has eyes for me.

If he wants to destroy this world by keeping me around a bit longer, who am I to stop him?