What If It’s You?

Chapter Seven

Once I’d reheated the soup—on the stove, as a career writer I actually had the time to do things the Martha Stewart way instead of living a microwave life—and torn off a hunk of challah, I started to feel greedy. What else might be better with Drew?

Maybe social media would give me a clue.

I started with my own grid. The posts were pretty spaced out, usually photo dumps to sum up a season, or a trip, or even just a special night out. It surprised me; I wasn’t some five-times-a-day poster in…I had to stop thinking of it as “my real life,” I was clearly here, it was very real, and it was possible, if still terrifying to really consider, that I might never get back.

So…World O and World D, then. Not particularly creative, but it worked.

But back to the task at hand: In World O I didn’t flood people’s feeds, but I didn’t particularly curate my posts either, sharing everything from fresh haircuts to views from the hotel when I traveled for work to snaps with a friend in whatever dark bar Ollie’s band was playing that weekend.

I scrolled through a series of Drew and me hiking, the tag placing us in the White Mountains, the main image a truly stunning view from a rocky promontory, both of us glistening with sweat behind our sunglasses as a string of peaks furred with summer greenery unfurled behind us. “Long weekend = time to add a new summit to our list.” We must hike often, then. Maybe that explained all the crunchy food in the pantry? If you thought of it as fuel for a long hike, the utilitarian trade-off between flavor and nutritional density seemed much less sad.

There was a series from a trip we’d taken to visit friends in San Francisco, the smiling faces unfamiliar; one of a Christmas at my dad’s, the setting heart-twistingly familiar, which only made the new-to-me photos feel more strange; a sunny day at an apple orchard with a couple I didn’t recognize but who stirred a warm feeling in my chest.

When I clicked through to their individual handles, I learned they were Matt Garabedian and Kari Wallenstein— Matt and Kari .

Clearly we were close—they showed up in a Turks and Caicos set as well.

In fact…a lot of these were of beach vacations.

I lingered over an image of Drew’s and my knees knocking against each other in the sand, the sun melting into the ocean visible between our toes, the entire scene washed in lurid pinks and oranges.

It was pretty, but I was surprised it was how we chose to spend precious PTO.

When Ollie and I traveled, it was more haphazard, a destination chosen mainly based on the Venn diagram of “Where haven’t we been yet?” and “Where are tickets cheap right now?” which usually meant some Northern European nation in March, or Central America in July.

No matter where we wound up, though, it would be interesting , we’d find some unforgettable site to plan an entire day around, or a landscape you couldn’t find anywhere else on earth, or a unique festival that just happened to line up perfectly with our travel window.

As the departure drew nearer, I’d focus on logistics—my hotel standards were much higher than Ollie’s, and I actually got a shot of dopamine when I found lodgings that managed to achieve the golden triad of affordability, location, and clean bathrooms.

Meanwhile, he’d come up with dozens of places to eat, dance, tour—so many options, in fact, that any given day felt like a mix of total spontaneity and the exact thing someone should do on a trip to Berlin, or Osaka, or wherever else we’d landed on.

But…that didn’t mean this couldn’t be nice, too.

Cocktails in the sand and days filled with nothing more than leisurely beach strolls.

Was it my ideal way to vacation? No.

But then…in this life, I had so much more control over the texture of every single day, a career and a home that were like something out of a fantasy—maybe time off wasn’t such a scarce commodity.

Maybe Drew needed trips like that to decompress, and honestly, who was I to judge?

It made me wonder what vacations Ollie must be taking in this life, whether he was happily exploring the world out of an oversized backpack and shared hostel rooms—he would have slept on park benches if I’d been willing—or whether he’d wound up with someone like me, who loved trying new things, visiting the sites most tourists skipped over, just as long as there was a reasonably comfortable bed and a clean private bathroom waiting at the end of the day.

There’s no way he’d have stayed single.

The thought clamped around my esophagus, its ache radiating through my entire body.

Maybe he’d have chosen someone nothing like me.

Maybe the only reason we were even together in World O was inertia, and in this world he’d found someone better for him, someone more adventurous and less rigid who didn’t secretly harbor hopes of living inside a high-end Scandinavian design catalog.

I shouldn’t look. It wouldn’t help anything to know. Unless it would? Maybe finding Ollie in this life would close some important loop and fix me where I was supposed to be…or at least make clear what I should do, if I really was being given the choice.

Or maybe I just had to see whether the girl he’d picked was hotter than me.

But when I typed in his handle, OH_no, the profile picture staring back clearly wasn’t Ollie—in fact, it was some middle-aged dude at a tailgate, so basically the anti- Ollie.

He must have a different handle. He’d only started using that one after the band he’d been in when we met, Don’t Tell Nadine, went out on a three-month tour that he opted out of. He claimed he didn’t care, didn’t feel like he was missing out on anything, but I noticed that he didn’t follow the band’s account once he set up his own. I tried searching the band…but in all worlds they seemed to have long since dissolved. Maybe just his name would turn up a hit? But of the dozen Ollie Hugheses that appeared, none of them looked like my Ollie. Maybe he just wasn’t on socials.

I double-checked my own grid, scrolling all the way back to the early days of Ollie, which would have been very near the beginning of my life with Drew, but he wasn’t there either. Had I gone in and deleted any photos of us together after things didn’t work out? Was the reason I was in this world in the first place that Ollie and I had never met? I’d assumed the moment that AltR had turned me left instead of right in my own personal corn maze was saying yes to a date with Drew. But maybe the only way I’d ever have said yes was if Ollie had never come onto the scene?

I opened my phone contacts, searching Oliver, then Ollie, then just scrolling through name by name, staring at the screen so hard my eyes were starting to sting…

But he wasn’t there. As far as this Laurel was concerned, he didn’t even exist. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that.

I was considering a deeper Google dive when my text notifications lit up.

FROM: Drew

Did you get the delivery?

TO: Drew

I did. Thank you—you didn’t need to do that

FROM: Drew

Of course I did

You know I like taking care of you

TO: Drew

No complaints here

Guys like this existed ? Guys as sweet and funny and brilliant as I already knew Drew to be, and on top of all that—already a partnership lottery win—they floated you chasing your lifelong dream, and went out of their way to make sure you were okay on the days you woke up feeling a little punky?

Forget the “AltR ported me to another universe” theory, was I just fully hallucinating?

It still felt a little uncomfortable, obviously—probably because the idea that Drew was the one worrying about me wasn’t meshing yet. And honestly, the entire concept wasn’t one I was used to. With just Dad and me holding down the fort, I’d had to learn early how to take care of myself. By the time Ollie entered the picture, that necessity had rooted into a hardy strain of independence, one I’d fiercely insisted he respect—being fussed over had made me feel anxious, the acts of caretaking infantilizing, claustrophobic in a way I couldn’t quite explain to myself, let alone Ollie.

In that life. Biting into my second slice of fresh challah in this one, butter melting into its soft crumb, I couldn’t quite understand what, precisely, was so important about suffering through it alone.

Though…Drew didn’t need to plan any more grand gestures for the morning. I was already feeling mostly like myself. Physically speaking.

TO: Drew

In fact I’m already starting to feel better

Thinking about heading to a café to get some writing done

After all, now that I knew I had my dream job, I was itching to actually do it. Was I working on a romance novel, or something more literary? So many other things had changed in this life, it certainly seemed possible.

FROM: Drew

If you really think that’s smart

But don’t push yourself. It’s not like you have a due date

I smiled, tenderness warming my chest. Obviously Drew and I had changed in this life—exhibit A: IRS-certified writing job— but his fundamental thoughtfulness when it came to the people he cared about was clearly intact across universes. And his giving me permission to take it easy, and knowing that I needed that—permission—showed how well he knew my inveterate gold-star-kid self, that he cared enough to indulge it.

I texted back a thumbs-up emoji, then scooped up the laptop and deposited it in my tote, quickly got dressed, and headed out before I could get sucked back in by the mystery of what my life looked like here. I might not have an official deadline, but I had no idea how long I might get to experience this world, this life. If I’d managed to find a way to write, my dream for as long as I could remember, I wasn’t going to waste it.

I made my way to the café Google told me was my local, relieved that the barista clearly recognized me and knew my “usual” order. An oat milk latte and avocado toast were so much more joyful than the virtuous cereal at the house (though after all that fresh-baked challah, I opted to skip the toast). Plus, I had always done well with routines. Even if I didn’t remember coming here…well, ever, this version of me, with her chic black bob and her elegant, well-curated life, would probably get into the writing groove way more quickly with the lubricant of her “usual” drink.

I pulled out my laptop and opened Microsoft Word. There, in the recent files, sat city mouse book . Oooh, intriguing.

Pressing my lips together to quell the blend of anxiety and excitement flowing through me, I opened the document.

There was…nothing.

Not nothing -nothing. I had about…five pages written, then a handful of bullet points beneath that. But it was far from the thousands and thousands of words I’d been expecting, the masterwork that I would be able to lightly edit over the course of the morning and, ideally, sell in the afternoon.

Swallowing hard, I dragged the cursor up to the beginning and began to read.

It wasn’t… terrible . It certainly wasn’t exceptional, but I wasn’t cringing in shame. But there was so little of it.

I started skimming the remaining pages. It seemed like I was going for a “high-powered working woman is pushed past her limits” setup, presumably so I could send her off to a small town to rebuild her life and coincidentally find love? Which I didn’t hate—Iread tons of those books, knew their rhythms so well half my pleasure in reading them now came from calling each plot twist as far in advance, and as specifically, as possible— That tractor is Chekhov’s gun, by act three it is going to explode into sex somehow.

So…why did I only have five pages and a list of bullet points, the most helpful of which was “ sex in a barn? Too dirty? ”

This couldn’t be all that I’d done in the last year and a half.

I took a sip of the latte, shuddering slightly as it hit the acid churn in my stomach. Maybe this was something I’d just started?

That had to be it, I probably had another book—maybe multiple other books—finished. I was probably shopping them around to agents, or editors. Which meant that my working on anything new was frankly heroic, proof that I was taking this seriously, treating it like a real job, pushing myself to develop a practice of writing, well before the inevitable demands of publishing schedules and book tours would make it a necessity.

I opened my files and started scrolling. In no time I found work rivals book and cooking competition book. See, Laurel? You were catastrophizing again.

But when I opened work rivals, I saw that it petered out around page sixty—apparently I’d managed to force my work rivals into a closet, where things had almost turned steamy, and then hadn’t, and then…they were still locked in there and trying to make keys out of paperclips? How had I spent eight pages on the key-making process?

Cooking competition book managed to sneak past the hundred-page mark, by which point my main character was on her way home to her mother’s funeral. Which I couldn’t be sure was out of left field, at least not without reading the pages more closely, but the chapter just before had ended in “paprika sabotage,” so it seemed like maybe it wasn’t the most logical next stop?

Based on the last-opened dates, I’d clearly determined that these books weren’t just heading in the wrong direction, they were unsalvageable. And now I had all of five pages of my latest attempt, most of them detailing an actual client presentation, and a road map that at its best pointed to maybe-barn-sex.

Dear god, what was I doing ?

“Need a refill, Laurel?” I startled to find the barista barely a foot away, wiping down the end of the long countertop that dominated the center of the coffee shop. She was probably in her midtwenties, with dark roots encroaching on her faded pink hair, a baggy Gremlins T-shirt knotted just above the waistband of her jeans. She looked like someone Ollie and I would know, one of the countless acquaintances he’d made through the music scene, who I’d then cultivated at shows and backyard barbecues, always the extrovert for the both of us. Somehow her easy smile just made me feel more embarrassed—could she tell that I was a total fraud? I shook my head, forcing a weak smile.

“Uhh…no, thanks. I’m starting to hear colors, I’m so caffeinated right now.”

“Oooh, lucky you.” She widened her eyes and moved on to another table, leaving me alone with my bafflement and vague sense of failure.

So much for my dream job. Clearly I was trying —even if they were duds, a handful of graveyarded books was better than nothing—but I couldn’t shake the feeling that with everything lined up for success, I should have done more by now.

Frustrated, I snapped the laptop closed. I could try to dive into the project that this-world me was working on, but honestly…it felt uninspiring. How, with all the time I could want and a picture-perfect life to return to at the end of the day, could I be this hopelessly stuck ?

God, I needed Ollie to wrap his arms around me right now and tell me…What would he tell me? Not that everything was going to be okay—he didn’t do pat assurances, didn’t believe everything always would be okay.

And anyway, Ollie wasn’t here.

But there was someone here who I knew would listen, would be in my corner, would make me feel, if not better, then at least cared for. Would remind me that he liked taking care of me—god, what a simple, utterly foreign concept.

Maybe that kind of support was what I’d needed all along.

The Pixel building was only a ten-minute walk from the café, so I decided to head straight over. I’d worried that walking into the building would have a funhouse mirror effect—or worse, activate some weird buried programming and boot me into yet another life—but it looked exactly the same as always, the soaring ceilings and double-helix staircases picked out in bright primary colors reassuringly familiar. I started for the stairs, planning to meet Drew at the Lightning offices, but was stopped short by a loud cough.

“Sorry, can I help you?”

Mark had been working the front desk at Pixel almost as long as I’d been there, his infectious laugh and incredible memory for faces the perfect public face for the company.

But he clearly didn’t know me .

“Hey, Mark. It’s Laurel. Everett?” I grinned awkwardly.

“Hi, Laurel. Did you have a meeting?” His smile was warm, but I couldn’t help but notice his hand had slid under the desktop.

“Uh, no. Not officially. I was just hoping to surprise my boyfriend for lunch.” He continued staring at me, his expectant smile unwavering. “Drew Bevins? He works on Lightning.”

“Oh, of course, Laurel . I knew you were familiar. It’s been forever, girl, how are you?” Mark turned his full attention to his screen. I forced myself not to frown—was I that forgettable? I’d been working here just eighteen months ago. “One sec, let me just let him know you’re here.”

He tapped away at the keyboard. I could feel impatience and anxiety coiling in my stomach. This was a stupid idea.

“I can just go up and grab him. I know how he gets when he’s in the zone.”

“I’m sorry, my better half called out today, and I can’t really leave the desk long enough to swipe you through to his office.” Mark gave an exaggerated, pouty frown. “But don’t worry, he already responded. He’ll be down in a sec, if you want to grab a seat.”

“Sure. Thanks.” I moved over to the suite of inverted pyramids that served as chairs, all of them in the same primary colors as the stairways, the bottoms bolted to the floor through an area rug to give the sense that they were balancing, impossibly, on their points. I’d never really looked at the office from this vantage point, as a visitor. It made me notice different things.

A few minutes later Drew trotted down the stairs, forehead crinkled with worry.

“Laurel. Is everything alright?” His voice was low as he approached me. He crouched in front of my seat, taking both my hands in his, and a surge of tenderness dissolved some of the tension I’d been holding in my neck and shoulders. I wasn’t sure which Laurel that was stemming from, whether it was one of those muscle memory remnants that seemed to exist in this body—my body? Regardless, I leaned forward to hug him tightly, exhaling gratefully as his strong arms wrapped around me.

“I’m fine, really,” I murmured, breathing in the sweet, milky scent of the Dove soap I knew, somehow, he showered with. There was something endearing about the fact that Drew clearly made enough money to afford what had to be a ludicrously expensive condo but still showered with the soap he’d used as a kid in Ames, Iowa. “I’m sorry, I should have texted.” A tiny thrum of guilt went through me—I’d known, without knowing how, that if I had texted, Drew would have told me not to come. “I’ve just been having a weird morning and I thought maybe we could get lunch.”

“Oh, umm…sure, yeah. Did you want to eat here, or…” He licked his upper lip, eyes darting up the staircase.

“Let’s grab sushi at Uni, I want it to just be us.”

Drew’s whole body relaxed. It was clear that he had the same preference but hadn’t wanted to let me down. Another surge of tenderness pulsed through me. Being here, with him, was the most normal—the most real —I’d felt all day.

It didn’t fix everything, but at least it was a start.

Drew kept side-eyeing me anxiously during the entire walk to the sushi place, hand drifting to the small of my back protectively at every crosswalk. I let it comfort me—general protectiveness wasn’t going to help me write a halfway decent book, but that wasn’t the only thing that could make me happy. Hell, six hours ago I didn’t even know I was trying to achieve that.

We snagged a corner booth and ordered, then Drew leaned across the table, taking my right hand in his and rubbing his thumb slowly across my knuckles, his large blue eyes locked on to mine.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Laurel?” He squeezed my hand once, and the warmth of his touch flowed into me. That morning I’d been so confused by seeing Drew in my bed that even casual conversation had felt like walking a tightrope, but right now, his gentle, attentive presence was a balm. “Not that I’m not excited to see you—I am. But you showing up at the office is a little…”

“Out of character?” I leaned forward, watching for anything, even the tiniest change in expression, that could give me a hint to what in character looked like here.

“You could say that. You were so emphatic about wanting a clean break after you left.”

“That’s true.” A tiny flare of anxiety shot up from the pit of my stomach, There are so many traps to potentially fall into. But the gentle comfort of Drew’s touch, the caring, credulous look in his eyes—deeply familiar, even if we’d never been this to each other in my other life—quickly snuffed it. I didn’t have to go into details to get this right, he wasn’t planning a fact check. I knew Drew, and different trappings in my life didn’t mean I was an entirely different person here. Well…except possibly literally; it wasn’t really clear to me whether I’d taken over some other-world-Laurel’s body or just entered a very developed simulation of that. “I guess it’s been long enough that I don’t feel as awkward about it anymore. Hell, Mark didn’t even recognize me until I dropped your name.”

“Seriously?” He scrunched his entire face in disbelief.

“I guess I’m just not that memorable,” I quipped, wishing I didn’t want so badly for him to contradict me.

“I seriously doubt that,” Drew said, smiling slyly. His eyelids lowered. “Either way, it’s good to see you. Now that we’re on track to present AltR to the entire board, the team is…”

“Freaking out?”

“ Constantly. Like, they all know what they’re supposed to be working on, they’re all good at their jobs, why do they suddenly need me to sign off on every single line of code, you know?”

“Awww, you’re their fearless leader,” I singsonged. Drew rolled his eyes. “No, seriously, they look up to you!”

“Well, I’d be a lot more impressed if they looked down at their keyboards instead.” He widened his eyes comically, leaning back to let the server drop our sushi platter, squeezing my hand once more before he released it to start applying a precise rice-grain-sized smear of wasabi on every single roll and glistening slab of fish with the tip of a chopstick. It was so emphatically him that I had to smile. Had I ever noticed the habit before? There were probably hundreds of little quirks of Drew’s that I’d been privy to as his friend but hadn’t really internalized.

“Are you feeling more like yourself?”

“Mostly,” I said. It wasn’t entirely untrue, even if I still wasn’t sure exactly who this self was. “It was probably just a bad night’s sleep. Maybe something I ate.”

“As long as you’re sure you’re okay. You know I don’t like when you push yourself too hard.”

“I’m not, I promise. Anyway, I’ve gotta push myself a little if I’m gonna prove this whole ‘writer’ thing was a good idea.”

“How’s all that going?” he said, eyes still on his sushi.

“It’s…good. Or, you know, as good as can be expected.” He nodded noncommittally. “Honestly, I’d rather talk about what you’re working on. I want to know everything about this AltR stuff. I feel like we barely scratched the surface last night.” Hopefully that was true? Asking him for a granular breakdown of every aspect of the program might raise his suspicions, but I had to find out more about whatever it was that had happened to me, and Drew was not just my best chance for that, he was possibly the best person to go to, full stop. “Besides, the stuff you did tell me is like…so far above my pay grade I don’t even think I fully grasp it, you know? Like…tell me everything again, but slower this time.” Was that too obvious? After the way I’d been acting, any more lapses in memory would have to set off alarm bells.

But Drew just smiled, flushing slightly, clearly enjoying the praise.

“It is a little tough to wrap your mind around—it’s not like anyone else is doing anything even close to this level of complexity yet. I just wish we could get the program to run longer than a few minutes at a time.”

“So right now you can see…what? Just a single choice?”

“It’s not a choice, exactly, more like an inflection point. A moment where things can split between if this versus if that . But to answer your question…yeah, more or less. One inflection point and a few minutes before and after it. But we’re gonna be able to go longer soon, every time we input new data, the AI gets smarter, which cuts down the computational time it takes to run all the—” He glanced up and smirked at the expression on my face. “Sorry, I know how much you hate it when I get in the weeds. Suffice it to say it’s getting better really fast.”

Hated it? Drew’s nerdy enthusiasm for his passions was one of my favorite things about him. Or at least…it was as his friend. I tucked the tidbit away and forged ahead.

“And what if the program were to…I don’t know, keep running somehow?”

“I mean…it can’t.” Drew shook his head once, sharply.

“I know, but if it could .”

He rolled his eyes, exhaling a small laugh.

“Laurel, it physically can’t . Do you know anything about quantum computers? Other than the fact that they exist, which honestly…even knowing that puts you ahead of maybe ninety-five percent of the population.” He sniffed out another laugh. I tried to ignore the flare of annoyance in my chest. I may not be a literal genius, but I’m not a simpleton.

“They run computations faster than regular computers, right?”

“Right. Because they can exist in two states at once. Superposition, it’s a principle of quantum physics. Each bit isn’t simply a zero or one in a quantum computer, it’s both zero and one until the moment we observe it.”

Déjà vu washed over me, but not from our unknowable life together. It was of much more recent origin, a weird echo between my two lives.

“Like Schrodinger’s cat.”

“Exactly!” Drew’s eyebrows shot up in pleased surprise. Clearly he’d assumed the concept was beyond me. Which, honestly, it still was, but that same annoyance lit again. Had he always thought I was dim and I just hadn’t realized it? And was it just proximity, or was this world’s Drew a little…different? I couldn’t pinpoint how, precisely, but I was sure I was right. But why would that be the case? I pushed the thought away as he finished chewing and continued. “A large enough quantum computer could run more computations per second than there are—”

“—atoms in the entire universe, I know.” Drew’s head jerked back and I bit my lip. Clearly in this life we’d never had this conversation. “What? I try to keep on top of the latest tech developments.”

“Really? I mean…I get general interest in the industry, but it’s not like you’re looking for a new role…right?” He blinked at me, clearly still stunned. Maybe the reason I didn’t like him to “get in the weeds” was his assumption that I would immediately lose track of him. I tried not to feel smug. Knowing a couple talking points didn’t mean I really understood this.

“Not at the moment.” His eyebrows crept toward each other. “Honestly…I just haven’t been able to get this stuff out of my head. I think…maybe I want to write a book about it?” I winced. Sure, that sounded plausible.

But Drew grinned hugely.

“Seriously? I thought you were working on yet another romance.” He chuckled lightly. My shoulders tensed.

“What’s wrong with writing a romance?”

He glanced up, clearly startled by my sharp tone.

“Nothing! Anything you want to write will be as brilliant as you are. Which, if it’s not clear, is saying a lot. ” He reached for my hand, the gentle, loving look in his eyes lowering my hackles some. “Sorry if that came out wrong. I just know you’ve been struggling a little to find the right idea. And selfishly? I like seeing you get so inspired. Especially by something I’m working on. It’s like seeing Hemingway watch his first bullfight or something.”

I took a deep breath. It was possibly—okay, almost definitely— the case that the lack of anything resembling any genre of book on my laptop had me a little…defensive about the writing thing.

“So…can I pick your brain a little more?”

“Absolutely. As long as you promise to thank me first in the acknowledgments.”

“Joke’s on you, that was already the plan.” I tilted my head to the side pertly and he laughed.

“Touché. So? What do you want to know?”

“Why can’t your computer physically run the program indefinitely?”

“Because we haven’t linked enough qubits.” I frowned and he dropped his elbows to the table, making parentheses with his hands between us. “A big enough quantum computer could do that. But ours doesn’t even have a fraction of a percent of that kind of computing power. All this tech is still in its infancy.”

“How infant are we talking?”

“You know in Mad Men, when they get a computer and it fills like…half a floor of their office and basically it’s a glorified calculator?”

I could feel my whole body going slack, mouth dropping open—how many years after that had it taken for computers to become…actual computers? If a “glorified calculator” had somehow booted me into the wrong life…how could I possibly use that to get me back? Drew laughed at my obvious shock and stabbed a chopstick through the center of a piece of salmon sashimi.

“Someday we’ll get to the everyone-has-a-smart-phone stage of quantum computing, but we are years away from that.”

I took a long sip of water. Hopefully Drew couldn’t see how hard my hand was shaking as I carefully replaced the tall, slim glass on the table. As much as I loved the stunning condo, the idea that I’d found a way to fully pursue my writing dreams here—even if the pursuit hadn’t landed me any quarry yet—I realized suddenly that I had always assumed I would eventually get back to my real life.

“So if the program were to keep spinning out the possibilities of one of the…‘inflection points’ you inputted. Like…to train the AI, say…”

Drew tilted his head to the side, gaze drifting to an upper corner of the room as he considered.

“I guess that would be possible if the computer just stopped trying to superpose the two states.”

My stomach dropped through my asshole so fast it had to have left a hole in the booth bench.

“Just to make sure I’m understanding what you’re saying…a timeline might be able to run longer than what you’re seeing right now…”

“If it were just one timeline, yeah.” Drew nodded. “Holding both states is the hard part.”

“Right…that makes sense.” My whole body was numb, too heavy and too light at the same time, one part of me rooted to the seat and another floating away. I bit back a hysterical laugh—how quantum of me. When I glanced up, Drew was looking at me expectantly. With a monumental effort of will, I forced myself to bite into a piece of fish in an attempt to appear nonchalant.

The conversation moved on from there, the two of us easily falling into a patter that was blessedly familiar from years of friendship, enough so that I could almost do it on autopilot. Which was lucky—anything that required more focus would have shorted out my massively overloaded mental circuits.

They were entirely consumed by one thought, its bass drum rhythm growing louder and more insistent with each passing second, reverberating through my core until I couldn’t just hear it, I could feel it taking hold of me, the thump thump thump rattling my vertebrae, making my teeth knock against one another spastically.

Just one timeline. Just one timeline.

If the computer could handle only one timeline, and I was currently inhabiting this one…then it didn’t matter whether this was my “real” life or not. If what Drew said was true, there was no way to get back.

That knowledge cast a heavy fog over the rest of the afternoon, and though I tried to focus—first on my writing, and then, when it quickly became clear there was zero chance of that happening, the grind of memorizing details of this life—I was staring off into space when Drew walked through the front door of the condo that evening.

“Thinking deep thoughts?” he said, chuckling when I jumped at his voice.

“Oh, umm…just spacing out, I guess.” I nibbled my lower lip as I watched him move through the space—our space—the idea that I might be permanently stuck here giving even his smallest actions undue weight.

“Did you manage to ponder on the mysteries of what to eat for dinner first? I’m starving,” Drew said, kicking his shoes under the hall table and crossing the living room, opening his laptop on the dining room table without even looking over at me.

“Sorry…no.” He glanced over, an eyebrow raised. Was dinner always on me? I suppose it made sense, my schedule was clearly the more flexible one. It made me wonder whether I’d really dived into cooking as a chosen hobby, or whether I’d been trying to convince myself it was my choice by adding more and more bells and whistles…

“Too much going on, I take it?” He glanced around the room with a wry smile, eyes landing on my tote, laptop peeking out from the top of its open mouth.

Annoyance swelled deep in my stomach.

“Is that so hard to believe? Writing isn’t easy, you know,” I spat, voice tart. Was my time just less valuable than his in his eyes? It made me rethink the earlier text exchange, my assumption that not like you have a due date was meant as a kindness to me. Drew raised both hands in mock defense.

“I know that! Don’t get upset, I was honestly just kidding around. Anyway, it’s no big deal. We’re overdue for a pizza night, right?”

“Right,” I said, forcing myself to return his distracted smile, not that he noticed—he was already typing rapidly on his laptop. “I’ll just call that in, then? Any requests?”

“Hmm? Oh, uhh…whatever you want. You know what I like.”

I didn’t, but it didn’t seem to matter. Drew had locked in to work, and we hardly spoke the rest of the evening, the TV not quite drowning out the roar in my ears.

You might be stuck here forever. This might become your real—only—life.