Chapter Sixteen
It was a long shot at best. I wasn’t entirely sure that was the mechanism, for one thing, and even if it was, I couldn’t know precisely where I’d be in another fucking universe .
But I could make a good guess. I only made it to Sunday night yoga maybe two weeks out of three, the serotonin rush it gave me leading into another workweek intoxicating but not always enough to overcome Let’s just curl up and watch a movie and ignore the Sunday scaries . I didn’t know what World O Laurel did while I was gone, didn’t know whether she—I—might have taken a morning run and worn myself out, or opted for a gigantic burrito for dinner that made the idea of physical activity frankly ludicrous. But I had to imagine that other-me was feeling keyed up, the psychic toll of slipping in and out of lives lingering, if not in my memory bank, then at least in my body.
Please, Laurel, let that anxiety drive you to yoga, not to ice cream.
The class let out at eight, the bus I took home picked up at 8:08. If I was in that yoga class right now, I had…twenty-five minutes until other-me would be boarding a bus home to Ollie. Hand shaking, I opened a rideshare app and dropped a pin near the bus stop, praying that someone was close enough to get me there on time.
Five minutes later, “Perry” pulled up outside the office. I slid into the back seat of his SUV, nerves crackling with anxiety.
“If it’s possible, can you try to, you know…hurry?” I flashed a pained smile. “I promise I’ll five-star you. And tip.”
His eyes flicked up to the rearview, assessing, then he shrugged.
“I can try. Can’t control the lights, though.”
The minutes ticked by as we picked our way along Cambridge Street, through the tangle around Harvard, down Mass Ave…7:58…8:00…8:03…
At precisely 8:06 he slid to a stop a few feet from the bus shelter. I yanked at the door handle, anxiety mounting. Down the block, I could see a gaggle of lithe women clustered outside the yoga studio, mats slung over their shoulders, crop tops visible beneath sleek hooded athleisure as they started to make their way to cars and Tstops or just lingered to chat with a friend. Some of them were even familiar.
“Oh, sorry, the child locks always turn on in this car,” Perry said, squinting at the panel at his elbow. Through the back window, I could see the lights of the bus approaching. I yanked at the handle again, uselessly. The little knob of the door lock had retracted fully, impossible to get my fingers around.
The bus slowed as a car pulled out of a spot down the street. 8:07.
“Please,” I said, heart skipping around my chest as the bus started up again. “I need to get out of the car now .”
“Did that do it?” He glanced back at me, noticed my frantic look. “Wait, that was the windows. How about now?”
With a tiny click the lock shot open.
“Thank you,” I choked out as I jerked open the door, spilling onto the sidewalk, not bothering to look back. I darted to the bus shelter, arriving just seconds before the bus lumbered up in front of it, panting with exertion and panic as the door creaked open.
I would be here in my real life, right? I had to be here.
“Are you getting on?” The driver raised a thin eyebrow at me.
“I just…I need to…” I clicked my phone to check the time.
8:09 .
Had I already missed myself? I paced the length of the bus shelter, hoping to intersect with the other me at some point along its few feet of street frontage.
“Lady, I have a schedule to keep,” the driver said, clearly growing annoyed. I glanced around, waiting for the vertigo to slam into me, for the world to go dark at the edges, but I was stubbornly, insistently here .
8:10. “Hello? You with me?”
“Sorry, I’ll, uh…I’ll catch the next one.”
With a huge eye roll the driver closed the door and pulled away, leaving me to sink onto the bench, body limp with despair. It had been a long shot, I’d known that, but it was the only idea I had.
The me in the other world—the me I should be—was probably curled up on the couch, head on Ollie’s thigh, both of us reading, or half-watching some random show, or just talking. And tomorrow she’d wake up in an apartment I had no access to in this world, and head in to work, and what was I going to do, keep trying to wait on specific stoops, slow down at specific points on the sidewalk, plant myself in the right place at exactly the right moment and hope that I was right, not only about my other self’s schedule that day, but about this “same place, same time” thing even working in the first—
A wave of dizziness hit like a freight train. I sat up straight despite the vertigo, every nerve alight. It was happening.
The glowing 8:11 on my phone screen was starting to waver in and out of focus.
I bent over, head between my knees, gripping the edge of the plastic bench as the light-headedness barreled through me, a tiny tornado spinning me out of this world and into the next. An image of myself as Dorothy, swept up alongside bike-riding biddies and a handful of extremely confused cows, flashed into my mind, and I let out a short laugh, the force of it only intensifying the dizziness. It felt more powerful than it ever had before, my fingers and toes were tingling now, and for just a moment I thought I was going to faint, but then…
“Are you getting on?” The same driver was staring down at me from the driver’s seat, her penciled-on brow arched at the exact same angle as she stared at me in a mix of boredom and annoyance. “Because I’m running behind schedule here.”
I glanced up at her, the world slowly coming back into focus as I took long, deep breaths. Her annoyance morphed into a wary frown.
“You alright? You don’t look so good.”
“Sorry…head rush,” I said with a weak smile, pushing up onto my feet and willing myself not to wobble. “Should’ve hydrated more before I went to hot yoga.”
“Mmm,” she said, leaning back in her bucket seat, then gestured at me to board the bus. “Well, hurry up, like I said, I’m behind.”
Gripping the handrail, I climbed onto the bus, swiped my T pass on the sensor, and collapsed onto a bench seat near the front, ignoring the driver’s mutters of Better not throw up I don’t have time for that bullshit tonight . As the bus lumbered along the route, I stared at my reflection in the window across from me, the night sky turning it into a black mirror. Long, highlighted hair pulled up into a ponytail, a nubbly black hoodie zipped up over my yoga wear, the Sun Shower logo on the chest nearly worn away. Of all the many bands Ollie had played in over the years, it was the one I’d always loved best.
I reached up to touch my cheek, confirm that I was here, solid, real . The longer this went on, the harder it was to trust…not my existence, exactly, but something nearby? I’d taken for granted that my consciousness and my body were inextricably linked—who didn’t?—and even if I was slipping into more or less the same body, every time it happened I felt a little more insubstantial, a bit less sure of where the borders of me really were. And if I couldn’t fully trust my perception of myself…what might I be getting wrong about everyone else?
Soon we’d reached my stop, and existential quandaries were elbowed out of my head by the anxiety thrumming through me. I hadn’t felt this much need for Ollie in longer than I could remember, and it was impossible not to let my thoughts drift toward darkness. Is the Ollie I think I know even real, or is he just someone I’ve invented? Someone who could slip away as easily as I have?
I lingered on the stoop in the cold for what could have been thirty seconds or an hour, desperate to see him, to feel him, but terrified that he wouldn’t be there, that the hole I’d left behind when I’d been ripped out of this world and into another had grown, the edges too frayed to hold the shape, the fabric of my life unweaving itself in my absence.
But when I finally got the courage to open the door, mount the stairs to our apartment, cross the threshold, he was spread along the couch in a stained T-shirt from some “seminal” nineties band I’d never bothered to listen to, headphones on, eyes half-closed, the television on mute, lights flickering over his skin. He smiled softly at something he’d heard, not seeing me yet, and my heart swelled with tenderness so quickly and painfully I thought it might burst through my chest.
Then, seeming to feel my eyes, he turned to me, and the smile unfurled fully, a blossom opening its petals to the sun, and the ache in me was too much to bear, I needed to feel him, to be sure he was solid, that he, and we, were totally, completely real. Dropping my mat to the floor unceremoniously, I crossed the room in three long strides, crouched over him, took both stubbled cheeks in my hands, and drew his lips to mine, the anxiety of the last hour—and days—alchemized into pure, shining need. Suddenly all I could focus on was the pressure of his mouth against my own, the smell of his skin—cedar and cloves and a musky hint of his pheromones hovering just beneath—the surprise I could feel move through his body, then dissipate as he shifted into a more upright position, hands drifting to my hips to settle me fully on his lap, pull me against him…
After a few breathless seconds, he pulled away, heavy-lidded desire warring with curiosity in his rich brown eyes.
“Wow, what happened in yoga?” His eyebrow cocked up. His thumb rubbed slow circles on the base of my spine, sending flickers of electricity out from my center with each turn. I drew in a shuddering breath, pressing my hips down against him slowly, barely managing not to groan. His eyebrow went higher.
“Can’t I want my boyfriend?” I smiled coyly, bending down to kiss him again, nibbling playfully at his bottom lip. He kissed me back for a few tantalizingly slow seconds, tongue flicking over the inside of my lip in the precise way I liked, then moved his mouth to the line of my jaw.
“I’m definitely not arguing against this,” he murmured against my skin. I threw my head back, hoping he’d take me up on the offer of my neck. Before I even finished the thought his lips were moving along the column of my throat, pressing long, lingering kisses to every inch. I gasped as he reached the top of my collarbone, then reached blindly for the zipper of the hoodie and yanked it down, shrugging out of it. “I’m just surprised. Usually it doesn’t get you so…” He exhaled a laugh, a tickle of breath on the delicate skin of my chest.
“You know it’s hot yoga, right?”
“Silly me, I thought that referred to the temperature.”
“Only if you’re unimaginative.”
“And what were you i-mag-in-ing …” He drew the word out in time with the slow movement of his fingertip along the inside of my arm, all the way from my shoulder down to the inside of my wrist. I shivered, heat pulsing between my legs as he slowly made his way back up the outside, fingers skimming around to the back of my neck until he was cupping my nape, his lips moving along the grace note of my collarbone all the while. His other hand was still on the small of my back, and he pressed my hips gently but firmly against him, letting out a soft mmm as I slid over his now hard length.
“Isn’t it obvious?” I repeated the motion, grinding over him slowly, relishing the friction of the fabric against my throbbing center, his stiffness tantalizingly close, sliding beneath me like a promise.
“You’re saying you spent that entire hour contorting your body, sweaty in skintight clothes, thinking of the moment when you could run your tongue along the entire length of…a burrito?”
“You know how revved up the promise of burritos gets me,” I purred. I wasn’t sure when our running gag about getting horny for takeout had started, but in that moment what had become so commonplace I almost didn’t register it anymore suddenly felt precious, a little glittering shard of us, something that had been missing for so long, not just in the other world, but maybe even in this one.
But before I could unpack that, I felt Ollie grin against my neck, then he grazed his teeth along its length until he reached my ear, which he nibbled just-this-side-of-gently, and all of me was tinder that I hadn’t realized was waiting to catch until the crackling glow of lust that we’d been stoking suddenly burst into a consuming flame. I exhaled heavily, a soundless groan, but Ollie seemed to feel it move through me, because within seconds he was easing me away just enough to peel his shirt over his head, smiling slyly at the open hunger on my face as I took him in— really took him in. My gaze moved over the muscled planes of his chest, a thicket of dark hair giving his slim body a hint of pure masculinity, then lower, lingering on the dark lines that carved out his abs, the knife-sharp slice of his vee-lines, swooping inward and down, arrows pointing toward his visibly growing desire.
I took a shaky breath and forced myself to climb off him, ignoring the ripping sensation at my center. This was just a grown-up version of the marshmallow test, Better things to come if you delay your gratification just a little while longer. I extended a hand and pulled him up after me, then led him silently through the darkened kitchen and into our bedroom. I left him at the side of the bed just long enough to flick on his bedside lamp, its warm glow skimming along his cheekbones, pooling in his dark eyes like liquid gold. I let myself get lost in their depths while my hands moved to his waistband, flicking open the clasp of his belt and pulling it free slowly. I tossed it onto the floor without breaking eye contact.
His hand moved up to cup my cheek as I unbuttoned his jeans, pulled down the zipper, moved them down over his hips, both of us mesmerized, unable to look away. His breath hitched as I slid his boxer briefs down, then wrapped my hand around him and stroked once, slowly, along his entire length. His teeth caught his bottom lip and for just a moment something flickered across his gaze that I didn’t recognize, a curtain drawn between us. Then his eyes dropped to my chest and, after quickly freeing himself from his pants and underwear, he ran his hands up the sides of my waist, fingers curling over my ribs and beneath the band of my sports bra. His eyes met mine for just an instant, but I didn’t need words to know what he was asking, and I lifted my arms overhead, breath catching in my throat as he tugged the bra over my breasts, the slight chill in our drafty bedroom tightening my nipples to buds.
Ollie bent down and took my left breast in his mouth, tongue moving in a slow, almost lazy circle over the delicate skin, then flicking over my nipple suddenly in a way that made me gasp. I could feel his half-laugh vibrate through me.
“I want you on top,” he murmured as he moved to my other breast, warming it with his mouth, heating every inch of my skin with the deft motions of his tongue. “I want to watch you,” he added as he drew away, my body magneted to his mouth so strongly that my chest followed its movement.
Unable to form coherent words, I simply nodded. Smiling at me from beneath his hooded eyes, he moved onto the bed, watching me openly as I slid my pants off, then the lacy black underwear that this-world-me had thankfully had the foresight to put on that morning. Leaving my clothes in a pile at my feet, I climbed onto the bed, moving over him on all fours, sighing as my hair slid over my shoulder, gentle as a caress. Ollie’s eyes roamed my body for several seconds before he lifted a hand to my waist, the other to my cheek.
“You’re so fucking beautiful, you know that, Lo?”
“I feel beautiful when I’m with you,” I murmured, and the slightest frown creased his forehead, the same drawn-curtain sensation flickering in his eyes. The tiniest wisp of dread went through me, a more toxic smoke off the conflagration of the two of us together. “Ollie…is something—”
“Shhh,” he said, drawing my mouth down to his, “the only thing I want to think about right now is this. You . Okay?”
“Okay,” I said, the word dissolving into his kiss, more aggressive now, still tender but with a distinct undercurrent of ferocity. Ollie released my cheek and moved both hands to my ass, directing me over him, and the feeling of him sliding along me, parting me, drove all other thoughts out of my head. I slid over him slowly, then faster, pressing down harder each time, until the throbbing between my thighs was just a constant thrum of need, every nerve in my body alight with it, my skin growing hot, each movement of Ollie’s hand—a squeeze, a caress, fingers trailing up the furrow of my spine so delicately it felt like his skin whispering to mine—heightening the sensation, until I thought I might explode with it.
“I need to be inside you, Lo. Now .” Ollie’s voice was a growl, his expression twisted between pleasure and pain as he wrapped a hand around himself and guided his length into me, moaning as he thrust to bury himself deeper. “ Fuck you feel so good,” he said, breaths growing ragged as he pushed into me again and again, the sudden fullness inside ratcheting things up so far I couldn’t even speak, could barely form thoughts.
I threw my head back, steadying myself with both hands on his chest, too lost in my own mounting pleasure to worry whether I was hurting him, whether he could breathe, because all I was was this feeling, and every time I rocked my hips over him, harder, faster, it grew, and grew, a storm gathering on the horizon and me helpless to avoid the oncoming deluge. I started to whimper, biting my lower lip against the tsunami of feeling overtaking me, trying to hold myself together, and then, with one final jerk of Ollie’s hips, I felt my borders dissolve, the distance between him and me collapsing in the joint spasms of our bodies, the rush of feeling so intense I started to feel dizzy, lips tingling, nails digging into his chest to keep myself from floating away to somewhere else altogether.
It took several long seconds for the storm to pass, the waves growing slower, and gentler, and then fading away entirely, leaving behind a calm, washed-clean shoreline. Shakily I swung my leg over him and collapsed into his waiting arm, my head fitting perfectly in the crook of his shoulder. I pressed my palm to his chest, rubbing back and forth slowly with my thumb, content to simply feel the warmth of his arm around my naked back, to watch the slow rise and fall of his chest, to luxuriate in the scent of his sex-heated skin.
“What am I gonna do with you, Laurel?” he murmured, turning to press a soft kiss to the top of my head. I frowned, not quite sure what he was getting at.
“More of this?” I ventured. Ollie’s laugh vibrated through his chest.
“Touché,” he said, ruffling my hair with his hand before he rolled over to face me. Seeing him stretched along the bed, body limned in golden light, literally bared to me, made my heart swell with bruised tenderness, a nostalgia for something I wasn’t sure I’d ever had. He was so completely at ease, so totally comfortable in his own skin, that I felt almost jealous. How? How could he be so sure of what he wanted, of who he was supposed to be ? How could he keep going after his dream when—despite all his hard work and his talent and the endless times he’d started over, re-formed himself, tried again—the world wasn’t granting him the success he absolutely deserved? And where did I fit into all this, the girlfriend with the eminently buttoned-up day job, a would-be writer without the guts to actually do the thing, and just as chickenshit when it came to us? I wasn’t wondering about Drew specifically anymore, felt more sure that what I had with Ollie wasn’t just habit, it was special, precious even…but the idea of slipping the ring Ollie had tucked away in his drawer onto my finger terrified me even now. I needed to figure out how to stay here, how to stay with him…but then what?
Ollie’s eyes narrowed, almost as if he could read the ticker tape of anxiety unspooling behind my eyes.
“Penny for your thoughts?” he finally said, voice cooler, but not distant, hand still resting on my hip, connected to me.
“I just feel like…I need to make a change,” I said, tentative. I didn’t rehearse full-on speeches for every casual interaction, but if we were talking about something a little deeper, I usually liked to have a sense of my message before I started talking. Now, though, I felt totally lost, alone in a dark forest without a map, or even a light.
“What sort of change?”
He hadn’t pulled his hand away, but I could see the tension in his body, the wariness circling the dark pools of his eyes. Part of me was dying to tell him the truth, a change to a program that I don’t fully understand but that is literally pulling me out of my life for unknowable amounts of time. But that felt…heavy. And wrong, somehow. And like it might make him question my sanity.
“Honestly, I’m not even sure,” I finally admitted, smiling weakly. It was all too much to process, let alone share. Disappointment briefly tightened Ollie’s eyes, then he shrugged.
“In that case, I’m gonna shower. Want to join?”
The look he flashed over his shoulder was sparkling with something I would have called intimacy before, a naughty inside joke of a look that let me in on the punch line, but I realized with a start that that wasn’t what it meant at all. The playfulness wasn’t pulling me in…it was keeping me at arm’s length.
“Uhh…no, you go on. I’m good.” I blinked, trying to process the new information. It was like I’d been seeing the image through a slightly warped lens and had only now pulled it out of the aperture. Ollie was here, he was smiling, he was asking me for a form of closeness, and yet all of it seemed meant to keep me away.
“If you change your mind, you know where to find me.” Waggling his eyebrows, he left the bedroom, leaving me in a tangle, both of sheets and of thoughts.
I’d always been so sure Ollie was an open book, and he was…mostly. So what was he hiding now? And how could getting so close that I could still taste him on my tongue actually feel like a step in the wrong direction?