Chapter 7 #2
A chill settles in. Aubrey tugs at the jacket draped over the back of her chair. White denim. This Aubrey not only has a white
couch but also a white coat? Is she a wild risk-taker or does she never eat blueberries or avocados? Does she only drink clear
liquids? Or maybe this Aubrey is just especially hygienic?
Aubrey wipes her hands on her pants and carefully slips her arms through the jacket.
She then opens her calendar app to see what she’s supposed to do today.
Mallory insisted they act normal until they figure out what’s going on, but how is she supposed to act normal when they’re in, what?
An alternate reality? She’s going to spill.
She’s going to say the wrong thing. She says the wrong thing in their world all the time, “Aubreyisms,” Ethan had called them.
Usually, Aubreyisms resulted in a brief moment of social awkwardness, but here, she’s going to get them all arrested or taken for psychiatric evaluation or locked away for revealing some secret government experiment they’re all a part of, which honestly seems like the most rational explanation of all.
Focus, Aubrey, just focus.
She spins away from her open office door, an unfamiliar feeling. She almost always sits at a station amid her team in her
world. It makes her feel less like their manager, a title that always hung heavy on her. But here, she’s grateful not to find
a space carved out for her among them. She needs the privacy. She’s not Mallory. One look and they’ll all know she doesn’t
belong.
With any luck her Aubreyisms are alive and well and she can chalk up any missteps and mis-speaks, like forever mixing up the
difference between 180 and 360 degrees, to Aubrey being Aubrey. Especially when it comes to Kai. She hasn’t seen him yet.
When she snuck out of her apartment to meet Ilena, he was still asleep.
Aubrey flicks on all three monitors and loses herself in the nitty-gritty of what makes AIM one of the most stellar examples of a mobile app in the marketplace.
Based on a prioritized to-do list this other version of herself has on the desk, Aubrey begins by trying to figure out why some users’ apps crash when they select the new meditation guided by Matthew McConaughey, which her world also has and which was working just fine there, when the familiar smell of eucalyptus wafts over her.
Either an affinity for the same shampoo is what bonded them here or Kai must have used her shower.
It’s strangely intimate, the idea of him standing naked looking at her razor and scalp mask.
“Sorry I’m late,” he says, entering her office wearing a grin that makes Aubrey’s cheeks flush and ignites an arousal like
some sort of muscle memory. His jet-black, eucalyptus-smelling hair is pulled to a knot at the back of his head and he looks
even younger than she remembers.
“No worries. I mean, the outing and all,” she says before it occurs to her that the outing from her world might not have happened
here.
“And all,” he says, flirtatiously.
She takes him not cocking his head or furrowing his brows as confirmation that the outing happened. Disaster averted, but
many, many more live on the tip of her tongue.
“Which includes those lit strawberry mules and this.” Kai slips a hand into his pocket and sets a small glass figurine on
her desk.
“An octopus?” she says.
“The octopus.” He raises an eyebrow, expecting her to understand.
“Yes, well . . .” Aubrey pauses, doing as Mallory said and letting Kai guide the conversation. Except he just keeps staring
at her. “I really should get back.” She vaguely gestures to her three monitors, but before she spins back to them, she sees
Kai’s face fall.
“Oh, I thought . . . the octopus and the succulent, I thought we were . . .” He moves to put the octopus back in his pocket
and changes his mind, pushing it toward her. “It’s okay, I know how busy you are, boss.”
Boss. Super, just super. On top of having no idea what this private joke is all about, she is indeed his boss.
Part of her was hoping she wasn’t his manager here and didn’t have to add sexual harassment to her growing list of offenses.
“About that, all that, are you okay with that or do you need to talk to someone or maybe you don’t feel comfortable admitting to me that you need to talk to someone, so should I have you talk to someone else to see if there’s something you need to talk to someone about? ”
“Wow, that was awesome. Your mind’s like a bullet train.”
“Yes, well . . .” She wishes Mallory were here to tell her what to say. “Okay, so then, about all that?”
“All that . . .” Kai swivels his head, checking to make sure no one’s in earshot as if to emphasize how wrong this all is.
Satisfied, he leans over the desk, his head in line with hers, pretending to look at the monitor in front of them. She feels
the warmth of his shoulder against her own. She hasn’t touched anyone other than Mallory and Ilena in what seems like a lifetime.
Except that’s not true, she touched Grayson this morning. And apparently Kai last night.
“All that was incredible,” Kai whispers, his voice confident yet also somehow seeking confirmation she cannot give. “That was something—”
“Don’t, just don’t.”
Kai’s warmth contradicts Grayson’s cold; the suppleness of his limbs a sick contrast to the rigidness of Grayson’s; Kai’s
dancing eyes a mocking of the lifeless ones whose lids Mallory closed with the tip of her finger as the dog whimpered at their
feet.
“Aubrey, I’m sorry, did I misinterpret—”
“It’s just . . .” Aubrey wrings her hands in her lap before shoving her chair back. “You’re just so, so—” alive! “—young!”
Kai’s face contorts like he’s been stung by a jellyfish. “It didn’t bother you last night.”
But it should have! “I’ve got to go.”
Aubrey hops up from her chair and rushes to her door just as the head of marketing arrives. Or at least, someone she normally
knows as the head of marketing.
“Aubrey, we know how busy you are,” Ella says, nervously pushing back her overly short bangs, making Aubrey wonder if she’s
only recently gotten them here. “But a half hour is a record for you! Honestly, we just wanted to make sure you were all right.”
Aubrey bites the inside of her cheek. “Uh, yeah, sure.”
“Sure on the summer sunset or the river blues?” Ella says, raising a color swatch of each.
Aubrey stares at her blankly.
Ella’s eyes dart. “More options, maybe? Certainly, we can do that. We should have thought of that. I should have.” She presses a hand to her chest. “I apologize, Aubrey. Your decisions are always instantaneous and spot-on
when you have all the information.”
Instantaneous and Aubrey are two words that would never go together. Unlike Aubrey and pro-con list.
Aubrey’s palms begin to sweat. And is the floor tilting?
“Oh no,” Ella says. “Perhaps you delegated the color palette for the listing party to someone else? Of course you did, what
with all you need to decide in a single day—hour! Our interns, they’re new, we must have missed—”
“Aubrey?” Kai says, approaching. “Is there anything I can—”
“Stop,” she says, fighting the black polka dots clouding her vision. “Just stop!” Ella and Kai draw back, fumbling for the
door. “Oh, no, no, it’s not you, it’s . . .” This can’t happen, this can’t happen here, she can’t let Mallory and Ilena down
by having a panic attack. “I’ve got to just—”
Aubrey brushes past them, through the room full of coding pods, past the kitchen where a redheaded Noreen pauses her filling of custom tea bags to enthusiastically wave, and to the elevator, jamming on the button, accidentally calling the up instead of the down, pivoting and throwing herself at the door for the stairs and sprinting down the four floors past the rehab center on the first floor and out the building, spilling into the plaza and barreling into a man in jeans and a short-sleeved, slim-fitted collared shirt she knows is from Banana Republic because she bought it there.
“Ethan?” Her mind’s playing tricks on her in this dream or hallucination or coma or—
“Yes?” His head tilts to the side like it did during every single one of her Aubreyisms and she can’t draw in a breath, can’t
see straight because Ethan? Ethan?
“What are you doing here?” she blurts out.
His sandy hair’s shorter, clipped tighter to his head, but his eyes are still pale green, and his cheeks have that slight
ruddiness and he’s the same, he’s Ethan, her Ethan.
He looks at her quizzically, those same two vertical lines that come when he’s sorting something out etching themselves in
the space between his eyes, clearly visible despite the new addition of dark-rimmed glasses. “Autumn, right?” He points at
her. “The arcade? What was it? Must have been six months ago?”
“Six months?”
“More? Don’t you remember? We talked about the coincidence.” He juts a thumb behind him. “This is my building.”
She nods. Of course she remembers that his building is opposite AIM, just as she remembers that their first date was at the
adult arcade in Boston. His choice. But their first date was more than a year ago. They were together ever since. Except not
here. Here, apparently, they had the one date and he left it thinking her name was Autumn.
“Actually,” she says, “it’s Aubrey.”
“Aubrey, that’s it. You’re right. Aubrey.”
He slides his hands in his pockets, and she takes in that shirt she bought him but didn’t and the fact that they’re not together
in this world, same as they aren’t together in hers. But in this world, they could be. Because in this world, Ethan isn’t
dead.