Parallel

conversation began are flowing freely now. I choke back a sob.
    “I am too,” he says sadly. He hesitates for a moment, then pulls me into a hug. “I believe you,” he whispers. I exhale and lean into him, letting the weight of my upper body fall against his chest. His neck, soapy and sweet, is warm on my forehead. The scent is both new and powerfully familiar, triggering the dozen or so memories I have of being this close to him. Sitting next to him on that swing in his neighborhood, the night before our first date. Holding hands at the planetarium two days later. His arm around me on the Ferris wheel. And my most recent one: leaning against a tree on the bank of the Chattahoochee, my head resting on his shoulder, watching the sunset after the Brookside crew picnic. I inhale deeply, allowing myself to imagine what those moments would have been like to live, since the memories of them, while specific and precise, are void of emotion and thus strikingly incomplete. My arms tighten around his neck. I don’t want to let go.
    “Cosmic entanglement,” Josh says after a minute, his voice muffled against my hair. “Definitely not where I expected this conversation to go.” I smile, resting my ear against his chest. “Who else knows about it?” he asks.
    “Only Caitlin,” I reply, distracted by the faint thump of his heartbeat, wondering what it would feel like beneath my palm. “Dr. Mann suspects, but we haven’t told him for sure.”
    Josh pulls back and looks at me. “You haven’t told Michael?” I shake my head. “Why not?”
    “I wasn’t sure he’d believe me if I did.”
    “Do you . . .” His eyes drop to the pavement. “Love him?”
    “I don’t know,” I admit. Josh turns and starts walking again. His brown eyes are heavy with hurt.
    “It shouldn’t have happened like this,” I say lamely. “If I’d known about you . . . about us . . . if I’d had any idea that we were—” The words “in love” are stuck in my throat. We were in love. I shake my head, unable to finish. Josh takes my hand and squeezes it.
    “So I should blame Thanksgiving, then,” he says.
    I look at him. “What?”
    “Last year,” he explains. “If you’d come over like you were supposed to, you and Michael would’ve met. Maybe things would’ve been different if you had.”
    My rib cage contracts. There’s no “maybe” about it. If Michael had known who I was when we met at Yale, he would’ve expected me to remember him, and I would’ve played along, the way I did with everyone else that day. At the very least, he would’ve asked me about Josh. There’s no way we’d be dating right now if we’d met under those circumstances.
    Thank God she didn’t go.
    I think back, trying to remember what my parallel did instead, but can’t. My breath catches in my throat as I realize.
    “Thanksgiving hasn’t happened yet,” I whisper.
    It doesn’t register at first. Josh just looks at me. Then realization flashes in his eyes and he gets it. “It’s still possible,” he says. “She could still come by. For dessert, maybe.” His eyes are shining with hope and possibility. But there’s something else there, too.
    Love.
    Even now, after all that’s happened. It’s written so plainly on his face. It doesn’t matter to him that his memories aren’t real. His feelings haven’t changed.
    He loves me.
    “Fate could intervene,” he says then. His lips, chapped from the cold, curl in a tentative smile. “We could end up together after all.”
    No! All the fears and anxieties I’ve been ignoring come rushing to the surface. If my parallel wants to be with Josh, she should be. If she decides to give their relationship another shot next fall when he tells her he’s willing to transfer, then great. I wish them the best. But here, in this world, I should get to decide who I end up with. And I choose Michael. He’s the one I’m supposed to be with. What I’m feeling in this moment doesn’t matter. In my head I know what’s true.
    Then again, it’s not my head that’s the problem.
    Unable to meet Josh’s gaze, I look past him to the wooden gazebo up ahead. My eyes wander down the hill to the swing at the lake’s edge, swaying in the afternoon breeze. Our swing. I blink, pushing the image of us on it from my mind. It’s not our swing. It’s theirs .
    Memories are tricky little bastards.
    “Come on,” Josh says, stepping onto the dirt.
    “So how do you remember it?” I ask as we settle into the