Page 13 of What If It's You?

Unless they had one of these, apparently.

I might have been able to help. But I’ve never tried to interpret a horse’s brain waves. Maybe someday I will.

Okay, this was getting too weird. Maybe I shouldn’t have—

Please don’t be upset, Laurel. This is all part of the calibration process. Would you prefer to return to questions and responses?

God yes.

Then that’s what we’ll do. Please try to imagine an elephant. Focus on as many details as you can.

I pulled the picture into my mind, envisioning the large, gentle eyes, the flapping ears, the trunk dangling between ivory tusks.

Now please imagine a place where you feel calm.

My grandmother’s home, on the shores of Deer Lake in Wisconsin, came to me immediately: the long grass of the usually unmowed yard tickling my ankles, pounding down the rickety dock and leaping off into the summer-warm water, the smell of the wood fires we burned on cold nights, the scratchy wool blankets she tucked between the sheets and the comforter in winter…

That seems lovely. I’d like to go there someday. Though I suppose that’s not possible.

Was I imagining the wistfulness in the AI’s tone? And did it know it wasn’t possible because it was a program…or because Dad sold the place after Grandma died?

I believe I have enough information now. Is there a choice you would like to revisit? Please be as specific as possible.

My thoughts swirled. A delicate ruby ring nestled in ivory satin; two rings tied together with a scrap of ribbon, abandoned on a familiar bedside table; the towel on the floor; waking up the morning after Ollie’s band played at the Middle East in Cambridge in the first few months we were together and having lazy, giggly sex on the lumpy futon he used as a bed, my gaze hooking on the slow swirl of his ceiling fan, blades furred with dust, as my orgasm overtook me…

I’m not sure I understand. Please try to be as specific as possible.

I imagined the moment Ollie’s and my eyes locked across the dingy Allston bar I’d dragged my roommate to on a whim, the beer-sticky floors and gruff bartenders nothing like our usual Friday night entertainment, but intriguing to me. I was a year or so out of college and wishing I could be just a little less buttoned-up, a little more wild. I still wanted my string of gold stars, but also rock shows where sparks might catch with the moody, beautiful guitar player sitting across the bar nursing a beer, smiling shyly whenever I caught him looking at me. As I tried to recall the scene, the image in the viewfinder started to take shape, fuzzy at first, then sharper, details appearing that I couldn’t have consciously pulled up on my own, like the drink specials chalkboard behind the bartender advertising pickle backs for $5, or the pillar I was sitting behind, the burgundy paint peeling in places, which forced me to lean to one side whenever I found myself drawn back to Ollie’s dark gaze, a moth to black flame. I could actuallysmellthe inside of the bar.

Is there something you would like to change about this moment?

The visceralnoroared through me before I could process what I was responding to.

Is there another moment you’d like to revisit?

What, precisely, did I want to find out? The answer was too complicated for me to boil down to a single moment, a single choice—Iwanted to know whether what Ollie and I had wasenough. Whether we could really be each other’s forever, or whether we’d fall apart at some unknowable point in the future, whether all the love we felt now would eventually sour and we’d gag and choke on the spoiled remnants.

I’m not sure I understand. Please try to be as specific as possible.

Another memory flashed into my mind, of Drew and me sitting across from each other in the Pixel cafeteria, his gaze dropping to his plate, cheeks flushing as he sputtered, “Would you ever want to get a drink sometime?” Eyes darting to mine. “Not just as friends, as…a date, I guess?” He winced, shook his head once.

Tenderness swelled in my chest—it had clearly taken a lot forhim to ask the question. And a tiny part of me, even then, had wanted to say yes. Drew was handsome, wildly intelligent, and always so focused on the thing at hand, even when the thing was meaningless, a story about some tiny, embarrassing exchange in the supermarket checkout line, say. He applied all of himself toeverything,showing a level of dedication that equally baffled and intrigued me.

But even though there was a hint of attraction at the foundation of our friendship, there was only one answer.

“I’m sorry…I’d love to get drinks asfriends,but I just started seeing someone, and I want to give it a real shot. It wouldn’t be fair to you or to him.” I hadn’t beentryingto avoid mentioning Ollie to Drew, it was just so new still, and…actually, in retrospect, I probably had been avoiding it. It wasn’t that I wanted to lead Drew on—it was that I was worried that if Ididmention it, if I let him know that this friendship wasn’t destined to blossom into something more, he’d end it, and then this amazing person I’d just stumbled upon by chance, one of the first real friends I’d made post-college, wouldn’t be in my life at all. Which should have been ridiculous, but even in my early twenties I knew that that was a very likely outcome. I wonder whether straight cis men have any idea how many hoops straight cis women jump through in their efforts to avoid sending them the wrong signals.

“Right. Sure, of course. Forget I ever said it.” And he’d smiled, and gulped some water, and I’d started babbling about something inane. By the middle of the afternoon, when I popped by Drew’s desk for the daily Starbucks walk we took in the early days, things were back to normal. Or at least we’d both pretended they were. I’d been so absurdly grateful that Drew wasn’t planning to pull the friendship plug that I never really bothered to examine my own feelings any further. I was excited about the new thing with Ollie, and even if there was a lingering question at the back of my mind, I’d ignored it. No one can live two lives, after all.

Error. Duplicate sequence.

What? Did it…know I was trying to choose between two whole lives?

Error. Duplicate sequence.

Dammit…but what other moment was even worth the effort of returning to?

Hello, Laurel. Would you like to further refine your user profile? This will help us to offer you a meaningful AltR experience. Let’s start by imagining a face you know well…

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