Dropping by our alternate selves seemed like a recipe for disaster, based on our last jaunts. Still, our lack of money and permanent place to live had us fudging the rules a bit. In one universe we sweet-talked our way into the luxury condo building where that version of Hayes and Yusuf lived. Whoopsie, forgot our keys again. Would forget my head if it wasn’t attached, blah blah. The doorman buzzed us through and in the condo, we found a spare key fob hanging by the front door of their unit. The first thing we saw when we stepped inside was an instant camera at a small table for odds-and-ends by the door, across from a wall mosaicked with pictures. Years of pictures with the two of them celebrating birthdays, cheesing on beaches, bright pinioned birds resting on their shoulders at zoos. A sliding door to a huge patio offered views of downtown Boston that looked pretty close to my own, with its glass towers, canals, and floodgates holding back the Atlantic.

The other Hayes and Yusuf were on their honeymoon, according to the digital wall calendar in their marble kitchen that was bigger than my entire studio. Best we could tell, they were finance bros, which squashed any guilt-pangs I had about spending their money.

For almost two weeks we slept in their bed and ordered takeout from the lobby restaurant and charged it to their unit. We strolled the city in their clothes. Yusuf swapped his cracked glasses with a pair he’d found by the bathroom sink. I played tour guide and we hoofed it all over the city—sitting in the nosebleeds for a game at Fenway Park, gliding across the water of the Public Lagoon in one of the swan boats, watching the gauzy jellyfish float by the two-story glass seawalls that surrounded the South Boston waterfront and kept Boston Harbor at bay.

I tagged along with Yusuf as he audited a physics class at MIT, saying he was a prospective grad student. He ended up raising his hand so many times and chiming in during the lecture that the professor planted her feet and asked him, perhaps you’d like to teach this class instead of me? Yusuf popped up out of his seat and dashed to the front of the class to pluck the marker from the professor’s hand and sketch diagrams on the board while he spoke.

I hid my laughter with a throaty, fake cough. I loved him so, so much.