I could barely hear him over the crackling of logs and the breeze. I almost thought I won him over, honestly. Maybe I was wishing too hard or I didn’t know him as well as I thought.

We sat in the dark, just watching the tide roll out. We slept a little. I watched the sunrise and Yusuf crawled over to the mattress. Then the next morning he told me I can’t do this anymore, wincing against the sunlight. I knew he was trying to look at me and see the person he fell in love with, who I still am, but the weight of all the lives hanging in the balance dragged him down.

“We’re not white-flagging,” I said. “I’m not bringing you back to the Compound. Him and Kaori will kill you.”

“What, you’re going to keep me here?”

“You know I won’t do that.”

His sigh was the sea breeze through the ferns.

“I know. I don’t—I… Then take me back to Beatty.”

“Alright.”

We’re tied together. What hurts is that I could see in his eyes that he knew this too, the way I grabbed his hand and we walked over to the Envisioner with our steps in synch. I opened a gateway to the universe where we met. A while ago, I’d be discreet about where we portalled into a universe, but the jig was up, so screw it. Right on the sidewalk it was.

Yusuf stepped through the glowing circle that separated the pink sand from the concrete. My hand lingered on the Envisioner, keeping the gateway open.

“I’ll figure this out,” I told him through the window between worlds. “I know I will.”

He smiled just a little. I could tell he wanted to believe me, but I guess I wouldn’t believe me either.

“You know where I’ll be,” he said. “I’m only waiting a few days.”

Then, smaller, in a way that broke my heart into a million fucking pieces—because with all the freewheeling and cowboying through universes and kisses in impossible landscapes, he’d never really sounded scared. Until now. “Please don’t make me go to them alone.”

I closed the gateway, stepped away from the machine, and the distance from him pulled me inside out.

*   *   *

So there. You’re all caught up. Yusuf bailed on me this morning and I’ve spent all day flapping my gums at a blinking red light on the camera. Now, let’s roll credits and hit the floodlights over at Hayes’s Disaster Drive-In to let people know it’s time to clear out. I’ll watch them blink against the glare and start packing up—folding their lawn chairs and shoving coolers of beer back into their trunks. And then they’ll drive away, leaving me here alone.