I think Paul and I were in love. I say “think” because it’s a hard feeling to nail down. Especially because the feeling was so weighted down with other baggage. Fear of what my parents would think; the irrational belief that this gay thing might still go away; anger that I didn’t fit the mold I thought I was supposed to; and confusion about what my future would hold. But when Paul and I were together, with no one else around, all that went away. That’s why I thought it might have been love.

Even so, I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around it. I mean, I couldn’t even use the word “boyfriend” in my own head, much less out loud. How messed up is that? The closest I could come was to say that Paul and I were “buds.”

And so in this reality, Paul and I found times and places to be together in secret. Places where we could leave the rest of the world out of it and pretend it didn’t exist.

So back to the two of us making out in the foyer. In previous worlds, when Paul was just my math tutor, it had never occurred to me that he was kind of hot. Now it was obvious. How could I have missed it? Inside I was feeling maybe every possible human emotion all at once, the good and the bad. I felt like a power plant struck by lightning. All that flaring, buzzing energy shooting down high-tension wires too feeble to handle it. I was melting down.

Then I heard the garage door grinding open. That was perhaps the only sound that could make us stop. I finally broke off the kiss. “I . . . uh . . . gotta take a shower,” I told Paul.

“Better make it a cold shower,” he joked.

“Very funny.”

I went upstairs and heard my parents and Hunter coming in, saying hello to Paul, just as I closed the bathroom door. To them, he was still just my friend and math tutor. I had gone to great pains to make sure they had no reason to think otherwise.

I hadn’t brought up any of the ingredients for the EMP bath, but now I didn’t want to take one anyway. It would be rude to Paul if I just disappeared upstairs for the better part of an hour. So I did what I said I would do: I took a quick shower, and for the life of me I can’t remember whether it was hot, cold, or somewhere in between, because my mind was somewhere else entirely.