She didn’t exactly hang up on me, but everything felt stiff after that. Was I crossing a line in trying to get her to kick Layton to the curb? When I was straight, my motivations might have been muddy, but now it was all about what was best for her. Yes, it was her decision to make—but Layton was abusive. Whether or not it was physical, he was definitely abusing her emotionally. The way he treated her. Like she was just an extension of himself. Like she had surrendered her right to be an individual.

What is it that keeps someone in a relationship like that? I remember thinking. Shouldn’t it be easy to just walk?

I thought my sleep would be troubled, but the one good thing about exhaustion is that it knocks you out. I didn’t wake up once during the night. It was a little after eight when I finally opened my eyes. Then I just lay there, with no idea what my course of action should be.

For the last few weeks, the morning after a game had been all about assessing the change and coming to terms with it. There was nothing new today that I wasn’t already grappling with yesterday.

Have you ever just laid in bed unable to dredge up the will to get out of it? I was never a man of inaction, but there I was, wanting to hide under the covers until the world ended. I could say that I wasn’t myself, but that would be wrong. I was myself—only so many different variations of me that I had no clue who I actually was. Everything I felt, every decision I made, had tendrils of motivation from every world I had inhabited. How could I trust anything I said or did anymore?

“Coming to my game?”

It was Hunter, standing there at my open door, who got me moving that morning.

“Of course,” I told him. “Don’t I always?”

Did I always? Yes. At least in these worlds I did. Hunter had weekend games, and I always went. But in my original world, Hunter and I weren’t close, were we? I never went to his games, and he never came to mine. If I managed to get back there, I wondered if that might change or if that groove was too deeply dug.

“Are you sure you want me to come?” I asked.

He was surprised by the question. “Why wouldn’t I?”

I shrugged, wishing I hadn’t even said it. “I don’t want to upstage you or anything. I don’t want to be a distraction.”

“You won’t be,” he said. “As long as you don’t bring the paparazzi with you.”

I sighed. “None of that was my idea.”

“I know.”