There was an ebb and flow of friends, family, teammates. Mostly, though, I just got cards and flowers. Norris sent a Halloween balloon, because it was now two days after Halloween, so it was cheap. He didn’t come by, because he had superstitions about hospitals. I can’t say I missed him.

And then Paul came to visit.

He didn’t come right away. He had been dealing with his own troubles and triumphs. In this reality, Layton hadn’t gone after him, but that fight, and the bruises Paul took from it, translated to this world in a different way. On the same night as my accident, he had been attacked. A hate crime. No one knew who did it, but in the aftermath, the school—in fact the entire town—had risen to support him. Rainbow flags and T-shirts with some of Paul’s quotes—which were a hell of a lot better than my quotes had been.

“All of a sudden I’m like the Queer Voice of Tibbetsville,” he told me, his voice a mixture of irony, amusement, discomfort, and pride.

He caught me smiling at him. I’m not quite sure what he read in that smile, but he asked, “Did you know? I mean, before I started telling people?”

“Never thought about it,” I said—because in this world, I hadn’t. I wanted so much to take his hand, I almost reached for it. I came so close. The fact was, three-sevenths of me was in love with Paul. But the rest saw him as a friend. Paul deserved a better equation than that. So if a friendship was all we’d have, I was determined it would be a real friendship.

“Hey,” I said, “I was thinking—if you’re not doing anything, I’d like to have you over for Thanksgiving.”

“Thanks,” he said, “but I’ve already got plans. I’ll be meeting my boyfriend’s parents.”

I had to suppress an involuntary flash of jealousy. “Anyone I know?”

“Naah, he goes to a different school. I mean, you might have played against him—he plays football, too. You’d like him. His name’s Josh.”

I smiled. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. When the universe is coherent, things tend to fit. “I’ll look forward to making his acquaintance.”

We played a game of chess, which Paul said was brain football, and would help with my recovery. “A chess board is pretty much the same as a football formation,” he pointed out—something obvious that I had never considered before.

We got through two games before I got too tired to play. I lost both, because Paul respected me enough not to go easy on me. When he left, we bumped fists. And maybe I held my knuckles against his a little longer than guys are supposed to. And maybe I’m not sorry about that at all.