“Don’t worry, they didn’t meet. We just sat for a while in the car snooping on my place. It was getting dark and the snow was falling heavier, and Erin just watched my Erin as she worked on her computer. She wanted to know if she ever did anything else besides work on her dissertation, like play guitar, or smoke weed, or go to concerts. I told her she didn’t. ‘Shit, so I’m super lame in this reality,’ she said. Then she said she didn’t want to mess with my Erin’s head like I’d messed with hers, she just wanted to go back to her own universe.”

I’d felt awful as I drove her back through downtown. I’d never meant to kidnap her or mess things up so badly. Ann Arbor was lit up with Christmas lights that hadn’t been taken down yet, and it was super cozy and romantic with couples walking along Main Street holding hands. Erin was looking out her window at the guy on the corner wearing a wolf mask, playing violin in the falling snow.

“I still don’t get it,” she said. “If you were trying to get even with her, you could’ve cheated with someone in your own reality. Why’d you kidnap me?”

“Because I never thought of it as cheating,” I said, “or kidnapping. I just thought of it as finding another part of you that still loved me in a subconscious string-theory kind of way. Seriously, I don’t want anyone else, I only want you.”

“Wait, she fucking bought that?” Donnie said.

“Bought what? It’s the truth, I’m in love with her.”

Which was what I’d told her in the car. We were stopped by a red light, with the pedestrians all passing, and she looked over at me and said, “Explain to me again why the other me isn’t making out with you in this reality.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe because I smoke too much weed?”

“Well, that’s stupid. You should know that the other me is missing out because you’re really hot,” she said. And then we were kissing again, our hands all over each other, until the guy behind us was honking because the light had turned green.

“So, moral of the story is your girlfriend from another dimension thinks you’re hot?” Donnie said.

“No, you’re missing the point. Erin agreed with me. She said it was fucked up to make out together in a universe where the other her also existed, but that she’d be willing to keep seeing me if I came to her. Donnie, I can be the human test subject now. Put me in her timeline and bring me back. I’ll give you reports. You know, for science.”

“Uh-huh. Since when have you been remotely interested in the actual science of any of this?”