Page 19 of What If It's You?

But I wasn’t at Pixel anymore in this life. So where was I making all the bank you’d need to underwritethis,my catalog dreams fully come to life?

I grabbed my laptop again. I’d have to find something on there that told me who I worked for. I made myself another cup of coffee—apparently brewing an entire pot was an inefficiency I eschewed here, since my fingers didn’t seem to know how to makethat happen—flipped the TV on and navigated to a news channel, then settled into the burnt-orange velvet sofa for a deep dive.

“Despite hours of late-night negotiation, the majority leader wasn’t able to strike a deal that satisfied all wings of the party. If an interim budget deal isn’t voted through by the weekend, a government shutdown…”

I couldn’t remember the name of the woman on the TV, but her bronze skin and impossibly straight dark brown hair were familiar, as were the general parameters of the latest Washington shitshow.

“At least some things were spared by the rampaging bull,” I muttered as I clicked the Mute button, the closed captions lagging a few seconds behind the images unfolding on the screen.

I started poking around my digital life, beginning with my archived emails (nothing from work that I could find, barring Pixel correspondence officially terminating my employment about eighteen months back) and bookmarked webpages (I couldn’t discern a pattern in the smattering of design blogs, recipe sites, subreddits, and random Wikipedia pages I’d decided I couldn’t bear to lose track of).

I scanned all the icons on my desktop, which was unnervingly spare, just a handful of shortcuts to important programs and, huddling in a corner of the screen, my catchall “personal” file, crammed with everything from photos to tax returns.

Tax returns. That would have to tell me my job! I opened up the finder, fingers shaking slightly as I typed “tax return” into the search bar, hoping that doppellaurel favored similar labeling protocols.

Bingo. An entire folder full of subfolders helpfully divided by year. All I had to do was open the return for last year and find…Drew Bevins?

We filed taxes together? Panic bubbling up from my stomach, I closed my eyes, raising my left hand slowly, too scared to open them and confirm my suspicions—if we were actuallymarried,clearly this life was better—how else could Drew have succeeded where the man I’d always thought was the love of my life had scared me into a literal alternate universe with the mereprospect? Which meant I’d have toeither find a way to never leave this world, or somehow work up the nerve to end things with Ollie when I got back and pray Drew was still interested. My stomach twisted painfully at the thought.

But when I finally worked up the nerve to look, there was nothing on my ring finger. I exhaled, shaky with relief. Which maybe I shouldn’t be. Relieved, that is. Just because we weren’t married, or engaged, that didn’t mean that life with Drew wasn’t the better choice for me. I mean—Look around you, Laurel. Still, the idea that my fears about forever with Ollie were rooted entirely in, well…Ollie,not in me, made my throat swell, eyes prickling slightly. It felt like a horrible betrayal, not just of the man, but of all those mornings together scouring for bargains, the careful hours he put into giving new life to the things we found, the ridiculous songs he’d sing me, and the way he could turn a random Tuesday into an adventure. Sure, our dishes didn’t match, but that wasn’t theonlything that could make a good life.

But back to the task at hand—I opened up the tax file, scrolling to find our details. Drew Bevins and Laurel Everett, domestic partners—that explained it. His profession was, unsurprisingly, computer scientist. Mine was…

Writer?

I blinked at the screen, not fully comprehending what I was seeing. I’d dreamed of writing books since middle school, when my creative writing teacher’s comments on each assignment—Charming story! Such an interesting idea! Great metaphors!—felt like a promise of future success. I’d always been bookish, but after Mom left, I’d thrown myself into writing—and reading—almost frantically, haunting the school library, devouring shelves and shelves of books systematically, furiously spinning out my pale echo fanfics, the promise of the resolution I knew I’d find on the page—true love found, evil neutralized—like balm in the sudden chaos of a post-Mom world.

But by the time I finally made it into one of the massively competitive writing seminars in college, the dream I’d cherished as ateen was already starting to feel distinctly dulled. For one thing, my professor had summarily dismissed romance—the genre I’d always gravitated to most strongly—aspedestrian, but then all genre writing is a bit facile, isn’t it?Which left me scrambling to try to create the kind of glumNo one is happy and no one grows or changes at the endshort stories she always lavished praise on. I never excelled in the class, and worse, despite my best efforts with back issues ofThe New Yorkerand various lauded anthologies, I’d never been able to shake my “pedestrian” taste for the romances I still read devotedly.

But more importantly, I wasn’t surehowone became a writer. As a kid, the genius-in-a-garret stereotype had seemed so romantic, aspirational in its own way, but after the horror of the apartment I’d lived in just after graduation—clearly I was the only one of the four roommates who had any personal experience with cleaning a bathroom—the idea of a hand-to-mouth life made my skin crawl a little (though that could have just been the mold in the shower). When I’d spotted the marketing job at Pixel, it had felt like a sign—Icould fulfill my creative destinyandpay my bills…in a better apartment, one that didn’t have a stove older than I was and a rotating revue of infestations. I told myself I’d still write, that this would be better, it would motivate me to use my mornings and weekends to draft my novel, in fact it would be a built-in hobby, and who didn’t need hobbies?

Suffice it to say that, nearly five years later, I was still in the “waiting for a really great idea” phase of my writing career. I tried to tell myself it was because I was too busy, that I’d get around to it once work settled down, that really, building up a nest egg before I leaned into writing was justsmart. And that wasn’t untrue, exactly, but I knew deep down that it was all just excuses. I was too scared to start. Too scared to take an idea out of my head and only imperfectly transcribe it, and then possibly face the contempt of “real” writers like my professor, or worse, a string of rejections.

Inthatlife. In this one…I was a writer. In a gorgeous condo where I used my spare time to not just have a hobby but excel atit—god, I must throw the most glamorous dinner parties—and that hobby was actually for enjoyment, not a career-in-training masquerading as fun. I laughed aloud, excitement fizzing through me.

“Holyshit,” I murmured, lifting a hand to cover my idiotic grin. I wasn’t dreaming, but this—my life—was the embodiment of my actual dreams.

The doorbell rang and I padded over, pressing my eye to the peephole before opening it. The slim, narrow-faced man on the other side was somewhere in his early twenties, gripping a paper bag in one hand and a bouquet of white daisies in the other, just like the ones that had grown in my childhood backyard, which Mom taught me to weave into crowns.

“Laurel Everett?”

“That’s right.”

“Sign here, please.” He proffered an iPad and I dutifully traced my signature with a fingertip, then he thrust his cargo into my arms and hurried away.

I took my bounty into the kitchen, finding a vase for the flowers—we had real vases, not just mason jars—before opening the bag. Inside, a cellophane sack was fogged and dewy around a loaf of still warm challah, a quart container of what turned out to be chicken noodle soup nestled beside it. The delivery service receipt at the bottom had a note:

Thinking of you. Rest up and feel better! xx, Drew

I was a writer. In this ludicrously lovely condo. With a boyfriend who not only loved me, not only supported my pursuing my dream—literally, the staggering amount next to Drew’s name on the tax return proved it. My bottom line was…well “bottom” was apt. Which meant Drew’s Pixel money was floating the day-to-day forbothof us while I launched a career I’d always known offered more by way of fulfillment than compensation. And on top of all that, he was thoughtful enough to send me sick day soups and flowers.

In this life, I really had it all.

How had I not known this was an option?

Once I’d reheated the soup—on the stove, as acareerwriterI actually had the time to do things the Martha Stewart way instead of living a microwave life—and torn off a hunk of challah, I started to feel greedy. Whatelsemight be better with Drew?

Maybe social media would give me a clue.

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