Page 107 of What's in a Kiss?

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“Whoa, whoa, whoa,”says the security guard at Milo and Lhüwanda’s, the weed café in Santa Monica. I remember him from the last time I was here, a week ago, back in my Real Life. He didn’t want to let me in then, either.

I put both hands up. “I’m chill, okay?”

“We’re only serving straight food today. No joints, no edibles.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re out of weed.”

“You’re out ofweed?”

“It happens. Once I went to Taco Bell and they were out of tacos.”

I spot Rabbi Dan past the guard, with his yarmulke and short sleeve button-down shirt, his silk tie printed with menorahs. He’s sitting at the zinc bar, reading a mass-market paperback, eating a slice of pound cake.

“Hey, you’re on that show,” the security guard says to me. “Whose dumb idea was it to mash up—”

“I completely agree,” I say. “Zombie Hospitalsucks so bad everyone involved should be imprisoned. Thing is, I’m here to see that gentleman.”

“Rabbi?” the guard calls. “This B-list celebrity with you?”

Rabbi Dan looks me up and down, chews his cake. “Depends on what she wants,” he says.

“I want to talk to you,” I say to Yogi Rabbi Dan. “I want to go home.”

Rabbi Dan wipes his mouth with a napkin and nods to the guard. “Let her in.”

“Thank you,” I say, sliding onto the stool next to him.

“Did you bring it?”

I open my purse to show him the giant joint Jake put there the last time we were at this café. Right before Masha’s wedding, right before the multiverse swallowed me whole.

“You haven’t smoked it,” Rabbi Dan says. “You must like it here.”

“I took one hit. Nothing happened. You said it wouldn’t work, anyway.”

“That was then,” he says. “You’d just arrived. But your eyes say now you’re a different person. Youbelieve.”

I wonder if the rabbi’s right. I decide he is.

“Where’s Jake?” he asks.

“He’s on his way home,” I say, picturing him when we’d said goodbye in Zuma. I’d held in my tears as he kissed me, until I was alone in my car. “We were just at the beach together—”

“One final sunset?” Rabbi Dan smiles.

“I told him I’d meet him at home but... what happens when I leave here? To this version of him? What happens to everyone when I leave?”

“That’s not for you to know,” Dan says. “It’s not for anyone to know. You make your choice and surrender to the universe.”

My eyes fill with tears.

Dan tilts his head. “May I ask why you want to leave?”

“Because it isn’t real,” I say. “And I know you’re going to say reality is overrated—”

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