Page 44 of What's in a Kiss?

“My favorite wife,” he says.

What? I’d never say that. Or would I, in this life? Has Glasswell turned me into an elitist snob? Is that the price for all of this? The two of us get along in this marriage realm... but I suck? Is that why Masha hates me?

“It’s a complicated impersonation,” Glasswell says, “Since you were originally quoting Aurora. Still, I think I nailed the nuanced layers.”

“Yeah, that’s what I heard,” I say, my tone made of ice.

“What doesthatmean?” Glasswell asks.

“What does anything mean?” My voice breaks, and he reaches over, giving my shoulder a rub. In the exact place with the exact firmness that I like.

“It’s been a hard night,” he says.

“It... has.”

“I know,” he says kindly, softly.

He doesn’t know. Something is seriously broken with my life. And my last brilliant idea for fixing it—going to sleep in my bed and waking up in the real world tomorrow... isn’t possible. I miss Gram Parsons. The thought of him in his green sweater makes a lump form in my throat. Does he exist in this version of my life? Is he—I shudder—someone else’s fuzzy little guy? I miss Masha—the Masha who doesn’t want me dead. And my mom—whom I talk to so often it’s like our phones are walkie-talkies.

I’ve got to get back to my life. I’m on the brink of tears. I don’t sob or shake, I don’t even wipe my eyes, but somehow Glasswell sees it. He puts his arms around me.

NowI start to sob.

“Should we go to bed?” he asks.

I’d love to go to bed. Especially now that I’ve consumed thisanvil-heavy chicken and Sancerre. Besides, I imagine snob-Olivia’s sheets have thread counts higher than the national debt. But wait...

Married people sleep in beds together.

“You go ahead!” I say. “I’m going to...” Roll down the hill and see what happens? “...take a bath.”

••••••

This bath. It’slike I’ve made a pilgrimage to a temple. The tub’s been cut from a single piece of Carrara marble. Surrounded by candles and dozens of expensive potions, it’s nearly the size of my old bungalow below. The tub sits in the middle of a large, glass-encased room. I look through the glass, toward the dark cliff’s edge above my former home. I pick up the matchbook on the sink and light the logs in the marble fireplace in the corner. How many fireplaces does this house have?

I set my wineglass on the marble floor. I turn on the tap.

As the tub fills with steaming water, I take down three of Glasswell’s sweaters from a retractable clothesline above. In real life, he wears suits, at least as far as we mere plebes know. But apparently in our house, he sports alpaca hoodies, handmade in Ecuador. I can’t help running my fingers over them, picturing his shoulders in these corners, his muscles mixed with heat.

I pile the sweaters, dim the lights, and light a candle that smells like tomatoes growing on a vine. I dump in salts and oils and foaming gels and soon I’m sitting with my second glass of wine, submerged lavishly in bubbles, trying to clear my head.

I try to reason with the uncanny, to use the things I know are different here. I’ve got no Masha. No mother. Just Glasswell.

What I need is guidance, a combination fairy-apothecary, like Carol Kane inThe Princess Bride. I need a sassy ethereal presence to put it to me straight, lay down the rules. What I’ve got is an evasive yogi-rabbi who vanished into the Pacific Coast Highway. But what would that stoner even say if I pinned him down?

You’re here because you were an asshole to America’s Sweetheart Jake Glasswell. Now accomplish these three tasks to prove you’ve learned your lesson, and I’ll put you back in your real life.

That’s what happens in these stories, right? The time-warped pay their karmic dues. Then they bound gratefully through the front door of their real home.

The thing is, Ihavelearned my lesson. Glasswell is human. He is capable of being kind. I’ve been too hard on him. I made him into a villain, to preserve my own fragile sense of peace.

Now I’ll do better. It’s been painful and I’ve grown.

So, if anyone is watching, maybe we can skip ahead to the part where I go home?

I gaze out through the window at the one star you always see from this part of the canyon. It might not even be a star. Maybe it’s Venus.

I make a wish. I’m ready. Someone just tell me what I have to do.

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