I feel like a teenager sneaking a boy into my room.

Maybe my giddy nervousness would make more sense if my parents were home, or even in town, but they’re on vacation. Also, I’m an adult—a divorcée, so, like, a super adult. And Tripp is…well, he’s Tripp.

“Sweet pad,” he says.

He walks into the living space—which is only like fifteen feet from the front door and kitchen—and turns around once, taking everything in. “So this is where all the action happens.”

“Yeah, all the sleeping and drinking,” I say. I don’t know why I’m so anxious. “Sorry, it’s kind of messy.”

He looks around. “You’ve seen my place, right?”

“Yes. And it’s spotless.”

“Not the bedroom.” He spies the pool through the windows. “Is that the pool?”

“It is,” I say as Tripp steps to look out the large window. “Nice.”

Honestly, I haven’t enjoyed living here, but that probably has more to do with me than the space, which is nice.

Tripp turns back to the room and motions to the coffee table. “Is there okay?” He brought his vaporizer, a plastic volcano about size of a fish bowl. I assume he wants to set it up there.

“Sure. That’s fine.”

I sit beside him while he packs the bowl, and I’m so geared up, I cross my legs and fold my hands over my knees to keep from bouncing them. I want to exude a level of calm befitting a woman who just yesterday gave this man a blowjob while he raved about her cheese eggs.

I laugh at my own un-chill, and Tripp glances at me, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing.”

He arches his right eyebrow. Just the right. “You aren’t laughing at me, are you?”

I cover my mouth. “No. I—was just thinking.”

“About something you’re not going to tell me?”

I’m saved from further explanation by a big plastic bag full of vapor. We fall into joint rhythm—puff puff pass—and finish a second bag before going to the pool.

It’s almost noon and surprisingly cool. Or maybe it’s the yard. My parents planted palms in all the right spots, so the yard is mostly in shade until later in the afternoon. I’m sure the pool helps, too.

Tripp chooses one of the wooden outdoor chaises to lounge in. All the furniture is pointed toward the Gulf; he adjusts his so it’s facing the sun, and I move to a spot beside him. Or try to. Tripp has to help me because I’m so high.

Like, super high.

“I haven’t been this high in years,” I say as I collapse onto the chaise. The dark wood feels warm against my skin, but not too warm.

“It’s a good day to be high,” Tripp says.

He’s already got a cigarette, and I ask for one. I feel a moment of guilt as I light it—Mom and Dad are ardent anti-smokers—but I remember I’m a grown woman, and I can have a cigarette if I want one.

“Too good,” I sigh.

“Cigarettes?”

“Yeah. And marijuana.”

“They’re the best things in life, really. And sex.”

“In that order?” I ask.

“Fuck no. Sex is first. Then cigarettes. Then weed.”

“Cigarettes over weed? No way.”

Tripp shrugs. “It’s science.”

I giggle. “It’s always science with you.”

“I’m a man of science, Bobby.”

“Then please tell me, Dr. Anders, how you created your list. Another survey?”

Tripp grins. “Experimentation, of course.”

“I’m sure you put in hundreds of hours.”

Tripp laughs. “Thousands.”

“Hmmmm. Well, I’ve put in some research time, too, and I think your list is wrong.”

“You think sex isn’t the best.”

“No. No. It is.” Especially with you. “I don’t think cigarettes are second place, though.”

“What do you always want after sex?”

“A lot of times I want to clean.”

Tripp chuckles. “Really?”

“Uh-huh. Sex makes me feel energized.”

“Hmmmm….” He smirks. “I was hoping to fuck you in the pool, but given that information, I guess we should go back to my place.”

I look for something to throw at him, but there isn’t anything around. My mom is a clean freak. There isn’t even a stick in the grass behind me. “That’s a little presumptuous, don’t you think?”

Tripp hold up his hands. “Hey, it’s not like you have to clean. Just an option if you need it.”

I give him my most sour look, and he grins back at me. “That’s okay. I’ve still got the second and third best things in life.”

I stamp out my cigarette on the concrete below me—I’ll need to wash that spot later—and consider asking for another one. But I use the wisdom I’ve accumulated from many years of social smoking to remind myself that I’ve never enjoyed a cigarette right after I’ve already had one. “Hashtag adulting.”

“That’s…definitely something people say.”

I giggle. “You need to smoke more. Weed.”

“I agree.”

“Like, right now. So I don’t feel embarrassed.”

“Hmmmm. You have a safety pin anywhere?”

I do. In the top drawer of my bathroom, in a first aid kit. Tripp finds it and uses the safety pin to empty a cigarette of its tobacco. He replaces it with weed, which he spends an inordinate amount of time packing, and pokes a large hole in the filter. “I get a lot higher smoking than vaping.”

“Science?” I ask.

“Probably.”

“You don’t know for sure?”

“Nope.”

“I’m shocked,” I say. “I thought you were a man of science.”

“I am. Except when it comes to the things I enjoy. I just enjoy them.”

“I like knowing how things work,” I say.

“Some people do.”

“I also want another cigarette.”

Tripp shakes one out for me, finishes his cigajoint, and lights up another cigarette. “I smoke super fast,” I confess, although I’m not sure why I’m confessing. “I’m almost done.”

“I noticed.”

I sigh and stub mine out. “I noticed talking isn’t anywhere on your list.”

“Talking is overrated.”

“But you talk a lot,” I tell him.

“Nah.”

“Yes you do.” I smile, because Tripp seems offended. “You do. But it’s good. You have a nice voice, and you’re funny.”

“Funny?”

“Clever. Witty. It’s a good thing.”

“It would be, except that ain’t me.”

“Who are you then?”

“I’m the strong, silent type.”

I laugh out loud. “Who told you that?”

“Bobby Baker Smith,” he says in a chastising tone. “Everyone told me that. It’s what I’m known for.”

“I’m sorry to tell you, Tripp Alfonse Anders—”

Tripp gasps. “Who told you my middle name? Now I’m going to turn into a fox!”

I cackle. “No one thinks you’re the silent type.”

“Yes they do.”

I shake my head.

“No one?”

“You were your own hype beast before there were hype beasts.”

Tripp grins. “I was ahead of my time. And don’t judge a young, relatively rich, semi-famous kid for being, you know, into it.”

“You were the Paul brothers before there were Paul brothers.”

Tripp winces. “So you’re a fun drunk and a mean high?”

“No. Just with you.” I smile sweetly. “You’re fun to fuck with.”

“Story of my life,” Tripp sighs. “And for the record, Neo Tripp is discreet AF.”

“That’s discreet.” I snicker.

“As fuck.”

“Do we need to go look at your social media?”

“That’s all for show, you know?”

“For show, huh?”

“Yeah. For business.”

“For business.”

“I appreciate the skepticism in your voice, I really do,” Tripp says. “I’ll have you know I get paid a dime for repping shit on Instagram. I just have to generate content almost every day.”

“That sounds like…really tiring.”

“It is.”

“I was terrible at social media,” I confess.

“Were you?”

“Absolutely terrible. It’s weird because I was on Facebook in college, and I got on Twitter and Instagram, too, but…I don’t know.” I shrug.

“What do you mean?”

“I never got likes. I never got followers.” I always felt weird for being so bad at something that on its face was simple. “I think one of my problems is I sucked at hashtags.”

“Hashtags suck,” Tripp says. “I don’t really do them.”

“You don’t need to. Most of us regular folk have to, if we want likes.”

He shrugs. “My social media presence is big because of surfing and my mom—she’s the one who opened the accounts. These days I put in just enough effort to maintain it, but otherwise, I mean, what’s the point? I don’t care about being good at this fake shit.”

“I always felt the same way. Kevin…” I shake my head. “Well, you know.”

“He’s spreading his legs all over the web.”

I smile. Try to smile. I take a deep breath, stretch my arms over my head, and try to enjoy the sun, which, based on its position in the sky, is officially on its way down. I feel like my mood is going with it.

I chew my lip for a minute, and then look at his handsome face. “Do you ever think about multi-verse theory? You know, what if there really are an infinite number of universes?”

Tripp, who has just lit a cigarette, nods. “I have before.”

“Well, do you think it’s true?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “It could be.”

“You don’t seem very interested in it.”

Tripp shrugs. “It’s interesting to imagine what I might be doing in other universes.”

“Yeah.”

“You…don’t…like it?”

I smile. “I don’t know.” I do, actually. “The idea makes me kind of depressed.”

“Why?”

I shrug. “I just think about all those universes, or timelines, or whatever they are, and all the things the other Bobbys are doing, and it makes me depressed. There’s no way I live in the best Bobby timeline. Or even one of the best.”

“Yeah, but the idea of ‘best’ is kind of relative,” he says. “Especially when we’re talking about infinite universes.”

“I don’t think so. I think somewhere there is a best universe for a Bobby like me. But even if there isn’t, in this universe I’m thirty—thirty-something. I’m divorced. I have no idea what I want to do with my life, or, you know, anything. So I’d say, practically speaking, this isn’t even a good universe for Bobby Smith. And I think about all the other universes, and all the other Bobbys in those universes, and how there are an infinite number of universes in which I didn’t marry Kevin, or I didn’t even meet him. There are universes where I met the right guy at the right time, and it all worked out perfectly. There are universes where I joined the Peace Corps after college, or went to med school, or got my PhD. There are Bobbys who are teaching English in Italy, and Bobbys who are, I don’t know, doing all kinds of things. There are Bobbys who are happily married with kids, Bobbys who never settled down, Bobbys who live in a commune in New Zealand. And I just think, how the fuck did I end up with this Bobby, in this lame life?”

“I can’t disagree with you about life being lame,” Tripp says. “But as far as Bobbys go, I think you’re the obviously the best one.”

That makes me smile a little—but I shake my head. “Well…thanks. But if that’s true, I feel bad for all the other Bobbys.”

Tripp stubs out his cigarette and sits up. “I get what you’re saying about, you know, wondering why you ended up with this life. I think most people would feel that way in your place.”

“You do?”

His gaze feels warm. “Yeah. I feel that same way sometimes.”

“Do you really?” I’m not sure why this surprises me so much.

Tripp nods. “I wonder about universes where I didn’t hurt my leg. Or where I didn’t take up surfing at all.”

I shake my head. “I just—I know that a lot of what separates me from other Bobbys are my choices. I chose to go to grad school. I chose to move to Seattle. I chose to go out with Kevin and to marry him. I chose these things. But there were other variables in play that I didn’t choose. Like, there are universes where I didn’t get a job offer from Helping Hands. There are universes in which Kevin didn’t break up with his girlfriend a month before meeting me. Or universes where he didn’t cheat. There are these variables that were out of my hands, that another Bobby—one very close to me on the Bobby continuum—got a better deal on. And that’s what bothers me. Is it luck? Is it chance? Am I somehow less deserving than these other Bobbys?”

Tripp nods. “I get what you’re saying. But you’re more deserving.”

“I just don’t know why I ended up in this universe: the one where chance or luck or causality or whatever conspired with my own stupid choices to make me a thirty-three-year-old divorcée.”

I feel like this is one of the major things that’s got me stuck. And it’s stupid, it really is, but I just can’t get over how unfair this shit is. It makes me so mad and sad every time I think about it. And I want to know what that Bobby I just mentioned is up to. What is her life like? Or the lives of the other Bobbys who are other versions of me…or who I am another version of.

The Bobby that took the Cincinnati job instead. What is she doing? Probably not living at home with Mom and Dad.

Tripp is quiet for a moment—a long moment—before he finally says, “I feel like everything I want to say to you sounds trite, but,” he shrugs, “I think you just have to figure out how you can start living your hashtag best life now.”

I rub my eyes. “I try, I just…I don’t know. I just feel so mad, and hopeless, and…and mad.”

“You ever feel like you want a do-over?”

“Yes.” I blink, surprised to feel tears stinging my eyes. “I do. Why don’t those exist?”

Tripp presses his lips together before asking, “If you could switch places with a Bobby that’s still with Kevin, would you?”

I shake my head, letting a breath out. “No. Despite my speculation about infinite Bobbys, I find it kind of hard to imagine a universe in which he didn’t do that.”

“Yeah?”

I nod. “He was always…selfish. Not in obvious ways, but just deep down, you know? He was always watching out for Kevin. Even when he was at his best, it was because Kevin was doing great and he had energy to dote on Bobby. What I really wish is that I’d never met him. But that’s not going to happen.”

“At least you didn’t have a kid with him,” Tripp says. “Then you’d be stuck with Kevin for at least the next eighteen years.”

I nod slowly. “That’s true.”

“I’m not the best at cheering people up, but I can give you some advice: focus on sensations,” he says. “The sun on your skin. Smoke in your lungs. Talk about things not related to your angst. And when you do find yourself thinking about it…try to tell yourself it could be worse.”

“I guess that’s true.”

He shrugs. “It’s what I try to tell myself, you know? I don’t feel like I’m negating my experience so much as acknowledging it could be worse. You’re young, smart, beautiful, and you’ve got a master’s degree. Those are pretty good odds.”

“You don’t have to say I’m beautiful.”

“But you are.” He takes my hand, fingers stroking. “And you’re smart, and funny, and obviously the best of all the Bobbys.”

“I don’t know about the best.” I squeeze his hand, feeling embarrassed and hot.

“The best,” he says. His voice is husky, and his mouth is tucking up in one corner. He leans in to brush his lips against my cheek.