Space Age Love Song

Part Four: We'll Cut Our Bodies Free from the Tethers of this Scene

It was during his second week of stay when Parallel New asked me about this universe's New. We were both in the living room, reading our separate books. The question came out of nowhere that it took me a while to process it. In my head, I thought, why would New ask about himself? Then, just like every time I got confused, his right ear blinked green.

"Why do you ask?" I tell him. I slid an old-receipt-turned-bookmark to the hardbound I was reading. Conversely, he had his finger as a bookmark. Very New.

"Nothing. I just had a déjà vu moment," he said.

"Huh?"

He laughed and it sounded so much like Hin's. I felt an unwelcome, but familiar pang in the chest.

"In Gaia, when we learned about the existence of a world that is an exact parallel of ours, we also discovered that we had parallel versions of ourselves and that we're somehow connected. We had a different term for it, but in here, your people call it a déjà vu moment. When that happens, our versions' consciousness swapped briefly," he explained.

I grabbed my head and feigned ache. "Ooooh," I said. "This is making my head hurt."

He laughed that Hin laugh again and replied, "That's okay. It also took me a while to fully grasp the concept of parallel worlds."

For a moment, he was just looking at me and then I remembered that he asked me a question earlier. I looked down at the book on my hand. It was Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, a gift from Hin. On the front page, New had a note written on it, with his distinctly small handwriting.

"Te—

I know how much you wanted this. So here you go. I love you.

                                                                                                                                            Hin."

I absently traced the lettering on the cover as I said, "This was a gift from Hin. It's so like him to surprise me with little things. We were in a bookstore and I saw a copy of this. I told him I was anticipating the book's release, but I couldn't buy it then because I didn't have a job. The next morning, I woke up with this book on my bedside drawer. It wasn't my birthday and it wasn't our anniversary. He told me that it's just a token of gratitude because I loved him."

I looked up at Parallel New who was staring intently at me. He had a sad smile plastered on his face. "You're crying, Tay." I wiped my face. I didn't notice that.

"I'm sorry," I gave a light chuckle.

"How long have you been together?"

"Five years."

"That's a long time."

"I know. But then five years—poof! Gone. Nada."

"What happened, Tay?"

That question froze me. That's the same one I had asked myself every day for the last three years. What happened? Where did I go wrong? What did I do? What didn't I do? The answers hopped on a plane bound for Italy.

"Can we talk about it some other time?" I said. Parallel New nodded and reopened the book he was holding. I stared at the black-and-white skin on the cover of the hardbound and went back to the marked page.

A few days later, Parallel New declared that he was going shopping. I was in the living room, binge-watching a series, when he came out from the bedroom and said, "I'm going shopping." I paused the episode and saw him standing there, wearing the same clothes he was in the first night we met. I replayed the video I was watching on my iPad and told him that I'd finish this one episode and then we'd go. But he said that he was going alone. This time, I flipped the iPad cover on it and looked at him.