Read Online The Love of My (Other) Life by Traci L. Slatton - Free Book Online

pillow. I couldn’t explain any more than I could explain my own responses to Brian, which I knew went up and down like an amusement park car on a rollercoaster. Or maybe I could explain them, and I didn’t want to because then I’d have to face things about myself that I preferred to deny.
    I had to get a grip on myself. It was just that for the first time in a long time, I felt alive again. It was like the pins and needles feeling when blood rushed into my foot after I’d been sitting on it for a long time: painful and awkward, so that I’d hop around spastically.
    Maybe there was a reason I’d numbed myself.
    “Look at him trying too hard. The chiseled face.
    He’s too perfect. I think rakish good looks that flirt with nerdy but, asymptotically, never land there, are more attractive. Don’t you?” Brian cut a muscle-man, Mr. Universe pose.
    “Anyone who uses the word ‘asymptotically’ is a nerd, by definition. What does that even mean?”
    Brian held up his finger in his lecturing posture.
    “An asymptote is a line that a curve approaches but never meets.”
    “I don’t speak science lingo. I didn’t take science at Columbia.”
    “You did at Yale, in my universe,” he said, his voice and his face softening.
    “I went to Columbia to be with David. I was accepted at Yale, but I didn’t go. I knew that would be the end of the relationship.” I sat up and tucked the sheets around myself. I wished Brian would let go of the whole mythical-other-universe thing. I wasn’t sure why he’d attached himself to me, but I was giving him a chance. More than a chance. I’d let him into my bed, which was something I’d never done lightly.
    To quote Mrs. Leibowitz, “Wheeeeeee!”
    I struggled to regain a semblance of control over my life. Maybe if I found out more about Brian, if I pierced his effusive fantasy life. “If we’re married in your mythical world, how do you know David?”
    I asked. “He wouldn’t be part of my life if I went to Yale and got with you.”
    Brian had crossed over to the window and was looking out into the courtyard. “The guy you’re meeting, does this have anything to do with the skull?”
    But I wasn’t distracted. There were still too many unanswered questions. “If you know Ofee, you know what his name stands for.”
    Brian glanced back over his shoulder and drew a line across his forehead. “One Fucking Eyebrow.”
    “Would Bard Rubin have the same nickname in a parallel world? Hmm,” I wondered aloud. “Of course, that information is on Facebook.”
    Brian came back to the foot of the bed and fixed me with what was clearly an inquiring physics professor look. “Your figure drawings have a lot of heart.
    Why not sell them instead of a stolen piece of art?
    Or your landscapes. I looked through all the canvases in the living room and in your closet. They’re gorgeous. They shouldn’t be hidden away.”
    “You went through my paintings?”
    “To get to know you better.” Brian pinched my big toe, which stuck out from under the duvet cover.
    “The you here, in this universe.”
    “Yes, this universe, that universe. How did you get to this universe?” I asked sweetly.
    “I built a decoherence device. It was genius, really. I got the idea when I was ten and watched an episode of Star Trek. I filled up a notebook with my ideas. I kept writing them down in notebook after notebook. But the time I was thirty, I had filled a hundred notebooks.”
    I felt frustrated and I jumped up and pulled on some jeans. What was I thinking, sleeping with this kook? Why wouldn’t he just be real with me? Why the elaborate set-up? What was my deal with the bad karma around men? “Cool. I have to go now.”
    “To the meeting. Right. With a guy to fence the skull? How do you know someone like that?”
    “I met him through a teacher.”
    “That doesn’t sound like you, the puritanical artist.”
    “I’m not puritanical,” I said, indignant. “I’m idealistic!”
    Brian wrapped