Back on Track

The Shambles was exactly as Laura promised: the bar version of an unwashed gym sock, with a half-moon of yellowed light above the sign, windows so streaked they looked sandblasted, and a door that stuck just enough to make you work for entry. Inside, it was at least ten degrees hotter than the street, and the air smelled like spilled Miller Lite and whatever a mop drags up after closing time. The floors were gummy, and the only available booth was a cracked-leather relic in the corner, the kind where the cushions exhaled stale stories every time you sat down.

They got looks, walking in like they’d teleported from a wedding: Andy in his midnight suit, both of Laura radiant in blue evening gowns, strappy heels and all. The regulars—a few bearded men in work jackets, two women in matching Cubs hoodies, a table of seniors playing euchre with unfiltered cigarettes dangling from their lips—stared just long enough to clock the spectacle, then returned to their drinks, Reality Adjustment doing the rest. No one even blinked at Laura’s twin bodies moving together, even as the blue silk caught every tacky bulb and reflected it back with intent.

The bartender, a woman with a face like a shovel and hands that had never once dropped a glass, raised one eyebrow at the pair—trio—of them, then gave Andy the up-down and Laura both the side-eye and the full once-over.

Laura grinned, both faces bright. “Two seltzers,” she said, both voices perfectly in sync, “and whatever’s cheap for the gentleman.”

Andy, still half-dazed by the contrast, said, “Beer’s fine, thanks.”

The bartender didn’t write it down, just nodded once and bent to pull the tap.

The karaoke setup in The Shambles was a relic: a sun-faded backdrop with a painted skyline, two microphones taped together at the handle, and a TV screen that flickered in and out of color every few seconds, as if it, too, was fighting for survival. The sign-up list was a stack of warped paper, pen chained to the stand, the ink trailing off halfway through every other name.

Laura’s hands moved together—one set in perfect sync with the other—as she wrote her name on the list. She glanced at Andy and smirked. “You’re next. No hiding behind the suit.”

He considered protesting, but knew better. Instead, he picked up the pen, wrote his name beneath hers, and braced himself for whatever flavor of embarrassment Laura had planned.

Their drinks arrived, three plastic cups sweating onto a bar mat that looked like it had seen one brawl too many. Andy took a sip, but Laura downed half of hers in one go, both bodies working the same angle, each with one hand on the glass. The effect was a little uncanny, but mostly impressive. He wondered if it would ever stop surprising him, the way she doubled herself so completely.

A man in a camo hat and Carhartt jacket climbed onto the karaoke stage and launched into a warbling version of “Friends in Low Places.” It wasn’t good, but no one cared, and by the second verse, half the bar was singing along. Andy watched as Laura followed the words, both faces grinning, one elbow propped on the sticky table.

“I give him a seven,” Laura said, both voices at once, “for passion. Three for pitch.”

Andy said, “He’s owning it, though. I respect the lack of fear.”

“I want you to own it,” Laura replied, both sets of blue eyes fixing on him with an intensity that could sand down a grown man’s ego. “If you bail, I’m calling a cab and telling Mildred to drive you home solo.”

Andy grinned. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Laura finished her seltzers, then, as the Garth Brooks cover wound down, both bodies stood and stretched in stereo, heads nearly brushing together before peeling off for the stage. Every eye in the bar turned to watch, and even the bartender paused, one hand on a rag, the other holding a glass that she didn’t so much as polish.

The MC, a wiry man with a mustache that seemed to live a separate life, announced the next singer: “Laura—uh, Laura.” He glanced at the list, looked up, and shrugged, then gestured at the twin woman in blue. “Double trouble, folks. Give it up.”

Laura grinned, both faces, and took the stage, each body gripping a mic. She waited a beat, scanned the crowd, then gave Andy a look so full of promise he knew he was in for it.

The screen glitched to life, and the first bars of Don't Stop Believin' blared through the battered speakers.

Laura belted it. Not just sang, but absolutely unleashed, both voices interleaving and echoing each other, hitting notes Andy didn’t know she had. It wasn’t a joke—she had real pipes, and she poured every ounce of herself into the performance, splitting harmonies between the two mics, one body taking the lead while the other underscored it. By the first chorus, the entire bar was staring, several people filming with their phones, and even the table of seniors paused their cards to watch.

It was the kind of song that turned a room into co-conspirators. Everybody knew what it was building toward. Everybody knew the payoff was parked at the far end of it, minutes away, held back like a secret the whole bar had agreed to keep. The man in the camo hat started drumming two fingers on the table. One of the women in the matching hoodies sang along under her breath, and then not under her breath.

Andy found himself leaning forward without deciding to, elbows on sticky vinyl, waiting on a line he'd heard ten thousand times in gas stations and grocery aisles and never once actually listened to. Then, before the last stretch, both bodies turned, unhurried, until she was facing the booth, aiming the rest of it straight at him. There was nothing subtle about it, and no one in the bar was paying attention to him instead of her anyway, so he let himself grin back like an idiot and didn't stop.

Andy was floored. He didn’t remember her ever singing like this, not even in their alternate memories, not even in the car or the shower, but here she was, both of her, dominating a stage that had seen decades of half-drunk failures. It was beyond even her performance at The 88 Club.

She held him with both sets of eyes right through to the end, and only let go at the very last second, when she allowed herself to be ridiculous again. She finished the last line with a twist, both bodies spinning to face each other before closing in for a self-high-five so perfect it looked rehearsed.

The bar exploded. Cheers, whistles, even the bartender slammed her hand on the bar and shouted “Woo!”

Laura beamed, both faces pink with adrenaline, and bowed to the crowd, then caught Andy’s eye and pointed at him: you’re next.

He laughed, clapping until his hands stung. When she came back to the booth, both bodies slid in next to him, one on either side, and she looped both arms around his shoulders.

“Okay, that was genuinely amazing,” Andy said, grinning. “I’m not sure I can follow that.”

Both of Laura rolled their eyes. “Don’t try to sandbag me. You can sing, too.”

He shook his head. “Not like that. Seriously.”

She just grinned, both faces equally smug. “You’re up. If you try to back out, I will physically carry you.”

He looked at her, saw the absolute certainty in both faces, and surrendered. “All right,” he said, “but you’re not allowed to heckle.”

Both of Laura made an X across her heart. “Scout’s honor.”

The MC called his name. Andy stood, straightened his jacket, and headed for the stage. The air was thick with anticipation now, the crowd primed for a show.

He picked up the mic and paged through the karaoke book, and the first thing his eye snagged on was a song he'd learned when he was thirteen and had only once performed in front of another human being. His thumb stayed flat on the page for a second longer than it needed to.

Then he turned it. Not yet, he thought, without any clear sense of what he was waiting for.

Three pages on he found one he could survive: Solsbury Hill. The intro chimed in, and he started.

He didn't have Laura's doubled range, but he could certainly carry a tune, and he'd always liked this one, since long before he had any good reason to say why. He sang it straight, letting the rough honesty of his voice do the heavy lifting, and by the second chorus, a few of the bar regulars were swaying and singing along. He didn't try to show off. He just sang, thinking about the last time he'd heard this song, which was at a school dance in seventh grade, when he'd stood against a gym wall and watched a version of Laura dance in a ring of girls, all of them laughing.

He had stood there for the entire song. He hadn't crossed the floor. He'd been thirteen and completely certain there would be other songs, other dances, an unlimited supply of them, and he had been wrong about that in the most total way a person can be wrong.

Halfway through the last verse he looked up and found her. Both of Laura had gone still in the booth, hands flat on the table, not filming, not laughing, not doing the thing she did with her face when she wanted him to know she was enjoying herself. Just watching him, eyes wet. He held it for a bar and a half and then had to look at the screen instead, because his throat had gone tight and there were still words coming.

He finished, and the bar clapped—polite, a little less raucous than Laura’s, but real.

He grinned, thanked the MC, and came back to the booth.

She didn't say anything at first. Both bodies just shifted over to make room, and a hand found his knee under the table and stayed there.

Then Both of Laura met him with a look of exaggerated seriousness. “You did not warn me you could do that,” she said, one face looking almost affronted, the other clearly delighted.

Andy shrugged. “I practiced over the last sixteen years. A lot.”

She narrowed both sets of eyes at him. “You weren’t this good the last time you sang for me.”

“I can only guess your presence makes me better,” he said, grinning.

Both of Laura laughed, then leaned in to kiss him on both cheeks at once, making him go hot right to his ears.

“You’re adorable,” she said, both faces, and he believed her.

They traded turns for the next hour.

Laura took I Will Survive and opened it the way it's meant to be opened, low and almost bored, one body at the mic and the other slouched against the speaker stack with her arms crossed like a bouncer. The bar recognized it three notes in and made a noise like a football crowd. She let them have it. She built it, sold every syllable, worked the whole width of the plywood stage, and by the key change she had the euchre table on its feet and the MC with one hand pressed flat against his chest.

And somewhere in the last minute of it, something in her face changed.

It was small. Andy might have missed it if he weren't in the habit of looking for everything. The performance stayed exactly as big and the attitude stayed exactly as sharp, but for the length of one phrase both bodies went very still, her hand tightened on the mic until the knuckles showed, and for a beat too long her eyes found his and didn't move.

Then she snapped back, threw a hip out, aimed a finger at the ceiling on the last note and held it until the PA buzzed in protest.

The MC gave her a standing ovation, which was less impressive than it sounded, since he'd been standing the whole time. He meant it anyway.

Andy clapped with everybody else and did not look at the clock over the bar.

She came back flushed and enormously pleased with herself, dropped into the booth on both sides of him at once, and said, both voices, "Beat that."

So he went up and beat it, and he didn't do it with volume.

He went back three pages, to the page he'd turned. He didn't announce it. He didn't look at her while the MC keyed it in, because he had a fair idea what his face was doing. When the first bars came through the ruined speakers—thin, tinny, the low end gone entirely—the whole room dropped a register. Somebody by the pool table groaned. A slow one. It was, objectively, the wrong song for The Shambles, and Andy had never in his life cared less about being wrong.

He sang it the way he'd learned it. Straight, no flourishes, exactly the way it would sound coming out of a car radio, because she'd always said flourishes were pretentious and he had built sixteen years of habit around the things she'd always said.

He was two lines in when he found her.

Both of Laura had come up out of the booth. Not to the stage, not yet—just standing, one hand braced on the edge of the table, both faces open in a way he had only seen a handful of times, none of them in public. She'd told him about this song when they were kids, with the absolute thirteen-year-old certainty she brought to everything: the only song she could picture dancing to at a wedding. He'd learned it for her. Then she was gone, and it had sat in a red notebook for sixteen years with nowhere to go.

The last time he'd sung it, they'd been standing on the footbridge, and by the end there had been rings on their hands.

She crossed the room. The regulars moved out of her way without appearing to notice they were doing it. She came up the two steps, took the other mic, and joined him on the next line without asking. He didn't have to guess where to leave room for her, and she didn't have to guess where he'd be. Two lifetimes of knowing exactly how the other one talked, laughed, breathed, and it turned out that was enough to know how to sing together, too. Their voices went out over the wrecked PA and simply fit, the way things do when nothing about them needs to be worked out anymore.

Then she smiled at him. It wasn't a performance smile.

Neither of them said anything about it. There was a stage the size of a door and a dead skyline painted on the wall behind it and forty people who would forget all of this by Thursday, and none of that mattered, because somewhere around the last chorus both of Laura's left hands found Andy's, her mic still raised with the two free hands, between her bodies, and pressed his hand between hers until all three rings touched. She didn't look at him when she did it. She didn't need to. The song had already done its work, weeks ago, on a bridge in the snow. Singing it here, hands stacked together under the cheap stage lights, was just proof it had stuck.

They finished. The bar clapped. It was nowhere near the noise she'd gotten for the first one, and Andy wouldn't have traded it for anything he had ever been given.

Then, because she had never in her life been able to leave a room in that condition, Laura leaned into the mic and said, both voices at once, “Okay. Now something stupid.”

They closed with (I've Had) The Time of My Life, which Laura began by singing both parts at once, one body per singer, grinning like a card cheat. She made it four lines before she gave up the bit and handed Andy a mic. He took Bill Medley's half. She kept Jennifer Warnes'. The bar lost its collective mind.

Everybody sang the chorus. The bartender sang the chorus. Somebody started a chant for the lift, and the chant went general, and Laura turned to Andy with an expression of pure, uncomplicated dare.

“For the record,” he said into the mic, “this is her idea.”

There was only one way to do it. He caught one of her at the waist, and she went up over his head with no more effort from him than raising an arm, both her arms flung out wide, silk trailing, exactly the shape the song was named for. He held her there, steady, longer than the music strictly asked for, because he could, because it cost him nothing, because the look on her face was worth every extra second. The bar came apart. Somebody's phone flash went off. He brought her down slow, and by the time her feet found the plywood again, the other of her had already come up to take the last chorus with him, and the three of them finished it standing, not laughing, just close, her hands still braced on his shoulders where he'd set her down.

For one second, no longer, Andy had the urge to reach out and take hold of the moment with both hands, the way you'd grab a railing. He had no name for it. It passed, or seemed to.

He glanced at the clock over the bar without meaning to, and then made himself stop.

The bar had filled out by then, and the regulars had decided they were okay, maybe even fun. A woman in a Cubs jacket offered to buy them a round, which Laura accepted (“Only if it’s the cheapest, and non-alcoholic for me,” both faces said, laughing). Someone passed Andy a high-five on the way back from the bathroom (Andy unobtrusively went back to wash his hands after). Even the bartender, still stone-faced, nodded at them with something almost like respect.

After their third round, they ended up back in the cracked booth, Laura’s heads on Andy’s shoulders, her hands—both sets—twined around his arms. He was warm and happy in a way he hadn’t expected, the glow of it fuzzing the edges of everything else.

“This was perfect,” Laura said, both faces soft. “The fancy part, and this. I want both.”

Andy kissed the top of her head, feeling the cool of her hair against his lips. “You get both,” he said. “You always get both.”

She yawned, the sound doubled but delicate. “I’m tired now,” she said. “Can we go home?”

He smiled, remembering the first time she’d said that to him, years ago, at the end of some family party. “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

They slipped out of the booth, each of Laura taking one of Andy’s hands. The bar had drifted into a low simmer, the night mellowing out. They waved at the bartender, who gave them a nod.

---

Mildred was waiting at the curb, the car’s interior just as Andy remembered: warm, faintly floral, insulated from the outside. As soon as the doors were shut, she merged back onto the night-blank street, navigating the old neighborhoods of Warrenville with the same smooth competence she’d shown at the hotel. Laura—both of her—had gone soft and pliant in the backseat, heads resting against Andy’s shoulders, eyes closed but hands gripping his in a double vise.

He watched the way Mildred drove: silent, eyes straight ahead, gloved hands never moving from ten and two. Not a word, not a flicker of curiosity about her strange passengers. Andy tried to guess what, if anything, was running behind those perfect features, but came up empty.

The drive back took less than ten minutes, but it felt longer, stretched by the heaviness of the night and the after-echo of all that singing. By the time they pulled into the driveway, the world outside had gone totally silent, the streetlights throwing yellow patches onto the snow like islands in a black sea. The house looked different at night—more real, somehow, than it had in the morning. The porch light was on, casting a warm glow down the walk and onto the steps, illuminating a dusting of new snow that hadn’t been there when they left.

Mildred eased the car to a stop, put it in park, and popped the locks. “We’ve arrived,” she said, voice perfectly neutral. No sarcasm, no warmth, just the fact of it.

Laura straightened, stretched both sets of arms above her heads (both of her yawning at once, which was weirdly adorable), and smiled at Mildred through the partition. “Thank you,” she said, both faces—so in sync it was almost eerie.

Mildred actually blinked, like she was surprised by the civility. Then she dipped her head, and for a brief instant, Andy caught what might have been a real, unguarded smile. “You’re welcome,” Mildred replied. “Enjoy your evening.”

She didn’t drive off right away. Instead, she waited, engine idling, until Andy had gotten Laura out of the car and up the steps. Only then did he realize he had left something unsaid.

He turned back. He stood there a second, watching the taillights, then crossed to the driver’s side and tapped on the glass.

Mildred rolled the window down. Her expression didn’t change, but something behind it did—a faint tightening, like she was bracing.

“When we’re back,” Andy said. “At the Hotel. After all this is over. I’d like to talk to you. If that’s okay.”

A beat. Her gloved hands shifted on the wheel, just slightly. “Talk to me,” she repeated, as if testing the words for hidden weight.

“Yeah.”

Something moved across her face. Not alarm exactly, but a close relative of it. Her eyes dropped to the steering wheel, then came back up. “Talk,” she said. “To me.”

“Yeah.”

She looked at him for a moment—not through him, the way she usually did, but actually at him. Then she faced forward again. “I’ll be available,” she said, which wasn’t quite the same as agreeing, but wasn’t a refusal either.

He stepped back. The window rolled up, and the car pulled smoothly away from the curb, taillights shrinking down the dark street until they turned a corner and were gone.

Andy watched her a second longer, then turned to find Laura standing at the edge of the walk, both faces tipped up at the porch light.

She was barefoot now, heels dangling from one hand per body, the other hand brushing hair out of her face. She looked tired, but in a contented way, the kind of tired that comes after a good day rather than a hard one.

She moved toward the door, both bodies in perfect lockstep, but Andy caught her hand—one of them, the left—and pulled her gently back. “Wait,” he said.

Laura turned, blue eyes sharp despite her exhaustion. “Something else?” she asked, both voices at once, curiosity overriding fatigue.

He nodded, nervous all at once. “Yeah. I’m not quite ready to let go of tonight.”

Both of Laura smiled, one eyebrow arching in tandem. “You’re turning into a romantic,” she said, the accusation softened by the way she squeezed his hand.

He shrugged, embarrassed. “Always have been.”

She looked at him, then at the yard. “Where are we going?” she asked, a genuine question this time.

He didn’t answer, just led her off the walk, around the side of the house, the snow crunching under their feet. The porch light faded behind them, and for a second they were in total darkness—just the two of them (or three, depending on how you wanted to count) and the chill of the January air.

When they reached the backyard, Andy paused and turned them both to look up.

The sky was ridiculously clear—far more so than a real night in Warrenville would ever allow, the stars all sharp and undiluted by light pollution, a thousand pinpricks in a velvet-black sky. The same yard where they’d sat together that morning, on the steps, while Laura told him about the pregnancy.

He felt her hand go tight in his, and both of Laura’s faces went soft, reflective.

She asked, “What’s the plan?”

“No plan,” he said. “Just… this.” He gestured at the sky, the snow, the empty stretch of lawn. “I wanted to see what it looked like, with you here.”

Both of Laura smiled, small and quiet, and she looked up again, letting the silence settle.

He glanced at the porch, saw a blanket folded on the swing, and went to grab it. He shook it out over a patch of grass (snow shallow enough to ignore), then lay back, arms open, and waited for her to join him.

She hesitated only a second, then came down beside him, both bodies at once, curling up on either side. He wrapped an arm around each waist, and they lay there like that, the blanket pulled up over their legs, the cold ignored in the warmth of proximity.

For a long time, neither spoke. They just watched the sky, the patterns of old stars shifting in slow, imperceptible ways.

He felt her head rest against his shoulder, both of them, and he let himself relax, breathing in the scent of her hair and the faint, ozone tang of cold air. The world was so quiet it almost didn’t feel real—a kind of magic, or maybe just the best kind of accident.

He didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to say anything that might make the night restart itself, or end.

They lay there for a while, not talking, just watching the way the stars seemed to multiply the longer you looked at them. Andy traced his fingers up and down Laura’s arm, sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right, sometimes both at once. She didn’t say anything, but every so often, one or both of her would sigh, like her body was letting out all the tension she never showed anyone else.

At some point, Andy thought she might have drifted off, eyes closed and her breathing gone soft and slow. He didn’t mind; it was enough just to have her here, not as a memory or a promise but as a real thing in the world.

Then, without warning, both of Laura turned their faces toward him, blue eyes reflecting the starlight in a way that made them look almost phosphorescent.

“Do you ever think about how so many stars are already gone?” she asked, voice low, both mouths moving in exact harmony. “That so many of them are just ghosts of themselves, something dead or burning out, and we only see them because the light took so long to get here?”

Andy blinked. He let the question hang, searching for an answer that wasn’t just sad, or a lie.

“Sometimes,” he admitted. “But mostly I think about how weird it is that the light even gets here at all. Like, against all odds, we’re here to see it.” He turned to look at her—both of her—and shrugged. “That seems like the part that matters.”

Both of Laura smiled, one face soft, the other skeptical. “You’re such a nerd,” she said, fondly, and then, after a pause: “I think I love you for it.”

Andy’s heart did that uncomfortable thing where it felt too small for what was happening inside it. He swallowed. “I love you, too,” he said, both because it was true and because the words had been waiting in his mouth all night.

Both of Laura leaned in at once, and kissed him, one on the lips and one at the edge of his jaw. The sensation was overwhelming, not in a physical way but in the way it reached back through every version of his life—the kid on the bridge, the high schooler who never quite got over her, the grown man who built a whole life around the absence and didn’t even realize it until she was here again.

They kissed for a while, the world shrinking down to just the three of them and the sharp air and the blanket pressed into the earth. Andy didn’t rush it. He let it stretch, let her have the moment, let himself have it, too.

He didn’t realize until later, until much later, that somewhere during the kiss he’d started to want the moment to last. Not in the usual way—not just to savor it—but to actually keep it, to suspend it in amber and refuse to let the night dissolve. He wanted it with a specificity that felt almost magical, and the wanting took on a shape and a current, the way a memory sometimes does when it’s about to become permanent.

It wasn’t a need, not really. For once, it was a want. So, in the space between one breath and the next, Andy found himself reaching for the power—his Command, the one he never liked to use, the one that always made him feel a little like he was cheating at life. He whispered, softly, almost a wish: “Let time stop for us. Just for tonight. Just until I say otherwise.”

He whispered it into her mouth, so low she wouldn’t hear it over her own breathing.

And he felt it work, the same way he’d feel his hand close into a fist, the certainty immediate and absolute.

Nothing in the world changed, at least nothing obvious. The stars didn’t freeze, because from here they never moved anyway. The cold didn’t let up, but it didn’t sharpen either. The only real difference was in the silence: a quiet so deep and so total that even the sound of their own heartbeats seemed to have been swept up and locked away somewhere outside the yard.

Laura didn’t notice. She was still lost in the kiss, both bodies curling toward him, both hands tangled in his hair, her weight soft and welcome against his chest.

He let the kiss slow, let it linger, then drew back just enough to look her in the eyes.

“Can I tell you a secret?” he asked.

Both of Laura nodded, so in sync it almost made him laugh.

He said, “This is what I dreamed of, when we were kids. A hurt, since the day you left because I thought I would never get this with you, ever again. Just this. I don’t care about the house or the life or anything else. I just wanted this. You, here, with me, under the stars.”

For a second, both faces were blank—processing, maybe, or just overloaded. Then one face broke into a grin, huge and bright, and the other went wet at the corners, like the words had cut her right to the quick.

She kissed him again, and this time it was slower, deliberate, a kind of seal pressed onto the moment.

“I love you,” she said again, both voices, and Andy could hear in it the truth of every version of the girl and the woman he’d ever known.

“I love you, too,” he said, and meant it, and didn’t care how many times he had to say it to make it stick.

They lay like that for a long, long time. Andy didn’t count the minutes. He didn’t have to. The world would wait as long as he asked it to, and for once in his life, he had nothing but time.

It was impossible to say how long they lay like that—could have been minutes or hours, except that time, for them, had stopped keeping track.

---

Eventually, Laura pulled back, just a little, both faces turned up at the sky. For a second Andy thought she was lost in it, the infinite black, the stars so sharp it hurt to look. Then both faces shifted, a small, tight line forming at her mouth. She was searching for something, a detail out of place.

She said, “The stars aren’t moving.”

He glanced up, trying to see what she saw, but of course she was right. The sky was exactly as it had been the last time he checked—a cluster of Orion’s Belt in the east, the bright smear of Jupiter directly overhead. No drift, no change, not even the creep of a satellite crossing the field. Just absolute, mathematical stasis.

Laura sat up, propping herself on both elbows, and stared up harder. “There’s a leaf,” she said, almost to herself. “Above us. It’s been there the whole time.” She pointed, and Andy saw it: a small, gold-brown leaf, suspended in the air maybe four feet above them, stuck mid-fall, a perfect freeze-frame. Not drifting, not even trembling in a wind.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.

Laura turned, both faces locking onto him, a new seriousness there. “Did you do this?” she asked.

Andy nodded. “Yeah,” he said, soft but steady. “I wanted to keep the moment. So I… did.”

She blinked, both sets of eyes widening. “You stopped time?” There was no accusation, only a kind of awe.

He nodded again. “For us, at least. I just—I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to see if we could keep it. Just for a little while.”

Both of Laura stared at him, then at the yard, then up at the sky, then back. “You just… decided, and it happened.”

“I said it,” Andy admitted. “I told it to stop. And the second I said it, I knew it had worked.” He tried to find words for the sensation, but it was slippery. “It felt like flipping a light switch. Like moving your own hand. It wasn’t a flare-up or anything. It was the Command Gift. Just… yes.”

Laura was quiet, watching him, both faces so intent it was almost uncomfortable.

“Do you know how long we’ve been here?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Not really. Could be five minutes, could be an hour. I didn’t think about that part.”

Both of Laura sat up fully now, looking around the yard as if she expected something to jump out at her. But everything was perfectly still: the trees, the swing, the tiny patch of snow under the porch lamp, the leaf above them.

She hugged her knees to her chest, both bodies mirroring each other. “Does this feel different from the thing with the car?” she asked.

He didn’t know what she meant at first. “What thing with the car?”

“The suit. The dresses. How you wanted something and it just happened.” Both voices were careful, analytic. “That wasn’t a command, was it?”

Andy shook his head. “No. That just… happened. I didn’t even know it until I looked down and saw it.”

Laura chewed on this, both faces going pensive. “So what’s the difference?” she asked, pressing now. “What makes one a command, and the other a—” She hesitated, searching for the word. “A flare-up?”

Andy hesitated, too. He’d never tried to untangle the difference before, not really. “I guess… with the commands, I know I’m doing it. I can feel it working, like a switch or a lever I can pull. With the other thing… it’s just there. It’s already happened, and I’m the last to know about it.”

Laura let the silence sit. Then: “Do you think maybe it’s not two different things?” she asked. “That it’s the same power, just sometimes you’re the one controlling it, and sometimes it’s the other way around?”

The idea landed in him with a thud. He’d never thought about it that way, and for a second, the sheer scope of what she’d just said left him without any words at all.

He admitted, “I don’t know. Maybe.” He looked at her, really looked, the way her faces searched his, the way she was turning it over, too. “It bothers me, though. Not knowing which is which.”

Laura nodded, both faces sympathetic. “I get it,” she said. “But maybe what will happen eventually will be that you’ll reconcile the two.”

He smiled, but it was tinged with something sharp. “What if I freeze something and can’t unfreeze it? What if I can’t get you back?”

Both of Laura's faces softened, and she reached out with both hands, cupping his face gently. “You'll get the leaf back,” she said. “You told it to stop. You can tell it to go.”

He held her gaze a moment longer, waiting for the rest.

She didn't take it up. Her thumbs moved once across his cheekbones. “I trust you,” she said instead. “That part I'm sure of.”

He looked at her hands, at how steady they were, and decided to take what she was offering. He nodded, finally.

“Okay,” he said. “We let it happen.”

They sat that way, the two of them, and the stopped world, and a night that refused to go anywhere at all.

The silence held a new weight now, thicker than before. Laura let it rest for a while, then curled against Andy’s side—both of her—fitting the angle of her shoulders to his like she’d been rehearsing it forever. He wrapped an arm around each of her, and she tucked her heads into the hollow above his collarbones.

After a long minute, she said, “It’s weird, but I’m grateful for this. The freeze, I mean. It’s the first time I haven’t felt like the clock was chasing me.”

Andy ran his fingers through her hair, gentle, slow. “Yeah?”

She nodded, both heads in tandem. “Because now we can say things. No one’s waiting. It’s just us, and the world has to deal with it.”

He smiled. “What did you want to say?”

Laura inhaled, deep and shaky, and it took her a second to get the words out. “I want to talk about being scared.” She said it plainly, without any of the edge she used to protect herself. “I keep doing the thing where I act like it’s all under control. Like there’s a plan. But most of the time I’m just… making it up, and hoping the next thing doesn’t hurt more than the last.”

Andy squeezed her waist, one arm then the other. “I’m scared too,” he said, surprised at how easy it was, now that he’d started.

Both of Laura’s faces softened. “You don’t have to be the strong one. Not with me.”

He almost laughed, but it came out as a breath. “That’s not how it works, you know. You show up and everyone expects you to be the fixed point.”

Laura was quiet for a long beat, then said, “I’m scared of the debt.” Her voice was low, but the words had a gravity that forced them into the world. “I’m scared of dying, actually dying, and not coming back this time. I’m scared of losing…” She hesitated, then finished: “of losing you, and the baby, now that I know she’s coming.” Both faces went stiff, and for a second Andy felt like the air in his lungs had solidified. “Now that we’ve met her.”

He hugged her tighter, both of her. He didn’t say anything right away.

“I only just found out,” Laura whispered, both voices. “I haven’t even let myself think it could be real, because it feels like cheating. I was dead, Andy. You don’t get to come back and get a family and a house and a future. That’s not how it works.” She tried to laugh, but it cracked in the middle. “But I want it. I want all of it. And I’m terrified it’s going to get taken away again, or worse—worse, I’ll screw it up myself.”

Andy rested his cheek on the top of her head, both heads. “You’re not going to screw it up,” he said, but he could hear the shakiness in his own voice, the lie he wanted to believe.

Both of Laura just held him, and for a while neither of them said anything. Then Andy spoke, softer than before. “I’m scared of what happens to me,” he said. “If we go through with the ascension, if it actually works. I’m scared of turning into something that isn’t me anymore. Something that can’t lose you, and loses itself instead.”

Both faces looked up, serious now. “You mean like Arabella,” Laura said. “Distant. Untouchable. Old.”

Andy nodded. “Yeah. Like I’d watch you, and our friends, and the world go by, and I’d just—stop feeling it. Stop caring.”

Laura lay back down beside him, both bodies curling tight into his sides, the right arm snug around his ribs and the left a mirror at his shoulder. The reaction on both faces wasn’t anger or fear, not even judgment. It was a kind of focus that Andy recognized from the first time she’d ever cut him off mid-spiral and forced him to just look at the problem, not the shadows behind it.

“That’s not you,” she said. “You don’t stop caring.” Both voices together, low and flat, as if stating a scientific fact.

Andy shook his head, not quite ready to let it go. “It’s easy to say that, until it isn’t. If I go through with the ascension—if it actually happens—I might not even know what I lost. Not until it’s too late.” He felt the words land, heavy and real. “I don’t want that.”

Both of Laura nodded, as if this was the only acceptable answer. “Then don’t let it happen.” The words were blunt, but the hands on his chest were gentle. “Arabella’s old. She’s not numb. She’s just—lonely. No one ever stays long enough to see if she’d open up.”

Andy snorted, a shaky exhale. “You’re giving her more benefit of the doubt than she gives herself.”

Both of Laura smiled, tiny and true. “That’s how you fix things. You pick them up, and you keep them. Even if they’re not yours to keep.” A pause, then: “You don’t stop being Andy just because you become a god.”

He wanted to believe it. He looked at her, both of her, and for a second it was like the rest of the world had gone grayscale. “I don’t want to lose you again,” he said. “Not ever. But I don’t want to lose Riley, or Myra, or your aunt, or anyone else, either.”

Both faces winced, a tiny shudder running through her. “Me neither.”

A long, cold silence.

Andy said, “It always lands on whoever loves the person most. That’s the unofficial rule, isn’t it? You don’t pay your own debt. It gets paid by someone who cared enough to try.”

Both faces stared at him, and for the first time all night, neither tried to be the brave one.

After a while, Laura found her voice. “I hate that rule,” she said, not hiding the shake in her words. “If I could smash it, I would.”

“I know,” Andy said. He squeezed her tighter, both sides, willing the world to let up for just a second.

Laura let the silence stretch. Then: “I’ve thought about it. More than I want to admit.” She swallowed, eyes going distant. “What if it’s Riley? Or Myra? Or—” She couldn’t finish.

Andy pressed his forehead to hers, both at once, the cold bite of her skin against his. “It won’t be. I won’t let it.”

Both faces smiled, wet at the corners, but she didn’t let him off the hook. “You can’t control everything,” she said, voice not unkind.

“Then I’ll fight for it anyway,” Andy said, the words surprising him with their finality. “I can’t—” He broke off, tried again. “I can’t be the guy who sits and lets it happen. Not this time. Not with you.”

There was a tremor in the air, like the world itself might start moving again if they said another word.

Laura reached up, both hands at once, cradling his face with a gentleness that reminded him of the way she used to handle sparrows with broken wings. “I need you to promise me,” she said, both voices together, strong now. “If it comes down to a choice, I need you to pick yourself. Not me. Not anyone else. If you’re the only thing standing between the debt and the rest of the world, you fight. Even if it means losing me. Do you understand?”

Andy nodded, but she held his gaze until he said it out loud: “I promise.”

She let go, then, and lay her heads down against his chest, both of them at peace for a moment.

“I’m not ready to go,” Laura said, voice soft as new snow. “But I’m even less ready to watch someone else go for me. I can’t do that.” The last word was a whisper, but the conviction in it was total.

Andy held her, both of her, and for the first time in months, felt the knot in his chest loosen, just a little. “You won’t have to.”

The two of them lay there for a long time, saying nothing, just breathing in the stopped world and letting the truth of it settle between them.

---

After a long, suspended time, Laura stirred. She shifted both bodies away from Andy’s chest, just enough to look at him properly, and said, “I want to be one person for this.” Both faces were dead serious, no hint of joke in it. “Like I was the first time. I want to do it on purpose.”

He smiled, just a little, and brushed her hair back behind both ears at once. “Whatever you want,” he said, and he meant it.

Laura closed her eyes, drew a long, steady breath, and then the second body began to pull inward, folding itself against the first until the two were nested together, a doubled hug that tightened and blurred at the edges until there was just one of her—one Laura, sitting beside him, breathing hard, arms wrapped around her knees. The process was cleaner now, not as much flicker or drag as before. She made it look effortless, and when she opened her eyes, there was a focus in them that made Andy feel like he was the only other person in the world.

He reached for her, and she came to him without hesitation. She climbed into his lap, straddling him over the blanket, hands working the buttons of his shirt one by one. She didn’t look away from his face as she did it. Her hands were steady, and every button felt like a small decision: yes, yes, yes, until the shirt was open and his chest was bared to the cold.

He sat up to help her, shrugged the jacket off, let it drop behind him. Her hands slid under the shirt, palms flat against his skin, and the look in her eyes made him dizzy.

She kissed him, slower than before, savoring it, and he let his hands travel up her back, down the line of her spine, tracing the zipper of her gown where it began at the nape of her neck. He found the pull, and, watching her face for a signal, he drew it down, inch by inch. The dress slackened over her shoulders, and she shivered as the January air touched her bare skin, but she didn’t stop. She shrugged it down, baring herself to the waist, then let it fall the rest of the way, pooling sapphire at her hips before she wiggled out of it completely.

Her hair, which she’d kept pinned back all night, came loose as she reached for the clasp, and a black waterfall tumbled over her shoulders. Andy thought she looked like a myth brought to life: all pale skin and blue eyes and dark, wild hair, the moon painting her silver at the edges.

She finished with his shirt, then started on his belt. Her hands were efficient, no wasted motion, and when she got it open she glanced up at him, eyes daring him to stop her. He didn’t. He lifted his hips so she could work the pants down, and when she had them at his knees, she let herself laugh, a bright, soft sound that made him want to say her name over and over.

He pulled her in, kissed her again, and her hands found his back, fingers spreading wide, memorizing the shape of him. She reached down, guided him, and when she eased herself onto him, she closed her eyes and let her head fall back, the tension in her whole body singing out and then settling into a deep, slow burn.

For a moment, she just sat there, letting herself adjust, both hands braced on his chest. Andy slid his hands to her waist, holding her steady, but didn’t move, just watched her face and the way she was letting herself feel everything.

She started to move—slow, rolling circles with her hips, the kind of rhythm that felt like it was for her alone. Andy let her take the lead, matching her pace, holding her by the hips as she rode him. She kept her eyes closed at first, then opened them, and the look she gave him was pure challenge.

She leaned in to kiss him as she moved, her hair falling around them like a curtain. The cold didn’t matter, not anymore; their bodies were warm, all heat and friction and shared breath. She broke the kiss only to move her mouth to his neck, then his ear, then back to his lips.

She changed the angle, sat up taller, and gasped at the way it felt, her hands flat on his chest as she found a new rhythm. Andy let himself fall into it, let the world narrow to just the points of contact: her hands, his hands, the slow drag of her body over his. He watched her, watched the way every flicker of pleasure played across her face, the way she was utterly present and nowhere else.

After a while, he couldn’t hold back. He sat up, one arm around her waist, the other bracing their weight, and rolled her gently onto her back, the blanket soft beneath her. He didn’t break the connection, not even for a second. He moved over her, slow and deep, propped on one forearm so he could see her, his other hand finding hers and lacing their fingers together beside her head.

Laura wrapped her legs around him, pulling him in closer, and told him she loved him, the words coming out sharp and clear, the kind of statement that didn’t need a reply.

He kissed her, hard, and then softer, and then she was coming apart beneath him, her whole body drawing tight around him, her back arching up into his chest. She cried out, louder than he’d ever heard, and the sound carried into the silent yard and hung there, a perfect echo.

Andy followed, lost himself, buried his face in her hair as he came, and for a second the whole world snapped to a single, electric point.

Afterward, they stayed locked together, neither willing to move first. His weight was braced above her, their hands still tangled together on the blanket. The stars above were still, as if the whole sky had come to a halt just to watch them.

They lay like that, catching their breath, the cold forgotten, the only sound the slow return of their heartbeats to something like normal.

Laura looked up at him, her face luminous in the starlight. “I wish it was always like this,” she said, and the words were so simple and so real that Andy almost started to cry.

He kissed her again, just once, and told her, “We’ll make it real. Even if it takes everything.”

She smiled, softer than he’d ever seen, and squeezed his hand.

They lay together, the world restarting around them, but for now, the night was theirs, and nothing else in the universe mattered.