Claire smiled sadly. “You have a great imagination when you get going, don’t you? But it doesn’t change anything, in the end.”

“What are you talking about?” Claire was looking into her mug and clearly not seeing her tea at all. “Claire?” She looked up.

“Maybe there aren’t any other universes. I don’t know. But I don’t think there’s very many where we’re together, are there?” Rose didn’t know what to say. Claire smiled that not-smile again as she turned in her seat to look at the table by the window behind her. “I noticed when we got here. I didn’t say anything, but I noticed. I’ve watched you, watching her.” Vanessa sat on the other side of the room, chatting with someone from school. “If you want to talk to her that’s fine. I need to get going, anyway.”

Claire stood up abruptly, leaving her mug on the table. She didn’t look back at Rose. The bell above the tea shop door jingled in her wake, but she didn’t hear it as she ran down the sidewalk. She didn’t hear her feet on the sidewalk. The world around her was blurring, closing in into one tiny black circle. She didn’t see or hear anything.

But she felt an arm on her shoulder.

“Claire? Claire, stop.”

Claire blinked and saw Rose standing in front of her. “You’re still here. I thought you’d be gone.”

“Of course I’m still here,” Rose said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“But, Vanessa…”

“Claire, we’re where we are now because we make choices every day. That’s what you told me, right? Well, I made my choices. I chose you. It’s you standing here, not Vanessa. It’s you.”

Claire looked up at Rose, hope starting to spread across her features. Rose smiled back at her.

“Besides, she’s with Brittany now.”

If Claire was still holding her tea she would have spilt it all down her shirt.

“With Brittany? Brittany, the bitch from Phys-Ed?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.

Claire was dumbfounded.

“What universe is this?” she said.

“The one where I’m with you.”

And Rose leaned in and kissed Claire, and it wasn’t like the first time at all. It was better. Much better.

Because the old Rose would have cared that they were standing in the middle of the sidewalk, in the middle of Toronto, with hundreds of people walking past to see what they were doing. The old Rose would have been terrified. But this Rose was different, Claire realized. This Rose wasn’t just out, she was proud. And even if she’d cared what anyone else thought, it wouldn’t have mattered. Because no one who passed them gave a second glance to two girls kissing on the sidewalk in the middle of a cloudless day. No one in this universe cared. They’d seen it before.