It was during the ending credits of their third episode when Sarah’s phone buzzed. With a sigh, she extracted an arm from a tangle of blankets and retrieved her phone.
Sarah’s body stiffened, at what she saw. Her fight-or-flight reaction, for just a moment, paralyzed her into non-movement. In just a moment, in a single message, Sarah’s entire day was ruined. And likely Jon’s, as well.
She slumped back into a particularly large pillow as She brought her other hand away from Jon’s shoulder and over to the bridge of her nose.
This got Jon’s attention. “Are you okay?” He raised himself up on his elbows.
Sarah shook her head, eyes closed. “I don’t think you and Karyn are going to get back together. And I don’t think she’s my best friend anymore, either.”
As much as Sarah wanted to protect Jon, this was something he needed to see. She turned her phone to face him, so that he was looking at the picture that Karyn had just texted her.
It was a selfie. Karyn and Biff, both topless, both grinning at the camera with cruelty in their eyes, bodies pressed together close enough that Karyn’s bare breasts were hidden against Biff’s chest.
The caption read: “This is the real me. This isn’t Other Karyn. And guess who I just fucked.”
Silently, Jon collapsed back next to Sarah, so the both of them were staring at the ceiling, each head taking up half of a gigantic pillow.
“Shit,” Jon said.
“Yeah,” Sarah replied.
The next episode began to auto-play. “Who can turn the world on with her smile?”
Sarah furiously tapped at her phone until the projector turned off, then threw it with disgust into the pile of blankets.
The two sat there in silence, thoughts whirring, both of them full of things they wanted to say, but neither sure whether they actually wanted to say those things out loud. Then Sarah spoke.
“Hey Jon?”
“Yeah?”
“Back at Amber’s house. What you said to me when I got there with Tiffany. It hurt me more than it should have.”
“I’m sorry,” Jon whispered.
“You were, I don’t know, love drunk or something. You were someone else. I don’t know. But I’m a big girl, I should have been able to shrug it off.”
“You shouldn’t have to shrug someone off when they’re being a jerk. And I was being a jerk.”
Sarah’s face softened. “You’re sweet. At least, you are now. But this is important, I need to tell you why you hurt me.”
Jon nodded and sat himself upright.
“You told me that I was jealous.” A long pause. “And it hurt because it was true. But I didn’t want it to be true. I was telling myself that it wasn’t true. Had been telling myself all Friday, from the moment that your mom let me into your house. No. From the moment you started answering my questions on Thursday night.”
Sarah sighed, and she turned to Jon.
“I saw what Karyn had, and I wanted it. I wanted you. But Karyn is my best friend, and more than anything else, I wanted her to be happy. So I threw myself into making sure her relationship worked. I told myself that helping her was more important to me than what I wanted. And if Karyn had you, then I’d still be adjacent to you.”
Jon looked down. “I don’t think Karyn wants me anymore.”
A tear built up in Sarah’s eye. “But I still do. I love you, Jon. I’ve loved you all day today, and all day yesterday, and I even loved you for most of the night before. And I know that sounds sudden. But now that I know that I’m not sabotaging Karyn, I can be honest with myself and I can be honest with you. I don’t know how I can be so certain that I love you after so little time. But I know it. I love you.”
Jon listened carefully to Sarah’s words, searched deeply within her eyes. Then he sighed a sad sigh. “No you don’t.”
“What?” Sarah’s face fell.
“We’ve talked a lot about trust in the last few days,” Jon breathed. “Before I tell you what I’m about to tell you, I need you to promise me that I can trust you.”
The tear overflowed Sarah’s eyelid and made its way down her cheek. “I promise, I will not betray your trust.”
Jon took a deep breath, and re-adjusted himself on the blankets. “My grandfather died a little while ago, and he left me a magical stone as my inheritance.”
Jon proceeded to relay the entire story of the last few days to Sarah. From the blue branch, to Karyn’s wish, to the way she started acting strange. Everything, as thoroughly as he could explain it, with no secrets hidden, all the way to the moment he started explaining the stone. And Sarah listened attentively, without interrupting.
“So," Sarah finally replied after taking a moment to process what she'd been told, "when she sent that picture and said that she wasn’t ‘Other Karyn,’ she was talking about her other personality? Like the Mr. Hyde part of her?”
“Yeah. Other Karyn isn’t supposed to know any of this, so it’s got to be from the real Karyn. My Karyn. So if she’s not my friend anymore, then I don’t know what to do.”
“Okay,” Sarah breathed. “I’m with you. I’m going to support you. We’ll figure this out together, whatever that means. But I do love you, Jon.”
“You don’t!” Jon’s reaction was visceral, but not violent. “It’s the stone. I don’t know what wish did it or why, but so many weird things have been happening, and it all started with that stone. You never even gave me the time of day before Karyn made her wish.”
Jon’s words struck Sarah deep into her core for the second time that day. Because, once again, it was true. Jon hadn’t even been on her radar as a person until he had popped into her bedroom with Karyn.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I don’t know why I never noticed you before. It might be because I was changed by magic, or it might just be because I never had a reason to notice you. But right now, I see you for who you are. And I know that I love the person that I see. Without reservation.”
Jon made an uncomfortable sound. “I don’t think I’m ready to accept that yet. Maybe I will. But I need time. I’ve had a really stressful week.”
Sarah became quiet once again. “Okay. So forget about love for now. Can we just be together for a bit? Just you and me, Sarah and Jon, supporting each other because right now we don’t have anyone else?”
“Okay.”
And Jon hugged Sarah. And Sarah squeezed herself against Jon. And they held one another, in their pajamas, huddled under a pile of blankets, on a giant sofa, in Sarah’s basement, in the middle of Lake Point, on the planet Earth, in the Solar System, in the Milky Way Galaxy, in a little speck, an insignificant mote floating across the great universe.
But as they held each other close, and as they cried soft, confused tears, and tried to make sense of their new realities, and eventually fell asleep in each other’s arms, they didn’t feel insignificant at all. They felt like each one of them was the entire universe.
