In a different timeline, he was standing on a beach of calm tides, looking across at the orange sunset burst. He might’ve been a little bit taller, a little less weird in the face, more extroverted. Outward with his energy, the things people admit to liking when they murmur to each other. There was a girl in his arms, unconscious or asleep, or making play of it, stuffed into a one-piece swimsuit, facing away from him. Of course she was. Why would that part have been any different? He thought of just dropping her; it would move the plot forward, but too mean-spirited. She might turn into a feather halfway down or some other nonsense poetic symbol from which he would have to extract significance. He had to fight for the attention we’re built to seek out—an endless battle no matter what universe he was in.