Ethan Calloway went to bed expecting nothing and woke up to the smell of industrial-grade air freshener and cheap carpet, which was the only way to suppress the overwhelming smell of the room, something that came from living with three roommates in a building that wouldn’t even be called a slum.
A combination of the terrible stock market crisis that was going on, combined with his heavy student loans and less than marketable liberal arts degree meant that even that was technically a luxury.
He woke up to a ceiling he didn’t recognize.
But, since it had no mold, he took that as an improvement.
He sat up slowly, taking stock of the situation with the kind of methodical calm that came from a life where surprises had always been bad.
A glance confirmed it was a motel room.
Queen-sized bed with sheets that were aggressively beige.
An old TV.
A window unit air conditioner that hummed with the confidence of a machine that had been running since the Nixon administration.
His clothes were on a chair, with a small suitcase showing all his clothes.
His wallet was on the nightstand.
He opened it.
California driver’s license.
His face, his name, an address in Pasadena he’d never seen.
Also, for some reason.
Two credit cards, three hundred and forty dollars in cash, and a gym membership card that looked suspiciously unused.
Everything he owned … except the address on his driver’s license was different, showing California instead of Oregon.
Weird.
He sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, looking at the mirror, showing his face.
The same.
Yet, somehow, he could feel that his whole world had shifted.
It was an absurd conclusion to react, yet somehow, in the depth of his heart, he knew it to be true.
The reasonable reaction would have been panic.
Screaming.
Maybe a mental breakdown, the kind that involved rocking and muttering.
He’d seen enough movies to know the script.
Instead, Ethan felt something he hadn’t expected.
Relief.
His life; the real one, the old one, or whatever he was supposed to call it now, hadn’t been the kind that inspired nostalgia.
No close family, no romantic interests, no friends.
A job that paid enough to survive and not enough to live.
An apartment with a recurring mold problem and a landlord who treated maintenance requests like personal insults.
He wasn’t going to cry over losing that.
He showered.
The water pressure was terrible, which confirmed that the universe, whatever version of it he was in, still maintained certain constants.
He dressed in the clothes that weren’t his but fit like they were and stepped outside.
Los Angeles hit him like a wall of sunlight and ambition.
The motel sat on a stretch of road that was caught somewhere between commercial and residential, the kind of block that couldn’t decide if it was gentrifying or giving up.
A laundromat.
A taco place with a hand-painted sign.
A store that sold phone cases and dreams of upward mobility.
Ethan walked.
He didn’t have a plan yet, and he was comfortable with that.
Plans required information, and information required observation.
So he observed.
The cars were wrong.
Not wrong in an obvious, science-fiction way.
Wrong in the specific sense that his trained eye caught model years that didn’t quite line up with what he remembered.
The phones people carried were familiar but slightly off.
Like someone had shuffled the last fifteen years of consumer technology and dealt them out in a slightly different order.
He passed a newsstand — an actual newsstand, which was its own kind of anachronism, and scanned headlines without stopping.
Nothing about the events he recognized.
No politicians he could name.
The world was similar enough to be navigable and different enough to be interesting.
Also, the year was 2012.
Panicked, he pulled his driver’s license again, only to see his birthday had been shifted to 1990.
Good, he wasn’t suddenly an overgrown ten years old child according to paper.
Or he was losing his mind.
That remained on the table, but he was strangely all right with it.
He kept walking.
Pasadena was pleasant in a way he didn’t expect.
Trees lined streets that were too wide for the amount of traffic they carried.
People jogged.
Dogs were walked.
Somewhere, someone was probably doing yoga in a park and feeling very good about their life choices.
Ethan found his supposed apartment after forty minutes of walking and a consultation with his phone’s GPS.
It was a one-bedroom on the second floor of a building that aspired to be charming and mostly succeeded.
The key in his wallet opened the door.
The apartment was lived in.
A bookshelf, heavy on history and science fiction, which tracked.
A laptop on a desk.
A kitchen that was clean in a way that suggested he didn’t cook often.
Minimal decoration.
Several boxes still half unpacked, signaling a recent move.
No photos on the walls, but otherwise, how he would have decorated if he lived alone and had some disposable income.
He felt an odd kinship with this version of himself he was apparently replacing.
They had similar tastes in loneliness as well.
He spent an hour going through the apartment like a detective at a crime scene.
The check-in laptop showed that an email informing that, unfortunately, he had been part of the corporate reduction, but considering it came with a severance, he found himself not complaining.
Not generous like buying a new home, but enough for him not to worry about rent and living expenses for a few months; especially since he had no student loans.
Who would have known that accidental multiversal travel was all one needed to do escape that particular debt.
He smiled.
A clean slate with furniture.
Ethan could work with that.
&&&
By early afternoon, he needed to get out of the apartment before the silence started feeling productive.
He had a habit of overthinking when left alone too long, but today, he felt free.
And he wanted to celebrate it with a drink.
A beer, which he normally wouldn’t drink midday, but he decided today would deserve an exception—
Only to freeze when he was passing in front of a coffee shop.
Not because the smell was amazing.
Not because the cafe was some kind of masterpiece.
It was not.
It was the kind of establishment that believed itself to be cool just because it had exposed brick walls and mismatched furniture and a chalkboard menu written in handwriting that passed as fancy.
The same went for the crowd occupying it.
It was half-full.
Laptop crowd, mostly.
The afternoon shift of remote workers and students who had colonized every available outlet.
Soft music that sounded like someone had searched for music more boring than elevator jazz.
Nothing about the shop itself appealed him, but he still pushed the door and entered.
No, his attention was caught by the person behind the counter.
A young woman.
Pretty, though in a very distinctively, nerdy way.
However, that wasn’t what caught his attention either.
He guessed she was nineteen.
No, he knew she was nineteen.
Because he recognized her.
Alex Dunphy.
He recognized her.
How could he not, since she was a favorite from one of his comfort shows?
Dark hair pulled back in a practical ponytail.
Real glasses, not fashion accessories.
She wore the café’s apron over a flannel shirt and had the slightly impatient expression of someone whose brain was running faster than her current circumstances required.
He decided to be a little crazy.
After all, he was already in a new world.
What could go wrong?
“Hi,” she said, in the tone of someone who had said hi four hundred times today and was running out of enthusiasm for the word.
“What can I get for you?”
“Large black coffee,” Ethan said.
“And whatever you’d recommend if I told you I have no idea what’s good here and I don’t trust chalkboard menus.”
That earned him a flicker of something.
Not quite a smile, but the ghost of one.
“The chalkboard is aspirational,” she admitted.
“Half of those drinks are theoretical.
We have the ingredients, technically, but the last person who ordered the lavender oat milk latte had to wait twenty minutes while I figured out where we keep the lavender.”
He smiled, enjoying her biting sarcasm that came out.
Normally, that would have intimidated him, and he would have taken it as a rejection.
But, knowing her life from the TV had its perks, like he knew just how little attention she got from men due to the same intimidation factor, and how easily it could be bypassed.
He just needed to let things slide.
“Black coffee it is.”
“Smart choice.” She turned to pour it, and Ethan watched her move with the efficiency of someone who’d been doing this long enough to be good at it, but also long enough to start resenting it.
She set the cup on the counter.
“Three fifty.”
He paid.
Then, because his instincts told him to and his common sense told him not to, and he’d always been better at listening to the former, he nodded toward the chemistry textbook.
“Organic chemistry in a café.
Either you’re pre-med, or you lost a very specific bet.”
She looked at him for a real moment then.
Actually looked, the way people do when they’re deciding whether to engage or retreat behind the counter and the safety of professional distance.
“What would you say it’s just some fun reading?” she asked.
“I would say it’s my lucky day.
I’m usually not lucky enough to flirt with women who are both beautiful and smart.”
The way her eyes widened in panic was amusing.
“You’re flirting with me?” she said, her tone indicating shock.
Ethan didn’t say anything, but instead grabbed her hand and kissed playfully.
Against anyone else, it would never have worked.
But Alex was the exception, just dorky enough to take that as effective flirting.
And, if a dumb plant worked, it meant it wasn’t a dumb plan.
She blushed.
“So, what is such a beautiful and smart woman doing here,” he asked, and she blushed even more.
“Sabbatical,” she said.
“From Caltech.”
“Caltech,” Ethan repeated, genuinely impressed and not bothering to hide it.
“And you’re spending your sabbatical pulling espresso shots and reading textbooks in a café?”
“I … I wanted to learn how real businesses work rather than taking a business class,” she clarified, and there was something in her voice.
“Oh, not only smart and beautiful but also wise,” he said.
“If it weren’t for your beautiful blush, I would have believed I had no chance.”
That didn’t help her blush.
“Shut up…” she muttered.
“So, how’s it going?” he asked, even as he took a sip from his coffee.
She gestured vaguely at the café, the apron, the chalkboard menu.
“Living the dream.”
“The lavender dream.”
This time she actually laughed.
It was small and quick, as if she was surprised by it.
“Maybe a movie?” he asked.
“If it is, it has a limited release.
Mostly just me sitting in this café questioning my life choices while customers try to order drinks that don’t exist, possibly with subtitles.”
“Don’t forget the pointlessly long take of you sitting down on the floor and looking at the emptiness to make the movie profound.”
She chuckled.
Then, they started talking.
Ethan didn’t have to talk for long.
He knew that Alex had too many things to talk about, and not enough people listening.
Letting her spill her truth was enough.
One that lasted until the end of her shift, which she only realized when the next in line arrived.
That surprised her.
“I’m not usually this forthcoming with strangers.
You caught me at a weird point in my shift.”
“I’ll take it,” Ethan said.
“I just moved to the area.
I wasn’t expecting to have a real conversation with anyone for three months, let alone taking a pretty barrista who was also a secret genius on a date.”
“A … a date?” she responded, her voice getting thin once again.
“Yes.
Right now, a little bar food and a beer.
Or anything else you want?
How about it?”
Alex studied him again.
He could almost see her running calculations, the same way he imagined she approached a problem set.
Variables assessed.
Risk evaluated.
He didn’t let her finish.
He leaned slowly, giving her enough time to retreat before he kissed her.
She didn’t escape, but her blush was amazing.
Five minutes later, they were at a bar table.
“You’re not from LA,” she decided.
“What gave it away?”
“You made eye contact and didn’t immediately talk about yourself, but actually listened.
That’s unusual in those parts.”
“Maybe I’m just building up to it.
Give me ten minutes; I’ll start pitching you my screenplay.”
“If you do, I’m charging you for that third coffee.”
“Fair,” he said.
“You’re lucky that I can’t take my kiss back,” he said, then leaned in to kiss her again.
Her blush was incredible.
“S-shut up,” she whispered.
“So, Caltech.
What’s the focus?
The organic chemistry would have suggested premed, but you say it’s a hobby.
Or, maybe it’s the beginning of a criminal enterprise.”
“Engineering and Physics, double major,” she said.
“And if I were planning something illegal, I wouldn’t read the textbook in public.
That’s amateur hour.”
“Noted.
I’ll adjust my criminal assessment.”
“Please do.” She leaned forward, and he struggled not to peek at her cleavage.
Her shirt was modest, but her bosom was not, enough to give him a show from this angle.
“What about you?
What does a ‘just moved to the area’ person do?”
“A tale old as time.
I got fired due to corporate restructuring, and decided to take a break while I enjoy my severance paycheck for a month or two.”
“So, nothing,” she teased.
“I’d argue there’s a quiet dignity to writing the first five pages of a screenplay that would never finish, but I’d be lying.”
She laughed.
“Sorry,” she said, pushing her glasses up her nose.
“I don’t … I’m not laughing at you.”
“You’re absolutely laughing at me, and I’m fine with it.”
“Okay, I’m laughing at you a bit.
But in a nice way.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
“You’re …
easy to talk to.
That’s not, I don’t usually say things like that to … handsome boys.”
“I’m happy to be the exception he said, enjoying her attention, not surprised by the speed she was warming up to him.
Not with what he knew.
Alex Dunphy.
Brilliant, underappreciated, perpetually overshadowed by her family’s particular brand of chaos because she had her shit together.
She was a smart one who never quite got the recognition she deserved, not from her family, not from her peers, not from the parade of mediocre boyfriends the universe kept throwing at her.
He knew that she was lonely.
Not in the dramatic, crying-in-the-rain way that made for good television, but in the quiet, corrosive way that happened to smart people who grew too fast and never learned that in the school.
Ethan sipped his beer, and they talked.
Well, mostly talked and occasionally kissed.
Then things shifted.
They occasionally talked.
And mostly kissed.
He continued even when the lines filled his view.
[Achievement complete.
Seduce Alex Dunphy
Challenge: Trivial]
[Choose One!]
[+1 Intelligence
1 Random Trash Skill
1 Random Trash Reward]
He didn’t even stop before he picked up Intelligence.
He didn’t know much, but being smarter would never hurt.
They kissed until they were both dazed.
So much that Alex didn’t question when he tugged her up, and left a hundred-dollar bill on the table, not caring about overtipping.
Alex followed, too interested in the kisses they were sharing to stop.
Not even when they arrived at his apartment.
His first day in a new world was going swimmingly.