The Futures(101)

I stood up and started to make my way down the stairs, but Evan had already opened the front door. I had waited too long. He was about to disappear. I was at the curb, about to hurry across, when a cab blasted past, roaring down the block. It slammed on its brakes with a sharp squeal. The driver, stopped, continued to blast his horn at the cars ahead of him. I noticed that Evan, too, had paused because of the noise. One foot propping open the door, the other still outside.

And then he turned, surveying the street. Maybe he was curious whether this minor rip in the neighborhood fabric had been noticed by anyone else. Whether it would be remarked on, acknowledged by a shared shrug with a neighbor. Or whether it was just another passing mishap of city life, fading into oblivion almost as soon as it happened, a tree falling in a forest with no listeners. That’s when he saw me.

“Julia?” he called, raising one hand to shield his eyes from the sun. This was the Evan I had always known, and I could see it on his face already—the recognition of who I was. The understanding of everything that had come before and everything that would come after.

I didn’t know what to say. Not yet. It would take a while, I knew. Maybe a long time. But I crossed the street and climbed the steps. What he said next made me realize that we would get there, eventually.

“Julia,” he said. His steady, light-colored eyes, the eyes that had managed to see the parts of me that I hadn’t known existed. “You came back.”