I can talk to my husband from ten years ago. He asked me: "Did I marry Lily Summers?" I thought for a moment, then wrote in the diary: "No." The pen on the other side paused for a long time. "Did I achieve my dream?" "Pretty much. Your team just won a top-tier aerospace award for propulsion systems." "So... am I happy?" I looked at Ethan Vance, asleep on the bed after pulling a forty-hour shift at the lab. I wrote: "You're doing okay. You have a career you love, and someone who loves you deeply." You just never really noticed her. 1. "Who are you?" The handwriting on the page turned sharp, aggressive. I hesitated, then wrote: "I am you, ten years from now." "Bullshit." The reply was instant. "Prove it." Even through the paper, I could picture Ethan’s skeptical frown. "When you were five, you found a book on rocketry in your grandpa’s study. You couldn't read the big words, but you told him you were going to build a ship to Mars." "Your high school physics mentor was Mr. Harrison. He said you were a genius, but 'stubborn as a mule.'" "Keep going..." "You and Lily made a pact. Sophomore summer, you’d go to Appalachia to volunteer. She’d teach math; you’d teach physics." Silence stretched across the page. "Anyone could find that out if they dug deep enough into my background." I continued: "How about this?" "The guys in your dorm call you 'God Mode' because you never study but curve every exam." "Once, you went to a LAN party at the cyber cafe. While everyone played League, you sat in the corner solving physics Olympiad sets and fixed the owner’s server before you left." I flipped the page. "You were a Guaranteed Admit to MIT. You didn't need to go to class, but you sat in the back row every day at 4 PM because Lily needed help with mechanics." "Three months before graduation, your advisor told you to prep for the International Physics Olympiad. You bailed. You said solving problems wasn't as fun as teaching her." "You didn't need to take the SATs again, but you did, just to sit in the same testing center as her." "You handed your test in early and waited outside with two iced coffees because you knew she liked them cold." The reply came fast: "A reporter snapped a pic of me with the coffees. That was on the local news. That proves nothing." I scribbled furiously: "Graduation night. Bonfire party. Lily got peer-pressured into drinking three beers." "You drank the rest for her without saying a word. When you carried her home on your back, she whispered, 'Ethan, let’s go to the same college.'" "You sat on that MIT acceptance letter. When the scores came out, you saw hers. You declined MIT and enrolled at Georgia Tech." "Your dad threw a coffee mug at the wall. He couldn't understand why you’d tank your future for a girl." "Your homeroom teacher roasted you in the group chat. Everyone called you selfish." "You told them, 'It doesn't matter where I study, it matters who I study with. Lily’s scores can't reach MIT, but they can reach my future.'" 2. The handwriting on the other end became frantic. "Stop! Who are you? Some kind of stalker? Is this a prank?" "Where did you get this diary?" On the bed, the present-day Ethan groaned in his sleep and rolled over. I wrote calmly: "I really am from the future." "Freshman summer, you guys went biking in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Lily’s chain broke. You gave her your bike and walked hers twenty miles back to town." "When Lily got the flu, you climbed the dorm fence in the rain to get her meds from the 24-hour pharmacy." "And you hate sweets. But every time she hands you a piece of dark chocolate, you eat it." "Only the two of you know that, right?" "Hahaha, I got you! You're Lily! What kind of game is this?" His writing looked giddy now. "Okay, you got me. Only we know that stuff. So, who rigged this book? Is it Bluetooth?" "We’re supposed to grab burgers at the dining hall after my final. Just you wait, I’m gonna get you back for this." "And hey, nice try saying I didn't marry you. Impossible. Wherever Lily Summers goes, that’s where Ethan Vance ends up." My eyes locked on that last sentence. The pen slipped from my fingers and clattered onto the floor. I closed the diary and looked at the wedding photo on the nightstand. Me and Ethan. Ethan, I lied. I’m not you. And I’m certainly not Lily. I’m Sarah Jenkins. You didn't marry the love of your life. You married the woman who made sense. The colleague. The partner. Because Lily Summers stayed forever in that summer you loved her most. 3. I first noticed Ethan Vance at freshman orientation. He was the valedictorian representative. He stood on stage, talking about propulsion systems, and the crowd went wild. I sat in the front row, dreaming that one day I’d stand on a podium next to him. His name was always at the top of the Dean's List. Physics Olympiad Gold. Putnam Fellow. MIT Recruit. I looked at the rankings, counting the names between him and me. It felt like a galaxy. Senior year, the gap closed a little. I’d walk past his AP Physics class just to see the back of his head as he tutored someone in the back row. He never looked at me. In the story of Ethan Vance’s youth, I was an Extra with no lines. When college decisions came out, I saw the news. The "Genius Boy" waiting outside the testing center with iced coffee. Lily running into his arms. The "Power Couple" headline was everywhere. That night, I changed my first choice from Georgia Tech to Caltech. A professor from Caltech had given a seminar once: "The US aerospace program is hitting a materials bottleneck. We need engineers who can solve it." I figured that was the best way to say goodbye. Go to the place furthest from Ethan Vance. Do the work we both loved. 4. Caltech was a grinder. I got into the BS/PhD fast track. Labs, libraries, student council. My roommate called me a "perpetual motion machine." I ate lunch with a textbook open. Late at night, when the code wouldn't compile, I’d Google Ethan’s name. There were photos of him winning robotics competitions, looking sharp in a dress shirt, that same black watch on his wrist. Sometimes, I’d re-watch that old news interview from high school graduation. I was a thief, stealing glimpses of a life I wasn't part of. 5. Until the summer of our junior year. My feed was flooded with a headline: [Hero Teacher Lily Summers: A Life Given to Save the Future.] The video was shaky, shot on a cheap phone in the pouring rain. Flash floods in Appalachia. A mudslide tearing through a valley. Lily was soaked, shoving kids up a muddy embankment. "Run! Don't look back!" she screamed. The last kid froze, paralyzed by fear. Lily ran back. The mountain gave way. A wall of mud and debris swallowed the schoolhouse. She shielded the kid with her body, taking the brunt of a collapsing wall. The footage cut to the aftermath. Ethan, kneeling in the mud. His hands were shredded, fingernails torn off, digging frantically into the rubble. Rain mixed with blood and tears dripping from his chin. "Lily! Why didn't you wait for me?!" The timeline on the other end of the diary... was just before that summer.
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