The sunset tastes like jasmine tea and promises you know can't be kept.
That's what I'm thinking as I watch the sky bleed out over the city. It's burning like something that has to be perfect because it won't last. A fitting thought, I guess. I've learned to appreciate the beautiful things that are designed to disappear.
Especially this one.
Sophia Catherine Winters—Cat, but only to people she trusts, and somehow, I made the list in forty-seven days—is warm against my shoulder. I can feel the soft fabric of her ridiculously oversized sweater, the one that smells faintly of charcoal pencils and something clean, like lavender soap. I can feel her heartbeat. A steady, solid rhythm against my arm. Real. Alive. Impossible to ignore.
This is my favorite part. The quiet before the end.
"You're thinking too loud again," she murmurs, her voice a soft, low hum that vibrates right through me. She doesn't look at me, just keeps her gaze fixed on the horizon, where the last sliver of the sun is dying in spectacular fashion.
I let out a breath I didn't realize I was holding. "Sorry. Occupational hazard."
"What occupation? Professional Overthinker?" She finally turns her head, and the last of the sunlight catches in her eyes, turning them from a deep, stormy gray to something closer to liquid silver. Her smile is small, a secret she's only letting me in on.
And God, it hurts. It hurts because I've seen this exact smile forty-seven days ago in my memory, and it's just as devastatingly beautiful now as it will be in the rearview mirror of my mind tomorrow.
"Something like that," I say, my own smile feeling thin, fragile. "Chief Executive Officer of Complicating Simple Things."
She laughs, a sound like wind chimes, and leans her head on my shoulder. It's a simple gesture. It feels like an anchor. Her hair, a chaotic mess of dark waves that she's always trying to tame, tickles my neck. I don't move. I don't breathe. I just try to burn this moment into my brain, stacking it on top of the identical memory that's already there. A ghost of a memory, from a timeline that only I know existed.
We're sitting on the roof of Northwood High. The chain-link fence behind us is cool against my back. The city sprawls below, a glittering tapestry of lights just starting to wake up as the sky goes to sleep. We're not supposed to be up here. That's probably half the reason it feels so perfect. Breaking a small rule to find a perfect moment.
"It feels like I've known you for way longer than… what is it? A month and a half?" she asks, her voice barely a whisper now. She's tracing patterns on the back of my hand with her finger, her touch sending little electric shocks up my arm.
Here it comes. The line that always breaks my heart.
"Forty-seven days," I supply quietly. The number feels both infinite and not nearly long enough.
She looks up at me, her expression serious, vulnerable. Her guard is down. It takes her a while to let people in—I know this intimately. I've watched her from afar, learned the subtle tells. The way she draws when she's anxious, filling sketchbooks with beautiful, frantic lines that say everything she can't. The way she pretends not to care what anyone thinks, but always glances around to see if anyone is watching when she thinks no one is looking. I've seen the armor she wears. And I've seen the girl underneath it.
The girl right here, looking at me like I'm a puzzle she's been solving her whole life without knowing it.
"Yeah," she breathes. "Forty-seven days. How does it feel like a lifetime?"
Because for me, it is. It's the only lifetime that matters. The one where I get to meet her for the first time, again. The one where I get to fall in love with her, slowly at first, then all at once, over and over.
But I can't tell her that. If I did, this moment would shatter. She'd think I was crazy—and maybe I am. The jury's still out on that one.
So instead, I just shrug, trying for casual, for charming, for anything other than what I actually feel, which is existentially terrified. "Maybe some people just… click."
"Click," she repeats, testing the word. She likes it. I can see it in the way the corner of her mouth quirks up. "Yeah. I guess we do."
The silence that follows isn't awkward. It's full. It's humming with everything we haven't said for the past forty-seven days. All the shared glances in art class, the jokes whispered in the library, the time we shared earbuds on the bus and she introduced me to the sad indie music that apparently fuels her soul. Every small, insignificant moment that added up to this. Here. Now.
She shifts, pulling her head from my shoulder to face me fully. The sky behind her is a masterpiece of deep purple and fading orange, and she looks like she was painted into it. Her hands come up to rest on my chest, right over my heart, which is currently attempting to beat its way out of my body. I wonder if she can feel it. I wonder if she knows it's beating for her. Only for her.
"Marcus," she says, and my name on her lips is a prayer.
"Sophia," I reply, my voice hoarse.
She bites her lip, a nervous habit I've cataloged alongside the thirty-four different ways she smiles. "Can I… Can I tell you something stupid?"
"Always," I manage to say, my throat tight. I already know what she's going to say. But I need to hear it again. I'm a masochist like that.
"I think…" she starts, then stops, her gaze flicking down and then back up to meet mine. She's searching for something. Reassurance, maybe. Permission. "I think I might be… falling for you."
The confession hangs in the cool evening air between us, shimmering and fragile. She says it like she's admitting to a crime. For her, with her fear of abandonment and the walls she's built brick by careful brick around her heart, it probably feels that way. A beautiful, terrifying crime.
I bring my hand up to cup her cheek. Her skin is soft, cool from the evening breeze. My thumb traces the line of her jaw. "What if I told you I'm already there?" I whisper. "Been there for a while."
A shaky breath escapes her. Relief. It floods her features, making her glow even as the last of the light fades. "Good," she says, her voice thick with emotion. "That's… good."
And then she leans in.
The world narrows to this. To the space between her lips and mine.
I've memorized this, too. I know the exact angle of her head, how her eyes flutter shut a half-second before our lips meet. I know how her hand will move from my chest to the back of my neck, her fingers tangling in my hair, pulling me closer. I know the soft intake of breath that says she feels it, too—this undeniable gravity pulling us together.
This is our first kiss.
For the second time.
It's just as breathtaking as the first. It's soft, and hesitant for a fraction of a second, a question. Then it deepens, and it's an answer. She tastes like the jasmine green tea she always drinks at lunch, and something else, something uniquely her. Something like hope. Her lips are ridiculously soft, and she moves against mine with a certainty that steals the air from my lungs. My other hand finds her waist, pulling her closer until there's no space left between us, just the frantic rhythm of two hearts trying to become one.
It feels like coming home to a place I've only ever dreamed of. It's everything.
When she pulls away—too soon, it's always too soon—she doesn't go far. She just rests her forehead against mine, her eyes still closed. We stay like that, sharing the same air, our breaths mingling in the twilight. The whole world could have disappeared, and I wouldn't have noticed.
"Wow," she whispers, and it's a tiny, breathy sound.
"Yeah," I whisper back. My own voice sounds wrecked. I feel wrecked. In the best possible way.
She opens her eyes, and they are dark pools of wonder in the faint glow from the city lights. "Please tell me I didn't just imagine that."
I feel a real, genuine smile finally break through the dam of my anxiety. "If you did, then we're sharing the same hallucination. Which, honestly, I'm okay with."
She laughs again, a full, beautiful sound this time. She pulls back a little more, but her hand stays on my neck, her thumb stroking my skin. "Good. Because I don't think I want to wake up from this one."
And that's when the ache returns. A cold dread that starts in my stomach and spreads through my veins.
I don't want to wake up from this one.
You have no idea, Sophia.
"Me neither," I say, trying to keep my voice from cracking. I hold her gaze, trying to pour every ounce of what I feel for her—every memory from this life and the one before—into this single look. I need her to feel it. I need some part of her to remember, even if her mind won't.
She seems to understand. Her smile softens into something sad, something knowing, as if she can sense my sudden melancholy. As if she's looped with me a thousand times and feels the echo of every goodbye.
"Don't look at me like that," she says softly.
"Like what?"
"Like you're about to disappear."
A lump forms in my throat. I swallow, hard. I can feel it starting now. A faint humming in the air, a pressure building behind my eyes. The first sign.
I have maybe a minute left.
I need to make it count. I lean in and kiss her again, more fiercely this time. This one isn't a question. It's a statement. A plea. Remember me. Please, this time, remember me.
She kisses me back with an equal, desperate energy, her fingers tightening in my hair. She doesn't know why it feels so urgent, so final. But she feels it too. I know she does. Her soul knows.
Then, the humming gets louder.
A strange, pale light begins to bloom at the edges of my vision, washing out the beautiful purple of the sky. The world starts to feel thin, like a photograph fading in the sun.
Sophia pulls back, her eyes wide with confusion, maybe a little fear. "What's happening?" she asks, her voice distant, like it's coming through water.
My heart is shattering. It's actually, physically breaking into a million pieces inside my chest.
"I'm sorry," I whisper. It's all I can ever say.
The light intensifies, swallowing the roof, the city, her beautiful, terrified face. It's not a warm light. It's sterile. Absolute. It smells like ozone and nothingness.
I feel a familiar, sickening lurch, like I'm falling from a great height. Her hand is ripped from mine by a force I can't see. Her voice calling my name is the last thing I hear before the white consumes everything. The sound distorts, stretches, and then snaps.
Silence.
Darkness.
And then…
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
I gasp, my eyes flying open.
I'm in my bed. Sunlight, sharp and unwelcome, is streaming through the blinds of my bedroom window. My alarm clock is screaming at me. It's 6:30 AM.
My chest is heaving. My skin is slick with cold sweat. For a disoriented second, I think it was just a nightmare. An incredibly vivid, emotionally devastating nightmare.
Then my eyes land on my phone, lying on my nightstand.
I already know what it's going to say. But I have to look. I always have to look. My hand is shaking as I reach for it, my fingers fumbling with the screen.
The screen illuminates.
And there it is.
Monday, September 4th.
My heart sinks to the floor.
Forty-seven days. It took me forty-seven days to get to that rooftop. Forty-seven days of getting to know her, of letting her get to know me. Forty-seven days of slowly, painstakingly, joyfully falling in love with her.
All of it. Gone. Erased for everyone but me.
Today, she won't know my name. She won't know that I know she takes her tea with too much honey or that she hums when she's concentrating. She won't remember the way her hand felt in mine or the taste of our first kiss.
To her, I will be a stranger again. A new face in art class.
My alarm continues to shriek, a monotonous, mocking sound.
I squeeze my eyes shut, and all I can see is her face in the sunset, her lips whispering my name. The ghost of her touch still lingers on my skin. The memory of her kiss is still on my lips.
I roll over and slam my hand down on the snooze button.
Silence fills the room. But it's not peaceful. It's the hollow, empty silence of a world that has forgotten its most beautiful moment.
Well. Almost everyone has forgotten.
I swing my legs out of bed, the wooden floor cold against my feet. A wave of exhaustion washes over me, a weariness that goes bone-deep, soul-deep.
It's the first day of school.
Again.
And I have to go meet the love of my life. For the first time.
All over again.