Page 7 of Parallel

I laugh and shake my head. “Just because there are worse specialties doesn’t mean it’s right for you. I want you to be riveted by something.”

His smile is soft. His hand, beneath the table, finds mine and swallows it. “I’m pretty riveted by this patient I met during my neurology rotation.”

“Is that right?” I ask, biting down on my grin. His gaze flickers to the movement of my lips. “Maybe you should ask her out.”

“You think she’ll say yes?”

I smile at him. “I can’t imagine there’s anyone who could say no to you.”

There’s something guarded in his eyes…a secret he isn’t ready to share with me. “I really hope you’re right,” he replies.

I learn that secret of his two nights later.

It’s just after my evening class. I step outside the architecture building to find Nick sitting on a bench out front, jacket thrown over his scrubs, smiling as he waits. When he smiles at me, it’s like his whole heart is in his eyes. I sometimes wonder if it’s even possible for him to feel the way I do, this loopy, out-of-control adoration, but when I see him smiling at me like he is right now, it’s impossible to doubt it.

He rises as I walk down the stairs. “You move like a dancer,” he says. I skitter to a halt in front of him, going on my toes to press my mouth to his.

“I assure you I’m not,” I reply. “Two left feet.”

He hesitates, then gives me a distracted smile. There’s something off tonight, but I can’t put my finger on it. “You could swing dance, though. Anyone can.”

I grin up at him. “I thought I was supposed to be the wild, impetuous one, and you were supposed to be the driven resident who doesn’t know how to have fun.”

“Until you, I kind of was,” he says softly.

I think of the serious guy I met at the hospital that first day and how much he’s changed since then. The fact that he is good for me is something I’ve known all along. But it’s only now I realize I’m good for him too.

He grabs one hand and places it on his shoulder, pulling me off the sidewalk and into the grass. If it weren’t late, I’d probably refuse, but the campus is mostly empty at this hour. “One, two. One, two,” he says, moving us in a slow circle. “You’re a natural.”

I laugh. “I seem to be a little better at things when I’m with you.”

“That’s because we’re meant to be together,” he says softly.

In our case, it’s not a cliché. Ever since we met, we’ve had a knowledge of the other that was almost intuitive, muscle memory. And I’ve been having these weird dreams about his childhood even though I wasn’t a part of it. Dreams in which I’m his best friend, the little girl next door he shares everything with. I would assume it was wishful thinking if it weren’t for the fact that I wake knowing things I shouldn’t. I referenced his twin, their treehouse, his parents’ place by the lake—all before he ever told me about them. I have no idea how I knew.

My voice is hushed as I meet his eye. “I think…no matter what universe we land in, we land there together.”

He stops dancing. Before I can blink, before I can ask why, he’s lowering to one knee in front of me. There’s a small black velvet box in his hand. “I know it’s too soon,” he says. “I know this is insane. But I also know that you’re the person I was born for, and I don’t want to wait to start our lives together.”

Inside me there’s this new thing, like the start of a sunrise. A dim warmth against the horizon, spreading, spreading until I’m flooded with light. It may be too soon, and everyone will say we’re insane, but he’s the person I’ve waited my entire life to find. To belong to. And now I will.

I wake early in the morning, feeling steeped in happiness, cocooned in it, until I open my eyes and see that it’s Jeff, not Nick, beside me. Nothing about Jeff has changed. He has the same sweet face he’s always had, mouth open, peaceful and deeply asleep. But there’s a part of me that doesn’t want him here. That misses Nick so much I could weep at the sight of my fiancé beside me. I inch away, struggling with my disappointment and horrified by it, all in the same breath.

The tightness in my chest propels me from the bed and into the living room. How, how, could it have felt so real? How can I remember the feel of his palm on mine, the weight of the velvet box I took from his hand? And the shops outside Nick’s flat—I can name them. I can name the streets surrounding them—Marylebone, Harley Street—as if they are familiar when I’m not sure I’ve ever even heard of them before. How could I see London so vividly when it’s somewhere I’ve never been?

Yes, I’ve known things before, things I should not know. But this is different. I’m seeing the life I might have had, if my father hadn’t gotten sick and my mother hadn’t fallen apart after he died. Because that was all part of the plan—get my architecture degree, move to London for graduate school. This knowledge…it feels like something I’m supposed to know. If feels important, like a life-altering conversation held while drunk, recalled only in small flashes the next day.

I grab my wedding binder, the nearest thing I can find. I skip past all the details about shoes and dresses and invitations, until I get to the blank pages in the back, and then I start to sketch. When I’m done, the interior of our flat—mine and Nick’s—sits in front of me. The tiny box of a kitchen, half the wall taken up by a radiator that would wake us with its clunk clunk clunk each morning. The bedroom, so small we had to edge around our bed to get in and out, and the garden terrace you could only reach by climbing on top of the radiator and out the bedroom windows. I stare at the drawing, feeling unsettled. It’s far too specific to be something I just dreamed up.

The tightness in my chest has gone nowhere. I miss it, that imaginary flat. I miss the icy floors on winter mornings and Nick’s broad hand pulling me through the window on a summer night so we could sit on the terrace. I miss the smell of chlorine on his skin and the way he’d look at me when someone made a comment—his eyes light and amused while his mouth didn’t give an inch—because he knew what I was thinking when no one else did. I miss being understood.

And I don’t want to miss anything. A week ago I was happy with my life, and now, now, it’s as if I’ve given something up…something I want more than the life I actually have.

My boss is waiting in reception to pounce on me when I walk through the office doors a few hours later. Dee is bone thin, unnaturally tall, and prone to wearing a fur stole whenever the temperature drops below 70, which never fails to make me think of Cruella de Vil. The comparison is, sadly, all too apt.

“Where’s the layout?” she demands, tapping her nails on the Lucite console beside her.

“Good morning, Dee,” I reply. “I’m feeling so much better, thanks.”