Parallel

dated November 10, 2009. Ten days later.
Abby,
Not that it matters anymore, but the coach at UConn offered me a spot on their team. I was going to transfer. That’s what I wanted to tell you. That was my big plan. I was going to leave a school and a team I love to be closer to a girl I love even more. But I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t, since clearly she doesn’t give a shit about me.
—J
    I stare at my screen as if staring at a train wreck, unable to look away.
    He hates me now.
    This awareness affects me more than I expect it to. I’ve never even met Josh—not in person anyway. He exists only in fragments, as mere memory, void of the emotion of experience. But in this moment, I remember more of him than I thought I possessed. Images pop into my head, new but familiar. Alternate memories I’ve been struggling to ignore. Josh carrying my bag for me. Josh singing along to the radio in his Jeep. Josh running his hands through my hair. The caramel corn sundae we split on our first date, and the slow kiss on my doorstep when he dropped me off, his lips still sweet from the ice cream and candy. The giant blue teddy bear he won for me at the Georgia Fair. The self-portrait we took with his phone at the top of the Ferris wheel. The way he looked in the moonlight on the drive home.
    All of a sudden, I wish I could switch places with the parallel me. Not permanently. Just . . . for a day. An hour, even. Just long enough to know what it’s like to hold Josh’s hand, to kiss him, to feel his breath on my neck. My eyes flutter shut and I’m back there again, on that bench by the pond in his neighborhood, my lips on his, tasting cinnamon and Ivory soap, willing the clock to stop so I won’t have to go home. I give in to the memory, soaking in every detail. I haven’t let myself do this, not once, afraid of where it might lead. What I might feel. But that was a mistake, because there is truth in these memories. Raw and bright. Of course Josh and I were still together after we left for school. That’s not the surprising part. The surprising part is that we broke up. From these memories, it seems impossible that we could.
    I scroll down, past the unread messages to the ones marked read, clicking on one dated August 29, 2009. The day I left for Yale. There’s a sweet I-miss-you-already message from Josh and a reply email from me. I stare at my screen, marveling at the fact that, because of some freaky cosmic accident, I’m reading an email exchange my parallel self will have with her boyfriend nine months from now.
    I click on the next message and the message after that, needing to read every one. The first few are brimming with I love yous and I miss yous and talk of upcoming visits and holiday breaks. But it doesn’t take long for the tone to shift, for anxiety and doubt and fear to take hold. My parallel starts writing things like, Maybe it was crazy to think we could do this , and Josh starts writing things like, Let’s not make any decisions right now, okay? But he should’ve known better than that. The Abby he loves isn’t a wait-and-see kind of girl. The Abby he loves doesn’t know how to handle uncertainty, so she runs from it, the way I used to, before.
    Subject line: Tonight. Sent September 25, 2009.
Abby,
I’m sorry I reacted the way I did tonight. I just wish we could’ve had that conversation in person. I know the distance is a lot. But we knew it would be, and we won’t always be three thousand miles apart. Please, don’t do this. What we have is worth fighting for. Let’s figure this out, together. I love you.
Josh
    I sit, unmoving. Unhinged. Seeing the words in black and white, knowing how it’ll end, and when, and why—this awareness should comfort me. But instead I have this hollow feeling in my gut, the way you feel when you drink coffee on an empty stomach. She was afraid, so she gave up. Of all the reasons for their relationship to end, that has to be the worst.
    I scroll back up to an earlier email, my favorite of them all, and read it again, allowing myself to imagine, just for a moment, that it was intended for me.
Abigail Hannah Barnes,
You changed my life. A year ago today, when you walked into it. “Are you here by fate or choice?” you asked me. I said choice. Now I know better.
I love you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Happy day before your birthday.
Josh
    I sit with these words, basking in their simple truth. Then it dawns on me: My parallel will still be with Josh on her eighteenth