Parallel

handing me a knife. I cut a hefty slice, then double it. It’s been a rough twenty-four hours. The familiar peppery pumpkin spice is instantly calming. I shove another forkful into my mouth. This is why they call them comfort foods.
    “So what’d you think of Michael?” I ask with my mouth full, not sure I want to know the answer. Both of my parents were pretty quiet after he left last night.
    “He seemed very confident,” she replies. “And he’s obviously very smart.” Confident? That’s like saying a girl has a good personality when asked how she looks.
    “So you hated him.”
    “We didn’t hate him! Don’t be silly.”
    “But you like Josh better,” I say.
    “We know Josh,” she replies. “We don’t really know Michael yet. But we’re looking forward to getting to know him.” She smiles.
    Let’s hope you get the chance.
    I’m about to bury my anxiety under another piece of pie when the doorbell rings.
    “Sorry to just show up,” Josh says when I open the door. “I tried calling, but it went straight to voicemail.” He’s wearing the fleece I had on an hour ago, the collar flipped up around his neck. It smelled like him when I put it on . . . did it smell like me when I took it off? “Am I interrupting dinner?” he asks.
    “Nope. I was just in the process of spoiling it.” I hold up the plate I’m still holding in my hand. “Want some?”
    “Nah, I should get home. I just wanted to give you this.” He pulls his hand from his pocket, and Caitlin’s gold bracelet slips to the ground beneath his feet.
    “Oh! Where’d you find it?”
    “It was stuck to the sleeve of my fleece,” he tells me as he kneels to pick it up. I watch as he drapes the delicate gold chain across his left palm, then extends his hand up toward me.
    Suddenly, swiftly, I am bowled over by memory. An image—this image—of Josh, kneeling in front of me, his left hand open and raised. Except, in my mind, the ground he’s kneeling on is a beach, and there isn’t a bracelet in his outstretched hand but a ring. And Josh, wearing khakis and a short-sleeved maroon polo shirt, looks different somehow, older. Why can’t I place when that was?
    Because it isn’t a memory.
    I grab the door frame to steady myself, my legs no longer sturdy beneath me. Why do I have a mental picture of Josh, down on one knee, holding a diamond ring? Where did that image come from? I wonder, but at the same time I know.
    It came from the future. But whose?
    “Abby? What’s wrong?”
    Oh, nothing. I just pictured you proposing to me in elaborate detail, down to the precise shade of you shirt.
    I feign calm and smile, taking the bracelet from his outstretched hand. “Josh to the rescue,” I tell him. “Caitlin would’ve killed me if I’d lost it.”
    “No problem,” he says, getting to his feet. He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a folded postcard. “I also wanted to give you this.” He unfolds the postcard and hands it to me. On the front is Dali’s Persistence of Memory . The painting that brought my parents together. The only painting that survived when the surrealist wing at MoMa caught fire after the collision. A painting whose name perfectly describes what I’m living with now. I run my thumb over the slick surface of the glossy image, marveling at the coincidence and connectedness.
    “Where did you get this?” I ask.
    “You gave it to me,” he replies, not bothering with the us/them distinction. Something in his face tells me it’s a conscious choice. “We went to your mom’s Dali exhibit the night before you left for school,” he says. “We were on a tour, listening to the docent describe the surrealist view of the subconscious. ‘Dreams are more real than real,’ the woman said. Right after she said it, you leaned over and whispered, ‘ We are more real than real.’”
    “I did?” I whisper, even though it wasn’t me who said it. We both know that.
    “That postcard was in my locker the next morning,” Josh says. “You must’ve gotten it in the gift store after the tour.” He reaches forward and flips it over in my hands. There, on the back, are my handwritten words. We are more real than real.
    I just stare at the smudged ink, my throat too tight for an audible response. More real than real. Something inside me reaches out and grabs hold of the idea. Are there things that transcend our perception of them? Things that are true no matter what? If so, what does that mean for me and