I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the rock.
Dark. Smooth on one side. Rough on the other. I set it on the center console.
"Proof I went outside," I said.
He picked it up. Turned it in his fingers the way he turned the pipe cleaner figure.
"Good rock," he said.
"It has two sides."
"Most rocks do."
He put it in his pocket.
I grabbed my bag from the trunk. Walked around to the driver's window. He'd rolled it down an inch.
"Thank you for the ride," I said.
"Anytime."
He pulled away. I watched until the car disappeared, then stood on the sidewalk with the cold pressing in.
My condo was exactly as I'd left it. I set my bag by the door.
My phone buzzed.
Heath:Good rock. It's on the coffee table.
Below the message was a photo. The rock sitting next to the pipe cleaner figure. One leaning forward, permanently mid-stride. The other still, shaped by forces that took millennia to leave their mark.
The rock was gone from my pocket. The only physical evidence of California was sitting in an apartment next to a pipe cleaner hockey player built by a man named Pickle.
I stood at the east window. Twelve stories up. Lake Michigan was blackness stretching toward the horizon. I pressed my forehead against the glass. My breath fogged a circle that shrank as soon as I pulled back.
The grad school applications were on my laptop. Three browser tabs. Scripps. University of Miami. URI.
Two years. The number used to feel like a countdown. Now it was a measurement of how long I'd have Heath before one of us disappeared.
On the bookshelf, the photo of Ansel and me sat where it always sat. My face half-obscured by fogged glass, the beluga tilted toward the camera with mild curiosity.
I thought about Ansel. How I'd stood at his window months ago and saidI'm gay. How nothing changed. The water stayed the same.
Then I remembered what I'd said in the car.
I don't know anymore.
I'd never said that about anything.
The plan that had sustained me since nineteen was still sound. Still logical. Still the only future where I became someone I'd chosen instead of what was offered me.
But it no longer felt like freedom.
Heath was here in Chicago. Standing in net-front traffic with his blade flat. Sending money home from a paycheck already spoken for. Setting the rock I gave him next to one of his most valued objects.
I couldn't take him with me. His life was here. And I couldn't pretend I hadn't seen the alternative. I'd sat in a lecture hall and felt what choosing tasted like. That didn't go away just because I flew home.
I sat on my couch and considered both futures, understanding I could only live in one.
