The funny thing about the day the world ended was that, for the first time in a long while, I was actually looking forward to tomorrow.
Ten years of friendship. Years of silence. And somehow, all it took was six words to make my heart behave like it had forgotten how to beat properly.
I had imagined this conversation a hundred different ways. Sometimes I was angry. Sometimes indifferent. Sometimes I rehearsed what I would say, as though the right combination of words could recover everything we'd lost.
But when the opportunity actually arrived, all those rehearsed speeches disappeared. And just like that, the day began.
I left the television on while I ironed a shirt I'd already ironed twice. I wasn't really listening. Nobody really listened anymore.
Mars Pathway Initiative celebrates its ninth launch this year. Seats on the next flight “already spoken for.”
Fuel prices up for a third straight week. Commuters brace for longer lines.
Celebrity couple confirms split. Fans react.
Further down: guest walks off morning show mid-interview. Network apologizes for “technical difficulties.”
Leaders end closed-door summit. Joint statement urges “calm and continued confidence.” Research facilities in six countries extend maintenance closures.
Clear skies tonight. Unusually high tides expected along the coast.
Somewhere in between, the hosts laughed about something trending online. Then the weather. Then sports.
I switched it off. I had a coffee to get to.
I arrived fifteen minutes early.
She arrived twenty minutes late.
The coffee had unnecessarily elaborate names, and the prices made you question whether the beans had been individually blessed. Some things, apparently, never changed.
“You're late,” I said.
“And you're still counting.”
She smiled. God, that smile. When she sat down across from me, it felt as though someone had opened a door to a room I'd forgotten existed.
Work. Family. Where we'd gone. The kind of safe conversations two people have when they're pretending they haven't spent years wondering about each other. Eventually, the conversation found the things we'd avoided.
“I'm sorry.”
“For what?” “For how things ended.”
Outside, the afternoon sunlight glittered across the ocean. I could have told her how much it had hurt. Instead, I asked —
“Do you ever think we were just stupid?”
“Very.”
“Like, remarkably stupid.”
“I think it's important we establish the scientific magnitude of our stupidity.”
She laughed harder. And I realized I had missed that sound more than I cared to admit.
A bookstore, where she criticized my taste in fiction and I questioned her understanding of science. A restaurant neither of us had tried — mediocre food, painfully slow service, sauce on her sleeve.
“Do you remember when we used to talk until three in the morning?” “Unfortunately. You were terrible for my sleep schedule.” “You never complained.” “I was young. I made poor decisions.”
“I missed you, you know.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I missed you too.”
Not painful anymore. Just true.
Places we wanted to visit. Movies we'd never watched. Books she'd promised to read and probably wouldn't. Somewhere between dessert and our third argument about nothing, she asked if I was free tomorrow.
“There's somewhere I want to take you.”
“You're asking me out again?”
“Don't make it weird.”
“Fine. Forget I asked.”
“Tomorrow. Ten o'clock.”
“Eleven.”
“You're going to be late anyway.”
“Exactly.”
For the first time in years, tomorrow felt like something worth anticipating.
The streets smelled of wet asphalt. Somewhere, a motorcycle engine struggled to start. A dog barked behind a gate.
Wonderfully, beautifully ordinary.
“You've gotten quieter.” “Maybe you just talk more now.” “Impossible.” The wind swept through the street, carrying the unmistakable smell of saltwater.
“There's probably another storm coming.” I glanced toward the coastline. The water looked unusually high. The waves seemed bigger than they should have been.
But the thought disappeared almost as quickly as it came.
“This was nice.” “Just nice?” “It was really nice.” There were a thousand things I wanted to say. I didn't say any of them.
“Tomorrow, then?”
“Tomorrow.”
She stepped closer and embraced me. A real one. Her breathing against my chest. The faint scent of her shampoo. The warmth of someone I'd thought was permanently gone from my life.
“I'm glad you came,” she whispered.
“Me too.”
Not cautiously optimistic. Not pretending.
Just happy.
That's when the wind stopped.
The trees stopped rustling.
The insects went quiet.
Somewhere down the street, a car alarm began to sound.
“What's that?”
At first, I thought the sky was reflecting a distant fire. A reddish glow had appeared above the horizon. It spread quickly. Too quickly.
“Is that the sunset?”
8:17 PM
“No.”
The clouds weren't drifting. They were being pushed outward. Something enormous was descending through the atmosphere. Then the clouds opened. And I saw it.
It was impossibly large.
A black, irregular mass hanging over the horizon, its edges burning. Too enormous for my eyes to judge its speed. Toward the coast, a wall of water began rising above the shoreline.
Some stupid instinct made me reach for my phone. Proof. Something to show people afterward. Then I realized there wouldn't be an afterward.
And I thought, absurdly, of the rockets.
All those launches. One every few weeks, then one every few days. Preparation for Mars, they said. We watched them on our phones and called it progress.
They had known.
Not everyone. Just enough of them to fill the seats. The scientists had tried to tell us. They were called alarmists, and then they were called nothing at all. The rest of us were given the weather, and sports, and something to laugh about.
There was never going to be an evacuation. There had never been room for one.
We're dead.
The wind returned. Violently. Windows shattered somewhere nearby. Asha grabbed my arm. “Please. We have to go.” I wanted to lie. Instead, I took her hand, and pulled her close again.
“I'm scared.” “I know.”
“What's going to happen?”
“I don't know.”
The fear was still there. But beneath it, strangely, was acceptance. I couldn't save her. I couldn't save myself. All I could do was hold her. So I did.
“We didn't even get to go on our second date.”
“Eleven tomorrow, right?”
“Don't be late.”
“I won't.”
The light came first.
There was no sound yet. Light traveled faster. A ridiculous thing to be thinking about at the end of the world. The last scientific observation I'd ever make.
Warmth. An unimaginable brightness through my eyelids. And, for the briefest moment, her arms around me.
Then nothing.
The last thing I had thought about wasn't the asteroid. It was a small café we hadn't visited yet. A conversation we hadn't finished. A morning I had already begun imagining.
And the extraordinary unfairness of finding someone again, only to run out of time.
For one perfect day, I had everything I wanted.
And when the world ended,
I was still looking forward to tomorrow.