I want to be in love like that someday. God, I haven’t talked to Emily in weeks—not since she went back to Arizona for the holidays. Before she left, we exchanged Hanukkah/Christmas/general-secular-end-of-the-year gifts and I’ve been living off the memory of her smile when she opened the box I handed her and saw the gold shell necklace nestled in tissue paper. It was a risk, I know, but I didn’t get her a conch shell specifically, but something more generic, something that would remind her of the necklace she had in her dream without tipping my hand.

“How did…” she whispered, pulling it out of the box. “My abuela has a shell necklace, kind of like this one. She—she still lives in Mexico, so I don’t see her much, but whenever I do, she’s always wearing her shell necklace.” She held the necklace in her palm, like it was a delicate, sacred thing.

“Really?” I said, making myself sound more surprised than I was and slotting away the answer to the question I’d had since that dream. “It just reminded me of you.”

Her eyes went glossy and she kissed me and for a moment my ability felt like a good thing. Like just a good thing.

We were going to spend New Year’s Eve together, with the lit mag friends that she’s been wanting to introduce me to, but by the time she came back to Boston, I had already called her and told her I had to deal with some family stuff, keeping it vague but being as honest as I could about how serious it was. She was so sweet about it and all I wanted to do was kiss her at midnight but instead I spent the night packing for the AM, then watching the ball drop with my family, my eyes darting between the enormous Times Square clock and my dad as I panicked about the steady march of time and how there’s nothing I can do about it.