This Time Tomorrow

by Emma Straub

Alice didn’t know if she wanted to have children, but she knew that at some point in the very near future, her not knowing would swiftly transform into a fact, a de facto decision. Why wasn’t there more time?

Alice wondered if no one ever felt as old as they were because it happened so slowly, and you were only ever one day slower and creakier, and the world changed so gradually that by the time cars had evolved from boxy to smooth, or green taxis had joined yellow ones, or MetroCards had replaced tokens, you were used to it. Everyone was a lobster in the pot.

Teenage girls’ skeletons were half bones and half secrets that only other teenage girls knew.

it was Alice’s thing, kissing and kissing and kissing and staying just shy of being called a slut because she didn’t actually have sex with anyone, but she definitely wasn’t anyone’s girlfriend, either.

it’s a choice—still. We’ve been married for fifteen years. But I still have to choose it. That doesn’t stop.”

what it feels like to love someone so much, and then have them change into someone else. You love that new person, but it’s different, and it all happens so fast, even the parts that feel like they just last for fucking ever while they’re happening.”

Alice thought about how many times she’d done the same thing. Helen’s father had died when they were in college, after a long illness, and had she even sent a note? She thought so. The whole thing had just made her uncomfortable, and she didn’t want to do or say the wrong thing, and so saying nothing and staying out of the way seemed better. But it was obviously not better.

Alice rested her head against his shoulder. It was bony in the way that so many teenage boys’ bodies were—bodies that didn’t yet know how big they were supposed to be, where they started and stopped.