The dawn crept across Manhattan like spilled honey, golden and slow, as I made my way home from the studio. In my previous life, I'd learned to love these hours—when the city shed its neon skin and showed its tired, beautiful bones. But now, with the weight of two timelines pressed against my temples, every sunrise felt like a small miracle of continuity.
My phone buzzed: a message from Mom. In this timeline, she didn't have to work double shifts anymore, but old habits died hard. She was probably already at the foundation office, planning another music education initiative.
*Breakfast? Velazquez's is open.*
The text brought a smile to my face. In my original timeline, we couldn't have afforded their coffee, let alone their famous huevos rancheros. Now, Mom treated it like our personal cafeteria. I typed back a quick "yes" and redirected my steps toward Spanish Harlem.
The restaurant was quiet, caught in that lull between the night workers and the morning crowd. Mom sat in our usual corner booth, papers spread across the table like autumn leaves. She looked up as the bell announced my entrance, and for a moment—just a moment—I saw both versions of her superimposed: the worn-down warrior of my first life, and this newer, softer edition who had time to dream.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," she said as I slid into the booth.
"Just tired. Long session." I picked up the coffee she'd already ordered for me—black, two sugars, some habits unchanged across timelines.
"Rico called." She gave me that look, the one that said she was trying to read between lines I hadn't even written yet. "Said you were doing that thing again."
"That thing?"
"Mhmm. That thing where you seem older than your years." She shuffled her papers into a neat stack. "Like you're carrying around wisdom that shouldn't fit in that young body of yours."
The coffee burned my tongue, a sharp reminder of present tense. In my pocket, my phone vibrated again—probably the studio with another golden opportunity, another chance to shape the future with knowledge from a timeline I was steadily erasing.
"I've been working on something new," I said, steering us toward safer waters. "A fusion of old and new styles. Like jazz, but..."
"But from tomorrow?" She finished, eyebrows raised.
I thought about the tracks we'd laid down last night, about Rico's questions and the careful balance of innovation and authenticity. The waitress appeared with our usual order, and I watched steam rise from the plates like the ghost of futures past.
"You know what your father used to say about jazz?" Mom asked, surprising me. She rarely mentioned him in either timeline.
"What?"
"He said it was like tomorrow's conversation happening today. That the best musicians weren't playing what was—they were playing what was coming." She cut into her eggs, the yolk running like liquid sun. "I hear that in your music sometimes. Like you're having a conversation with a future we can't quite see yet."
The truth of her words hit harder than any bassline I'd ever produced. In the restaurant's ancient speakers, a Miles Davis track played softly—"Blue in Green," if my memory served. The past serenading the present, while I sat here with my future memories and tried to orchestrate tomorrow.
"Do you ever wonder," I asked carefully, "what would have happened if you'd known? About everything? All those years ago?"
She paused, fork halfway to her mouth. "Known what?"
"Everything. The struggles, the victories. Where we'd end up."
Mom set her fork down and looked at me with eyes that had seen enough of life to fill several timelines. "Baby, that's not how the music plays. You don't get to know the end of the song before you play it. That's what makes it beautiful."
I thought about the tracks waiting back at the studio, about Beyoncé's upcoming session next week, about all the careful adjustments I was making to a timeline that felt increasingly like a remix of my original life.
"Besides," Mom continued, reaching across the table to take my hand, "sometimes the best parts are the improvisations—the moments you never could have planned for."
The morning light had filled the restaurant now, painting everything in shades of possibility. Outside, the city was waking up, ready to write another day's worth of stories. I squeezed Mom's hand, feeling the pulse of now beneath my fingers.
"You're right," I said, and meant it more than she could know. "Some songs you just have to let play."
We finished our breakfast as Miles gave way to Coltrane, the past and present dancing together in the morning light. And somewhere in the spaces between notes, I felt the future waiting patiently for its cue to begin.