The walk home stretched into a meandering journey through my old haunts—new haunts, technically, in 2005. Past the record store where I'd first discovered vinyl's warmth, before streaming made music feel weightless. Past the shuttered Windows on the World restaurant where, in another life, I'd celebrated my first Grammy nomination. The absence of the Twin Towers still struck me as wrong, even after months in this timeline. Some wounds, I'd learned, echo across all possible futures.
In my pocket, my flip phone buzzed. Maria.
"Baby, you eating tonight?" Her voice carried that particular mixture of concern and resignation that only single mothers of teenagers can perfect. "I got leftovers from Miss Angela next door."
"Already ate at the studio," I lied, not wanting to worry her. In truth, my appetite had vanished somewhere between Beyoncé's improvised melody and the weight of tonight's predetermined dinner in Brooklyn.
"You sure? Because your mama might have made sweet potato pie..."
I smiled despite myself. Even with all my future knowledge, she could still play me like a well-tuned instrument. "Give me twenty minutes."
The night air carried the promise of autumn, and as I walked, lyrics began forming in my mind—fragments of a song that had topped charts in 2019, but now felt different, more immediate:
*Time keeps slipping through my fingers like gold
Every moment precious, every memory old
Walking streets I haven't seen yet
Chasing dreams I can't forget
While tomorrow's shadow keeps its hold*
I hummed the melody, adjusting the phrasing to match what I knew contemporary audiences would expect. In my previous life, this song had been a collaboration with another artist—one who was currently in middle school. The thought made me dizzy.
Approaching our apartment building, I spotted Rico's car parked across the street. He sat behind the wheel, watching the entrance, and my heart rate spiked. This wasn't part of the original timeline.
He rolled down his window as I approached. "Get in."
"Rico, my mom's waiting—"
"Called her already. Told her we had label business." He unlocked the passenger door. "We need to talk, Marcus."
The interior of his Cadillac smelled of leather and ambition. He'd bought it used, but kept it immaculate—a rolling statement of intent. In fifteen years, he'd own a fleet of them, but right now, this one represented everything he hoped to become.
"That counter-melody today," he started, staring straight ahead. "I heard it before."
My blood ran cold. "What do you mean?"
"Three months ago, you were humming it in your sleep. That time we pulled an all-nighter mixing the Rodriguez track." He turned to face me. "Exact same notes. Before we ever met Beyoncé."
The silence that followed felt like standing in the eye of a hurricane. In my first life, Rico had been my manager, my mentor, eventually my best man. But I'd never had to trust him with this.
"Some musicians," I said carefully, "we hear things before they exist. Like... like the music's already out there, just waiting to be found."
"Nah." Rico shook his head. "This is different. You're different. The way you move in the studio, the decisions you make... it's like you've seen the future."
A police siren wailed in the distance, its doppler shift a perfect metaphor for how time seemed to bend around this conversation. In the orange glow of streetlights, Rico looked both younger and older than I remembered.
"If I told you something impossible," I heard myself say, "something that would change everything about how you see me, would you keep it between us?"
He studied me for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Then, reaching into his jacket, he pulled out a folded piece of paper. As he smoothed it out against the steering wheel, I recognized my own handwriting—notes I'd made about industry shifts and technological changes, carelessly left in the studio.
"Already keeping it between us," he said quietly. "Have been since I found this last week. Streaming services? Social media platforms that don't exist? Digital distribution models nobody's even thought of yet?" He tapped the paper. "Either you're crazy, or..."
"Or?"
"Or you're the greatest prodigy in music history. But thing is, prodigies predict where music's going. They don't predict how people gonna listen to it fifteen years from now."
The moment stretched between us like an infinite measure rest. Through the windshield, I could see my bedroom window, where in another timeline, an older version of me had once written the song we'd recorded today.
"What do you want to know?" I asked finally.
Rico folded the paper carefully, deliberately. "Everything you can tell me without breaking whatever makes this possible." He smiled, but his eyes were serious. "And then we're going to your mama's for some of that sweet potato pie, and you're going to tell her too. Because whatever this is? You shouldn't carry it alone."
Looking at him then, I realized that some bonds transcend timelines. Maybe Maria had been right about letting things unfold naturally. Or maybe the universe just had a better sense of timing than I did.
"It started," I began, "when I woke up yesterday morning, thirty-five years old, in my teenage body..."
The city's midnight symphony played on around us, a backdrop to a story that would change everything—again.