It rained that evening.
But not the way I remembered it.
Back then, I'd written in my journal that March 17th was hot, dry, and still. A "dust-in-the-eyes" kind of day. But now, as I sat on the front steps watching water bead off the iron gate, I realized something — maybe I had misremembered. Or maybe this wasn't the same March 17th.
Maybe nothing would happen the same way again.
I heard footsteps behind me. Not cautious, not loud. Just… there.
"Hey," said Arjun.
I turned. He was holding a rusted umbrella, crooked as ever, the kind he refused to throw away. We used to joke that it was less of an umbrella and more of a mobile drip system.
He dropped down next to me on the steps, no umbrella, letting the rain tap on his shoulder. "We're getting old," he said.
"We're sixteen," I replied.
He smirked. "Exactly."
It had been two days since we'd started talking again.
Two days since I took that first step back into a friendship I'd lost — not in a dramatic fight, but through all the quieter ways people drift. Misunderstandings, egos, forgetting to check in.
But now he was here, again.
I watched the sky as it wept.
"What do you think happens to us in the future?" he asked suddenly, voice low.
That question.
The one I'd answered a thousand times in my sleep.
"Good things," I lied.
"You sound like you don't believe it."
I stayed quiet. What could I say? That in one version of the future, we stopped talking? That I stopped calling? That he left town, angry, confused — and I never got to fix it?
I swallowed the truth like it burned.
"I believe it now," I said instead.
A car passed. The streetlight flickered. In that strange, in-between moment, I felt it again—that fragile quiet that comes before something breaks.
Then Arjun spoke again. "I'm sorry for what happened last year. The fight. I should've told you why I stopped replying."
That hadn't happened in the original timeline. Not then. Maybe not ever.
I looked at him, heart racing.
"You're not the only one who stopped trying," I said.
He nodded, and we sat there, our silence warmer than any umbrella.
When I finally went inside, drenched and lighter somehow, Mom looked up from the sofa. She had a bowl of sliced mangoes in her lap.
"I was about to call you," she said. "Your dad's still at work."
I stared at her. That line.
It wasn't supposed to happen until next week.
She offered me a slice. I took it, unsure if I was rewriting fate or walking straight into it.
Upstairs, I stared at the calendar again.
Same date. Same year.
But everything… was already starting to shift.
And the rain that wasn't forecast?
Maybe it wasn't just weather.
Maybe it was warning.