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“Do you believe in fate?” Zach asks.

“Not exactly. I believe that everything has already happened.”

“You believe . . . ?”

“As far as I can tell, the future is a done deal.”

“So what’s it like?” Zach asks. “If it’s already settled? Are our future selves living in a barren hellscape?”

I open my mouth to say something snarky, but there’s a kernel of unhappiness and worry in Zach’s voice that kills my dark joke. I sit up. His face is somber in the low light. “The future is very wet,” I say softly. “There are storms. But that’s a long time from now, I think.”

“How can you bear knowing what’s coming?”

“I know some things, but often I have no idea what they mean, or how they fit together. I delight in uncertainty. If I don’t know what’s about to happen, I feel more alive.”

Zach strokes my cheek. “I can tell that about you, even though we just met. I’m the opposite: I crave stability, I get nonstop chaos. I keep thinking that if I throw myself into the fray, help put out the fires, eventually there will be peace, love and understanding for all and I can fulfill my destiny teaching rhetoric at a community college.”

I laugh. “Are you sure you want to have anything to do with me?” I slip my hand around the back of his neck and touch the fine short hairs just above his collar.

“Apparently that’s already been decided,” he says, softly.

“Are you worried?” I ask. I turn my head and our eyes meet.

“Strangely, I am not. Should I be?”

“It’s not too late to change your mind,” I lie.

“I don’t believe you,” he tells me gravely. “But thank you for warning me.”

We kiss. A short while later, I take Zach’s hand and lead him down the hall to my bedroom. We are fumbling, urgent; we apologize and laugh nervously, we get under the covers because we are cold, we try to forget all the talk that has gone between us, and then we are together: a physical, erotic, maybe even a little bit spiritual understanding passes between us. Afterward, I feel a sudden new connection with my future self, who loves this man; I feel a fierce protectiveness toward her, and him. Let it be so. I accept this future, this man. We are curled together, sweaty and exhausted. My hair is twined around his fingers, I can feel his breath on my neck.

“So?” Zach asks.

“Yes,” I reply. We fall asleep in the New Year, content with our beginning.

Zach: I wake up happy. The light around the edges of the blinds is white. Alba is asleep. She’s turned slightly toward me, and I can see her eyes darting back and forth under her eyelids. I wonder what she’s dreaming? She frowns in her sleep. Her bed is only a double, and my feet hang off the edge, but I’m used to that. I have an overwhelming desire for a cigarette. Today is day five of quitting. I try to be still because the minute I move, I’ll start coughing. My nose is cold and my feet are freezing but it’s warm under the duvet. Alba is pressed against my side; I can’t feel the border between her skin and mine. I grope at the nightstand and find my glasses. This room is obviously her childhood bedroom, and it seems too small for her now: The furniture is a mismatch of new and old, the closet is overstuffed with belongings, the bookcases bulge with books that range from Winnie-the-Pooh to Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music. There’s a violin case tucked under the dresser and handwritten sheet music in drifts all over the floor, along with our hastily cast-off clothes. I think of my bare room at the Gomolinskis’, and this room seems enviable, a complete world. I could lie here, happily, for a lifetime.

Cautiously, I reach down to the floor and bring up two sheets of music. The notes make dense triangular patterns, then thin out. It’s interesting to look at, but it doesn’t turn into sound in my head, the way I imagine it would if I were a musician. Alba’s handwriting is bold: It’s very long and looping, sort of swinging, and the margins are full of ballpoint-pen-doodled blue mice and black cats chasing each other. The music is in pencil, and a few erasures have left a slight pink residue on the paper. I can feel the cough coming on. I sit up carefully, try to stifle it, but end up hacking away loudly, waking Alba. I get up and search my coat for Kleenex and cough drops. When I get back into bed, I am still clutching Alba’s music under my arm. I look at the paper-littered floor and realize that I’m not sure where these pages belong.

Her thick sleepy voice startles me: “Can you read that?”

“No,” I say. “Did you write it?”

“I did,” she replies.

“Play it for me?”

At first I think she’s going to refuse, but then she slowly clambers over me, turns on the bedside lamp and crouches on the carpet to slide the violin case out from under the dresser. She is unselfconsciously naked. I sit up in bed to watch her as she opens the case, takes out a violin and spends a little time tuning up, yawning. She plants her feet shoulders-width apart, gives me a look that seems kind of defiant. She takes the music from my hand and lays it out on the bed, then launches abruptly into an energetic tangle of sound that breaks apart into delicate quick notes, as though two trains of thought have collided and shattered into rain. Alba’s eyes are closed. She bends from her waist, her fingers fly; her expression is sorrowful.

The music elongates, keens, then stops as suddenly as it began, leaving charged air. “It goes on,” Alba says, but she doesn’t resume playing; she avoids my eyes.

“Mercy,” I say. “I had no idea. I mean, that is amazing.”

Alba puts the violin back in its case, snaps the clasps shut. “Thanks,” she says, brusquely. She takes the music from me and flings it randomly at the floor. She doesn’t look at me. She says, “Budge over,” and gestures for me to make room for her; she climbs back into bed and we pull the duvet over us. She’s sweating but cold, and I wrap myself around her to warm her up. Neither of us speaks for a while.

“Are you angry with me?” I ask her.

“Sorry,” she says, her voice quiet. “No. I didn’t mean to be so abrupt. It’s hard for me to play for anyone.”