Just let go.

As if it were that simple. Just do nothing, just accept what had already happened, would always happen, and tomorrow would come.

She had come close a few times. She had spent the morning walking down by the river and thinking of death, of every song and platitude that made its inevitability beautiful. She had spent the afternoon trying to find religion as if it were a scavenger hunt, a race against more than the clock, but none of the churches or graveyards in town had the sort that would save her.

No more than they could save Jessica. She had tried to tell herself it should be easy – they didn’t cross paths until the evening on that one day, the day that was the world now, and if a few hours together were all they had, those should have been easy to let go of.

She had tried letting go of those hours. Not showing up at the restaurant, peering through its window like a private eye as Jessica waited at their table inside, as her excitement wilted into worry and, finally, rotten disappointment. She had followed after her when she’d stomped out into the dusk, a shadow slinking one block behind, hoping.

But death had been waiting for Jessica all the same. Whether it was at a disappointed eight in the evening or a giddy eleven, whether it was a drunk driver veering wide around the corner or a fire in her apartment building, god, all those fucking screams, something, fate or a god hiding in none of those churches or graveyards, had decided she wouldn’t live to see tomorrow.

And so the world wouldn’t see tomorrow, either. Not as long as Rosalee could put her foot down at midnight and say no. No, there had to be another way. It couldn’t be written in some god’s commandments that the woman she took out for dinner and dancing had to die that day.

And it could never be simple, never be easy, to say goodbye to her that night and never see her again. To kiss her for the last time and know it. To just let go.

See you tomorrow? Jessica would whisper every night against her lips.

Of course, she would say, until she found a way to make it true.