The graduation tassels were still swinging from the rearview mirror, gold and bright, just like our futures.
I'm the one telling you this because, well, I have the best seat in the house now—even if it's a seat made of mist and memory. My name is Ryan, and that night was supposed to be the beginning of everything.
The party at Leo's place was a blurred masterpiece of cheap champagne and loud music. I remember the smell of Maya's perfume—something like vanilla and rain—as she leaned against me, showing off her diploma like it was a golden ticket. We laughed with our friends, promised to stay in touch, and toasted to the "Real World." We were twenty-two, invincible, and deeply, foolishly in love.
"Ready to go, Graduate?" I whispered into her ear as the clock crawled toward midnight.
She grinned, her eyes sparkling with that hazy, beautiful post-party glow. "Take me home, Ryan."
The drive was quiet. The city lights streaked across the windshield like fallen stars. I was buzzed—not just from the drinks, but from the sight of her. I kept stealing glances at her in the passenger seat. She was rambling about how she wanted to decorate her first apartment, her hands moving excitedly as she talked.
I should have been looking at the road.
I looked at her instead. I looked at the way her hair tucked behind her ear and the way she smiled when she mentioned our future.
On the other side of the intersection, a truck driver—a man whose name I'd never know—was fighting a battle with sleep and losing. His eyes closed just as mine were fixed on the love of my life.
There was no screech of tires. No cinematic slow-motion. Just a roar of cold steel and the world folding in on itself.
The truck hit my side of the car. It wasn't a collision; it was an erasure. The driver's side crumpled like paper, the engine block forced into the space where my heart had been beating seconds before.
Then, there was the silence.
I found myself standing in the middle of the wreckage. I felt light—impossibly light. I looked down and saw the car, or what was left of it. I saw the truck driver slumped over his wheel, his journey ended. And I saw myself. Or rather, I saw the shell I used to live in, pinned behind the steering wheel, motionless.
But Maya... Maya was still there. Her side of the car was shattered but intact. She was unconscious, her forehead bleeding, her breathing shallow and ragged.
"Maya!" I screamed, reaching for her. My hand passed through the door like it was made of smoke.
Suddenly, the night sky split open. A light, more blinding than any sun, poured down from above. It was warm, beckoning, and a voice—not a sound, but a feeling—urged me to step forward. It's time, it whispered. The path is open.
I looked at the light, then I looked at Maya as the sirens began to wail in the distance.
"No," I whispered. "I can't leave her, not yet."
I turned my back on the peace of the afterlife. I followed the ambulance. I stayed in the sterile, white halls of the hospital for weeks, sitting by her bed, fruitlessly trying to stroke her hair or hold her hand. I watched her sister sob; I watched the doctors shake their heads. I fought off the shadows and stayed anchored to the floor by the sheer weight of my devotion.
Then, on a Tuesday morning, her eyelashes fluttered.
Her sister, overwhelmed, sprinted out of the room to find a doctor, shouting that she was awake.
I stood at the foot of the bed, trembling. I knew I was a ghost—a shimmer in the air, a transparent trick of the light. To anyone else, I was just a cold breeze.
Maya's eyes opened, unfocused and clouded. She blinked once, twice, and then her gaze locked onto mine. The confusion in her eyes cleared, replaced by a shock so profound it seemed to pull her back from the brink of death.
"Ryan?" she cracked, her voice a fragile whisper. "Ryan... is that you?"
My heart—the one that wasn't beating anymore—jolted. I moved closer, my form flickering like a dying candle.
"You can see me?" I asked, my voice echoing in a way only she could hear. "Maya, you can actually see me?"
She reached out a trembling hand toward the space where my face was, and in that moment, the "Real World" we had toasted to was gone, replaced by a beautiful, haunting new reality.