The last thing I remember from my first life is the sound of metal crushing metal, and David's hand reaching for mine across the center console. Then I woke up in my college dorm room, twenty-one years old again, with my phone buzzing on the nightstand. The date on the screen made my heart stop: September 15th, 2016. Seven years before the accident. Seven years before our loveless marriage would end in twisted metal and broken glass on the interstate. I sat up so fast I nearly fell out of the narrow twin bed. My hands—smooth, without the wedding ring I'd worn for seven years—trembled as I touched my face, my hair, everything feeling impossibly young and unfamiliar despite being my own body. "This isn't possible," I whispered. But the evidence was everywhere. The Taylor Swift poster I'd taken down junior year. My roommate Jessica's bed across from mine, still made with those ridiculous unicorn sheets she'd loved. The philosophy textbook I'd forgotten I ever owned, sitting on my desk with a coffee stain I suddenly remembered making. My phone buzzed again. A text from a number I'd deleted years ago but still recognized instantly. *David: Hey! Saw you in the library yesterday. Want to grab coffee after your 2pm class?* My stomach lurched. This was it. This was the moment that had started everything. In my first life, I'd said yes to that coffee. We'd talked for four hours. He'd walked me home, kissed me under the streetlight by the science building, and told me I had the most beautiful smile he'd ever seen. Three years of dating. Seven years of marriage. Ten years total of loving a man who never fully loved me back. I stared at the message for a long time, my finger hovering over the keyboard. In my original life, I'd been so flattered that David Chen—smart, ambitious, devastatingly handsome David—had noticed me. I'd ignored the way he sometimes got distant, the way he'd change the subject whenever I mentioned the future. I'd told myself that love would be enough. It hadn't been. Our marriage had been a masterclass in polite disappointment. Separate bedrooms by year three. Dinner conversations that never went deeper than "How was work?" Every time I'd brought up having children, he'd found a reason to delay. "Not yet, Claire. Let me get the promotion first. Let's pay off the house. Let's wait until things settle down." Things never settled down. And I eventually understood why. Sophie. His first love. The one who'd studied abroad their senior year and never came back. The one he'd never quite gotten over, even though he'd never said her name aloud in our entire marriage. I'd found the letters once, hidden in a box in the garage. Years' worth of unsent letters, pouring out his heart to a woman who'd chosen Paris over him. I'd put them back and never mentioned them. What would have been the point? But I'd known, after that, why he looked at me the way he did. Like I was a good choice, a sensible choice, but never the choice his heart wanted. My phone buzzed a third time. *David: No pressure! Just thought it might be nice to get to know you :)* I took a deep breath and typed four words that changed everything. *Claire: Sorry, I'm busy.* I blocked his number before I could second-guess myself. --- The next few weeks were surreal. I kept expecting to wake up back in my real life—or to discover this was some elaborate coma dream. But every morning, I was still twenty-one, still in 2016, still being given the most impossible gift: a second chance. I threw myself into my classes with a focus I'd never had the first time around. I changed my major from English to Computer Science, remembering all the tech booms I'd witnessed from the sidelines. I joined clubs I'd been too shy for before. I made new friends, including a brilliant girl named Aisha who was developing an app that would eventually be bought by Google—something I remembered reading about in my other life. This time, I invested my summer job money in her company. I saw David around campus occasionally. He'd tried to approach me a few times in those first months, looking confused and a little hurt. But I always had somewhere to be, someone to meet. Eventually, he stopped trying. I didn't date anyone. Partly because I was too focused on building the future I should have built the first time. Partly because I kept wondering if David remembered too. I got my answer six months later, in the campus coffee shop. I was working on a coding assignment when someone slid into the seat across from me. David, looking exactly as I remembered him at twenty-two—that half-smile that used to make my heart race, those dark eyes that had once been my whole world. "Claire," he said. "We need to talk." My hands stilled on my keyboard. "Do we?" "You remember." It wasn't a question. "The accident. The marriage. All of it." I closed my laptop slowly. "How long have you known?" "Since the first day." He ran his hand through his hair, a gesture I'd seen a thousand times in our marriage when he was stressed. "I woke up and I remembered dying next to you. I remembered everything. That's why I texted you. I thought—" He laughed bitterly. "I thought maybe we were getting a second chance to do it right." "Do what right, David?" I kept my voice steady. "A marriage where you spent seven years wishing I was someone else?" He flinched. "You knew about Sophie." "I found your letters. Year four." I met his eyes. "I never told you because what would it have changed? You'd married me. You were faithful. You were kind, in your way. But you never loved me the way I loved you." "Claire—" "No." I stood up, gathering my things. "We got our second chance. And I'm choosing to use mine differently. I hope you do the same." "Wait." He stood too, reaching for my arm. "Maybe that's exactly what this is. A chance to do it better. We know what went wrong. We could—" "David." I gently pulled my arm away. "I don't want to do it better. I don't want to do it at all." I walked away from him for the second time in two lifetimes, and this time, my heart didn't break. It soared. --- Seven years passed like a dream. I graduated top of my class. My investment in Aisha's company paid off spectacularly—enough to fund my own startup. By twenty-five, I'd sold my first company and started my second. By twenty-seven, I was featured in Forbes' 30 Under 30. I dated casually but never seriously. I traveled to fifteen countries. I bought a loft in the city with floor-to-ceiling windows and a view that made me cry the first time I saw it. I built a life that was entirely, completely mine. I didn't forget about David, exactly. Sometimes I'd wonder what he was doing, if he was happy, if he'd found Sophie again. But I didn't check. I didn't look him up. I let him become part of my past—both pasts—and focused on my future. Until the college reunion.