"isn't it just so pretty to think

all along there was some

invisible string tying you to me?"

Jake had been running around the same lake that I (Emily) had visited every summer starting in 1998, but neither of us knew.

We used to joke that the universe tried so hard for so many years to make us cross paths: my family passing Jake's old home on the way to the creek every summer, living in Redlands for the same years (with Jake's brother literally in my pysch 101 group), even playing Pokemon Go in the Lake Arrowhead Village down to the same minute.

It only took a pandemic to finally cross paths online. Apparently the universe gave up on in-person fate, but it was never "too late."

It was just in time.