The Courier of Almosts

I was brushing my teeth when someone knocked like they knew my heartbeat: three quick taps, a pause, then one soft one. It felt like a memory. It felt like a song I’d only heard in a dream.

The man on my doorstep wore a courier’s cap and carried a satchel that glowed like a pocket of sunset. He smelled like rain that hasn’t fallen yet. “Evening,” he said. “Delivery for Kira.”

“I didn’t order anything.”

“You almost did.” He lifted a golden envelope. The paper threaded light into the air, thin as spider silk. I could feel the pull of it, like a current tugging at my sleeve. “Sign here,” he said, holding out a pen that hummed.

“What is this?”

“Possibility,” he said. “Old route. New customer.” When I hesitated, he added, “It’s time-sensitive.”

I signed because the world had been too normal lately and I was bored of it. The envelope warmed my hands. It pulsed, once, like it had a heart.

“Enjoy,” the courier said, tipping his cap. He pushed off on a black bicycle whose tires left comet tails in the dusk. As he rode away, more envelopes unspooled behind him, traveling down streets I’d never taken, into windows I’d never opened, toward strangers I might have been.

I closed the door and turned the envelope over. The seal was an ampersand.

Inside was a letter in my handwriting: Lucy, I’m coming to the airport. Don’t board. I was wrong. I want the bigger life, even if it’s messier. If you’ll let me, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.

I had never sent this. I had never even written it, unless late at night in my head counted. The letter smelled like coffee and wet wool, like the day she left. The date in the corner scraped something tender in me: the day the sky had seemed to chew itself to pieces.

I read it three times. On the third, the letters lifted like birds from the page and hovered, fluttering; the words trailed little threads of light to the ceiling and quivered there like constellations. Then they settled back down, as if embarrassed.

“You kept it,” I whispered, and wasn’t sure whether I meant the courier or time or the braver version of me who’d written this in some parallel kitchen with a steadier hand.

My phone buzzed. Unknown number. A text: Delivery successful? —B.

I typed back: What is this?

Three dots pulsed, disappeared, returned. We run missed chances. You get one per week until your drawer is empty. Tip optional.

B as in…?

Bird. A wing emoji. We met before. Different story.

I laughed because I’d started to remember things you shouldn’t be able to remember: a market that appeared after midnight, an hourglass with my name on it, a choice written in ink. Maybe the universe worked night shift. Maybe it liked repeat customers.

What do I do with the letter? I wrote.

Open it again, somewhere with wind. Then decide.

I took the envelope to the fire escape. The city was in a lavender mood. A bus sighed. A neighbor practiced a trumpet like it was a new language. I opened the letter and read it out loud.

At the bottom, there was new writing, in Lucy’s neat print: Fifteen minutes is long if you’re brave, and short if you’re not. —L.

My heart did the kind of gymnastics that get medals. I propped my phone on the railing. Thumb hovered over her old contact, the one I never deleted. The one that had kept quiet long enough to gather dust.

The wind slipped the letter from my fingers. It didn’t fall. It hung there like a kite that remembered being a kite. The glowing threads unspooled from the envelope and stretched toward the street, searching.

Someone knocked again: three quick taps, a pause, one soft one.

Bird stood in my doorway, breathless, his front wheel still spinning. “I shouldn’t,” he said. “But I’m off route for the next nine minutes.”

“What happens in nine?”

“Depends on what you do in eight.”

He nodded at the letter hovering outside. “That way lies the version of the day where you went. We can set it down, let you walk into it for a while.” He held up a palm. “It’s rental. It won’t stick. But it can teach.”

“What does it cost?”

“An almost you’re willing to lose.”

I thought of all the near-lives I kept like souvenirs: the novel that got to page forty-seven, the piano lessons I stopped because my wrists ached, the apology I rehearsed so long I wore its edges smooth. My apartment was a museum of nearly.

“Take the fear I use to keep the rest of my life small,” I said. “The one that dresses like wisdom and calls itself realistic.”

Bird whistled softly. “That’s premium stock.” He touched the air like a doorman holding a curtain. The threads drew tight. The city tilted. The letter opened into a door.

I stepped through.

The airport smelled like cinnamon pretzels and goodbyes. I was a younger me, shaking, ridiculous, carrying a plant because flowers felt too theatrical. I saw Lucy at the gate, the dawn making a halo of her hair. I heard myself say the true thing and felt the future pivot like a weather vane finding wind. She cried, I cried, a TSA agent pretended not to watch while also definitely watching. It was messy and brave and those fifteen minutes were long in the best way.

Then the door slid shut behind me and I was back on my fire escape with dusk on my skin and Bird rubbing a kink from his calf. The letter lay on my lap, quiet now, normal paper.

“Did it stick?” I asked.

“Did you learn?” he said.

I folded the letter. My hands were steadier. “Yes.”

Bird swung onto his bike. “Then it stuck where it matters.”

“Will there be more deliveries?”

He grinned. “Your drawer is full. But it empties faster when you start doing things the first time.” He pushed off, trailing little embers of maybe down the street. “Save me some miles.”

I went inside and texted a number I did still have. Coffee? I didn’t explain. I didn’t overthink. I chose the bigger life, even if it made my hands shake.

On the table, the envelope dimmed until it was just paper again. I kept it, not as a shrine to what almost happened, but as a reminder that almost is just a door with a delicate hinge.