100 Yellow Doors

10:43 p.m.

She looked...older.

Julien had heard the saying that women matured much quicker than men, likely from Iman's mouth, even, but he didn't think this was quite what it meant. It was slight, anyway. An angle to her jaw that hadn't been there before, a new definition around her collarbones, her shoulders and neck held stark, almost like a soldier's. Her eyes were the same, he thought. Bright. Alive. Dark brown and birdlike.

Iman was such a warm thing. After being forced into Sera's company, Julien needed time away from the cold.

It seemed contradictory to leave a loud place just to find another, so Julien avoided the noisy, aimless bars lining the street just outside the amphitheater and instead led Iman to a cozy cafe-esque place around the bend. It was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it sort of venue, camped out beneath a Vietnamese nail spa and only accessible via a set of rusting, paint-chipped stairs leading down from the sidewalk. The lighting inside was a sultry, dim yellow and the air was thick with bourbon and hookah smoke; though Julien had been in France in the 1920s and therefore didn't truly know, the posh bar gave him the vibe of a vintage American speakeasy.

Julien saw Iman jolt to attention as soon as he'd shoved open the door, but before she could speak, he shushed her. "I know what you're thinking."

"Do you?"

"Don't worry. It has good Yelp reviews."

Though he walked behind her, he could very well see her roll her eyes.

The two of them claimed a table nearest the empty stage, which was truly three or four plastic crates with a wooden slab laid over them. Julien ordered a Cuba Libre automatically while Iman mulled the menu over for a time before settling on a White Russian. A slow, molasses-like saxophone solo sang over the speakers; Julien's eyes lingered on the group of older men smoking a bong in the corner before landing on Iman again.

Her dress was velvet, plunging, violet. He didn't think he'd ever seen her in anything that wasn't a sweatshirt or a sweater. Then again, he'd never seen her in the present. As she'd pointed out, a lot of things were new.

Old friends? He scoffed at the idea. He didn't know what label they fell under, but he was fairly sure it wasn't that one.

"Three years," said Iman, then again: "Three years?"

Julien counted on his fingers, just to make sure. Time was a muddled thing when you had so much of it. "Yes. More than that. It was 2016 and I was still in San Diego. I was trying and failing at hand-rolling spring rolls in my basement without any pants on and you scared the absolute shit out of me."

Julien watched a slight smirk crawl across Iman's face. "2016," she repeated. "So somewhere else, somewhere back here, my other self was—what? Finishing up my second year of college?"

Julien stirred his Rum and Coke, indolent. "Sounds about right."

"San Diego," said Iman.

"Is it a common habit of yours to repeat random things that I've said to yourself?"

"All the times I saw that yellow door, and I never knew where it was—and now I do," Iman's eyebrows twitched towards each other; she sucked her lower lip beneath her teeth for a moment and exhaled. "What was a vampire doing in California, anyway? That's not too much sun for you?"

"I stayed inside during the day," said Julien matter-of-factly. "The night is when everything real happens, anyway."

Iman drew a tiny circle on the tabletop with the very edge of her navy blue-painted finger, her shoulders slightly lifted towards her ears. Silence nearly settled between them until Iman fixed that dark, birdlike gaze on Julien again and asked, "Why did you leave?"