He wasn't alone forever though.

     His realizations had come just in time. It's just the way that karma is... if you can mentally fix things, you're one step closer to fixing things in reality. 

     Maybe not in time to get in touch with everyone again, but he eventually did end up calling Susan, once again, and she was there. He apologized right away, and was surprised to hear that she hadn't minded, and that she had already been planning to call him. Her familiar voice was a relief just to hear.

     They began to call each other every Saturday; those were his depression days. They talked about work, the weather, small talk; typical things. Eventually, though, it got deeper.
      They talked about the meaning of life, rather than life itself.

    Finally, he visited her on the West Coast, and they got a hotel in San Fransisco during the late autumn. They had both grown up, there was no denying that, but what he wanted was to catch up, and continue where they had left off. 

     It was a time of awe, and a time of more realizations.

   He had a jarring flashback one of the nights that they were together, back to when they were young. It was when they were out in this little school courtyard, sometime in junior high. 

     Kids were gathered in tight packs, talking, laughing, eating, the most studious ones using the time to work on their schoolwork. Some of the boys told promiscuous jokes under their breath, thinking they were being inconspicuous. The air outside was fresh, and birds soared overhead. Sun shone brightly above.

     He and Susanna had been having a conversation about how annoying everything seemed. 

     They conversed about their parents, families, homework, weather patterns, stupid kids, stupid adults, authorities. All of the things that irritated them in their lives, when he, without really thinking about it asked, "Am I annoying to you like all of that other stuff?," looking at it now, he had wanted to clarify why she'd already stayed his friend for three and a half years now. 

    "Nowhere near as much as 90 percent of the population," she had said, matter-of-factly, her purple braces glimmering in the bright sunshine. The purple that interlaced her teeth somehow seemed to make her eyes more violet than blue, he had thought.
    
     ...She even smelled like lilacs.

     That was one of the things he secretly loved about her, the way she would state things so factually, yet with a sort of emotional backdrop tied into it all. Quite hard to explain. It was another thing he certainly would never admit.

     The school bell rang right then, like a siren, or rather a signal of a missile dropping in a densely populated area, or like nails on a chalkboard. 

    The vast majority scrambled for textbooks, bags, and garbage and hurried inside, but he and Susan had hardly noticed, they were so deep into their shared thoughts, that they just sat like statues on the brick ledge, contemplating.

    "Well that is a relief", he had said, staring down at her left hand, and swinging his leg sheepishly over the greene grass below.
     Her fingernails were painted with pink nail polish. 

     "Oh my gosh!," she said, "We have to get to class... I just realized!"

     They panicked and hauled their stuff off of the pavement. 

     ...This, being the moment at which he awoke from this memory, somehow knowing he had to stay with her until the end of time.