Page 13 of Meet Me in Another Life

Santi tucks the card into his desk drawer. He’s been round this track too many times: students and their goodbyes, a fuzz of staticcutting out to radio silence. Thora may miss him now, but he’ll soon fade into the background of her life, just as she will fade into the forgotten hundreds who have passed through this classroom. If she sees him on the street in ten years’ time, she will double back to avoid him, rather than face the awkward retreading of a relationship long since expired.I hope I see you again.He already knows he never will.

No Going Back

Thora sits at a corner table in Der Zentaur, waiting for Brigitta to bring her a glass of wine. The wiring diagrams she brought as a gesture toward the social acceptability of solitary daytime drinking are out on the table, but she knows she won’t give them more than a glance. These days, most of her is lost in space. What’s left rattles around Cologne, oscillating between her flat in Ehrenfeld and her job at an engineering firm across the river: a distance so small that from the perspective of the universe she might as well be standing still.

Watching dust fall through a sunbeam, she runs through her excuses. The ones she gave her parents: not realistic, not smart enough. The real one: her paralysis in the face of important choices. Each time life puts her at a crossroads, she doubles back, terrified at the thought of trapping herself on a single path. It’s driven away everyone she’s ever tried to have a relationship with. And it’s kept her from her ambition as effectively as a wall across the sky.

Brigitta thunks a glass onto the table.

“Danke,” Thora says without looking up. She’s surprisedwhen her fingers touch cold. A slim glass of Kölsch, the local lager, not what she ordered.

“Entschuldigung,” someone says from across the room.

A man about her age, mid-twenties, with dark curly hair, holds up a glass of red wine. Cautiously, Thora nods. As he comes over, smiling, she feels a tremor that is something like dread.

His accent wasn’t German; she makes a safe bet and switches to English. “I don’t have to talk to you just because you have my drink.”

“What about because you havemydrink?” Spanish, she guesses, but his English is confident.

“Here you go.” Thora slides the Kölsch across the table. “Interaction complete.”

He places her wine on a mat and pushes it closer to her, sitting down on the other side of the table. “Really? Why not turn a mistake into an opportunity?”

“Brigitta doesn’t make mistakes.” Thora eyes the barmaid over her glass, but she is conveniently serving another customer.

“Hmm. So it wasn’t a mistake,” the man muses, tapping his chin. “What other theories do you have?”

Damn.It has been the weakness of Thora’s life that she can’t resist a scientist. “She might be trying to ruin my day.”

“We need more data.” He leans forward, lowering his voice as he looks sideways at the bar. “Have you ever gotten the sense that Brigitta doesn’t like you?”

His murmur actually makes Thora shiver. Ridiculous. “No, she’s been nothing but pleasant to me.”

He sits back, triumphant. “Then why not assume she’s trying to improve your day, rather than ruin it?”

Thora tries as hard as she can not to smile. “You’re very sure of yourself.”

He is smiling for the both of them. “Are you an engineer?”

Thora gives him a deadpan look.

He frowns in confusion. “Is that a no?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought that was the start of a chat-up line.Are you an engineer? Because...” Thora tails off. “Shit, I don’t know. Something about screws.”

He laughs, sudden and loud. “No, I just—I saw the wiring diagrams.” He taps the papers under her elbow. “But, that’s a good one. I’ll definitely use that in future.”

Thora smiles despite herself. Their eyes meet, and something passes between them, something she didn’t think she believed in. “Who are you, anyway?” she demands, almost angry.

“Santi,” he says, holding out his hand.

She takes it. “I’m giving you until we finish this drink. Then I’m going back to my original plan of morosely drinking alone. Deal?”

He throws up his hands. “Seems like I don’t have a choice.”

They talk, starting with how long they have lived in Cologne—Santi since he came to study for his master’s, Thora since her parents moved here from England when she was ten. Within an hour, they are deep in conversation about where they’ve come from and where they long to go. “There’s so muchout there,” Santi declares, pounding the table for emphasis. “I don’t understand people who can look at this”—he gestures vaguely at the bar, the other drinkers, the square outside “as if it’s all there is.”

Thora’s mind is made up. She takes his hand and gets to her feet.

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