Page 14 of Meet Me in Another Life

Santi looks up at her like she’s pulled him out of one world and into another. “What are you doing?”

“Leaving,” she says. “With you.”

He gets up, startled but delighted. He tries to insist on settlingthe bill, but she orders him out to wait for her in the square. As Brigitta goes to the till to get her change, Thora faces her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. She looks flushed, self-conscious. She doesn’t want to meet her own eyes. She turns away, shifting around the corner of the bar until she’s standing on the wrong side. In the mirror, something shimmers. Thora turns to look, and freezes, trying to understand what she’s seeing: an aerial view of the square outside, the fountain a wisp of smoke, the cobbles the shining scales of a dragon. She can even see Santi waiting for her, his tiny, dark-headed figure a study in expectation.

“Excuse me?”

Thora jumps, refocuses. Brigitta stands in front of her, looking pointedly at Thora’s feet on her side of the bar.

Thora steps back. “Sorry.” As Brigitta hands over her change, she looks again at the mirror. All she sees is her own reflection.

She pockets her change and steps slowly outside. Santi is standing where she saw him from above, lit by a ray of sun like a pointing finger. A shiver settles across her shoulders.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing.” She can’t tell him what she thought she saw. He would only try and make it mean something. She lets him take her hand. “Where are we going?”

“God knows,” he says with a smile.

God brings a tram that takes them to the Belgian Quarter, then guides their steps through an unlocked green door onto concrete stairs.

“Why do you have to live on the bloody roof?” Thora protests after the third flight.

Santi grins back at her. “I see things more clearly from up here.”

His door is set with green glass, framed by wildly overgrown plants. Thora, still dislocated, feels the threshold as more than a doorway, a humming portal to another world. Staring through it, she retraces the chain of causality that led her here. She went to Der Zentaur and ordered a glass of wine. Brigitta delivered it to the wrong table. Now, she orbits her way into Santi’s living room. A blue sofa, a coffee table, a star map on the wall. A black shape streaks past, and Thora yelps. “Jesus!”

“That’s Félicette. She doesn’t really obey the laws of physics.” Santi runs his hand self-consciously through his hair. “My current theory is she lives in a pocket dimension that happens to open into my apartment.”

“Félicette,” Thora says. “The first cat in space.”

Santi grins. “You’re the only person who’s ever got that reference.”

Thora takes him in. He’s familiar and all new. Where has he been all her life?

He’s looking at her with a caution she understands. “Do you, ah—can I get you a coffee?”

She shakes her head. She’s sure. Thora isn’t used to being sure. She can’t help mistrusting the feeling, wondering where it comes from.

“This is embarrassing,” Santi says. “But—I don’t know your name.”

Thora looks back over the bright, urgent moments since they met. She knows his name; how can he not know hers? She sees herself suddenly from his perspective: a nameless woman with purple hair and a leather jacket, a bundle of cryptic signifiers. “Guess,” she says.

He frowns, like it’s a test he doesn’t want to fail. “You said you were born in England?”

She nods, holding back a smile.

“Jane Smith,” he says.

She bursts out laughing. “Statistically, a good guess. But no. It’s Thora. Thora Lišková. Is Santi short for something?”

“Santiago López Romero,” he says: every syllable exactly right. “Nice to meet you.” He holds out his hand for her to shake.

Thora doesn’t take it. Instead, she steps into his space and kisses him.

He doesn’t draw back, but he doesn’t exactly respond. When Thora starts to feel like she’s applying mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, she breaks off. “Are you—is this—”

“Thora Lišková,” he says breathlessly, and kisses her back.

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