Page 16 of Meet Me in Another Life

“Girl trouble?” Lily asks knowingly.

Thora sighs. “Not this time.”

Lily frowns. “Boy trouble? It’s been a while.”

Thora considers telling her about Santi, about why she walked away.He was perfect. That was the problem.Lily would, quite reasonably, tell her that was insane.

Lily pours an unconscionable amount of honey into her mint tea. “Has there been anyone since Jules?”

Her name is still painful, a reminder of all the ways she was good to Thora and all the ways Thora failed her. “Not really.”

Lily stares at her piercingly. “Okay, so you’re obviously in a cryptic mood, and I can’t be arsed to play detective. Call me if you ever want to talk about it. In the meantime, can we make a plan for the sci-fi festival? If we don’t book soon, the whole thing’s going to sell out.”

As the days pass, Thora waits, at first warily and then with something like longing, for the universe to throw Santi back into her path. She crosses and recrosses the park between Ehrenfeld and the Belgian Quarter, waiting for running steps and a hand on her shoulder. At the sci-fi festival, she remembers the books on his bedside table and turns, searching the darkened cinema for his face. Finally, one weekend afternoon, she steels herself and walks into Der Zentaur, fully expecting him to be at the table where she first saw him. But there is only Holger, the moroselocal who always sits at the bar, and a couple talking in whispers in the window.

She sits down at her usual table and orders a glass of red wine. As she waits, she brings out the wiring diagrams and places them carefully under her elbow. She has tried to make everything the same, but differences beyond her control keep intruding: the whispering couple, the new arrangement of the tables, each detail breaking the mad magic she’s trying to weave.

When Brigitta brings her drink, Thora looks at it with a despair so profound that the barmaid hesitates. “You wanted wine, yes?”

Thora nods and takes a sip. “Brigitta,” she says. “Do you remember the man I ended up talking to in here after you swapped our drinks? Dark-haired, Spanish, kind of short.”

“Oh, yes. Santi.” Brigitta shrugs. “He hasn’t been here for a long time. He stopped coming about the same time you did.”

Thora slumps in her seat as Brigitta goes back behind the bar. So much for her attempt to start again, to make a different choice this time. She ran away because she felt like the universe was pushing her into something. Now, it is pushing her the opposite way, and she resents it all the more.

“Fuck it,” she says, downs the rest of her wine, catches a tram to the Belgian Quarter, and climbs the stairs of Santi’s building to knock on his door.

It opens a crack. “Félicette,no,” she hears him say, and her heart goes supernova. When he finally opens the door and sees her, he doesn’t speak. He just exhales, a sound that could be relief or disappointment, and lets her inside. “You want some coffee?”

“Tea, if you have it,” says Thora, following him into the kitchen.

Santi opens cupboards, looks through neatly stacked boxes and tins. “I think Héloïse left some before she moved out.”

Thora notes the name. Flatmate? Ex-girlfriend? She pulls out a barstool and sits down. “So you’re probably wondering why I left to get coffee and never came back.”

Santi folds his arms, leaning back against the worktop. “I mean, I had a theory. But that theory doesn’t explain why you’re here now.”

“What was your theory?”

He shrugs. “You didn’t like me enough.”

“No. That’s not it.”

Santi’s brow furrows. “Then I go to theory two, which is that the coffee shop got sucked into another dimension, and you only just now managed to escape and find your way back.”

“Close.” She smiles. “But no. The problem was I liked you too much.”

The kettle boils. Santi goes to pour the water. “You’re going to have to explain that to me.”

Thora bites her lip, searching for the words. “Do you ever feel like the universe is trying to push you into something? Like it’s what’s supposed to happen, and you’re just meant to let it?”

Santi takes out the teabag, smiling. “Not often enough.”

“I felt that. As soon as I met you, almost.” She crosses her arms. “And that’s exactly why I left. Because I didn’t trust that feeling. Not one bit. I hate being told what to do.”

He crosses to her, hands her the cup of tea. “Even by fate?”

“Especially by fate.” From where she’s sitting, he’s taller than her. She looks up into his eyes. “But now, I’ve decided. The universe isn’t pushing me into this. I’m choosing it.”

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