Part 2: The Stranger Who Knew My Coffee Order.
Ava should have handed the photograph back. Instead, she found herself studying it the exact gap between her own front teeth, the small scar above her eyebrow from a bike accident at nine years old that nobody photographed, ever, because it was barely visible unless you knew to look.
He knew to look.
"Okay," she said slowly, sliding the photo back across the table. "Say I believe you. Say this is real. What's your name?"
"Theo," he said. "But that's the easy part. The hard part is the next eleven years, and I don't actually know how we get from this booth to that wedding. I just know we do."
"That's not comforting."
"It's not supposed to be comforting." He leaned forward, elbows on the table, and for the first time his easy smile faded into something more careful. "Look, I know how this sounds. I'd think I was insane too. But three weeks ago I found this photo in a box of things I don't remember owning, and I've been carrying it around like an idiot, hoping I'd recognize the diner, the booth, the woman and then I walked in this morning and there you were. Exact seat. Exact order. Exact scar."
Ava's coffee had gone cold in front of her, forgotten. "So what happens now? You just insert yourself into my life because a photo told you to?"
"No," Theo said. "Now I ask if I can buy you breakfast, and we find out the long way whether any of this is actually going to happen or if I just made a complete fool of myself in front of a very patient stranger."
Ava looked at the photograph again, face-down on the table between them now, and then at the man across from her imperfect, nervous under all that confidence, waiting for an answer he clearly wasn't sure he'd get.
"One breakfast," she said finally. "That's it. That's all this proves."
Theo's smile came back, softer this time. "Eleven years starts with one breakfast. I can work with that."
Outside the window, the morning light shifted, and Ava realized with a small, unwelcome flutter in her chest that she hoped he was right about all of it.
to be continued... ๐