A few months ago, we were sitting at Rue Café when the waiter brought us coffee.
"You know," he said, "normal people use dating apps."
Adrian replied, "Where's the drama in that?"
I kicked him under the table.
The café now has a tiny plaque beside our corner table.
The waiter had it made as a joke.
It says:
"RESERVED FOR PEOPLE WHO MAKE UNNECESSARILY COMPLICATED PLANS."
Adrian loves it. I hate how accurate it is.
People sometimes ask whether I think we were meant to meet again.
I don't know.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
I don't think the important part is that we made some romantic promise and fate somehow honored it.
Because technically, Adrian didn't show up at that table.
Not the way I'd imagined.
The man I remembered from one afternoon had been through something that changed him.
And I had spent a year imagining a version of him frozen in time.
That's not how people work. They come back changed.
Sometimes scarred.
Sometimes slower.
Sometimes carrying truths they were too frightened to say the first time.
The question isn't whether the exact person you remember comes back.
It's whether you're willing to meet the person who actually does.
The next time Adrian and I went to Rue Café, he reached our table first.
He pulled out the chair across from him. "Is this taken?"
I looked at him. One year earlier, I'd left that answer to chance.
This time, I sat down.
"Yeah," I said. "By me."
