‘Can I get you some still or sparkling water?’ he said. I looked at Em, letting her decide the answer.
‘Still would be great thank you,’ said Em, the waiter disappeared, reappearing instantly with water and menus.
The waiter started to speak through the menu when he finally mentioned the ‘chef’s surprise’. It was a compilation of the chef’s favourite entrée, main, and dessert. I watched Em’s eyes light up as the waiter continued to speak about how it worked.
‘You really love surprises, don’t you?’ I said.
‘I do,’ she said, smiling coyly, looking away from my gaze.
‘We’ll go with the chef’s surprise,’ I said.
The waiter nodded and walked away. Emma smiled. ‘Thank you.’
We sat talking about Emma’s coastal life as we looked over the water, why she had moved here and how much she loved her new job, how much time she dedicated to her paintings. I loved hearing that. I knew she was super talented, the world needed to see her art. I always thought that about her since the day I met her. She had a lot to give. She spoke in-depth about some of her friends. They sounded like great people. I couldn’t imagine Emma being friends with anyone who wasn’t great. I wondered if I would ever get to meet them. The waiter came back over bringing out our entrées.
‘I guess I never expected to be eating caviar-crusted olives, sitting opposite the DJ I had sex with by the river one time over three years ago,’ she laughed, ‘oh the adventures of life, hey?’
‘I don’t know if that’s how I like to be referred,’ I laughed. ‘I can’t say I was expecting this either, but I am glad that we’re here.’ I wonder if she had thought as deeply as me about our random run-ins, as I had this past week. I wanted to ask her about her thoughts. But I also wanted to understand how I felt about all these meetings with her. I was confused and intrigued. Her mind was always clearer than mine, so I made a joke. ‘So, soulmate, how do you really feel about these constant coincidental moments of meeting?’ I asked, my voice stuttering a little nervously that I had hoped.
She swallowed an olive and her eyes rolled around in her head. She was in pleasure; I’d seen that face before. ‘This is amazing.’ She said, lost in her own tasteful world, until she looked back at me.
‘Oh, your question —Maybe we knew each other in a past life,’ she said, matching my gaze, shrugging her shoulders and taking a sip of water.
‘Do you believe in past lives?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know what I believe. I mean, all of it’s a lie really. Because there’s never a real way of knowing. So, I guess what I believe is whatever lie I choose to adopt? And that, I’m not too sure of just yet,’ she said, picking up another olive.
I think I fell in love with her mind more with every word that she spoke. Her thought process was wildly beautiful. I would love to spend some time in her brain diving deeper into how she came up with such brilliance. To me, she was really one of a kind. ‘What I want to know, is what you believe in? What lies are you choosing to explain this series of random moments together?’ she asked, sitting so poised, staring into my eyes.
I turned to look out the window, pointing up at the sky, ready to unfold a story that would hopefully make her laugh.
‘I think our stardust souls fell from the same meteor.’ I said, she began laughing, almost choking on an olive. Her laugh was so infectious. I loved hearing her laugh. But her eyes fixated on my gaze, I could see she wanted me to continue the story. I continued with a completely made-up story, or as Emma called it, a lie to entertain her. ‘Maybe within us, the twenty-seven grams of unexplained science was once shooting stardust from the middle of the universe. I think our flames were friends. Equally creating, fun. A little weird and unusual. But we complimented each other beautifully, and we didn’t care what other people thought. I was a little faster than you, landing on earth a few years before. You weren’t far behind.’ I got lost in my rant and continued. ‘You can’t separate a flame. You can blow some of it out. But fire doesn’t part. That’s why we’re always drawn back to each other. Our stardust burns bright.’ I got lost in my wild galactic story. Emma’s mouth was open wide, but her eyes were smiling.
‘Wow,’ she said, pausing. I could see she was gathering her thoughts. She giggled a little before she spoke. ‘I think you might be right. I think I choose your lie. It makes me feel, almost one of a kind. Out of this world.’
‘You are. You’re super special. That’s for sure,’ I said.
She shot down my comment straight away. ‘You have a wondrous mind for creating lies.’
‘Lies or stories?’ I asked.
‘Aren’t they both the same thing?’ she asked.
I shrugged, ‘Maybe.’
‘Can I get you anything else, tea? Coffee?’ The waiter said as he took our dessert plates.
‘I think we’ll just grab the bill,’ I said. The waiter presented the bill and I took it before Emma could even look at it and placed my card on the leather case where the white receipt was held.
‘Did you get a new card?’ Emma was staring at the ‘activate me’ sticker that was still sitting on the front of it.
‘I’ve actually had this card for a little while now, it’s probably time I took it off.’ I peeled back the sticker of the card and stuck it underneath the table. ‘Do you think it’s going to be here in twenty-five years?’
She laughed. ‘I don’t know, I guess you’ll have to come back here and find out.’
‘I’m going to set an alarm on my phone, to remind myself to do just that.’ I pulled my phone out of my pocket and started talking into the screen. ‘Hey Siri, set a reminder in my phone for twenty-five years. Remind me that I was sitting at Spice with Emma, having a wonderful time. And to come back and check if there’s still a sticker underneath the table.’
Siri spoke back to me. ‘Your reminder has been set for 2047.’ Emma couldn’t stop laughing at me. But her smile and her eyes were warm.
