The first time I saw him, I nearly dropped my coffee. He sat at the exact center of the café, one leg crossed over the other, a newspaper in hand. But it wasn’t just that he looked like me—it was that he was me. Same eyes, same sharp jawline, even the way he drummed his fingers against the ceramic cup matched my own nervous habit.
He looked up and froze.
Day 1
For a long moment, we just stared. Then, at the same time, we muttered:
“What the hell?”
A laugh burst out of me, startled and nervous. He smirked. “Well, this is weird.”
“You think?” I sat down across from him, drawn by a pull I couldn’t explain.
And just like that, we started talking.
Before we left, he grinned and said, “Same time tomorrow?”
I found myself nodding.
Day 5
The days passed in a blur of conversation.
Every afternoon, we met at the café, ordered the same coffee, and talked like old friends. The resemblance wasn’t just skin-deep. We had the same memories, the same childhood fears, the same way of tapping a rhythm on the table when thinking. But there were differences, too.
He had everything I wanted—a dream job, a house by the lake, a fiancée who adored him. I had the pieces, but they never seemed to fit together right.
“This is insane,” I said one afternoon after an hour of comparing lives. “I mean, what are the odds?”
“Maybe it’s a joke.” Alan grinned. “Or maybe the universe is screwing with us.”
I laughed. “If this is a cosmic prank, it’s a damn good one.”
He raised his cup in a mock toast. “To the multiverse.”
I clinked mine against his. Close—but not touching.
Day 12
“I used to think about running away,” Alan admitted, stirring his coffee. “Leaving my job, my life. Starting over somewhere else.”
“Why didn’t you?”
He shrugged. “I love them too much.”
I nodded. I understood. We joked about switching places. But it was just a joke.
Day 20
Without meaning to, we always sat at the center of the café.
I only noticed it one afternoon when I tried to slide my chair a little closer to his and felt… resistance. Nothing physical. Just a feeling, like stepping too close to the edge of a cliff.
Alan noticed, too. He frowned. “We never cross this line, do we?”
I hesitated. “Huh. Guess not.”
Neither of us tested it. Something about our meetings felt inevitable. Like two trains running parallel, never meant to intersect. Until the day we did. And the world stopped.
Day 25
It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t special.
Alan reached out to shake my hand, the way friends do. Instinctively, I took it.
For the first time, we touched.
Time cracked. I could feel it—hear it—like a frozen lake splintering beneath my feet. The café, the people, the hum of the world—all fell into absolute stillness.
Alan’s hand was warm in mine, his grip just as firm as my own. His eyes widened in panic.
“What’s happening?” His voice didn’t echo, didn’t carry. It just hung in the frozen air, meaningless.
I tried to pull away.
Too late.
Light swallowed us whole.
Day…?
When I opened my eyes, I was sitting alone.
My coffee was still warm. The café buzzed with normalcy. Nothing had changed.
Except for me.
I had memories. Memories that weren’t mine—but were. A childhood by the lake. Late-night talks with a woman I loved. A job I thrived in. My mind reeled as two lives folded into one, like puzzle pieces snapping together.
I was Alan.
But which one?
I pressed a hand to my chest, my breathing uneven. Did I lose myself? Did I gain something greater? I didn’t know. But as I stood and walked away from the café—toward my home, my fiancée, my perfect life—one truth settled deep in my bones. I finally had everything I ever wanted. And I had no idea if that was a good thing.
