He believes in logic, spreadsheets, and bourbon. 

But when a stranger with haunting eyes pretends to be his fiancée—and then vanishes—he’s left with a sense of knowing he can’t explain... but also can’t ignore.

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➤ MEMORY THAT BURNS WITHOUT FLAME

[8:35 PM — The Cloister Café, Beacon Hill]

 

I once stumbled across a theory in a dusty psychology article during a flight.

The premise was simple yet unsettling: the body remembers things—people—even when the brain cannot.

It's like how catching a whiff of vanilla can hit you in your gut before your mind has a chance to trace its origins. Or how déjà vu might be less coincidence and more a type of muscle memory from forgotten lives.

That girl—she was a stranger to my mind, yet my body knew her.

That undeniable, primal recognition carved deep into some forgotten corner between instinct and memory. A knowing that doesn’t rely on words but thrives in feelings—raw and visceral, like stumbling across a bruise you don’t remember earning.

And her eyes?

Jesus.

I’d seen those eyes before.

In smoke.
In silence.
In dreams that I could never catch hold of—dreams that slipped away the moment I woke, leaving behind shadowy fragments clinging to me like whispers.

It was always the same scene: a little girl standing amidst smoke, her eyes wide with fear.
Sometimes she cried; sometimes her mouth would open in an unheard scream.
But always…those eyes.

✦✦✦

➤ GHOSTED BY A GHOST
8:37 PM — The Cloister Café, Beacon Hill

 For a moment, I froze, staring at the empty chair where she’d been sitting moments earlier.

It felt like it might suddenly grow a mouth and explain my entire tragic backstory in a dramatic monologue.

No phone buzzed to break the moment, no meaningless distraction to pull me out of my trance.
Just the ghost of her perfume lingering in the air, sweet yet grounded, vanilla threaded with rebellion. It mixed with the sharpness of bourbon still lingering on my tongue.

I had asked for her name.
She hadn’t offered one.
Of course not.

With an exhale that came slower than I’d intended, I slumped against the worn leather booth until it groaned under my weight like an old grudge. In that moment, everything felt incomplete—a puzzle missing crucial pieces.

It wasn’t just coincidence. No, what I felt—what she stirred—was something deeper, something rooted beyond logic or reason.

The brush of her fingers on my jaw seemed as though they'd traced its contours before.
The sound of her voice struck chords inside me I didn’t know still existed.

My body yearned to follow her out the door even as my mind demanded restraint: “SIT. STAY. DON’T BE A CREEP."

For once, though, the absence of answers didn’t enrage me.
It simply unmoored me.

I’d survived corporate betrayals that could turn your stomach, hostile takeovers that ate at your soul, and Google rabbit holes at 3 AM searching: (‘Can stress cause spontaneous human combustion?’).

Yet here I was, confounded by a glance from a girl who unraveled me in ways I didn’t understand.

Unsettled and haunted—or maybe just curious—I sat there in silence as if the warmth she left behind could somehow piece together this aching familiarity.

For the first time in years, I didn’t feel the usual itch to move, to chase the next thing.

I just wanted to stay in the moment.