Apparently, it’s been four months since I last posted. If you’re an American, you can probably understand why. Life has been less than stellar in many ways at Chez Cook. But I continue to work to make my community a better place in the ways my body and mind will allow me to. (By the way, I recommend volunteering where and when you can. It makes such a difference in your life and the lives of others. I’ve had the opportunity to volunteer at our local public library a few times this year, and it’s been some of the most fun I’ve had in a while.)

Anyway, today is the day after many states’ elections, and while my local community had no candidates or ballot initiatives to vote on, many others in the United States are feeling a small bit of hope that their voices are finally being heard. To that end, here’s a little story about a meet cute involving time travel I wrote at the beginning of the year that never did find an audience elsewhere. I hope it makes you smile as much as it did me while I was writing it.

Missed Connections

by Amanda Cook

Missed Connection: You were a front desk temp at FlitBit’s headquarters. You were wearing a dress with sunflowers on it. I was the guy from R&D with the Star Trek pin you geeked out about when I stopped by for our mail. Wanna grab coffee? Saturday, January 25th, 11 am. The café at 3rd and Smith. I’ll have a copy of The Lord of the Rings.

#

At ten minutes to eleven, I stood at the café’s door, glaring at the back of a guy at a table for two, a copy of Tolkien’s famous work laying next to his steaming coffee mug. Despite his expensively tailored suit, his haircut and the set of his shoulders were like looking in a mirror.

Unreal. I had beaten myself to my own date.

I didn’t need to see his wrist to know how he’d done it. Closing the door before he saw me, I ran back to the lab for a FlitBit.

#

1st Attempt

I stood at the café’s door, a prototype FlitBit hidden under my sweater’s cuff. I had fiddled with the code and programmed it to jump me fifteen minutes earlier than I’d arrived before. I had thought that would give me enough time.

The Other Me was already there, sitting at the table, Tolkien by his coffee.

Deeply annoyed by my miscalculation, I tapped my wrist and jumped back to the lab.

#

2nd Attempt

I stood at the café’s door, a half an hour earlier than before.

The Other Me was already there.

I fumed and jumped back to the lab.

#

10th Attempt

I stood at the café’s door, three hours earlier.

The Other Me was already there.

#

?????th  Attempt

I stood at the café’s door just after the restaurant opened.

The Other Me was at the counter, ordering a coffee. His copy of Tolkien bulged from the pocket of his cashmere overcoat, taunting me.

I vibrated internally from too much of the lab’s burnt coffee, a whole load of anxiety, and zero sleep. My raggedy college sweatshirt stunk from countless takeout dinners I devoured while ruminating over code and paradox situations. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d shaved.

I stood there, utterly baffled. How was I not him already?

He sat at his—our—usual table and sipped his fresh coffee. My hot breath fogged up my glasses as a cold wind blasted around me from the still open door.

I almost jumped back to the lab.

Almost.

Instead, I pulled my sweatshirt’s hood low over my bloodshot eyes, ordered a coffee for myself, and chose a stool at a counter by the window, close enough to his table to observe, yet far enough away not to be noticed. He had his back to the door for some reason—probably to keep the space time continuum from collapsing if he got even a glimpse of me—which gave me the advantage. I could see outside, so I’d know if she showed up before he did.

At 11:10 am, he started fidgeting with his book, idly turning the pages and pretending to read. From the way he kept tugging on the cuff of his shirt sleeve, I knew what he was thinking.

Had she seen the ad? Did she even read the indie paper I—we?—posted it in?

If she had seen it, was she even interested in meeting me? Did she even remember me?

Had this—all of this—just been a waste of time? For both of us?

The door swung open, and I turned my head in time to see her hurry inside the warm café, blowing on and rubbing her cold, reddened fingers. The skirt of her sunflower dress swished around her thick winter boots. She wore a puffy parka over it and a black wool beret, her blond hair falling in waves around her wind-stung cheeks.

Finally noticing she had arrived, the Other Me shot up from his chair, embarrassing me in his eagerness to see her. I quickly slumped over my cold coffee to keep him from seeing me, but I was able to sneak a peek over my shoulder at him. He looked strangely debonair in an Armani suit I could never afford on my current salary, and when he waved at her, his sleeve cuff shifted enough to reveal a sleek, new FlitBit strapped to his wrist.

She waved shyly back at him—at me! But, really, at him—and after an awkward dance between them, she decided on a handshake instead of a hug. She sat at the table across from him—across from me—and said something I couldn’t hear over the late morning crowd. Whatever she’d said, it was enough to make the Other Me throw back his head and laugh.

She smiled her sunshiny smile then, the one that had grabbed my curious heart and wouldn’t let go when I first met her at work. Scowling on my stool by the window in my ratty, stinky hoodie, I wondered for the umpteenth time where I had gone wrong with my own FlitBit.

I also wondered when I would eventually get it right, as obviously, I had.

Hunched over the counter, I drank the dregs left in my coffee mug, desperately wishing it was me at that table and not . . . well, me.

But how could I be jealous? It was me! I was going to meet her someday (today) and get to know her better someday (today). Eventually. (Today.)

After about an hour, a couple of chairs behind me scraped against the tile floor, and from the corner of my eye, I watched them leave the café together. He offered her his arm as they walked past the window, and she took it willingly, chatting away about some subject I couldn’t make out through the glass. I wondered where they were going and what the future had in store for them.

For us, I reminded myself.

I thought about ordering another coffee to go and jumping back to the lab to work on my code again. But the number of hours, days, weeks, months—years?—between me and the future that had just left the café felt like an eternity from where I sat.

Sighing heavily, I rubbed my exhausted eyes, swallowing the tears that threatened to drip free.

“This seat taken?” a sweetly-pitched voice asked near my ear.

“No,” I said glumly.

“Great!” I felt the clunk of a mug on the counter as someone settled on the empty stool next to mine. “I’m so glad you decided to stick around this time. I was afraid you might leave again before I could say hi.”

I slowly dropped my hands from my eyes and looked over to find her—her!—grinning triumphantly at me.

“You don’t know how many times I’ve sat in the back of this place,” she said, “watching you open that door and deciding whether you were going to come in or not. But I’m glad you finally did, Joe. I’m Amelia, by the way.”

She stuck out her hand for me to shake. She wore the same sunflower dress and black wool beret as before, but a sleek, new FlitBit winked from her wrist.

It took me a moment to find any coherent words to speak aloud.

“But. Wait. Didn’t you just leave with—me?”

Amelia waved away my shock like I had asked her for the answer to the most trifling math problem. “Yeah, but that was ages ago. Longer than you could possibly know, really. And it took me that long to realize that he wasn’t the guy I wanted to meet today. Though, Let’s not talk about that right now,” she added, seeing the questions firing away in my brain.

She lifted her half-full coffee mug, and after nodding for me to do the same, clinked hers against mine. “Here’s to getting to know the old you, Joe. The real you,” she said and smiled in that way that grabbed my heart and would never let go.

THE END

Copyright (c) Amanda Cook, 2025

I hope you are doing the very best you can wherever you are right now. I hope you can find something everyday that makes you smile.

And, as always, thanks for reading.

A. Cook