He gets to the front of the line and orders and I’m still staring and my ears prickle, trying to hear his voice. Would I even know if it’s him by his voice? I don’t know and I can’t hear anything anyway; the place is too loud.

When he looks around, trying to find a table, all I want to do is grab him and say, ‘Hey, you can sit here with me. Are you him?’

Our eyes meet and he doesn’t look away for a few seconds. Is it him? Did he recognize me? How could he? He doesn’t know what I look like.

I get up and I’m about to do something even crazier than coming all the way to Carmel. I’m about to just go to him and ask, when he turns around and leaves. And before I know it, his car speeds away.

Twenty-Seven

It takes me minutes to recover. I don’t know why, but I just… I thought that it might be him. How incredible would it be if I randomly find him on my first day here?

But I don’t know if it’s him, and I can’t do this to myself whenever I see a Lift driver. I’m sure there’s more than one in Carmel.

There’s no sign of Ethan’s twin, Celine, so I have to come up with a plan. Another plan.

The line calms down after a while, and I make my way to the press shelf to see if they have any local papers. Maybe, I don’t know, maybe there’s something in there about him. An event, a reading, or whatever it is that authors do. A party I could go to, uninvited. I chuckle to myself. Where are these crazy thoughts coming from?

The server stops by to ask if I need anything else and if I’m enjoying the food, just as I’m closing the second magazine. Nothing about him in either of them.

And just as I’m telling her I’m all set and wonder if I should ask about the owner and how to do it, I hear a man calling out, “Celine!”

My head snaps in the direction of the voice.

The server turns too. “Just give me a minute, Hugo,” she says, and then turning to me with a big smile on her face, “Duty calls.”

My face drops. She’s Celine. She’s Ethan’s twin sister. My God, she looks fantastic for thirty-three. I look old compared to her.

I met her last year and I didn’t know who she was. Funny if not ironic. I study her, trying to find similarities with the man in the photo. She’s tall, slender and has light brown hair with sandy highlights, and light brown-amber eyes. She’s very pretty. He probably has brown eyes too and that short hair in the photo is most surely brown. So, I guess they do look alike.

As the fascination fades, I’m left with the question—now what? Should I ask about her brother? And how? If I tell her the truth, it might not go well. If I say I’m a fan, it won’t help because I doubt she’ll offer any information about Ethan. She seems nice, and I don’t want to lie to her, but I don’t know what to do. I should’ve thought about all these things before I came. I get that I went from never doing anything in the spur of the moment to doing everything in the spur of the moment, but this is simply stupid.