I check my jacket pocket for my debit card and find that it’s missing.

“We’re square,” says Cillian.

“What? No, I can pay, I—I can’t find my card.”

“That’s why people carry wallets.” He grabs something from behind the counter and comes over with it. “I found it on the floor. Again. But there’s no charge.”

Again?

“Oh, that’s not—”

I take the unfamiliar card, about to say that it’s not mine when I see that it has my name on it. Meg A Bryan. It’s even got the right middle initial.

It’s a debit card for a bank I don’t recognize. It’s clearly well used, with an expiration date only a year from now. I look on the back and see my own signature there in the little white box. I haven’t seen it in a while—I usually sign Lana Lord these days. But it’s definitely mine.

“Goodnight, Meg. And hey, bring back my bloody dog, will you?”

He goes behind the bar, through a swinging door, and into what I assume to be the back kitchen.

Did he learn my name from the card? No, that doesn’t explain anything, because I don’t recognize this card. It’s not mine. Even though it really, really appears to be.

I take another bite of the sandwich as I put my coat back on, then grab the phone. Cillian comes back out with a scratched black bus tub and starts putting the Guinness and Jameson branded bar mats into it.

I shut the door behind me, seeing a last glimpse of Cillian before I go. He’s not looking at me, but I get the feeling that he was.

I hightail it back to the house.

I consider that maybe I somehow got canceled and now the world hates me. Then, because of this, I had lost my mind, time passed Rip Van Winkle–style, and now I’ve actually gotten my mind back. There was an old William Powell movie about that: he hits his head and, instead of getting amnesia, it turns out he had amnesia and he’s gotten his memory back. Maybe it’s that.

Or what if I was in a coma?

Oh God, what if I’m in my fifties or something, having lost decades of my life?

I open the phone and look at the calendar. No, it’s the year it’s supposed to be. And of course, if it was decades later, this phone would be an absolute relic.

I’d wonder if I’m dreaming, but of course I’m not. This isn’t what dreams feel like. They aren’t tangible, with buttery bread and cold walks in the middle of the night. At least not for me. My dreams never immerse me like that.