Chapter Eight

Chapter 8 “Our eyes met”

“Have you ever noticed that when you desperately try to find something you’ve lost, it seems to deliberately ‘hide away’ from you? But the moment you let go and stop searching, it magically reappears?”

“Sometimes, this strange rule of the universe happens in love, too.”

Tiny beads of water slowly slid down the side of the empty cocktail glass, spreading across the bar’s surface.

The woman gently wiped the corner of her lips. Little by little, she felt the silence around her grow so deep that even the air seemed to have vanished.   

She glanced across the bar and found something odd about the full-length mirror in the far corner. 

Something didn’t look quite right. What she saw in the mirror wasn’t a reflection. It felt like a view into another space - a bar in some other place.

Curiosity drew her forward, step by step, from her seat to the mirror. 

Inside the mirror, she saw another bar counter, where a man was sitting. He turned his head to look back. 

Their eyes met.

His gaze paused. Then slowly, step by step, the man began walking towards the mirror, stopping right in front of the woman. 

She stared at the man in the mirror, hardly believing what she was seeing. 
He looked back at her, his expression mirrored hers - puzzled, bewildered. 

In that moment, their eyes locked, and time seemed to come to a standstill. 

What stood between the man and the woman - was it just a mirror?
Or was it a doorway to the other side?