this time.

I hit the drive-through before the two-hour drive, the kind of stop you make out of ritual more than thirst. My whole body was buzzing with anticipation. Thin, electric, almost adolescent. It felt ridiculous to be that eager, but there it was, humming under my skin.

The lot was empty when I pulled in. No cars at the speaker. No cars at the window. The cafe inside, usually crowded with commuters and scattered regulars, sat hollow and fluorescent, chairs stacked on tables as if they’d closed early or never opened at all.

When I rolled up to the window, the barista slid the drink toward me with a practiced smile.

“It was paid for,” she said.

I blinked.
“Sorry?”

“The person in front of you covered it.”

She said it like it was nothing, like generosity was still a normal part of the world. I looked ahead.
The drive-through lane stretched into an empty curve. No cars turning. No brake lights fading.
I looked inside. No customers, no movement, just the hum of refrigeration and a single employee wiping down an already-clean counter. There hadn’t been a car in front of me. There hadn’t been anyone.

Still, I nodded like this made sense, like free coffee materializes all the time in deserted parking lots before sunrise. I took the cup. It was warm enough to fog the air between my hands.

On the side, written in black marker, neater than the usual scribble, almost careful-

Can’t wait to see you.

For a moment I just sat there, idling in the empty lane, the cup warming my palms while a thin chill threaded down my spine. It wasn’t the message itself. I’d received sweeter ones, needier ones, ones that tried harder. It was the way it appeared: unassigned, unearned, delivered by a ghost who somehow knew my route and my timing and the exact words that would make my pulse hitch.

I traced the letters with my thumb.

The handwriting wasn’t familiar in any obvious way, but there was something in the slant, the impatience of it, that triggered a recognition so subtle it felt borrowed. Like remembering a dream someone else told you about.

I checked the rearview mirror, expecting, what, exactly? A car easing out of a blind spot? Someone ducking around a corner? A silhouette that made sense of the barista’s claim? Nothing. Just the gray morning, the faint suggestion of rain, and my own reflection staring back at me with the kind of expression people have before admitting they’re afraid.

I don’t know why I kept holding the cup, why I brought it closer as if proximity might unlock an answer. Maybe I wanted to believe it was him. Maybe I needed a reason for the hope lifting in my chest, light but insistent, the way hope always is when you’ve already chosen someone in your mind long before reality can keep up.

But this didn’t feel like him. Not exactly. It felt like intention without presence. Desire without body. A message sent from a version of the world where cause and effect had loosened their grip.

I set the drink in the cup holder and pulled out of the lane. The lot was still empty behind me.

As I turned onto the highway, the sky broke open with a thin wash of pale sunlight… weak, indecisive, the kind of light that makes everything look slightly doubled. The road stretched ahead, flat and quiet, and for the first twenty miles I told myself nothing strange had happened, that I was reading into coincidence, that anticipation can warp detail until it resembles omen.

But then I lifted the cup to take a sip.

And that was when I noticed the second message. Fainter, smudged, written beneath the first in the same deliberate hand:

You’re early this time.

My stomach dropped, clean and cold.
This time.

I tightened my grip on the wheel.
The buzzing under my skin shifted into something else entirely, still electric, but darker, threaded with the unmistakable knowledge that this wasn’t a gift, wasn’t a gesture, wasn’t even romantic.

It was a warning.
Or a memory.
Or something I hadn’t yet lived through.

And I hadn’t even reached the city.