IRISH LOVESTORY - Coincidences don´t exist

 

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Coincidences don´t exist

One golden afternoon, I wandered through the quiet streets of Thomastown, past a small petrol station only five minutes from our house. My thoughts drifted far away, my head lost somewhere among the clouds, when suddenly someone called my name.

I turned once. Then again. No one.

Across the street stood only a stranger’s car, its tinted windows catching the light. The driver’s face tugged at some deep memory, but for a moment I couldn’t place it.

Then I focused. A cap. A pair of eyes. No—surely my mind was playing tricks. It couldn’t be…

“Hi, Teri. What are you doing here?”

The voice struck me like a sudden gust of wind. My heart leapt so violently it nearly landed on the pavement. Jack. My Jack. The Jack I’d lost.

All I could manage was a smile so wide it almost hurt.

“What am I doing here? What about you?” I stammered.

“I come here for Julian—Alice lives here,” he said, smiling as though we’d stumbled upon something magical. He looked as surprised as I felt.

For so long I had imagined this moment, though I never truly believed it would happen—least of all here, in the middle of an ordinary day. It was like a dream, only somehow better. We exchanged numbers quickly; I told him I lived nearby.

When we parted, promising to stay in touch, I floated down the street in a daze. After so many nights spent awake, after so much silence, he had appeared again as though conjured by fate.

Was it coincidence? Or the quiet hand of destiny leading me down that road?

I kept the meeting to myself. No one—not Sunny, not my friends—would understand. Jack became my small, sacred secret. In the evenings I sat on my bed, phone in hand, staring at his number as if it might explain the strange poetry of it all.

We wrote a few times, his words so familiar they made me ache. But I was with Sunny. And soon, Jack slipped away again—perhaps he lost his phone, perhaps something else. My life had shifted elsewhere, and I tried to keep pace with it.

Months later, I walked the same path. By now it was my daily route to work. The spot where I had seen Jack was empty. I crossed the street and spotted a young woman burdened with heavy shopping bags. Something told me—without reason—that it was Alice.

I had never seen her before.

I brushed the thought aside—until a boy appeared from behind her shadow, his head bowed, his steps slow and dragging. Julian.

It felt as though fate were playing a game of “guess who” with me. So this was Alice—just an ordinary girl. She didn’t wait for him to catch up, only called sharply, “Come on, Julian!”

He hopped after her like a small, weary rabbit. I knew he would have recognized me if he’d looked up—but perhaps it was better that he didn’t.

Not long after, I moved in with Sunny. He had found us—and a few of his employees—a small house in Thomastown. By chance, it was on the very street where I’d first seen Jack again.

The place was cold and unwelcoming, but I tried to make our room a little haven: silk sheets, small trinkets on the vanity, as if comfort could be conjured from fabric and glass. Sunny was kind, always gentle with his words. Slowly, I adjusted to this life, though it was far from what I had once imagined.

One day I learned from local friends that our house had been Alice’s. The discovery made me laugh out loud—what were the odds? So many threads knotted together in one place.

In a small blue room that Ahmed now occupied, I paused in the doorway and imagined Julian there. His laughter. His footsteps. The comfort he must once have felt. The thought was bittersweet. I wanted so badly to be part of his and Jack’s world again. At least now, in some strange way, I occupied a corner of their past.

Sunny’s bistro was in trouble, and he decided we should move to Carlow to make things easier. He offered me work there, and I agreed—partly for the change, partly to escape the damp, endless cold of that house. We had lived wrapped in sweaters, huddled around a small radiator while our breath fogged the air. Sometimes I half-joked about lighting a bonfire in the living room just to feel warmth again.

Then there was Jessie—Sunny’s son. A child so difficult he could test the patience of a saint.

One day, left in my care, he began by screaming, “I’m hungry!” and tearing around the room. I made him a sandwich.

“Don’t want it! Yuck!” he shrieked, shredding it into crumbs that landed butter-side down on the floor.

“What do you want?” I asked, counting silently to ten.

Golden Julian, I thought. He’d never made scenes like this—never complained, always ate what was given. Jessie was wild, and Sunny’s soft approach only encouraged it. Even his father couldn’t control him. If given sweets, Jessie would line them up, counting each one, and explode into screams if anyone dared take a single piece.

I tried to be kind. But when Sunny was the one dealing with Jessie, I was grateful for the reprieve.