You were certain you’d met her before.

Not in a vague, maybe-in-a-dream way. You remembered details—too many to be imagined. A cracked vinyl couch. Cigarette smoke curling toward the ceiling. The sound of rain against a window that didn’t quite close.

Marla Singer remembered it too.

You realized it the first time your eyes met across a room neither of you were supposed to be in. She stared at you like she’d seen a ghost—then smiled, slow and knowing.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”

Your stomach dropped. “You remember?”

She laughed softly. “I was wondering when you’d show up again.”

Again.

You sat together afterward, somewhere dim and forgotten. A laundromat at midnight. A bus stop that never had buses. Somewhere that felt like it existed just for the two of you.

“We met years ago,” Marla said confidently. “You were quieter then. Still lying to yourself.”

“You had shorter hair,” you replied without thinking. “And you kept saying nothing was real unless someone else saw it.”

Her smile faded.

That’s when you knew this wasn’t coincidence.

You started asking people about her. Therapists. Clerks. People who should remember.

No one did.

“She’s not on the sign-in sheet.” “There’s no record of her.” “Are you sure you weren’t alone?”

Marla got the same answers about you.

“It’s like we’re erased,” she said one night, voice unusually serious. “Like we only exist when we’re together.”

“That’s not possible,” you said.

She leaned closer. “Then why do you feel real only when I’m here?”

The question haunted you.

Time became unreliable. Memories overlapped. Sometimes you remembered conversations she swore never happened. Sometimes she finished your sentences before you spoke.

“You ever think,” she murmured once, staring into nothing, “that we’re the same mistake made twice?”