The Meeting
1644 Words
Lena didn’t sleep that night. Not truly.
Her body rested, but her mind worked like a machine set to full throttle. She replayed the words on that online forum over and over, mouthing them aloud like a prayer:
“I’ve been dreaming of the same woman for three months. I know her name is Lena. I don’t know how I know that.”
The screen burned in her vision even after she shut her laptop. She had found him. Miles Obiora. Systems engineer. Lagos.
He was real.
And he remembered her.
The implications of it all were too massive to absorb. Her fingers hovered over her keyboard, unsure what to do. Should she message him? What would she say? Hi, I think we’ve been meeting in our dreams. Want to talk?
She shook her head and closed the lid.
Too soon. Too raw.
She needed to think.
________________________________________
The next morning, Lena skipped class and took a walk. It was warm, the first time in weeks that the air felt breathable. Ibadan was alive in the usual way—traffic, chatter, the sound of vendors yelling prices over the hum of engines. She kept walking, not aiming for anything in particular, until she ended up near Agodi Gardens.
She hadn’t been there in over a year.
The place was quieter than the main roads, tucked just enough away to mute the noise. Families lounged in the shaded areas, and a few joggers passed by. Lena found a bench near the koi pond and sat down.
The moment she sat, a strong sense of familiarity wrapped around her like a second skin.
It was subtle, but unmistakable. She had been here before—not in waking life, but somewhere else. The curve of the path, the shape of the trees, even the smell of the air. She closed her eyes and let herself sink into the sensation.
In a dream, this place had been different. It was raining. The trees were darker, heavier with water, and Miles had been standing just across the bridge.
“Why here?” she had asked him.
“Because this is where you remember.”
________________________________________
She stood slowly and walked the path to the small arched bridge crossing the pond. A couple was taking photos at the far end, but otherwise, it was quiet.
Lena stopped at the center and looked over the edge.
No visions. No sudden flashbacks. Just water and orange koi fish circling themselves in lazy patterns.
Still, her heart raced.
If he had been dreaming of her the same way she dreamed of him, then perhaps—just perhaps—they had crossed paths in real life. Maybe once. Maybe never. But something tied them together in a way that made rational explanation feel clumsy.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket.
She pulled it out: a new email notification. U.I. Research Coordinator – Update on placement logistics.
She sighed, opened it absently.
As she skimmed through the usual scheduling information, her eyes locked on a line in the middle of the text:
“You have been reassigned for the upcoming project review meeting to Lagos, for in-person observation at a systems firm—Omnitech Solutions—this Friday.”
Lena froze.
She read it again. Then a third time.
She hadn’t requested Lagos. She hadn’t even considered it.
Her fingers tightened around the phone.
Omnitech.
She googled the company.
Top of the page: Omnitech Solutions – Lagos HQ – Digital Infrastructure & Systems Engineering.
And then, just below, in a LinkedIn snippet:
Miles Obiora – Systems Engineer, Omnitech Solutions.
Her breath caught in her throat.
The reassignment wasn’t random.
________________________________________
The days between Tuesday and Friday stretched and shrank depending on how distracted she kept herself. Her body moved through routines—schoolwork, light packing, confirming logistics with her supervisor—but her mind was elsewhere, anticipating what felt like a meeting written in another lifetime.
She didn’t dream again during those nights. It worried her, but she tried to stay grounded. If the dreams had brought them together, then perhaps now they were stepping aside.
Reality was about to catch up.
________________________________________
Friday. Lagos. 11:05 AM.
The Omnitech building was modern, polished glass and steel, with a cool interior that smelled faintly of air conditioning and citrus-scented cleaning fluid. Lena adjusted her blazer and tried to focus on the presentation materials tucked into her bag.
She wasn’t here for Miles. Officially, she was shadowing a review session. Her group had split up into teams, and she had been paired with a staff coordinator named Seyi, who greeted her at the lobby with a firm handshake.
“Your timing is perfect,” he said as they walked toward the elevators. “We’re reviewing a migration issue on the server clusters. Nothing flashy, but it’ll give you a sense of what we do here.”
“That sounds great,” Lena replied, her voice steadier than she felt.
Her eyes scanned the faces passing them in the hallway. Engineers, admin staff, interns. No sign of him.
The elevator doors opened, and Seyi gestured for her to step inside.
“What team will I be observing?” she asked casually.
“Server Infrastructure. You’ll be sitting in with Miles—he’s one of our top systems guys.”
The elevator door slid shut.
Lena’s knees nearly buckled.
________________________________________
They stepped into the room at the end of the hall. Glass-walled, with a long table and several occupied seats. People were already settling into a meeting.
She tried to breathe.
Seyi introduced her quickly. “This is Lena Adewale—student observer from UI. She’ll be shadowing this session.”
A few nods from the table. Friendly but distracted.
And then he walked in.
Miles.
He entered from the other side of the room, notebook in hand, his eyes scanning a paper before glancing up.
They locked eyes.
It was one second. Maybe two.
But it was enough.
Everything slowed.
Recognition flickered in his eyes—shocked, confused, but unmistakably real. She saw his posture shift, his breath catch. The same face. The same eyes. The man from her dreams.
He blinked once.
And then, like a curtain falling, he masked it.
He took a seat across from her, nodding briefly in her direction, as if she were just another student.
Lena sat still, heart slamming in her chest.
She didn’t imagine it.
He saw her.
He knew.
________________________________________
The meeting crawled by, filled with words she didn’t absorb—terms like “load balancer failover” and “latency optimization.” She nodded when appropriate, took half-hearted notes, but her focus never wavered from him.
Every so often, she felt his eyes flick to her. Always brief. Always guarded.
When the meeting ended, people filtered out quickly.
Lena remained seated, pretending to pack her things more slowly than necessary.
Miles lingered by the whiteboard, pretending to study a diagram.
And then—finally—he walked toward her.
They stood alone.
“Lena,” he said.
Her name on his lips sounded exactly like it did in her dreams.
“You remember,” she said quietly.
He nodded, expression unreadable.
“How long have you known?”
He hesitated. “Since January. Maybe longer. But I didn’t know if you were real.”
“I wasn’t sure either.”
They stood in silence.
She wanted to reach out. To ask a hundred questions. To hold his hand like she had in those impossible other versions of themselves. But something about the way he stood—guarded, tense—told her not to move too fast.
“This is... overwhelming,” she admitted.
He exhaled. “That’s one word for it.”
She gave a small, almost sad smile. “What do we do now?”
He looked away, toward the hallway. “I don’t know.”
________________________________________
They met again that evening, after work.
He picked a quiet café—nothing like the one from their dreams. It was brightly lit, with modern chairs and cold metal tables. She ordered tea. He got black coffee. Neither of them touched their drinks.
They talked.
For hours.
About the dreams. The feelings. The impossible details. Places neither of them had visited yet but both remembered. Events that hadn’t happened but felt real. Conversations they had never had in waking life—but finished sentences for.
It was like reading pages from the same story written in two languages.
He told her about the lake.
She told him about the voice calling her name.
They laughed, nervously at first. Then genuinely.
And somewhere in between, they started believing—not just in each other, but in something greater than what they could explain.
“You know what’s strange?” he asked.
“What?”
“I used to think I was just broken. Like, emotionally. But ever since these dreams started… I’ve felt like I’m becoming someone I forgot I was.”
Lena stared at him.
“Like remembering the shape of your own shadow,” she said.
He nodded. “Exactly.”
________________________________________
They walked together for a long while afterward. Past shops shutting for the night. Past honking taxis and blinking streetlights. They didn’t hold hands. They didn’t kiss.
But the space between them felt charged. Full.
And then they stood at her hotel entrance.
“I don’t know what this is,” she whispered. “But I know it’s not nothing.”
Miles looked at her like he was trying to memorize her face. “I don’t want it to be nothing.”
A pause.
“Will I see you tonight?” she asked.
He smiled, a quiet smile. “You always do.”
She watched him walk away. Her chest ached.
But it was a good kind of ache.
The kind that comes from remembering.
________________________________________
- Writer
