I Had Coffee With the Wrong Woman for Twenty Minutes

My blind date sat down, smiled, and said, “You look just like your photo.”

There was only one problem. I had never sent her a photo.

My friend had set the whole thing up. “Table twelve, one o’clock, her name is Priya,” he’d said. So when a woman walked straight to table twelve, sat down, and started talking to me like we had been chatting online for weeks, I didn’t question it.

I probably should have questioned it when she said, “You’re funnier in person, Mark.”

My name is Daniel.

But she said it so warmly, and the coffee had just arrived, and honestly, Mark sounded like he had excellent taste in cafés — so I nodded and became Mark.

For twenty minutes, I was the best version of Mark anyone could ask for. I asked about her job. I laughed at the right places. I even agreed that “we” should finally try that hiking trail, which Mark had apparently been avoiding since spring.

Then a second woman appeared at our table holding a phone and looking deeply unimpressed.

“Daniel?” she said.

Behind her stood a man holding two coffees, looking at my table companion the way I was looking at both of them.

“Mark?” my table companion said.

It turned out the café had given two couples the same table number by mistake — and all four of us had been too polite, or too nervous, to notice.

Priya looked at me. Mark looked at his date. Then Priya picked up her cup, sat down at the next table with Mark, and said, “Honestly? Let’s just start over. All of us.”

They were still talking when I left.

Priya texted me that night: “Wrong table. Right evening, though.”

Mark and his date are getting married in June.

We were both invited. Separately.