The coffee shop stood at the far end of a block where foot traffic gave way to half-empty patios and the slow churn of weekday lunch crowds. Theo had walked past it a dozen times, never quite registering the place except as a landmark between parking lots. Kristy claimed the back booth within seconds of stepping inside, moving with a certainty that made the rest of the patrons look as if they were merely renting their space.

  She kept her sunglasses on even though the light inside was warm and forgiving, diffused through frosted glass and filtered by the yellowing leaves of a fake ficus in the corner. The lenses caught the reflection of the street behind them, and for a moment Theo thought he saw himself doubled in her eyes, smaller and less composed than he would have liked.

  She slid into the seat, exhaling through her nose. “I feel like I owe you another apology,” she said, fingers tracing the rim of the ceramic sugar caddy. “I’m not usually this much of a disaster.”

  “You’re underselling yourself,” Theo replied, settling across from her. “Most disasters have a certain logic. You, I haven’t figured out yet.”

  He saw her mouth twitch, a flash of white teeth as she considered whether to take it as a compliment or a warning. She picked up a menu, holding it at a perfect perpendicular to the table, but her gaze never touched the page.

  The waiter appeared, an undergrad in a wrinkled apron, and Theo let Kristy order first. She chose a plain coffee—black, “hot as possible”—and waited for him to follow. He went with the same, though the menu promised a flight of single-origin pour overs and a selection of pastries that sounded more complicated than his engineering degree.

  When the waiter left, Kristy peeled at the corner of a sugar packet, not tearing it open, just worrying the edge until it frayed. “You always do this?” she asked. “Meet strange women, walk them through parking garages, ply them with caffeine?”

  Theo shrugged, stretching his arms across the back of the booth. “I like to think of it as community outreach. Also, I had nothing else planned for today.” He left the rest unspoken, but she picked it up anyway.

  “I’m not, like, running from anything,” Kristy said. “I just needed a minute to breathe. You ever feel like the world’s watching and your anxiety just goes crazy?”

  Theo thought of the endless rows of cubicles at Apex, the half-heard rumors, his brother’s relentless goading. “Only every time I try to do anything remotely interesting.”

  She grinned, this time letting it reach her eyes. “Good. Then you won’t judge me for being jumpy.”

  The coffee arrived. She gripped the cup with both hands, letting the steam fog her glasses. She didn’t remove them, just nudged them higher up her nose.

  Theo asked, “so what do you do?”

  “Do you want to hear my cover story or the truth?” she asked, setting the cup down but not releasing it.

  He studied her for a second, weighing the edges of the question. “Whichever is more interesting.”

  Kristy looked away, toward the plate-glass window and the spill of sunlight across the tile floor. “Okay, cover story. I work in entertainment consulting. It’s mostly menial work, but often I have to travel. A lot of NDAs, a lot of moving parts.” She delivered the words with a cadence too practiced to be wholly spontaneous.

  “Does that mean you’re secretly a spy?” Theo asked, half-smiling.

  “No, but it means I can’t talk about most of my work,” she said. “And not without boring myself to death.”

  He sipped his coffee, letting her own the silence. She seemed grateful for it, as if each answer came with a built-in cooldown period. After a few moments, she added, “The truth is I like music, and my dad. I’m trying to figure out what else there is.” She paused, then, “What about you?”

  He looked down at his hands, thumbs worrying the seam of the paper sleeve. “I write code,” he said, as if admitting a minor vice. “Not the fun kind. Mostly back-end, database stuff. But sometimes I pretend I’m fixing things that actually matter.”

  She snorted, a sound that broke through the performance. “Hey, databases run the world. Or at least the part that keeps Amazon from losing my packages.”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “Or from sending you a thousand of them by mistake,” he said. “Which has happened. Twice.”

  She laughed for real, the sound bouncing off the wood-paneled wall behind her. The people at the next table glanced over, then dismissed them as just another couple on a fun date.

  Kristy’s shoulders loosened, and she leaned into the booth’s corner, letting her guard relax by visible degrees. She toyed with a spoon, spinning it so the handle tapped out a steady rhythm on the tabletop.

  Theo asked, “So what kind of music?”

  She hesitated, as if calculating what was safe to share. “Anything that feels like an escape,” she said finally. “I grew up on old-school R&B and gospel, then shifted to indie stuff in high school. Lately, it’s been a lot of pop. The really embarrassing, dance-in-your-kitchen kind.”

  “Nothing embarrassing about that,” he said, meaning it. “I once listened to the same Carly Rae Jepsen album for an entire month. Got my best performance review that year.”

  “Correlation is not causation,” she teased.

  “Says who?”

  She grinned again, this time holding his gaze for longer than before. The sunglasses made her unreadable, but her mouth was open and loose, the edges curved with something close to delight.

  The coffee cooled. They refilled from the carafe on the table, and Kristy didn’t even bother with sugar this time. The conversation drifted from music to travel to the quirks of mall architecture. She confessed to a childhood spent in “air-conditioned wonderlands,” her first real rebellion a pilfered Wetzel’s Pretzel at age eight. Theo matched her story with his own: a botched attempt to hack the arcade’s prize counter, resulting in nothing but a lifetime ban from Starkey’s Arcade

  They went back and forth, the stories small and unremarkable but growing in warmth as the afternoon deepened. Every time a new customer entered the café, Kristy’s posture tensed, but it always softened again within seconds. Theo caught the pattern and, without commenting on it, made sure to block the front door so no one could see her while entering.

  At one point, she slid her sunglasses to the top of her head, revealing eyes that were sharp and a little bloodshot, rimmed with fatigue and something else—relief, maybe, or the aftershock of anxiety slowly receding. She let them rest there, propped like a tiara, as she asked him about his favorite books, his weirdest family holiday, the most trouble he’d ever gotten into at work.

  He surprised himself with how much he enjoyed the questions, how much he wanted to keep her there, keep her talking. It wasn’t like the other dates he’d been on, the ones that felt like interviews conducted by people trying to maximize return on investment. With Kristy, even the silences felt full.

  Eventually, the sun shifted, throwing a band of gold across the floor that inched closer to their table. Kristy watched the light, then said, “You know, this is the first time I’ve actually just…sat somewhere. In weeks, maybe.”

  Theo raised an eyebrow. “You don’t do a lot of sitting?”

  “Not like this,” she said, voice dropping. “Mostly I’m in transit. One place to another. I forget what it’s like to just stop.”

  He wanted to reach across and touch her hand, but he kept his fingers laced in his lap, the impulse contained but not lost.

  She checked her phone once, quickly, then set it face down on the table. When he glanced at the screen, she grinned. “Not checking the time. Just making sure the world hasn’t ended.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather be the last to know?” he asked.

  She considered. “Yeah. I think I would.”

  The café crowd thinned. The only other patrons were a couple of college kids sharing a laptop and a woman grading papers, red pen moving in decisive strokes.

  Theo signaled the waiter for another round, but Kristy waved him off. “I should get going soon,” she said, though she didn’t move.

  He nodded, not disappointed so much as hopeful for another chance. He wondered if she felt the same.

  She lifted her sunglasses, weighing them in her hand, then met his gaze directly. “This was nice,” she said, and he believed her. “I didn’t expect to have a good time today.”

  “I didn’t expect to spill coffee on a complete stranger,” he replied, “so we’re even.”

  She laughed, then sobered. “You’re easy to talk to.”

  “Same,” he said. “About you, I mean.”

  A moment passed, thick but not awkward. She leaned forward, elbows on the table, and he mirrored her.

  “Next time,” she said, “I’m picking the place. Somewhere quieter. Or we could just meet in the parking lot and stage another collision.”

  He smiled, already picturing it. “I’ll bring a helmet.”

  The waiter returned, leaving the check without a word. Kristy reached for her wallet, but Theo intercepted, shaking his head. “Community outreach,” he reminded her. “Let me.”

  She rolled her eyes but relented, sliding out of the booth and stretching her arms overhead. “Well,” she said, “I’m officially out of hiding.”

  “Mission accomplished.”

  They stepped outside, the city air bright and just a little cooler. She stood on the curb, hands deep in the hoodie pockets, and regarded him with a look that was softer than anything she’d shown in the mall.

  “Thanks for the coffee,” she said.

  He hesitated, then asked, “Can I see you again?”

  Kristy looked up, blinking against the sun, and for a split second she looked like she might say no. Then she smiled, small but real. “I’d like that,” she said. “Maybe next time I’ll wear something less…incognito.”

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “It suits you.”

  She shook her head, then, with a little wave, walked off down the street. Theo watched her go, the navy of the hoodie a bright line against the faded concrete, until she turned the corner and disappeared.

  He stood for a while, feeling the aftertaste of their conversation settle in his chest. For once, it didn’t feel like something he needed to analyze or fix. It just felt good.

  He walked back to his car, replaying their talk in his head, already looking forward to whatever happened next.