Three days later, you return, which is too soon to call it a coincidence and too late to pretend it wasn't on purpose. You told yourself you had work to do and wore a bag over your shoulder to prove it.
Mid-morning made the café bright. A toddler announced he had found his shoe as if it were gold. Someone in a booth pitched a start-up about lemons, which sounded more interesting than it should have.
The pastry case glowed with the kind of butter you have to earn.
Micah was behind the machine again. Hair a little messier, sleeves the same unbothered roll. Ink smudge at the base of his thumb like he'd written something down and decided not to wipe it away. He glanced up as if he'd been expecting nothing at all, and for a thin moment they were in the same room on purpose.
"Latte?" he asked, and then, the hint of a grin,
"Living dangerously… extra hot?"
Your mouth remembered how to smile without checking in first.
"I'm told risk builds character."
"Some of us prefer our character already built," he said, uncapping the marker. "Name?"
You give him your name.. He wrotes quickly, then paused. "One 'n' or two?"
"Two."
"Good," he said softly, like the tiniest part of the world had just clicked into its correct place. When he handed over the cup, your fingers did not touch,
a decision that still felt like contact. Heat jumped across the skin of your palm.
Taking a table against the wall you open the laptop, Stare at the blinking, patient cursor.. You, were not so patient.
When you look up, you let yourself look longer this time. He adjusted the grinder with a practiced twist. He teased a gray-bearded regular for forgetting his punch card and then slipped a free cookie into the bag like kindness could be smuggled. He turned the music down when a baby fussed and met the mother's eyes with the quick nod of someone who didn't want thanks.
A girl near the door swung a canvas tote in a wide arc and caught you shoulder, square on. The cup tipped, hot liquid sliding toward your wrist.
Two hands arrived—steady, easy—closing around her forearms and anchoring you, just enough.
"Got you," Micah said, voice close, warm with steam and something that felt like early evening.
"God, I'm sorry," the girl with the tote said. "I didn't see—"
"It's fine," you answered, surprised to find it true.
He releases you slowly, as if he were setting the air down gently. "Tragic latte spill averted. Hero status pending."
You gave him a look, hoping it read as grateful and only a little amused. "Consider it approved."
He pressed a hand to his heart in mock gravity and went back behind the counter like he hadn't just touched a stranger and given your nervous system a new tempo.
On the walk home, the town rearranged itself by half an inch. The thrift store with the basket of scarves outside looked like a place you might actually stop. The bookshop cat appeared in the window as if he'd been waiting specifically for you, which is what cats believe about everyone. A teenager skateboarded past, knees soft, unafraid of falling. Somewhere, a wind chime did what it was built to do.
At home, you put the laptop on the table, not because you planned to work but because sometimes, objects need to hear you haven't given up on them. Standing in the threshold of your daughter's room and counted hair ties like beads. In the mirror, a photo of the two of the two of you, was taped at an angle that had survived a move. Your face in it, looked younger than you remember being. Or maybe not younger; just less careful.
That night, broccoli steamed on the stove and you salted it precisely and tasted actual green. You text her sister back with something that wasn't a lie. The house was quiet again, and yet…
Micah:
Rules are useful until they aren't. He had one about never writing songs about customers because people aren't raw materials, and if you start mining them for ore you forget how to see them as mountains.
He broke the rule by a hair.
After closing—chairs flipped, floor swept, espresso machine polished until it reflected back some thinner version of himself—he pulled out his phone and opened Notes.
extra hot / two n's
not breakable—just carefully carried
laugh like the edge of something warm
He could hear Lee clowning him for the poetry of it, but the alternative was letting it get away.
Anyway, half the point of songs was catching what would otherwise evaporate.
His sister texted a photo of their mother's new pothos draped over a cheap trellis, vines pretending they'd built the room themselves. She named it Gloria, his sister wrote. Prepare appropriate reverence.
Gloria forever, he typed back, and meant it. You don't mock the things people use to keep going.
He thought about the way the woman had said approved like she was authorizing his joke to enter the record. He thought about the fraction of a second his hands had been around her forearms and how he had known when to let go—how he'd wanted to and not wanted to at exactly the same time.
The gig on Friday was a small room with a stubbornly honest sound system. He'd play three originals and a cover he loved more than he should. He wasn't trying to be famous; he was trying to make rooms where people could put down whatever they'd been balancing. Sometimes, if he did it right, their faces changed.
He added one more line:
chorus opens like a door that was never locked
Micah locked his phone, turned the key in the café door, and stepped into a town that knew enough about you to nod and kept enough distance to let you become a new story. Streetlights hummed. Somewhere, a wind chime did what it was built to do.
He hummed too, not chasing the melody, just walking beside it until it decided to stay.