It arrived on a Tuesday.
Not a significant Tuesday. Not one Leo had circled or counted toward.
Just a Tuesday in the middle of an ordinary morning shift, when the café was at that mid-rush lull where the line had thinned but the machines were still warm and Aiden was doing something involving inventory in the back that required occasional frustrated sighing.
Leo was wiping down the counter.
His phone buzzed in his apron pocket.
He almost didn't check it. He'd stopped checking his phone during shifts weeks ago a deliberate decision, because checking and finding nothing was its own particular kind of exhausting, and he'd decided waiting was easier when you weren't actively doing it.
But he checked.
Meridian Arts Institute Admissions Office
His hand went still on the counter.
The café kept going around him. The machine hissed somewhere behind him.
A customer at table three asked for the wifi password and got no response.
Leo opened the email.
Dear Mr. Leo Michael,
