It started like every other morning.
She walked in wearing that long, olive-green coat that made her look like she belonged in a black-and-white French film. Headphones already on. Hair braided to one side, still a little damp from the shower. Her notebook tucked under one arm, her fingers tapping an invisible beat against her cup before she even reached the counter.
I’d already been there for a while, halfway through my coffee, pretending to edit something important but mostly watching her reflection in the window across from me.
She noticed me before I noticed her noticing.
“You’re here early,” she said, sliding her bag off her shoulder and placing it in her usual seat.
“Trying to beat the rush,” I offered, tilting my cup in mock salute. “You?”
She shrugged, pulling out her notebook. “Felt like a green tea and some quiet. But you’re already here, so there goes that.”
I smirked. “You wound me.”
She laughed, really laughed, and for a moment the air around us shifted, like the café itself leaned in to hear what came next.
She sat across from me today. That was new.
Normally, we kept a diagonal rhythm: her at the window, me tucked into the side wall. Like magnets that never quite aligned. But today she was in front of me, stretching her legs out beneath the table, eyes scanning the room like she was seeing it differently.
“You always sit in the same spot,” she said.
“So do you.”
“Maybe we’re both stubborn.”
“Or consistent.”
She nodded, then paused. Studied me the way someone studies a piece of art they’ve walked past a dozen times but never really looked at.
“You know,” she said, her voice softer now, “you carry stillness. Like, when you’re here, the whole place feels… calmer. More grounded. I don’t know if you know that.”
I blinked.
She looked away like she hadn’t meant to say it out loud. Like maybe it slipped past her inner gatekeeper.
“Someone told me the same thing about you,” I said.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Said you walk in and shift the whole atmosphere. I’ve always thought that.”
She smiled, but this one was different. Quieter. Warmer. A smile with weight.
She reached into her bag, pulled out a pair of gold wire-frame glasses, and slid them on like armor. Then she tilted her head, locking eyes with me, this time without the distraction of movement or music or polite distance.
“Maybe we’ve just been orbiting,” she said. “Same sky, same pull, just… never collided.”
That line hit somewhere in my chest I didn’t know still had nerve endings. I almost said something, then let’s, but instead I nodded, letting the silence settle into something richer than words.
She turned back to her notes. I returned to my half-finished draft. But the space between us felt newly claimed, like we’d stepped into a slightly different version of reality. One where names meant less than glances, and glances meant everything.
And as the café filled with the low hum of morning noise, all I could think was…
What if this whole time, we weren’t actually waiting on a spark?
What if we were the spark?