He comes in at 2:47 on a Tuesday afternoon, and I know something's wrong before he reaches the counter because he's got the look—the one where the body showed up but the mind is still three blocks back, wrestling something invisible. Mid-twenties, maybe. Nice coat. Hair that's been run through by anxious fingers at least fourteen times today.

"Black coffee," he says, before I can ask.

Black coffee is the drink of someone whose brain cannot handle one more decision. I've learned this. It's not a preference; it's a survival strategy.

"For here or to go?"

He looks at the counter stools like they might bite him. "Here. I think. Here."

I pour from the Guatemalan—chocolatey, forgiving, the coffee equivalent of a weighted blanket—and the smell rises between us, dark and steady. He takes the stool third from the left, which puts him in my peripheral vision whether I want him there or not, and pulls out a pen.

Then he starts murdering napkins.

Write. Pause. Cross out. Crumple. Reach for another napkin. Write. Pause. Cross out with more violence this time. Crumple harder, like the napkin personally offended him. Reach for another.

By the time I've restocked the pastry case and wiped down Betsy's steam wand twice, there's a small mountain of napkin corpses accumulating near his elbow, and I'm trying very hard to mind my own business, which has never been one of my spiritual gifts.

"Refill?" I ask, even though his cup is still half full.

He looks up. Blinks. Looks down at the carnage surrounding him. "Sorry. I'm—" He gestures at the napkins like they might explain themselves. "I'm getting married tomorrow."

"Congratulations," I say, and mean it, and also: ah.

"I'm writing my vows." He stares at the latest napkin victim. "Or trying to. I've been trying for three weeks. I have a business degree. I wrote a forty-page thesis on supply chain optimization. I cannot figure out how to say 'I love you' in a way that doesn't sound like a greeting card that got run over by a truck."

I lean against the counter because this feels like a leaning conversation. "What have you got so far?"

He smooths out the napkin. Clears his throat. "'Hannah, from the moment I met you, I knew—'" He stops. Crosses it out. "No. That's a lie. From the moment I met her, I thought she was way out of my league and I should probably not embarrass myself by talking to her."

"Romantic."

"She asked me out." He says this like it still surprises him. "She's—she's so much, you know? She's loud and she laughs at her own jokes and she cries at commercials for car insurance and she cannot cook anything without setting off the smoke alarm, and I just—" He stares at the napkin. "How do I say that? How do I say 'you're a beautiful disaster and I want to watch you burn toast for the rest of my life' without it sounding like an insult?"

Something shifts in my chest.

I grew up in a house where love was a ledger. Where every kindness came with a notation, and every failure got tallied in a column that never quite balanced. Love meant performance. Love meant getting it right. Love meant the sick knot in your stomach when you couldn't tell if today's version of you was enough to earn what you needed.

I didn't know love could look like someone laughing at their own jokes. Like burnt toast. Like choosing the mess on purpose.

"Can I ask you something?" I'm wiping the same spot on the counter I've already wiped twice, but he doesn't seem to notice.

"Sure."

"If you forgot everything else—if you stood up there tomorrow and your mind went completely blank and you could only say one thing before the words just... left—what would you regret not telling her?"

He's quiet for a long moment. The afternoon light through the front window catches the dust motes floating between us, and somewhere in the back, Betsy makes her little settling noise, the one that sounds like contentment.

"That she makes me brave," he says, finally. "That I was so scared of everything before her. Scared of being seen. Scared of wanting things. And she just—" He swallows. "She makes me want to be seen. Even the embarrassing parts. Especially the embarrassing parts."

"Write that."

He looks at the pen in his hand like he forgot it was there. Then he pulls a fresh napkin from the dispenser and writes. One line. Maybe two. Doesn't cross anything out.

He stares at it for a long time.

"That's it," he says. "That's the whole thing."

I reach for his empty cup—when did he finish it?—and my elbow catches the napkin dispenser, which launches itself across the counter, hits his napkin mountain, and sends approximately forty-seven crumpled failures cascading onto the floor in a waterfall of abandoned vows.

We both freeze.

Then he laughs. Really laughs, the kind that comes from somewhere deep and surprised, and I'm on my knees collecting napkins and trying not to die of embarrassment when he says, still laughing: "My fiancée does that. The elbow thing. She's taken out three lamps this month."

I surface with an armful of napkin corpses. "She sounds like a catch."

"She is." He's smiling now. Actually smiling, not the tight grimace he walked in with. "She really is."

He pays for the coffee and leaves a tip that's too big, and at the door he turns back. "Thank you. For—" He holds up the napkin. The one that didn't get crossed out. "For this."

"Go get married," I say. "Try not to knock over the unity candles."

He grins. "No promises."

The bell rings him out, and I'm alone with the afternoon light and the lingering smell of Guatemalan roast and a counter full of someone else's discarded attempts at perfect.

I think about love. About ledgers. About the way I used to believe that saying the wrong thing would cost me everything—that there was a script, and deviating from it meant losing whatever fragile affection I'd managed to earn.

I think about Hannah, who sets off smoke alarms and took the risk of asking first.

I think about showing up scared and saying the true thing anyway.

I smooth out one of the crumpled napkins. He'd written: I promise to be the person you deserve, crossed it out, tried again: I promise to try to be—, crossed that out too.

The fear of getting it wrong. I know that fear. I've built whole rooms inside it.

But maybe love isn't about getting it right. Maybe it's about showing up with your messy handful of words and saying this is what I have, this is all of it, I know it's not enough but I'm giving it to you anyway.

Maybe the fumbling attempt is the gift.

I throw away the napkins—his failures and my certainties, gone together—and wait for the next person who needs a place to figure out something true.