The bell chimes at 6:47 PM, which is thirteen minutes before I officially close, but the shop is empty and I've already started wiping down the counter with the particular aggression of someone who wants to go upstairs and not talk to anyone for at least three hours.

I look up, ready to smile the customer service smile, and it's Todd.

Without a toolbox.

This is disorienting in the way that seeing your dentist at the grocery store is disorienting—the context is wrong, the props are missing, and your brain keeps trying to reconcile the person with the setting and failing. Todd without a toolbox is like me without coffee grounds on my shirt. Theoretically possible. Practically unprecedented.

"Betsy's fine," I say, because that's the only reason Todd comes in, except for the three times he came in one day back in January when Betsy was also fine and we ended up eating Chinese food on the back room floor, but I'm not thinking about that, I'm definitely not thinking about that.

"I know." He crosses to the counter. Takes his usual stool—third from the left, the one with the good view of Betsy, which he always claims is about "monitoring her performance" and I always suspect is about something else. "Saw your light on. Thought I'd stop by."

"You thought you'd stop by."

"That a problem?"

"No, I just—" I'm holding a rag. I've been holding this rag for the entire conversation. My hands don't know what to do when they're not making coffee or knocking things over, and right now they're doing neither, which means they're just... here. Holding a rag. Being weird about it.

I turn around and start making a cortado.

"Didn't order yet," Todd says behind me.

"You were going to order a cortado."

"Was I?"

"You always order a cortado."

Silence. I tamp the grounds, pull the shot, steam the milk. My hands know this. My hands are grateful for something to do.

"Yeah," he says finally. "I guess I do."

I slide the cortado across the counter. Our fingers don't touch, because this isn't a movie, but I'm aware of the space where they didn't touch in a way that feels ridiculous and also very loud.

"Thanks," he says.

"Sure."

I go back to wiping the counter. I wipe the same spot three times. I'm not actually paying attention to the counter. I'm paying attention to the way Todd drinks his cortado—slowly, like he's got nowhere to be, which is different from how most people drink things here, which is quickly, like the coffee is a task to complete rather than a thing to experience.

"Earl's got a new window display," Todd says.

"The spoons?"

"He says they're Victorian."

"He says everything's Victorian. Last week he told me my cash register had 'Victorian energy.'"

Todd almost smiles. On Todd, almost smiling is basically a standing ovation. "He's not wrong. That register's older than most of the stuff in his shop."

"It works."

"I didn't say it didn't."

The quiet settles again. Not uncomfortable. Just... present. The kind of quiet that happens when two people aren't trying to fill the space with anything.

I wipe the spot a fourth time. Still not paying attention.

"The storefront across the street," Todd says. "Heard anything about it?"

"The empty one?" I glance toward the window. The storefront has been empty since I moved in—a perpetual "FOR LEASE" sign in the window, collecting dust and speculation. "Nothing concrete. Earl thinks it's going to be a yoga studio. Jamie thinks it's going to be a vape shop. Lou won't say what he thinks, which means he probably knows something."

"Lou always knows something."

"Lou knows everything. He just doesn't share."

"Smart man."

I set down the rag. Lean against the counter. Todd's almost done with his cortado, and I'm aware of time passing in a way I don't usually notice—the minutes ticking toward something, except I don't know what.

"Why'd you stop by?" I ask. "Really."

Todd looks at me. He's got this way of looking at people—direct, unhurried, like he's actually seeing you instead of just registering that you exist. It's unnerving. It's also the thing I like most about him, which is its own kind of unnerving.

"Saw your light on," he says again.

"That's not an answer."

"It's the answer I've got."

I should push. I should ask what he means, what this is, why he keeps showing up without reasons, why he came back three times in one day in January, why he brought me a business card from a fancy restaurant group like he was handing me permission to be something more than this.

I don't push.

"Okay," I say.

He takes another sip. Sets the cup down. Looks at me again with that look, the one that makes me feel like I'm being seen in a way I didn't sign up for.

"I like who you are when you're not trying to be anyone," he says.

The words land somewhere in my chest and just... stay there. I don't know what to do with them. I don't know where to put them. They're too big for the moment and too small for what they might mean, and I'm standing here behind my counter in my coffee-stained shirt with my hair escaping its ponytail and my hands still not knowing what to do with themselves.

"I'm not—" I start.

"I know." He finishes the cortado. Stands. "That's the point."

He leaves cash on the counter. More than the cortado costs, because he always leaves more than things cost, and I've stopped arguing about it because arguing with Todd is like arguing with weather.

"See you around, Rena."

"See you."

The bell chimes. The door closes. The shop is suddenly very quiet in a way it wasn't before he came in, like his presence had been taking up space I didn't notice until it was gone.

I pick up his empty cup. Hold it for a moment. The ceramic is still warm.

I like who you are when you're not trying to be anyone.

I don't know what that means. I don't know what we are. I don't know why he keeps showing up without toolboxes and leaving me with sentences that rearrange something in my chest.

But here's what I do know: I didn't perform for him. I didn't try to be funny or smart or put-together. I wiped the same spot four times and made him a cortado he didn't order and stood here in my mess, and he looked at me like that was enough.

Like I was enough.

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding.

I've been trying to understand this thing with Todd. Categorize it. Name it. Figure out what it means so I know what to do with it. But maybe some things aren't meant to be understood yet. Maybe some things are just meant to be... trusted. Surrendered to. Let to unfold in their own time, at their own pace, without my hands trying to control the outcome.

I wash his cup by hand, even though the dishwasher is right there. It feels like the right thing to do. Like honoring something small.

Then I finish closing. Turn off the lights. Lock the door.

The empty storefront across the street is dark, like always. But the streetlamp catches Lou's window, and Earl's Victorian spoons, and the flowers in Jamie's display, and for a moment the whole block looks like something out of a painting—quiet and waiting and full of things I don't understand yet.

I'm learning to be okay with that.