I started shutting things down in his absence. Wiping counters that were already clean. Re-wrapping the stack of pastries that didn’t sell. I kept half an eye on the street, watching for the cop, for anyone lingering too long on the sidewalk, for headlights that slowed instead of passing by. My brain – traitor that it is – started making lists.
Maybe I should get a bike. It would get me home faster at night. Give me some kind of edge if I needed to outrun someone, even if that someone was really my own fear.
I was still imagining myself pedaling like hell down the street when the bell over the door chimed again.
Halo stepped back inside, the night air following him, with two brown paper bags hooked in one hand.
He crossed the room like he’d never left and dropped the bags onto the nearest table. The smell hit first: basil and garlic and something rich and savory that made my empty stomach twist so hard, I had to catch the back of a chair.
Thai food.
Not just Thai food. Thai food from the place two blocks over. The one I went to on payday before everything went sideways. My favorite.
I hadn’t told him that.
My brain immediately tried to make it sinister. Had he gone through my trash? Surveillance? Phone records? But somequieter part of me suggested a simpler explanation: maybe he just watched. Really watched. Maybe this was the sort of thing he noticed for a living.
He unpacked the containers with the same efficient, almost military neatness as he did with everything else. One, then another, lids popping, steam unfurling into the air. Pad see ew. Green curry. Rice. Spring rolls. It felt too generous, like a feast.
He slid a container toward me along with a plastic fork. No ceremony, no “ta-da,” just a practical offering.
“Eat,” he said, settling into the chair across from me with his own portion.
I sat down because my knees had started to feel suspiciously unreliable and because saying no to hot food after the day I’d experienced felt like a kind of self-harm.
The first bite was almost painful. My body wasn’t used to being fed when it needed it. Half the time, I forgot to eat until I was lightheaded. The noodles were glossy and hot, the sauce too salty, exactly the way I liked it. My jaw worked slowly at first, like it had forgotten how.
We didn’t say much after that. It wasn’t awkward, exactly. Just… full.
The shop was nearly closed around us. The espresso machine slept, wiped clean and gleaming. The chairs were still where they belonged, the chalkboard menu already smudging as the air cooled. Outside, the street was sliding into dusk, the sky going the color of bruised peaches behind the buildings. The lights inside cast everything in a gentle, golden wash that made the scuffed floors and chipped table edges look almost romantic instead of tired.
A cop might still be circling the block. Someone might still want me dead. Halo might still have blood under his fingernails from earlier, and I might still be one bad decision away from everything collapsing.
None of that went anywhere.
But there, at that little two-top by the window, the danger felt… paused. Like someone had gently laid a hand over its mouth.
Between bites of pad see ew and sips of lukewarm coffee, gone sour at the edges, something shifted. Not big. Not cinematic. Just… a tiny rearranging inside my chest.
Halo ate like a man who’d learned to do it fast and quiet. No slurping, no clinking, no wasted motion. He kept his shoulders turned slightly toward the door, profile angled toward the street, eyes tracking movement outside in little flicks. But every few minutes, his gaze would land on my face, just long enough to make sure I was still there, still eating.
That did something simple and complicated to me at the same time.
It had been a long time since anyone made sure I ate.
Not in the you-should-really-eat-more way, not in the “girl’s gotta keep her strength up” way, tossed like a joke. I meanreallynoticed. Clocked the absence of a meal and thendidsomething about it. Not with a lecture. With a takeout bag.
We could have been any two people in any city. Just coworkers closing up shop, sharing dinner. To someone walking by, that’s what we were: a girl and a man split by a small table and two sweating plastic containers. Nothing about us said “murder” or “threat” or “witness protection on a shoestring.”
There was something comforting in that. In being boring, even from the outside.
He broke a spring roll in half and nudged the bigger piece toward me without looking.
“You’re staring,” he said.
I startled. “What? No, I’m— I’m just thinking.”
“Eat,” he repeated, but there was no bite to it. Just that low steadiness, like it was a thing he’d decided he was responsible for now: my pulse, my location, my caloric intake.
