Before I ruined it.
My phone buzzed.
Ethan
You coming? I'm already here.
I pulled the door open. The bell chimed—that same flat, tinny sound.
The air inside was warm and smelled like burnt coffee, griddle grease, and the industrial cleaner they used on the floors.
Ethan sat in the back booth. Laptop open, two coffees on the table, a pen tucked behind his ear. He was wearing a corduroy jacket I hadn't seen before—thrifted, probably.
He looked up when I walked in.
Something in his expression made me slow down. Not the easy confidence I was used to—something underneath it had frayed. Tired eyes. Tension in his jaw.
"Hey," I said, sliding in across from him.
"Hey." He pushed one of the coffees toward me. "Got you your usual. Black, no sugar, because you hate yourself."
"Thanks."
He almost smiled. Almost.
The silence that followed wasn't comfortable. It used to be—freshman year, we could sit in this booth for an hour without talking and it felt fine. Now the quiet had edges. Things we hadn't said. Things I'd done.
"So," I said. "Mixer plans?"
Ethan's hands tightened around his cup. "Actually—I need your help with something else."
"Okay."
He turned the laptop toward me. Paused video on screen—dark space, spray-painted walls, bodies moving in the background.
"My film. The Berlin project." His voice was quieter than normal. "Festival deadline's Friday. Four days." He stared at the screen like it might bite him. "I've been editing for weeks and I can't tell anymore if it's good or if I've just been staring at it too long."
"You want me to watch it?"
"Yeah. Just—watch it. Then be honest."
He hit play.
The film opened on a gutted factory. Broken windows. Graffiti layered so thick the walls looked alive. A voice in German, subtitles at the bottom:
"They don't want us to exist."
Then—artists. Working on massive murals in crumbling rooms. Welding sculptures from scrap metal. Performance art in spaces that smelled like they'd been condemned for years. The cinematography was stunning. Golden hour pouring through shattered glass. Close-ups of paint-stained hands. Wide shots of cavernous rooms reclaimed by people the city had tried to erase.
But it wasn't just beautiful. It was pissed off.
"The city sells our neighborhoods to rich people. Tears down our homes for luxury condos. So we take what they've abandoned and make art."
A collective meeting. Twenty people in a squat, sitting in a circle on the floor.
Then Ethan's voice. His own narration, laid over footage of him walking through these spaces with his camera.
"In Berlin, for a summer, I felt free. No expectations. Just creating what mattered."
