A shadow passed the window, and then he was there—pushing through the door, bag over one shoulder, already scanning for an open table.
Same guy from last time. Same spaceship paperback, same restless energy. He ordered at the counter, waited for his coffee, then claimed the corner table and set up: laptop open, book beside his cup.
Then he looked up and caught her looking.
She looked away first. Pulled up the cozy mystery file, seventy-five percent done and stalled for months, and pretended to read the last paragraph.
Clementine set her teacup down with more force than necessary. "Mr. Ashworth, I don't care how many alibis you claim to have. Someone moved that grandfather clock, and I intend to find out why."
She'd written that sentence months ago—the start of the final act—and hadn't been able to find the next one since.
She stared at the screen. The fantasy romance waited in the other tab, alive and demanding in ways the mystery hadn't been in a long time.
"Outlet situation in the corner is terrible," a voice said.
Her eyes lifted from the screen. He was standing beside her table, laptop tucked under one arm, coffee in the other hand. Up close, she saw details she'd missed before. The silver ring on his thumb, the faded venue name on his T-shirt now close enough to almost read. A date from years ago.
"There's one under the window," she said, gesturing. "You have to move the chair."
"Ah." He crouched down, found it, and straightened with a satisfied nod. "Crisis averted." He didn't move to leave. "I noticed you're here again."
The outlet had been a pretense. She didn't mind.
"I noticed you noticing."
He laughed, surprised out of himself. "Fair enough." He set his coffee on the table and extended his hand. "Clint."
"Jen."
He accepted that with a nod, which she appreciated. "Mind if I join you? Seems a shame to waste a working outlet."
She was here to work. She had a mystery to write, an editor to appease, a career to maintain.
"Go ahead," she said, and moved her bag off the chair across from her.
They worked in parallel for the first hour. Not silence, really. There was the ambient noise of the coffee shop, the whir of the espresso machine, someone's phone buzzing every few minutes. But they didn't talk. Clint had one earbud in, the other dangling loose. He worked the way he had last time. Bursts of typing, phone checks, the paperback for resets. She matched his rhythm, typing when he typed, pausing when he paused.
Once, she glanced up to rest her eyes and found him watching her over the top of his laptop. He looked back at his screen without saying anything, but she'd caught it.
At some point, she noticed two full pages on the screen. Not the mystery. The fantasy. The world with two moons had pulled her back in, and she'd stopped fighting it.
"Can I ask you something?"
Her attention lifted. Clint had pushed his laptop aside, focused entirely on her.
"Depends on the question."
"What are you working on? You've got that look."
"What look?"
"The one where you're somewhere else entirely. Like whatever's on that screen has you completely absorbed." He smiled, sheepish. "I only ask because I haven't had that look in about six months, and I'm trying to figure out how to get it back."
She could have said "just work stuff" and left it there. But the question felt honest, the admission embedded inside it, and she told him the truth.
"I'm supposed to be writing a cozy mystery. It's what I do. What I've always done." She gestured at the screen, then dropped her hand. "But for the last few months, this other thing has been happening instead. Fantasy romance. A woman at the edge of a forest that shouldn't exist, magic she doesn't understand yet." She heard herself and winced. "It sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud."
"It doesn't sound ridiculous." Clint leaned forward, elbows on the table. "It sounds like the thing that actually wants to exist."
