She’s not my only friend.
When the café closes for fifteen minutes every afternoon, I take my break outside. I like the others, but I need the silence.
Those fifteen minutes belong to me alone.
I stop planning. I stop preparing. I stop holding my breath for whatever comes next. I just sit.
In the beginning, I sat alone.
Then Kieran started joining me.
He didn’t warn me he was coming. One afternoon he walked out with his coffee, pulled his chair a few inches away from mine, and sat. He didn’t talk or glance my way. He just drank his coffee and stayed where he was.
He never pushed conversation. He never jumped to fill the silence. Some days we said nothing. The quiet didn’t feel strange or heavy. It felt shared.
Other times, we talked about how the espresso machine had been acting up again, how Maeve had accidentally locked herself in the supply closet twice in one week, or how that crack in the pavement near the dumpster kept getting wider.
One day he asked if I thought the stray cat preferred chicken or tuna, and we spent the whole break watching it ignore both.
He’s leaning back in his seat now, arms crossed loosely, looking at me for an answer. Waiting. His whole body says there is no rush.
The question waits between us.
What is your favourite flower?
I search my mind and come up empty.
I don’t know how to answer that question. I have spent my whole life learning other things. How to scrub stains from fabric until the fabric gives way. How to bandage a cut and hide a bruise and make a hot plate of food when there is nothing left in the cupboard.
But a favourite flower?
No one ever asked me that. I have never stood in a flower shop and chosen something for myself. I have never received flowers that weren’t an apology or an obligation. I have never looked at a bloom and thoughtthat one.That one is mine.
“I don’t know,” I say finally.
I wait for his face to change.
For the flicker. The one Julian always had. The one that came right before he said,You should know this. That small twist of disappointment that told me I’d failed another ordinary test.
My chest pulls tight. My fingers press into my palms.
But Kieran only smiles.
No flicker. No twist. No disappointment.
The tightness in my chest eases. He didn’t correct me. He didn’t tell me I was wrong. He just asked a question, and when I didn’t know, he didn’t turn it into a failure.
My hands open. My palms ache where my nails pressed in.
He’s still smiling. Still here.
“Okay,” he offers. “Then we’ll find it.”
I pause. “Find… it?”
He nods, his expression easy. “Your favourite flower.”
I study his face, lost. “Why would you want to do that?”
