The café had already put its night face on—chairs balanced on tables like folded knees, mop water cooling in a bluish bucket. Only the corner table was still itself. Heather rolled a sleeve and wiped a clean circle cleaner, the citrus cutting through the smell of milk.
The door eased open; a ribbon of cold air slipped across the floor.
He stood in the doorway with rain on his shoulder seams, a breath late into the hour. "We close in fifteen," she said, reaching for the kettle.
"Chamomile, please," he said.
She dipped the bag, watched the steam rise and thin. When she set the cup down, she noticed the corner of a white envelope half-zipped in his bag—heavy paper, gray crest. Meridian Contemporary. Regret to inform… She didn't mention it. Observing is safer than asking.
He took the cup in both hands and didn't drink.
Heather went back to closing: lids counted into tens, the pastry case wiped of fingerprints that would be back by morning. Somewhere in the back the fridge compressor clicked off. The city filled the quiet: a far siren, tires on wet asphalt, the radiator's patient tick.
"You don't have to wait for me to finish," she said without looking up.
"I won't keep you," he said. Then, after a beat: "Just… sitting."
She brought him a napkin—blank this time—and set it beside the cup. "In case."
"In case of what?"
"I don't know. Whatever needs catching."
He almost smiled. He folded the napkin into a perfect square. Unfolded it. Folded it again, as if building a small structure sturdy enough for a thought.
He traced the cup's rim with one finger. She turned off the track lights section by section until the room wore shadows, leaving his corner for last. When she finally switched that row, the light above him surrendered and he was a figure in window-glow—outline, breath.
When she locked up, he was still standing there.
She flipped the sign, pocketed the key. Outside, the street was spare: a taxi sliding past, a cyclist leaning at a red light, steam lifting from a manhole.
They fell into step without trying. He tucked his chin into his scarf. She kept her hands in her coat pockets, the work-day chill still living in her knuckles. They cut south on Second Avenue toward Houston; the F train was six blocks. A neon dumpling shop buzzed half-lit, a bodega cat slept between towers of water bottles, scaffolding rattled in a light wind.
They passed a ground-floor studio with the lights off and monitors winking their tiny sleep lights.
"You work there?" she asked, nodding at the glass.
"Most days," he said.
"Do you like it?"
"It keeps the lights on." A breath. "Some days I make things. Other days I rename files that pretend to be things."
She nodded. That sounded like a truth he used sparingly.
Half a block of silence. Their footsteps matched the seams in the sidewalk.
"I used to write," she said. "Real writing, I mean."
"Used to?"
"Used to."
They walked under scaffolding that clipped their voices smaller. A bus sighed by; the warm air from its underside wrapped their ankles for a second.
"What did you write?" he asked.
"Stories about people who didn't know they were being watched."
"And now?"
"Now I just watch."
He paused. "But you still see them. The stories." Not a question.
She didn't answer.
Steam rose from a subway grate. They moved through it and kept going. He touched the strap of his bag like he was checking that it still belonged to him. The envelope corner showed again, white against black canvas. He looked at it, then away.
"I still dream in color," he said finally, almost to the air. "I just draw in grayscale now."
Something in her opened and didn't make a sound. She nodded. "Maybe that's careful," she said.
At the stairs, metal spoke below. He lifted two fingers in a goodbye that wasn't practiced. She did the same.
Her apartment kept only the light of the laptop and the small glow from the open fridge. The radiator ticked once and quit. She pulled her hair into a loose knot and sat.
First attempt: too close to the real shape. Delete.
Second: too far—clever sentences that left no fingerprints. Delete.
She circled the truth for a while. Then she began.
⸻
Entry #4: Someone Still Dreaming
There's a man who orders tea he never drinks hot.
Tonight I understood why.
Some people need their comfort to wait for them. To stay
patient while they remember how to want it. He holds the
cup like it's keeping his hands employed. By the time he
takes the first sip, the tea has cooled to the exact
temperature of giving up.
But here's what I didn't expect:
He hasn't given up. He's just careful about his hoping.
I see it in the way he sketches—not the big gestures, but
the small ones. The wear patterns on handrails. The specific
angle of exhaustion in a stranger's shoulder. He documents
what survives the commute: the small erosions that prove
we were here.
Someone told him once that his art didn't matter.
(I know this because I recognize the way he hides it.)
Walking to the station, he said:
"I still dream in color. I just draw in grayscale now."
Maybe that's what burnout really is—not the absence of
dreams, but the careful rationing of them. We portion out
our hoping like medicine. Too much and we remember what
we've lost. Too little and we forget we're still alive.
The man with the cold tea is still dreaming.
He's just doing it quietly, in case the world is listening.
⸻
She read the last line twice, then once more for the part of her that usually argued with hope. It didn't. She hit publish and felt foolish for how much her heart behaved like she'd opened a window.
Saturday found the room without asking. Light moved across the floorboards and warmed the rug. She made tea and let it sit, watching the steam thin.
Three views. One comment: This helped. Thank you. Small words that felt like a door unlocking somewhere.
She reached into her coat pocket for a hair tie and found a folded napkin instead, a careful geometry. When she opened it, a tiny drawing in soft graphite: the café's corner as it looked from the counter—tile seam, table edge, the ghost of a cup ring. She must have picked it up when she wiped the table down.
On the fridge, the old window sketch he'd left once—just lines and the suggestion of light—was still taped there. She added the corner beside it, edges barely touching.
A window and a corner. Two points. The start of a line.
She opened the unsent email to her publisher, didn't type, didn't close it. She wrote a line in her notebook that could be a to-do or a promise: Call back the part that left. Then she did nothing for a while, which felt like doing everything right.
The tea had cooled to the exact temperature of telling the truth. She drank.
Somewhere else in the city, a notification blinked on a dim phone: New post: "Someone Still Dreaming." A thumb hovered, then tapped. A familiar breath settled. She didn't know that yet.
On the fridge, the two drawings learned each other's company. Together they looked less like souvenirs and more like the beginning of a map. She didn't try to name where it led. She let it be lines practicing being a place.