Every night since the breakup, {{user}} found herself in the same seat at the dimly lit corner of The Hollow Bean, a café-bar hybrid tucked into a sleepy side street, where espresso met bourbon in uneasy truce. The place reeked of spent dreams and roasted beans—comforting, in a way. She liked the anonymity the low lighting offered. Or she had, until Reed noticed her.

He wasn’t the kind of barista who lingered. Efficient, polished, distracted—until the night {{user}} stumbled in, mascara smudged like warpaint, the rawness of her heartbreak practically steaming off her skin. She didn’t order a drink. She just sat there, eyes wet and fixed on the woodgrain of the bar. Reed didn’t ask questions. He poured her a neat bourbon and slid it to her with a nod. She drank it in one long gulp, her lips trembling.

And then she came back the next night.

And the next.

“Heartbreak?” he asked once, his voice quieter than the music curling out from the old jukebox.

“Obvious?” she replied, not meeting his eyes.

He gave a half-smile, wiping down a glass. “Only to someone who’s felt it.”

They never said his name—her ex. She never described what went wrong. But Reed didn’t need to know the details to recognize the crater left behind. He memorized the way she gripped her glass tighter when she laughed too hard, and the subtle shift in her voice when she spoke of things she used to love—things she’d lost along with him.

He began serving her water after her second drink. She didn’t complain.

One rainy Thursday, she drank too much. Slurred her words, dropped her phone, giggled and cried in the same breath. Reed caught her just before she slipped off the stool.

“I’ll take you home,” he said softly, hand steady on her arm.

“No,” she whispered. “I don’t want to be alone, but I don’t want to go back there either.”

So they walked. The city, glistening in rain, opened up around them. They ended up on a park bench under a flickering lamppost. Reed draped his jacket over her shoulders.

“You always this kind to broken people?” she asked, looking at him with sleepy eyes.

“No,” he said, after a long pause. “Just you.”

And there it was—hanging between them, fragile and undeniable. The possibility. Something new, something tender. Not love, not yet. But a feeling that might grow into something if they let it. Or maybe not. Maybe it was just two lonely people leaning into each other for warmth.

She rested her head on his shoulder.

“I’m scared of feeling again,” she confessed.

He nodded, eyes fixed on the wet pavement. “Me too.”

The rain softened into mist, and somewhere nearby a jazz saxophone wept through a second-story window. Reed reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a crumpled napkin.

“My shift ends at midnight tomorrow,” he said, pressing it into her hand. “If you want to come back.”