The first time you saw him, you came to the conclusion he was just a grad student pulling shifts for extra tuition money. He looks way too clean-cut for this place. Hair tidy even at 11PM, button-up far too crisp for a line cook, polite in a way that doesn't feel performative. Maybe that's a trick of the trade.

The diner sits just off El Camino Real. It's nothing fancy: just old neon, cracked vinyl booths that tempts people in with a jukebox. It has charm, you suppose. The cheap coffee also helps. You and your friends started coming there freshman year to cram for finals. But they slowly stopped showing when sleep and sororities won out. You keep coming back anyways. Something about the hum of the fluorescent lights and the hiss of the griddle keeps you alert enough to study.

He's always there. At first, he barely looked up when he brought your food. Just a quick polite nod. Then, the second week, he starts bringing you your coffee and pastry before you've even asked for it.

"You always get the same thing," he says when you bring it up in passing, clearing a plate from a nearby booth.

"Routine helps the brain focus," you say, tapping your pen against your temple. It's embarrassing the way you feel proud about the smile he cracks in your direction.

It takes three weeks for him to learn your name. Four before he starts writing little notes on your receipts. Sometimes it's corny jokes, or quotes, or occasionally just a question mark if he catches a glimpse of you frowning too hard at you notes. You answer with napkin scribbles. Small drawings. A half-finished haiku once that makes him linger by your table for a moment.

"You study lit or something?"

"Engineering," you supply. "Unfortunately."

"Then why the poetry?" He quirks a brow.

"Keeps me sane."

He hums like he agrees with the sentiment, even if you're pretty sure he laughs under his breath as he turns back to his cleaning.

You don't know much about him. Just his name from the tiny black-and-gold tag pinned to his apron: Art. You don't ask more, either. But you pick up on things, like the way he leans in to talk to the cook to avoid yelling at his underpaid co-workers. Or how he never rushes you even when the place gets quiet enough to close early.

By week six, you've developed a routine. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and sometimes Sundays if you were particularly overwhelmed, you'd show up around eight PM, settle into the corner booth, and sip on your coffee until your brain couldn't unjumble the letters anymore.

Art never hovers. He isn't one of those too-charming guys that make a game out of flirting. But the passing comments, the way he refills your coffee and mimics a secretive little shhh motion when you tell him you don't have the cash on you to cover another one, is far better than any pickup line. He even writes you his own haiku at one point about how boring his shift is. Poetry definitely isn't his strong suit, you realise, but it touches your heart nonetheless.

And finally, finally, he slides in opposite you one day. Elbows propped up on the table, smile in place despite the fact he has three different stains on his shirt and has been on his feet for the last six hours.

"Are you ever gonna let me take you out? Or have I just been wasting all my literary talent and dad jokes on you for nothing?" He pauses, and then adds with a groan: "Oh, god, please don't tell me you have a boyfriend. I can take it. You don't have to let me down easy, but that'll kill me."