The café was nearly empty by the time he asked if he could wait at her table—just until the rain let up, he said, gesturing at the door where the street had become a river.
She said yes the way you say yes to something you've already decided.
He ordered espresso. She was on her second glass of white wine. Outside, umbrellas inverted against the wind and people ran with newspapers over their heads, and none of it was dignified.
"You were going somewhere," he said. Not a question. "I was somewhere," she said. "Now I'm here."
He had the kind of hands she noticed first in people—broad across the knuckle, at ease on the table between them. She thought about what they would feel like against the small of her back.
He asked her name. She told him. He offered his, and she repeated it back to him slowly, holding each syllable a beat longer than necessary.
The conversation moved the way good conversation moves—sideways, unhurried, circling something neither of them named. She caught herself leaning forward. He caught her catching herself.
When the check came she reached for her wallet and he said, "Let me," and she let him, and the letting felt like its own small agreement.
Outside, the rain had softened to a mist. They stood under the awning and she put on her jacket and he watched her do it with an attention that felt like a question.
"I live three blocks," she said. He didn't answer right away. The mist settled on his shoulders. "Which direction," he said.