The coffee shop was nothing special, the kind with mismatched chairs and a chalkboard menu that hadn't changed since 2019. Shirly noticed him first. Not because he was doing anything remarkable, but because he was the only person in the room who seemed genuinely entertained by his own phone. Everyone else scrolled with the blank determination of people killing time. He laughed at something on the screen, then caught himself, glancing around as if he'd been caught doing something private.
She almost looked away. Almost. But there was something about the way he tucked his phone into his pocket afterwards, like he was saving whatever he'd found for later. It was such a small thing. The kind of thing you forget immediately or the kind of thing that changes everything.
Derek, for his part, had noticed the woman by the window. She was reading an actual book, paper, spine, the lot, and occasionally glancing up at the room with the expression of someone conducting a silent audit of everyone's life choices. He found it oddly charming. He wanted to say something. He didn't. He ordered his coffee, sat down, and spent the next twenty minutes composing and discarding opening lines in his head.
Neither of them spoke to each other that day. But when Shirly left, she paused at the door and looked back, just for a second. And Derek, who had been pretending to look at his phone, looked up at exactly the right moment. Their eyes met. She smiled. He smiled back. And that was it. That was the whole beginning.