Early mornings have a particular weight to them — the way light slides across concrete, the muffled sound of the city waking up. I was on my usual bench, the one with the cracked slat on the left side, when she sat down.
She didn’t look at me, and I didn’t look at her. That’s the rule. Two people on a bench at 6:30 AM are there for the same reason: to be alone, together.
The coffee was bad that morning. I’d made it too strong, or maybe not strong enough. It’s hard to tell the difference when you’re not really paying attention.
She pulled out a sketchbook. I pretended not to notice, but I noticed. Little lines becoming shapes, shapes becoming a tree, the tree becoming the one across the street. She was drawing the same tree I’d been staring at for the past ten minutes.
“You got the branches wrong,” I said, immediately regretting it.
She looked up. “Excuse me?”
“The left branch. It droops more. See?” I pointed. She looked at the tree, then at her sketch, then back at me.
“You’re right,” she said. “It does.”
That was it. Nothing dramatic. But the morning felt different after that — a little less heavy, a little more like the light had somewhere better to go.