The woman at table six ordered the same thing every Tuesday—cortado, croissant, newspaper folded to the crossword. She never finished the crossword. She'd fill in three, maybe four words, then stare at the half-empty grid like it was a window into something she couldn't quite see.
Miguel had been watching her for months. Not in a creepy way—just the way a barista watches regulars, the way you notice patterns in people the same way you notice the afternoon light hitting the espresso machine at exactly 4:47.
Today she was crying.
Not the loud kind of crying. The kind where tears just happen, like weather, while the rest of your face pretends it's a normal Tuesday.
Miguel brought her cortado to the table instead of calling her number. Set it down gently. She looked up, startled, quickly wiped her eyes.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm fine."
He nodded, started to walk away, then stopped. Came back to the table. Pulled out a pen and leaned over her crossword.
Seven across. "To exist."
He wrote: BE.
She stared at it. Two letters. The simplest answer.
"It was bothering me," he said, though it wasn't true. "I see you leave it blank every week."
"I know the answer," she said quietly. "I always know that one."
"Then why don't you write it?"
She traced the empty boxes with her finger. "Because once you write it down, you have to fill in the rest. And sometimes the rest is..." She gestured at nothing, everything. "Hard."
Miguel understood then. The crossword wasn't about the crossword.
He sat down across from her—something he'd never done with a customer, something that broke all the invisible rules of barista-customer dynamics.
"What if," he said carefully, "you just filled in the ones you knew? Just the easy ones. Just for today."
She looked at him for a long moment. Then she picked up her pen.
Two down. "Small light."
She wrote: LAMP.
Nine across. "To start again."
She hesitated. He waited.
Finally, she wrote: BEGIN.
They sat there as she filled in five more words—none of them leading anywhere complete, but all of them there, real, in ink.
When she left, she forgot her newspaper. Miguel almost called after her, then decided not to. He picked up the crossword, looked at the half-filled grid, the empty spaces still waiting.
He thought maybe that was enough. Maybe that was everything.
Maybe all we can do is fill in what we know and trust that the rest will come.
#flashfiction #Barcelona #moments #connection