#solitude

The woman at the café dropped her pen three times before I realized she was crying.

She sat two tables away, close enough that I could see the tremor in her hands, the way she pressed her palm flat against the marble tabletop as if to steady something inside herself. Her coffee had gone cold. A thin skin had formed across its surface, catching the late afternoon light that filtered through the plane trees outside.

I shouldn't have looked. In Barcelona, we've perfected the art of proximity without intimacy—sharing walls, streets, the same square meter of shade, all while maintaining our careful distances. But her pen rolled under my table, and I had no choice but to pick it up.

The woman at the café table had ordered the same cortado three times in two hours. Each time, she'd let it cool, untouched, while her fingers traced the rim of the cup in perfect circles.

Marco noticed because noticing was his job. Fifteen years behind this counter had taught him to read the rhythms of solitude—the difference between someone waiting and someone hiding.

She wasn't waiting.