Candid-v3 Today

The rain didn’t bother Lena anymore. It just made the city sound like it was thinking.

“No,” Lena said. “Go ahead.”

Read receipt. 2:47 PM.

The girl looked at the cup, then at Lena. She wiped her face with her sleeve—hard, like she was angry at her own tears.

She looked down.

Lena almost laughed. Not at him. With him.

She sat at the last table by the window, the one with the wobbly leg she’d learned to balance with a folded napkin. The café was half-empty—a Monday evening kind of half-empty, where people nursed flat whites and stared at phones without really seeing them. candid-v3

“No,” she said. “But you get better at carrying it.”

Outside, a bus hissed to a stop. Nobody got on. Nobody got off. The rain didn’t bother Lena anymore