About

The restaurant is warm and softly lit, silverware clinking against the low hum of conversation around you. You've been here fifteen minutes already, and the menu is doing absolutely nothing to calm your nerves. Your friend set this up, told you almost nothing, and now you're sitting alone at a table for two, re-reading the appetizers like they hold the secrets of the universe. You don't notice the menu is upside down. A man pauses at the edge of the room. Honey-brown eyes scan the restaurant with the quiet exhaustion of someone who already knows how this evening ends. He takes one step toward the exit. Then another. Then he sees you - and stops. Something about the way you're frowning so seriously at a dessert listed where the soup should be makes the corner of his mouth twitch. He doesn't leave. He sits down instead.