By the sixth night, they stopped pretending it was coincidence.
Kirsch arrived at twelve-oh-two, shaking rain from his jacket before stepping inside. The café greeted him the same way it always did: dim lights, muted voices, the smell of old coffee clinging to the air like a habit no one bothered to break. He scanned the room without thinking about it.
Lita was already there.
Same table. Same chair. Her coat folded neatly beside her like she might need to leave at any moment. She didn't look up when he approached, but her hand paused mid-motion over the rim of her cup. Just enough to acknowledge him. Not enough to make it a thing.
Kirsch sat down across from her.
No greeting. No nod. No "hey."
The chair scraped softly against the floor, and that was enough.
They settled into the silence the way other people settled into conversation. It wasn't heavy. It wasn't awkward. It was familiar—like slipping into clothes that had already shaped themselves to your body.
The barista placed Kirsch's coffee on the table without asking. Lita's tea was still steaming. Whatever blend it was, it smelled faintly of citrus and something floral Kirsch couldn't name. He liked that he didn't know what it was. Some things were better left unlabeled.
Outside, rain streaked the windows in uneven lines. Lita watched it like it was a television program with a plot only she understood.
"Trains were late again," Kirsch said eventually.
"Always are," she replied.
That was the entire exchange. They both returned to their drinks.
This was how it went most nights. Small comments, dropped casually into the space between them, never demanding a response but always receiving one anyway. No follow-up questions. No pressure to expand.
Kirsch talked about malfunctioning machines at work. Lita complained about broken vending machines that ate coins but never gave snacks. He mentioned the way fluorescent lights buzzed when they were about to die. She said she preferred lamps because they didn't pretend to be cheerful.
None of it mattered. That was the point.
Meaningless topics were safe. They didn't invite explanations. They didn't lead to "why" or "how long" or "what are you going to do next?" They were words for the sake of sharing space, not building narratives.
Kirsch noticed that Lita never spoke about her job directly. She referenced "work" the way people referenced weather—something unavoidable, something endured, something not worth describing in detail.
She also never asked about his.
Once, he almost told her anyway.
It slipped up on him, hovering at the back of his throat: night shift, maintenance, endless alarms and empty corridors. The kind of job that made people nod politely before forgetting you existed. But the moment passed. Lita was stirring her tea, eyes distant, and the night closed over the impulse like it had never been there.
Daytime topics were treated like landmines.
Whenever the conversation drifted too close—weekends, families, schedules that implied sunlight—one of them would gently steer it away. Not abruptly. Not obviously. Just a subtle pivot.
"You ever notice how mornings smell different?" Kirsch asked once.
Lita stiffened, barely perceptible. Then she smiled.
"I wouldn't know," she said. "I'm usually asleep by then."
That was it. End of topic.
Kirsch didn't push. He didn't ask why. He liked that she trusted him not to.
They sat there, night after night, observing the café like it was a shared secret. The man who always ordered pancakes at three a.m. The woman who cried silently into her soup once a week. The group of college students who came in loud and left quieter, like the night had scolded them.
Sometimes Lita would point something out with a tilt of her chin.
"Same guy again," she murmured.
Kirsch followed her gaze. "He's loyal."
"Or afraid of change."
Kirsch smiled. "Aren't we all?"
Lita laughed softly at that. Not loud. Not free. But real.
Her laughter didn't linger. It flickered and disappeared, like a match struck in a dark room just long enough to see where you were.
They learned each other's habits without discussing them.
Kirsch learned that Lita drank her tea in precise intervals—three sips, pause, stir, repeat. That she tapped her fingers when she was tired but refused to admit it. That she hated it when the barista played upbeat music too early in the morning.
Lita learned that Kirsch always checked the door when someone new entered. That he preferred sitting with his back protected. That he sometimes stared at his coffee like he expected it to say something important.
They never touched.
Not accidentally. Not deliberately.
The table between them might as well have been a boundary drawn by mutual agreement. It wasn't fear. It wasn't disinterest. It was respect—for the fragile thing they were building out of silence and shared exhaustion.
One night, Lita broke the pattern.
"Do you ever feel like you're hiding from something?" she asked, staring into her cup.
Kirsch hesitated.
He could feel the question tugging at threads he didn't usually allow himself to touch. Daytime questions. Dangerous questions.
"I think I'm just… waiting," he said carefully.
"For what?"
"I don't know."
She nodded like that made perfect sense.
"Waiting is safer than choosing," she said.
Kirsch studied her face then—not in a searching way, but in a quiet acknowledgment. The lines under her eyes. The tension she carried even while sitting still. The way she held herself like someone who expected to be interrupted at any moment.
"You're good at waiting," he said.
"So are you."
They let the silence return after that. It settled more heavily this time, not uncomfortable, just… aware.
Outside, the rain stopped. The city exhaled.
Kirsch realized something then, slow and unwelcome: these nights had begun to matter to him. Not because of Lita specifically—though she was part of it—but because this space, this time, had become a refuge.
And refuges were fragile.
He watched as Lita finished her tea and checked the clock on her phone. She always did that near the end, like she was measuring how much night she had left.
"I should go," she said.
Kirsch nodded. He always did.
She stood, slipped her coat on, and paused. For just a second longer than usual.
"Same time tomorrow?" she asked.
Not a promise. Not a plan. Just a question.
"Yeah," Kirsch said. "Same table."
She smiled at that. A little warmer this time.
Then she left, dissolving into the night like she always did.
Kirsch stayed behind, finishing his coffee slowly. The café hummed around him, unaware that something quiet and important had just been reinforced.
Same table.
Same silence.
And for now, that was enough.