Page 11 of Night Shift

But every evening for the past several, I have sat at Ghoulish Grinds' sticky bar, watched Calliope ring up sullen students and bone-tired parents, and listened to her unspool stories about her town, her life, her assembled collection of minor disasters and even smaller victories.

In theory, I am not keeping score.

In practice, I know the number of times she twirls her hair around a pencil when she is thinking, the exact twist of her mouth when a regular tries and fails at banter, and the pattern of freckles along her cheekbone that resembles the constellation Cassiopeia.

Tonight, I sit with both hands cupped around my mug, letting the warmth soak into my joints. Calliope keeps catching me at it, as though I need constant reminding that one is supposed to treat a hot beverage with proper ceremony.

"You said the pastries are better on Wednesdays," I tell her, regarding the scone she has presented. "I suspect this is an attempt to secure my loyalty."

She wipes her hands on her apron, leaving a faint dusting of flour behind. "You'd know if you stuck around for a full week. Maybe you're afraid you'd get bored."

"I do not experience boredom."

The speed of my response makes her eyebrows rise.

"Touchy."

"I recognize repetition for what it is," I continue. "A precondition to comfort. Or so I have read."

"You read up on comfort?"

"Once. It did not seem urgent at the time."

I break off a piece of the scone and study it before adding, "Now it does."

Her expression softens before she laughs, not at me, but with the gentle amusement I have come to recognize as uniquely hers.

I find I like that distinction.

The shop is busy, then still, then busy again in predictable pulses. Third-shifters fill themselves with espresso and mutter into their phones while students grow progressively more frantic as deadlines approach. At the crest of each wave, Calliope finds her way back to me, sometimes with more coffee, sometimes with a story about someone in town who has apparently not changed in decades.

She tells these stories with the easy affection of someone who both loves and despises her roots.

By the fourth night, she no longer waits for a lull to speak to me. She leaves the bar during her break and drops into the chair across from mine, frowning at her phone before placing it facedown on the table.

"Do you ever feel like there's more to the world than anyone sees, but you can't tell if you're crazy or if everyone else is just ignoring it?"

"Yes."

The answer escapes before I consider its weight.

She leans forward. "I knew it. You're not from here."

"No."

"You're not even from, like, adjacent reality, are you?"

The urge to tell her everything presses unexpectedly against my bones. I could tell her how the first light of creation sounded, about the secret hum between atoms or the civilizations I have watched turn to dust beneath skies they believed would last forever.

Instead, I say, "I have seen many versions of this world. Most people look away."

She does not.

"What about you?"

"I am not most people."

She studies me for a second. "You know, sometimes you sound like the villain in a movie. The kind who gets all the best lines."