They ordered coffee. Then tea. Then, without really planning to, they ordered dinner too.
Daniel asked her about the plant visible over her shoulder in her profile photo — the big, dramatic one in the blue pot. She laughed and said it was a fiddle-leaf fig named Gerald, and that Gerald was, honestly, struggling.
"I'm not great at keeping things alive," she admitted.
"That's okay," he said. "I'm not great at parallel parking. We all have our things."
She laughed — a real one, not the polite kind. She didn't even hide it behind her hand.
He told her about his students, about a thirteen-year-old who had written a three-page essay arguing that Napoleon was, technically, not short. She leaned forward without realizing it. He was easy to listen to. He made ordinary things sound interesting.
Time moved differently inside that café.