Nathan met her on a Wednesday.
It was raining—not the storming kind, but a soft, persistent drizzle that painted the sidewalks silver and turned city lights into blurred halos.
He wasn't meant to be there. The café wasn't even his usual stop.
He had wandered for too long in the rain, his thin jacket soaked through, when he ducked under the awning of a dimly lit bookshop with a crooked sign that read"Paper Moon Café."
He hadn't expected warmth. He hadn't expected her.
Solene.
She stood behind the counter, arms crossed, a chipped black mug steaming near her elbow, a pencil tucked into her messy bun like a forgotten weapon. She looked up from a half-finished sketch and said, without hesitation, "You look like a ghost who forgot to dry off."
Nathan blinked.
"Tea," he muttered.
Her lips curled into something between a smile and a smirk. "Got it. One cup of resurrection coming right up."
---
He returned the next day. And the day after that.
She always had something sarcastic to say, always had music playing low on the café speakers—jazz, indie, soft piano riffs—and always had a pencil in her hand. Sketching in the margins of receipts, on napkins, even on her arms sometimes.
Nathan found himself drawn to her in a way he couldn't explain. Maybe it was because she didn't feel like everyone else. Her mind was harder to read, like a dream half-remembered. Her thoughts weren't walls like most people's—more like riddles, abstract and emotional, unpredictable.
She offered him a job by the end of the week.
"We're short-staffed. You're quiet. You don't annoy me. That's basically a résumé."
He took it.
Not just for the money—though he needed that, too—but because she made the world feel a little less cruel.
---
They spent weeks together.
Long hours sweeping floors, refilling syrup bottles, alphabetizing books they both knew no one would buy. She would tease him for not knowing bands or movies she loved. He would listen to her talk about dreams she had—owning a tattoo studio, traveling to Iceland, seeing the northern lights.
They talked about everything, except the one thing Nathan never said.
He never told her what he felt.
He didn't need to.
He knew it the way he knew his own breath—the way her laugh softened his chest, the way her voice steadied him when he felt unmoored. He knew it in the way he caught himself watching her when she wasn't looking, wondering what her silence meant.
And yet, even with all he could hear... he couldn't change the truth.
Because her thoughts didn't say his name.
---
They said "Luca."
The boy who sometimes swaggered into the café late, trailing smoke and the scent of rain-drenched leather. He was all edge and chaos, with a smile that broke rules and a voice that lingered after he left. Solene never introduced them. She didn't have to.
Nathan knew him before he said a word.
He felt it in her stillness whenever Luca walked in. Heard it in the way her thoughts became colors—bright and reckless. He hated how easily Luca filled the room, how easily Solene changed in his presence—her guard dropped, her words tangled, her heartbeat fast.
And Nathan… faded.
---
He tried not to let it show.
He kept showing up. Kept laughing at her jokes. Kept working hard. He became her shadow, her helper, her listener. He told himself it was enough to be close. To have her trust. To be someone she turned to when things were hard.
But when he lay in bed at night, staring at the cracks in the ceiling, he ached in places he didn't have names for.
Not because she didn't love him.
But because she *couldn't*.
She loved the kind of fire that burned too fast. And Nathan… Nathan was a quiet candle in a room full of storms.
---
Still, he stayed.
He stayed through winter, through quiet evenings where the café glowed with golden light and smelled like cinnamon and ink. Through late-night talks on the back steps, where she told him about her father she never saw, and the brother who died before she was born. Through moments that felt like almost—almost something, almost real.
But never enough.
---
And then, one morning, she didn't show up.
No call. No message.
Just an empty sketchbook left behind on the counter, and a note taped to the espresso machine
"Gone chasing northern lights. Don't wait for me."
He stood there for a long time, the paper trembling in his hand.
His throat burned. His heart was quiet.
He didn't cry.
Not then.
He just made himself a cup of tea.
Sat in the seat where she used to doodle stars on napkins.
And stared at the rain sliding down the window.