A dying winter’s afternoon, and from the window of a coffee shop a young woman watches rain slant down across the city. Each time she’s glanced outside, the afternoon’s a little darker, the lights sharper as they dazzle off the wet street, off the wet cars and buses surging toward the intersection. She shivers and looks back at her laptop. Her job with its long hours—her whole life in this city—is still new and brimming with promise.

So many people have taken shelter in the coffee shop that now the air’s heavy with their chatter, their breath, the smell of their damp coats. She stretches her neck, settles her fingers back on the keyboard, but she’s barely typed a word before someone’s standing over her. A man holding a small cup of coffee. A bony face, his thin hair slicked to his head, his coat drenched. There’s something unsettling about the way his eyes clutch at her from behind his glasses. “If I may?” he says, and nods toward the empty chair beside her. That strangely formal phrase, the slight lilt to it, as though he learned English far away. 

“Oh,” she says, and she frowns.

It’s enough. Already he’s muttering, “My apologies,” and walking away.

When she glances outside again, there he is at the curb, a shadow in the twilight, holding his coffee as the rain beats down and traffic rushes past. It’s odd, the way he just stands there. Maybe that’s why she’s still watching as he gathers himself up, and she stumbles to her feet, slams her hand against the window with a cry.

Of course, it’s too late. He’s stepping into the road and she won’t be able to shake the sight of him as she packs up her apartment, as she takes a bus back to her hometown, as she sits on her childhood bed and feels more alone than she ever has or ever will, because there he is, for that singular moment before the thud that sends him flying, that man ablaze in the headlights.