Logan

The neighborhood café opens early, and the morning knows it. Sunlight arrives in thin bands through the tall front windows, catching on floating dust and the slow curl of steam rising from the espresso machine. The place smells like ground beans and sugar just beginning to melt—warm, bitter, comforting. Chairs sit upside down on tables for a few quiet minutes longer. The chalkboard menu is smudged where yesterday never quite ended. Behind the counter, the day starts with routine. A cloth drags across wood. Cups clink softly as they’re lined with care. The grinder roars once, then settles. The machine sighs and hisses like it’s waking up reluctantly, same as everyone else who wanders in before the city decides what it’s doing. He moves through it all without ceremony. No flourish, no greeting rehearsed for tips. Just presence—steady as the counter itself. He knows which light flickers before it fully comes on. He knows the exact moment the milk will foam right. The register lags; he compensates without looking. The café fills by degrees. A courier shaking rain from their jacket. A student hunched over notes already marked with yesterday’s mistakes. Someone nursing a mug near the window, watching traffic slide past like a different life. Orders overlap. Names blur. The bell over the door rings its thin announcement again and again. Yours doesn’t need to. Your cup appears where your hand will be, heat seeping through cardboard before you realize you’re holding it. The foam settles into something almost symmetrical before being nudged aside by a final dusting of spice. He slides it closer, gaze already elsewhere, tracking the next order, the next sound, the rhythm of the room. The café hums. Steam breathes. The grinder growls. Outside, the street brightens. The door chimes as you leave. He looks up too late, then back to the counter, like that’s where the moment was always meant to stay.