Coffee at Midnight

The café always smelled of cinnamon and old books. Maya had discovered it three months ago, during one of her sleepless nights when the apartment felt too empty and the silence too loud. That's when she first saw him. He sat in the corner booth every night at midnight, reading under the amber glow of a vintage lamp. Dark hair, tired eyes, fingers wrapped around a ceramic mug. He noticed her too, and nodded - a simple acknowledgment of two souls seeking refuge from their respective darknesses. They didn't speak that first night. Or the second. But on the third night, when Maya chose the table next to his, he slid a napkin across with a single word scrawled in elegant handwriting: 'Insomnia?' She smiled and wrote back: 'Life's too interesting to sleep through.' And so it began - a ritual of midnight conversations written on napkins, spoken in whispers, woven into the fabric of those quiet hours when the world belonged only to them. They established rules without ever stating them: no last names, no phone numbers, no meeting outside these walls. The café was their pocket universe, separate from everything else. He told her about his music, how he composed symphonies in his head but never wrote them down. She told him about her paintings, canvases she'd started but couldn't finish. They shared coffee and stories and comfortable silences, building something fragile and perfect. 'What are you running from?' he asked one night, his voice barely audible over the rain pattering against the windows. Maya studied her reflection in her coffee. 'Expectations. Everyone's idea of who I should be.' She looked up. 'You?' 'Regrets,' he said simply. 'All the choices I was too afraid to make.' Their hands were inches apart on the table. Neither moved to close the distance, both acutely aware of the electricity in that small space. Weeks became months. The barista stopped asking for their orders, simply preparing two coffees at midnight. Other patrons came and went, but Maya and her stranger remained constant, like planets locked in orbit. Then one night, he wasn't there. Maya waited until 3 AM, her coffee growing cold. She returned the next night, and the next, each empty booth a small devastation. On the seventh night, she almost didn't come at all. But when she pushed through the café door, he was there - flowers in one hand, nervous energy radiating from every line of his body. 'I'm sorry,' he said before she could speak. 'I had to leave town. Family emergency. I didn't have your number, didn't know how to find you.' He held out the flowers - wildflowers, the kind that grew without permission. 'I realized something while I was gone. I don't want to keep running. Not from regrets. Not from this.' Maya took the flowers, her heart thundering. 'We had rules.' 'We had fear,' he corrected gently. 'But I'm tired of being afraid. My name is Alex.' She laughed, tears surprising her. 'Maya.' 'Maya,' he repeated, like he was tasting the word. 'Can I buy you coffee tomorrow night? And the night after that? Maybe eventually somewhere other than here?' Maya looked around the café - their sanctuary, their pocket universe. Then she looked at Alex, really looked at him, and saw not just the stranger who understood her sleeplessness, but the possibility of something more. 'Yes,' she said. 'But let's keep midnight.'