“You know what she is, right?”
Rico tossed a few bucks on the table and jerked his chin towards the counter. Droplets of condensation gathered on the windows. The sky looked like an old bruise.
“You gotta be careful, man. Some of ‘em look real until it matters.”
No reply from Ben. He just nodded, could be he agreed, could be he didn’t. The door buzzed as Rico left. Static hissed from the corner speaker, a preacher’s voice bleeding through the interference, a promise of salvation through subscription.
It didn’t rain in Tampa anymore. Moisture just hovered in the air, caught in the dead circuits of the old storm grid. A sky without sound.
He sat in his usual booth. Boots still gritty from his port run. A dull ache from where he’d tweaked his back lugging fiber cables, the deep sea kind. He had a smear of egg on his cuff from breakfast. His second cup of coffee had gone cold.
Rose poured him a fresh one without asking.
“Thanks,” he nodded. She walked away, her hips swaying just enough to leave a wake in the warm light.
She looked, to him, like a softer world. She’d have been a model in a pre-war ad. Maybe a backup singer in a synth cabaret. Way too much grace for a place like this. That grace held as she scrubbed the counters for a hundredth time, served food to people who didn’t ever look you in the eye.
She was working the order screen while he watched. Fingers tapping with an easy rhythm.
Ben smiled as she brought him another order of toast, burnt the way he liked it. And, glancing around the empty diner, she slid into the booth to sit opposite him.
They sat in silence while he ate a couple of bites. Rose sipped a cup of her own coffee, black, no sugar.
“Someone said something,” said Ben.
Rose raised her eyebrow.
“That guy I came in with from work. Rico.”
“Ah.” She didn’t need to ask what he said.
Ben pushed his toast around the plate. “He said I should be careful. That you aren’t…real.”
“And what do you think?”
He looked up. She was keeping her voice even. Not sharp, but expectant.
“No…it’s not that,” he stuttered. “ That’s not…I didn’t think that.”
She let the moment sit for a little while. The hum of the diner lights filling the silence.
“Then why did you tell me? What are you asking?” she said.
Ben swallowed, took a swig of coffee. “Just…why don’t you tell people? Like, be upfront.”
She leaned back in the booth, studying him like a new customer reading the menu for the first time.
“They don’t deserve to know,” she said. “Why am I going to let them file me like a form?”
He flinched a little. “I didn’t mean…”
“I know,” she said, gently. “But you still asked.”
He nodded. The worst part was that she wasn’t even mad. Calm. Because she’d had to do this dance way too many times to stumble.
“I didn’t want it to look like I was lying,” he said.
She tilted her head. “What would you be lying about?”
“I didn’t know at first. I mean…y’know…I didn’t ask.”
“Was I hiding, Ben?”
Ben rubbed his face with one hand, knuckled his hair. “Why is it still a thing? It shouldn’t be.”
“It’s not on me that it is,” she said.
The toast and the coffee were cold. He didn’t care.
“I just like being with you,” he said. “That feels realest, right? That’s what matters.”
“Then just do that.”
Ben looked at her. Really took time to look. Smooth line of her jaw. The perfect asymmetry of her smile. That little light he always felt he could see just behind her pupils, just for him to notice. At least, so he liked to believe.
“You tell me I feel like fire,” she said, her voice quiet. “Maybe stop trying to explain why it’s warm.”
Outside, someone lit a cigarette beneath a flickering streetlamp. Smoke curled into the damp, heavy air and disappeared. A man in a white suit screamed scripture into a floating lens.
Ben reached across the table. Her hands met him halfway.
There didn’t need to be announcements. No disclaimers for risk. They were just two people, sharing a booth and, sometimes, a heartbeat. Holding hands in a city that didn’t know how to mind its own business.