Leo’s simple “Happy birthday, Mira” landed with a weight she didn’t expect. It wasn’t just that he’d noticed the date on her license; it was the way he said her name, as if it already belonged in his mouth, as if she were not invisible in the blur of morning orders. He slid her coffee across the counter, the usual plain cup now marked with a small, lopsided star and the words: “Make today different.”
All day, the message followed her. In the reflection of the office window, in the silence between emails, in the ache of realizing how long she’d been coasting through her own life. That evening, instead of going straight home, she walked back to The Corner Bean. Leo was wiping down tables, surprised to see her return. She thanked him—for the coffee, the star, the sentence that had unsettled her. Then, for the first time in years, she made a new choice: “Do you have a minute to sit?”
