The café hums softly — a low murmur of spoons, voices, milk steaming behind the counter. I go there more often than I should, pretending it’s for the coffee, though I know that’s not true. He’s always there — Joseph — the boy with the rolled sleeves, the nice ass, the quiet smile. He moves with a kind of unthinking grace that makes the simplest gestures unbearable to watch. The tilt of his head, the tiny crease that appears between his brows when he concentrates. He hums under his breath when the machine hisses, wipes the same patch of counter top as if he’s polishing a secret into it. The light hits his hair just so, and I find myself timing my arrival to catch that moment when he leans over the counter and looks up.

Sometimes he catches my eye, and it feels like an accident — a spark that wasn’t meant to happen. He doesn’t know what he does to me: the curve of his wrist, the steam curling around his face, the way his voice seems to linger in the air a heartbeat too long. When his hand brushes mine as he gives me change, there’s the faint scent of roasted beans and skin, a small, electric pause before he turns away.

I tell myself I could stop if I wanted to. That it’s just a crush, just admiration. But I don’t want to. I want the ache. It isn’t love — not really — it’s too fleeting, too impossible. He doesn’t see me, not the way I see him. Yet there’s a strange tenderness in wanting without having, in sitting there each morning, pretending to read, tracing the rim of my cup as the warmth fades — while the boy behind the counter unknowingly becomes the centre of my day.

I collect fragments of him and carry them home like offerings. Sometimes I imagine saying his name aloud, but I never do. It feels too intimate, too final — as if it might break the spell.