They met again the following weekend, same café but a different corner. Kristina arrived early and commandeered a table next to the window, her sunglasses this time perched on top of her head. She wore the hoodie, but in a defiant, deliberate way, sleeves pushed to the elbows, drawstring knotted and fanned at the throat.

  Theo was precisely on time. He spotted her from the street and gave a quick, almost military salute through the glass before entering. It was so corny she had to laugh, and when he saw her reaction, he grinned back.

  She had already ordered them two coffees. “You struck me as a creature of habit,” she explained as he slid into the seat across from her.

  “I like to think of it as iterative refinement,” he replied, folding himself into the small space with the care of a man used to not taking up more than his share. “If something works, you don’t improve it. Or at least you don’t break it.”

  She liked the way he said it, not in the brittle, defensive tone of men who had something to prove, but in a way that suggested he’d long ago accepted his own preferences and made peace with them. She wondered if that was an engineer thing or just a Theo thing.

  They talked about nothing and everything: the weather, the rising cost of rent, the impossible wait times for getting anything fixed in LA. Kristina, unmoored from the routines of publicist-driven interviews, let herself say what she actually meant, sometimes double-backing when she got nervous, sometimes catching herself and pushing forward anyway.

  Theo talked about his job with a kind of enthusiasm that made Kristina smile even when she barely followed the jargon. He explained the satisfaction of an elegant codebase, the petty rivalries of inter-departmental politics, the transcendent joy of a Friday afternoon when all the tests finally passed and you could just go home.

  When she asked him what he would do if he could do anything, he surprised her by saying he would teach. “Not kids,” he clarified, “but college, or maybe high school. Something where you could show people how things really fit together, without worrying about bottom lines or status meetings. Just the pure stuff.”

  She leaned forward, chin in her palm. “You’d be good at it,” she said. “You explain things without making people feel stupid.”

  Theo blushed. “Well, you don’t seem stupid.”

  “That’s because I’m not arguing with you,” she teased, and he laughed, a sharp bark of a sound that startled the couple two tables over.

  They were midway through their second cup when he mentioned his friends. “I have this crew,” he said. “Marcus, Elena, and Darren. We’ve been friends since college. Still hang out pretty much every week.”

  “That’s cute,” she said, and he groaned.

  “They would hate that. But yeah, I guess it is.”

  She sipped her coffee, already knowing the next question would be about relationships. She was used to it, the conversational calculus of first dates: establish the friends, then the job, then the exes, then the vulnerabilities. But Theo surprised her again.

  “We’re going to Vegas in a few months,” he said, “for the Mia Amor concert.”

  She almost choked, and then genuinely did, a mist of coffee atomizing from the back of her throat. She coughed, grabbed a napkin, and dabbed at her mouth.

  He looked alarmed, but also a little delighted. “You okay?”

  She nodded, still sputtering. “I just didn’t peg you for a pop concert guy.”

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “I’m not,” he admitted. “It’s a long story, but basically, we made a pact. Marcus says it’s about cultural enrichment. Elena just wants to dance. Darren is mostly there for the Vegas buffets.”

  “And you?” she asked, trying to compose herself. Her heart was hammering, partly from the surprise and partly from the risk of being found out.

  Theo looked down at the rim of his mug, tracing the condensation with his thumb. “I like seeing how it all works,” he said. “The sets, the lights, the sound. How someone can stand in front of twenty thousand people and make every single one feel like it’s for them.”

  It was the first thing he’d said that made her nervous. She could picture the show: the glitter, the smoke, the way the entire room held its breath for her. If he only knew. But Kristina was good at poker face, and she just nodded, letting the moment pass.

  “You’re not a big fan, then?” he asked.

  She risked a shrug. “I mean, the songs are catchy. The rest of it feels…manufactured, I guess.”

  Theo smiled. “You’re not wrong. But I have a theory that even the most manufactured thing has a little bit of truth in it, if you dig deep enough. There’s always a real person in the machine.”

  Kristina laughed, but softer this time. “I think you just gave away the ending to every philosophy book ever written.”

  He raised his hands, surrendering. “My apologies to the ancient Greeks.”

  A comfortable silence settled over them. The café had emptied out except for a man typing frantically at his laptop and a barista cleaning behind the counter. Afternoon light crept across the floor, pooling at their feet and warming the table.

  Kristina toyed with her spoon, tracing lazy circles in the dregs of her coffee. “You ever been to Vegas before?” she asked.

  Theo shook his head. “This’ll be my first time. Elena swears by the shows, Marcus has a spreadsheet for the best blackjack odds, and Darren is just excited to not be working. I’m…mostly along for the ride.”

  She bit back a smile. “You sound like you’re dreading it.”

  “I’m not! I’m just not built for the—” He gestured with both hands, miming the swirl of chaos. “I’m more of a sit-on-the-balcony-and-watch it on TV type.”

  She liked that. She liked that a lot.

  He went on, drawing diagrams on the napkin with his finger, outlining how stadium sound worked and the physics of crowd control. “It’s like a living organism,” he said, his hands moving with every word. “The way the beat travels, the way the crowd feeds on it and gives it back. It’s messy, but there’s a pattern in there if you know how to look.”

  “Messy is underrated,” she said. “Most people spend their lives trying to clean it all up, but maybe you’re supposed to leave some of the dirt behind.”

  He nodded, looking genuinely impressed. “See? You’re good at this.”

  “At what?”

  “Making sense of things.”

  She shook her head, but she was smiling. She felt lighter than she had in weeks. Maybe months. She risked another question. “If you could ask the real person inside Mia Amor one thing, what would it be?”

  He thought about it, really thought about it, then said, “I’d ask what keeps her going. If it’s still fun, or if she’s just riding inertia.”

  Kristina swallowed, feeling the question land somewhere deep. “What if the answer is both?” she asked.

  Theo grinned. “Then I’d say she’s doing it right.”

  They talked until the light faded and the barista announced, with only a trace of apology, that they were closing in ten minutes. They hadn’t noticed the time, hadn’t looked at their phones once.

  They left together, standing in the cool dusk outside the café. The city was louder than before, and the sidewalk vibrated with the energy of people heading to dinner, to bars, to whatever version of themselves they hoped to find that night.

  “Walk with me?” Kristina asked, surprising herself.

  “Anywhere,” Theo said, and this time he didn’t hesitate.

  They walked in easy silence for a block or two, just close enough that their arms brushed now and then. Kristina tried to memorize the sensation, the ordinariness of it. At the corner, she stopped and turned to face him.

  “This was fun,” she said.

  He nodded, searching her face for something. “Will you come to the concert?”

  She thought about it, and for the first time, she didn’t want to lie. “Maybe,” she said, “but only if you promise to come see me afterwards.”

  He smiled, wide and unguarded. “Deal.”

  They stood there a moment longer, neither wanting to be the one to say goodbye first. When she finally walked away, she looked back over her shoulder, found him still standing at the corner, watching her go.

  She waved. He waved back.

  Kristina walked home with a strange lightness in her chest, like a window had opened somewhere inside her. She let herself feel it, just for a little while, before the world rushed in again and demanded her attention.

  But even as the demands mounted—calls from Leslie, a text from Victor, an email from her father—she kept thinking about Theo, and the way he saw through the mess to something real.

  Maybe, she thought, that was enough for now.