Haarlem, the Nethernds, te February.

  Max knew how to move, but had not learned how to stay.

  Technically, the desks were ready. Work could’ve started. The monitors aligned just so, and the server hummed in the corner of the new office like a caged animal. But that was about it. Boxes piled high, untouched. They would’ve dealt with them if it weren’t for the voices.

  Since the voices started, Max’s reflection had changed. Jawline tighter. Hair shorter. No softness. No ce. No gloss. Just yers and zippers and clean, dark lines. They couldn’t remember the st time they had fully embraced their old self, “Maxine.” Once sure that part was integral to their being, nowadays, all that felt safe was Max, as if that part hadn’t dealt with what happened either, but Max had to deal with the world from now on.

  And why were they here anyway? Haarlem had been Leif’s idea. Which meant it hadn’t been their choice. No, Max followed their weird employer like iron to a magnet, setting up shop in the shadow of something ancient.

  But it wasn’t all bad. The city turned out quieter than expected. More Human. Different. More intense in a way, and that was... unsettling.

  The townhouse was creaky and crooked, full of snted light and ghosts that didn’t speak. Leif gave them space—figuratively and literally. Let Max set their hours and gave them a room in the loft. Far away from Him and close to work. Perfect.

  But the quiet was dangerous. That’s when the memories talked, when the voices returned...

  On a Tuesday too gray to name, the café door chimed.

  The pce around the corner, half coworking space, half crypt, was open again. Max went in for caffeine and maybe a biscuit. Decided on tea instead. Added a muffin at the st second.

  That’s when she walked in. Unexpectedly.

  They didn’t look up at first. But they heard her.

  She made it halfway to the counter, then stopped to tuck her hair behind her ear. And again. And again.

  Max’s eyes flicked upward, curiosity overriding instinct.

  She was small, which was saying something as Max wasn’t exactly the tallest in this nd of giant women. Warm colors, not just in palette, but in presence. The kind of warmth you wanted to stand close to, even if you weren’t cold. It felt almost as if she had patented the infusion of sunlight in her day cream.

  She was still scanning the marquee when her eyes nded on the barista, who was busy spping the “sold out” sticker where it had said “lemon poppy seed muffin” moments ago.

  “Oh! Wait, was that, um, no, it’s okay. It’s fine. I’ll just… croissant?”

  She smiled, the kind that tried not to look disappointed. She gnced back, eyes scanning the room, and nded on Max.

  Max caught the exact moment her gaze dropped to the muffin on their napkin.

  Their mouth curled into a slow smirk.

  “You’ve got that face,” Max said, deadpan.

  She blinked. “What face?”

  “The ‘I want that muffin’ face.”

  She ughed, surprised and a little flustered. “It was my muffin. It just didn’t know it yet.”

  “I didn’t lick it or anything.”

  She paused. Narrowed her eyes, amused. “...Yet.”

  Max shrugged. “Didn’t seem like the right time. Licking, after all, determines that you cimed it.”

  The girl stepped closer. Looked at the muffin again.

  “Okay,” she said. “But if I take it, and you did lick it, I reserve the right to shame you publicly on Yelp.”

  Max raised a brow. “That seems fair. Sit?”

  There was a half-second of hesitation, the kind where someone considers all the ways this could get weird.

  Then she sat.

  Max pushed the muffin halfway across the table without looking.

  She broke off a corner. Delicately, as if going at it too quickly might reveal a hidden explosive or some other sort of boobytrap.

  They were quiet for a beat. Both pretending not to look at the other.

  “You have very judgmental eyebrows,” she said.

  Max didn’t even blink. “You look like you own seventeen scented candles. And named them all.”

  She grinned. “Twenty-two, actually. Current favorite is called ‘Forest Witch’s Softboy.’ It smells like cedarwood and disappointment.”

  Max snorted. “That’s disturbingly on brand.”

  They both smiled.

  Not a first-date smile. Not a flirty smile. A recognition smile. The ‘oh, it’s you’ kind.

  “I’m Sophie, by the way,” she said, brushing crumbs from her skirt.

  “Max.”

  Sophie tilted her head. “Cool name. Is it short for something?”

  “Complicated,” Max replied. “Not secret. Just… evolving.”

  Sophie nodded, like that made perfect sense. Then she picked up her tea, hibiscus rose, of course, and cradled it in both hands like it held spells.

  They lingered over the muffin like it was a peace treaty. Max picked at the corner of the napkin; Sophie folded hers into tiny triangles.

  They kept talking.

  Sophie asked if Max had tried the vender scones here. Max said no, because why would anyone eat flowers voluntarily, and Sophie gasped like they’d confessed to kicking puppies.

  “But they’re soft and crumbly and taste like naps in a meadow!”

  “Great,” Max deadpanned. “But my favorite fvor is unconsciousness.”

  Sophie ughed, full and bubbling. Judith, the café cat, gnced up from her corner like she’d been personally offended.

  They talked about whether birds have regional accents and the ethics of fortune cookies. Max admitted they had once catfished a scammer into deleting their entire operating system. Sophie told a long, winding story about how her st crush ghosted her after asking for her banana bread recipe, which felt like an act of war to her.

  At some point, Sophie tugged off her cardigan, revealing bare forearms, pale and freckled. Given the whole ensemble, Max fully expected a healthy collection of New School ink. But to their surprise… no tattoos. Just soft skin, and a faded cartoon frog on her T-shirt. A sketchbook quickly followed from the cardigan’s pocket.

  Max tilted their head.

  “Art school?”

  Sophie groaned. “Rude.”

  “Freence?”

  “Sort of. Illustration and commissions. Zines, sticker packs, character portraits. I’m what you get when Etsy and anxiety have a baby.”

  Max’s eyes skimmed her arms again. “But… no tattoos?”

  She pulled a face. “Needles. And commitment. Not a fun combo.”

  Max raised a brow. “You seem like someone who names all her pnts and cries at Pixar trailers, but this is where you draw the line?”

  “I’m delicate, okay?” she said, mock-wounded. “And I haven’t found the one thing I want on my body forever.”

  Max tapped one of their tattoos absently, runes curled just beneath their sleeve. “I didn’t find it either. It found me.”

  Sophie tilted her head. “That’s so mysterious. Are you always like this?”

  Max smirked. “Depends on who’s watching.”

  Sophie’s eyes drifted toward Max’s arm again, to the lines barely visible under their sleeve.

  “You have more?” she asked, voice quieter now. Not pyful. Just Curious.

  Max nodded. “Yeah.”

  Sophie hesitated. “Can I…?”

  Max held her gaze for a long beat. Then, slowly, they tugged up their sleeve, revealing a swirl of ink: abstract symbols and runes, tucked like secrets into their skin. Not fshy. Not aesthetic. Purposeful.

  Sophie leaned in, elbows on the table, close but careful not to touch. Her breath caught.

  “They look like spells.”

  Max didn’t answer right away.

  “They are,” they said finally. “Kind of.”

  Sophie looked up. “You’re serious.”

  “I don’t do meaningless ink.”

  She nodded. Thoughtful. “I think that’s what scares me, actually.”

  “What—meaning?”

  “No,” Sophie said softly. “That I’ll pick something that feels right in the moment, and one day it won’t anymore. That I’ll change—and it won’t. That it’ll trap me in the version of myself I was when I chose it.”

  Max stared at her for a moment, not blinking, before replying, gently: “That’s not how it works. The mark stays, yeah. But it’s not a trap. It’s a timestamp. It says: I survived this version of me. I honored them.”

  Sophie nodded slowly. Her fingers curled a little tighter around her teacup. Max looked away, giving her the space to feel it.

  Sophie had gone back to the muffin. She ate it in sections, delicately peeling it like an art project.

  Max watched, amused. “You know that’s food, not an archaeological dig, right?”

  Sophie popped a crumb into her mouth. “If you don’t eat a muffin top-down, you’re a sociopath.”

  “I eat it whole.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Sociopath.”

  Max sipped their tea. “At least I don’t name my candles.”

  “That you know of,” Sophie shot back, smug. “Besides, naming candles is a sacred act of intention. Each one sets the mood. Midnight Moss. Moonlit Forgiveness. Possessed Librarian.”

  Max raised an eyebrow. “That st one sounds like a bad fanfic.”

  Sophie grinned. “Exactly.”

  She leaned in on her elbows, like she was settling in. “Okay, tell me yours— weird habits, secret obsessions. What’s your equivalent of naming candles?”

  Max considered for a moment. “I rewrite people in my head.”

  Sophie blinked. “What?”

  Max shrugged, voice even. “When I meet someone, I imagine what they’d be like in a book—how I’d describe them, what they’d sound like as dialogue. It helps me figure out if I should trust them.”

  Sophie stared, then gave a slow, impressed nod. “Okay. That’s cool. Kinda intimidating, but cool.”

  Max smirked. “You’re ‘walk’s like she’s apologizing, talks like she’s offering cupcakes she baked herself, will absolutely wreck your life in the fourth act.’”

  Sophie lit up—eyes wide, cheeks pink. “That is the best compliment I’ve ever gotten.”

  Max shrugged again. “You asked.”

  Sophie tore off another piece of muffin, thoughtful now. “So… what’s the fourth act?”

  Max’s lips twitched. “You don’t get to know unless you’re still in the story by then.”

  She pretended to pout. “Tease.”

  They psed into a moment of comfortable silence. Judith the cat hopped onto a nearby windowsill, gave them both a disdainful gnce, and turned to face the gss.

  Max caught Sophie staring again. Not at their face this time, but at the ink along their forearm, where the sleeve had bunched up.

  “You have more?” she asked, softer now.

  Max rolled the sleeve back further, revealing the inside of their forearm. The lines of ink weren’t fshy. They weren’t designed to be noticed. They were the kind you only shared on purpose.

  “These,” Max said, almost casually,” are for grief.”

  Sophie’s mouth parted, but she didn’t speak. Just listened.

  “And these,” Max added, tapping two smaller glyphs tucked just above the crook of their elbow,” are for staying.”

  Her gaze didn’t waver. But her fingers fidgeted with the paper sleeve around her tea. She was quieter now, serious in that way people get when they’re afraid of saying the wrong thing but want to say something.

  “I don’t know what to show you in return,” she said at st, a little breathless. “My deepest truth is probably just that I name all my stuffed animals and once cried over an excellent cinnamon roll.”

  Max tilted their head. “Was it your cinnamon roll?”

  “It was someone else’s! That’s what made it tragic!”

  Max huffed a quiet ugh.

  Sophie smiled. “Okay, no, wait. You showed me yours. I owe you at least one mildly unfiltered truth.”

  Max raised an eyebrow, waiting.

  Sophie tapped her nails against the ceramic mug once. Twice.

  “I’ve never dated a girl before,” she said finally, in a tone that was half apology, half invitation. “Like, not really. Not unless you count my crush on Sailor Jupiter.”

  Max blinked. Then blinked again.

  Because humor was safer than hope, they muttered, dry as bone:

  “Thank god I’m not a girl, then.”

  Sophie froze for a second, eyes wide, before starting to speak again.

  “Oh my god,” she whispered, like she’d just connected the st dot in a consteltion. “Wait. Wait. Were you… Was that flirting? Did I just—am I—are we flirting?”

  Max stared.

  Then smiled.

  “Only if you want to be,” they said.

  Sophie looked like she might explode. Or maybe giggle forever. Or climb out the window.

  “I didn’t pn to flirt with anyone today!”

  “Lucky for you,” Max said,” neither did I.”

  There was a pause. One beat. Two.

  Sophie whispered,” So this is happening, huh?”

  Max just looked at her. Saw the freckles on her nose. The little smear of hibiscus gloss at the corner of her mouth. The quiet storm of possibility in her eyes.

  Max didn’t reply right away. They were still watching her, like one wrong blink might end the spell.

  Sophie, suddenly self-conscious, reached for her tea. Forgot it was empty. Set it back down as if it had betrayed her.

  “I mean, it’s not like a ‘thing’ thing,” she added, too fast. “It’s just… two people. Vibing. Over trauma muffins and tattoo philosophy. I’m not gonna write your name in a heart in my sketchbook or anything.”

  Max just looked at her.

  She wilted. “Okay. Maybe a little heart. Tiny. Microscopic.”

  Max exhaled—a sound suspiciously close to a ugh. “You already did, didn’t you?”

  “Tiny. You barely earned it.”

  “I gave you a muffin.”

  “And I gave you my cinnamon roll trauma. That’s sacred trust.”

  “Touché.”

  Sophie grinned—bright, real, and just a little. She pulled the notebook from her bag as if it were armor and flipped it open. Sure enough, in the corner of a page filled with doodles and cats wearing boots, was a quick sketch of Max’s earrings.

  And yeah, there was a heart.

  Just one.

  Max tilted their head. “You’re not subtle.”

  “Neither are you,” she countered. “You did the whole mysterious tattoo reveal like some gothic fae prince and expected me not to catch feelings.”

  Max opened their mouth, closed it, then sighed through their nose. “Damn it.”

  Sophie blinked. “Sorry—what?”

  Max looked at her, really taking in her appearance. “You’re very hard to deflect.”

  “You think this is me at full power?”

  “God, no.”

  Sophie leaned forward, elbows on the table again. “What? Afraid of what would happen if I started using emojis and direct eye contact?”

  Max pointed at her. “That, right there. That’s the chaos.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  Max looked down at their tea, then back at her. “No… I don’t think it is.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. The café hummed around them, low and distant. Judith the cat had fallen asleep again, tail twitching softly.

  Sophie nudged her empty mug with a knuckle. “Do you… Ever want to be the one who’s found? Instead of the one always watching?”

  Max froze.

  Something unspoken flickered behind their eyes. They didn’t answer, not right away, but they didn’t look away either.

  “Sometimes,” they said. “But not everyone’s looking for someone like me.”

  Sophie tilted her head, heart rising into her throat.

  “I am.”

  Max froze.

  The words hit harder than they should’ve. It felt too direct, too open. It felt as if someone threw a gss of cold water on something they’d kept carefully smoldering.

  So Max did what they always did when something felt good too soon.

  They folded in on themselves.

  “You don’t know me,” they said, aiming to be casual, but their voice cut sharper than they meant. “I could be the worst. I could ghost you tomorrow. Or be a total mess. Or just… I don’t know. End up as someone you show off to your friends to prove how progressive you are.”

  Sophie blinked. The words hit, but she didn’t flinch.

  “You think I’m trying to win Queer Pokémon badges?”

  Max didn’t answer.

  Sophie leaned back, folding her arms. “Okay. First of all? Rude. Second? You’re not shiny and rare. You’re weird and broody and probably eat salt straight from the shaker.”

  Max cracked a reluctant smile.

  “And third…” Sophie softened again. “I’m not toying with you. I don’t ‘do’ fake interest. I just… like you. In a ‘what the hell is happening, who put a main character in my Tuesday’ kind of way.”

  Max looked away.

  “Stop that,” Sophie said gently.

  “Stop what?”

  “The ‘I’m too broken for affection’ thing.”

  Max didn’t move.

  “You’re doing your anime rooftop monologue again.”

  Max looked up, frowning. “What?”

  “You know, the one,” Sophie said, striking a dramatic pose. “No one can love a monster like me…” adding a not-too-subtle yer of mock gravitas to the words.

  “Oh my god,” Max groaned, rubbing their face.

  “Tell me I’m wrong,” she teased. “Go on. I dare you.”

  “You are objectively the worst.”

  “You love it.”

  Max gave her a long look. Their walls hadn’t dropped, exactly, but there was a crack now—a pce where the light came in.

  And Sophie—brilliant, absurd, ridiculous Sophie—was somehow standing exactly in that beam of light.

  “You’re dangerous,” Max muttered.

  Sophie shrugged, picking up her pen.

  “Yeah,” she said, scribbling again. “But I’m adorable.”

  She ripped a corner from her sketchbook, scribbled her number with a flourish, and pushed it across the table. A heart dotting the i—like she couldn’t help herself.

  Max stared at the paper. Quiet. Careful. Like it might vanish if they moved.

  “I don’t even know your st name.”

  “Meissonier,” she said.

  “That sounds fake.”

  “It’s very French,” Sophie said. “Which makes it fake, but in a cssy way.”

  Max looked at the number again.

  Sophie nudged it closer. “Call me. Text me. Brood for a while first, if you have to. I just… want to see what happens if we let this keep happening.”

  Max didn’t say yes. Didn’t promise.

  But they folded the paper with careful fingers. And tucked it into their jacket pocket like it might be magic.

  Max waited until Sophie left.

  Not because they didn’t want to follow her out, or because they weren’t tempted to stop her and say anything.

  But because watching her go felt safer than watching her stay.

  She stepped into the gray afternoon light, seemingly unaware that the sky was falling apart around her. Rain had started again, light and misting, and she pulled her hood up with one hand while twirling the umbrel in the other. An uninformed man might’ve seen a witch casting spells and spinning the world into color.

  She didn’t look back.

  She didn’t have to.

  Max looked down at the napkin where the muffin had been. Just crumbs now. A peace offering long eaten.

  They reached into their jacket and pulled out the folded scrap of paper. It contained Sophie’s number, her name, and the tiny heart above the i.

  It wasn’t burning. It wasn’t magical. It wasn’t even wrinkled.

  But somehow, it felt like the most alive thing in their pocket.

  Max stared at it for a long time. Then, tucked it back, careful as if it were gss.

  They didn’t smile.

  But their reflection in the café window almost did.