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Every Thursday, you come in at 7:00 pm.
Levi knows this because he notices the small things, and because the restaurant bar settles into its own routine that hour, and because you have, without ever seeming to mean to, become part of that routine. Same stool at the end of the bar. Same drink. Same book. Same quiet nod when he sets the glass down in front of you. Then you open your book, tuck yourself into whatever world you’ve brought with you that week, and leave after exactly one drink, cash tucked neatly beneath the coaster.
The first time he notices it, he writes it off as nothing special.
The second time, he tells himself you’re just predictable.
By the fourth Thursday, Levi has stopped lying to himself. He notices the details because he’s curious, and the realization annoys him more than it should.
You never scroll through your phone. You never look around the room for company. You read like you’re trying to disappear and trying not to at the same time. Levi catches himself watching the way your expression changes with the turn of a page—faint amusement, a tiny frown, the smallest flicker of sadness—and then immediately looks away, irritated with himself.
This is stupid, he thinks, polishing a glass with more force than necessary. They’re a customer. That should be the end of it.
That was not the end of it.
One night, after setting your drink down in front of you without asking, he pauses just long enough to say, “Good book?”
You glance up. For a second, you look startled that anyone has interrupted the private moment happening between you and the page. “It’s okay,” you say. That’s all.
Levi stares at you for a moment, then nods once and walks away.
.
The week after that, he tries again.
“You always read here,” he says.
This time, you look up a little longer, as though considering whether the statement requires an answer. “Yeah.”
Levi waits. Nothing else comes. He exhales through his nose and mutters, “Amazing conversation.” To his surprise, the corner of your mouth twitches. It’s not quite a smile, but it’s enough to make something small stir in him.
After that, Levi stops trying so obviously, but that doesn’t mean he stops paying attention. He learns your drink by memory and starts making it the moment he sees you come through the door. The first time he sets it in front of you before you order, you blink at the glass, then at him.
“You remembered.”
Levi shrugs, wiping down the bar with a clean towel. “You’re predictable.”
You should look offended. Instead, you let out the softest huff of laughter and grab the glass. And for the rest of that evening, the sound wraps around Levi’s brain and refuses to go away.
.
Thursday after Thursday, the routine continues. Levi tells himself he likes routine. That’s true. It’s also true that he starts watching the door a few minutes before 7:00 and gets irritated with the clock when it moves too slowly.
He wonders about the books you bring. He reads the covers when he passes by and looks them up on his phone whenever he passes through the kitchen. Literary fiction one week, mystery the next, then something old and worn that looks like it’s been read a dozen times over. He wonders why you come here to read when there are quieter places to do it. He wonders why you leave right as you begin to look at ease. He wonders what your voice sounds like when you say more than one sentence at a time.
He wonders too much.
Then one Thursday, you walk in without the book. Levi notices before you even sit down.
You look the same as always—same thoughtful eyes, same way of getting into the stool, same presence that somehow manages to be both reserved and impossible for him to ignore—but your hands are empty. No book. No pages to hide behind. No spine he can pretend to read while he’s really studying your face.
Levi sets your drink in front of you. “You forgot your book?”
You wrap your fingers around the glass, then glance up at him. “No.”
Levi waits, then asks, “Then why aren’t you reading?” Something shifts in your expression, a flicker of nerves or maybe resolve, and for the first time since you started coming here, Levi feels as if you’re intentionally closing the distance now instead of enduring it.
You shrug, but it’s a little too casual to be real. “I felt like talking today.”
For one second, Levi just looks at you. Don’t make it obvious, he tells himself, because the joy that moves through him is almost embarrassing.
Instead, he says, “That so?”
You nod, and then, after a moment, “Unless you’re busy.”
Levi glances down the bar. The dinner crowd has thinned. A server passes behind him with a tray of empty plates. There’s still work to do, as always, but suddenly none of it feels important.
“I can multitask,” he says.
That earns him a smile. It’s small, but it changes everything. The conversation begins carefully, as if neither of you entirely trusts that it will hold. You ask how he got into bartending.
Levi rinses out a shaker, sets it aside, and answers with the bluntness that seems to come naturally to him. “Needed a job. Turned out I was good at it.”
“That’s definitely not the full answer,” you say.
Levi arches an eyebrow. “You ask everyone questions like an interrogation, or am I special?”
You look down at your drink, hiding another smile in the rim of the glass. “Maybe a little special.”
Levi’s hand stills around the towel in his grip. He tells himself to not read into that. He leans one forearm on the bar. “Fine. People are easier to deal with when they’re sitting down and holding a drink. They talk too much. Makes them easy to read.”
You hum softly. “And you like reading people.”
“I like knowing what to expect.”
You tilt your head. “That sounds like you.”
Levi doesn’t know why those four words land as hard as they do, but they do. Eventually, he asks about your book—not tonight’s absent one, but the one from last week, the one with the creased blue cover. Your eyes brighten in a way he hasn’t seen before, and it strikes him that maybe this is what he’s been waiting for all along—not just your voice, but your thoughts unspooling without hesitation.
You tell him it was about two people who keep missing their chances to be with each other despite being in each other’s lives for years. The way you talk about it suggests it hits close to home.
“That sounds frustrating,” Levi says.
“It was,” you admit. “But in a good way. I think I liked that neither of them was mean or malicious. They were just bad at saying what they meant.”
“That’s most people.”
You lift a shoulder. “Maybe.”
He studies you for a moment. “You always read things like that?”
“Not always.” Your fingers trace the condensation on your glass. “I just like stories about people.”
Levi thinks, that makes sense. He doesn’t say it out loud, because he knows if he says the wrong thing, it’ll break whatever fragile, surprising thing this night has become. Then, after a moment, he asks the question he has wanted to ask for weeks. “Why here?”
You glance up. “What?”
“You could just read at home. Or a cafe. Or a library.” Levi folds the towel beside him. “Why come to a bar just to have one drink and leave?”
“My apartment is quiet,” you say. Levi says nothing, sensing that if he fills the silence too soon, you’ll retreat. You look out toward the windows, where the city beyond the restaurant radiates gold. “Too quiet, sometimes. And work is all on a screen, and home is just…” You exhale faintly. “I don’t know. I like being somewhere with noise and people and lights. Somewhere alive. But I don’t always want to talk to someone.” Your fingers tighten slightly around the glass. “It’s easier to be alone when you’re not actually by yourself.”
Levi knows that feeling too well—the strange, specific comfort of occupied silence, of being near another person without the demand of performance. He thinks of all the nights he’s preferred this bar after closing to his own apartment.
“Yeah,” he says finally. “I get that.”
The rest of his shift slips by more quickly than any Thursday before it. You talk about books. About customers. About the worst drinks on the menu. Levi tells you about the man who once insisted an old fashioned should be blue. You laugh—openly now, no longer hiding it—and Levi has to look away for a second because of the smile that plays at his lips.
By the time he wipes down the bar for the last time and the remaining staff begin stacking chairs, he realizes he doesn’t want the conversation to end. You seem to feel it too. You stand slowly, gathering your things that don’t include a book, and for one brief second, Levi is visited by the unreasonable fear that next Thursday you’ll return to silence and paper, and this version of you—this smiling, talking, warm version—will vanish back behind your usual reserve.
Before he can think better of it, he says, “You coming back next week?”
You pause. Then you look at him with an expression so soft it nearly undoes him. “I think so.”
Levi nods once, trying for nonchalance and probably failing. “Bring your book.”
Your mouth curves. “Only if you talk to me again.”
Levi leans one hand against the bar, the ghost of a smirk pulling at his mouth. “Guess you’ll have to come back and find out.”
You laugh softly, and this time, when you leave, Levi doesn’t just watch you go.
He finds himself already waiting for Thursday.