The window seat

The cafe has one window that matters, and today it is hers, fogged at the edges, looking out at nothing but white. She has been coming here long enough that the owner no longer asks what she wants — just brings the ginger tea, sets it down without a word, and goes back to the stove.

Her friend is late, the way she always is in the mountains, where nobody's watch means the same thing twice. So she waits, and the waiting doesn't feel like waiting. There's a wood fire somewhere behind the counter, its smoke leaning sideways out a crooked chimney, and every few minutes a gust finds the gap under the door and the flame in the lamp on her table leans with it, then rights itself.

When her friend arrives she doesn't apologize, just drops into the chair across from her still wearing half the cold outside — cheeks red, scarf half-undone — and holds her palms flat against the teapot like she's reading it. They don't say much. There isn't much that needs saying. Two women who've known each other long enough that a silence between them isn't a gap to fill, just a third thing at the table, comfortable, taking up its own space.

Outside, the fog thins for a moment and there's a slope of pine, gray-green, and then it closes again like a hand.

Her friend laughs at something — not a joke, just a sound she makes when she's warm and there's nowhere else she needs to be — and reaches for the second cup, the one that's been sitting there cooling since the tea was poured, meant for no one in particular, and drinks from it anyway.

Steam rises off both cups now, thin and identical, and for a moment neither of them says a single thing, and the window stays fogged, and the fire keeps its small, steady sound.