The Last Good Cup

There is a specific minute that happens at the end of a long shift, not when the clock actually hits the mark, but a few minutes after, when you are still on the floor technically but your brain has already started the walk home. Everything slows down just slightly. You stop pre-empting the next thing.

Simone found the last good cup before I had even decided I wanted coffee. That is her skill, or one of them. She doesn't ask whether you want it; she just materializes with two cups and holds them up like she's presenting evidence in a case you didn't know was being tried. The case was: today was a lot, and this is the answer to it. Verdict delivered.

We stood at the break room counter for maybe ten minutes longer than we needed to. Someone came through and apparently took a picture, which I did not know until my phone buzzed later.

Simone presents the evidence.

I look like someone who has just remembered that she is, in fact, a person who exists outside of a work context. Simone looks like she could stand there for another hour and not mind at all.

The tail end of something.

I've been keeping track, not formally, just in the way you notice things, of the moments that end up mattering at the end of a week. Not the big stuff. The break room minute. The cup that was already there when I needed it. September is doing something hopeful lately, and I'm not questioning it.