A man stood there with a plastic bag, the kind that collects groceries and rain together. He was small and ordinary; his hair had been in a hurry that morning. Up close she noticed his hands—gentle, freckled—and a smudge of ink on his thumb. “Sorry to bother you,” he said, voice low as if he worried about breaking things. “Power’s out next door. I thought you might like some coffee. Mine’s too much. I thought maybe—” He didn’t finish, because he didn’t need to.

The light did not answer, but it stretched toward her, climbing the hem of her dress, warming her knees. It was a fleeting intimacy.

Be her sign.

The shadows in the corner were the only things that stayed. Maya sat in the center of her room, the blue light of her phone casting a ghostly glow against the peeling wallpaper. Outside, the world was a cacophony of sirens and laughter, but in here, silence was a heavy velvet blanket.

And the love? It is real. It is fragile and complicated and often unspoken. But it is real.