Lena showed up at the bookshop on a Wednesday with two coffees and the expression of someone who had decided something on the way over and wasn't going to be talked out of it.
Damian saw her through the front window before she came in.
He'd known her for three years. They'd met on a catering shift — a corporate dinner, forgettable except for the moment halfway through when Lena had looked at the host's speech and said, quietly and without venom, "that man has never once in his life been inconvenienced" and Damian had laughed for the first time in weeks.
She handed him a coffee through the gap in the counter without ceremony.
"You look terrible," she said.
"Good morning to you too."
"I mean it in a caring way." She settled onto the stool he kept near the register for slow mornings. "You've lost weight."
"I've been busy."
"You've been not eating." She looked at him over her cup. "Those are related but not the same thing."
Damian drank his coffee.
