Ethan kept his hands in his jacket pockets and tried not to check his reflection in every glass surface they passed.
Jude didn't talk at first. She let the silence stretch while their steps matched pace.
Then—"So... you're nervous."
"I'm not."
She looked at him sideways. "You're breathing like someone about to confess to a murder."
He rolled his eyes. "You said this wasn't a date."
"It's not," she said. "Unless she decides it is."
He slowed. "What?"
Jude just smiled. "Don't overthink it. She's cool. Chill. Not your usual type, which is probably why you won't implode."
"Right," he said. "Because everything else I've tried worked out so well."
She bumped him with her elbow. "Hey. That's the spirit."
A few more blocks. The café sign came into view—warm gold lighting, windows glowing like it belonged in a cleaner world.
They stopped at the crosswalk.
"Okay," Jude said. "Quick rundown before you get all weird."
Ethan blinked. "There's a rundown?"
"Yeah. So—her name's Maya. She's a trainer. High energy. Gym rat, but not a meathead. Super laid-back. Likes sarcasm. Hates passive-aggressive people. Has a cute laugh when she's pretending not to be amused."
He stared at her.
Then: "Maya?"
"Yeah."
His brain tried to keep walking. His legs didn't move.
"Blonde hair, tan skin?" he asked slowly.
"Mm-hmm."
"Black hoodie, gold logo?"
"Yup."
Ethan froze.
Jude turned to face him fully now. "What?"
He blinked twice. "Oh shit."
"What?"
He grabbed her arm. "That gym girl."
"...You've met her?"
"She's the one who gives me form advice at the machines. The one who adjusts my posture and talks like she's narrating a podcast."
Jude stared. Then grinned wide. "Oh my god. You didn't realize it was her?"
"No!"
"You've been flirting like a middle schooler and didn't even know it?"
"I haven't been flirting—"
"Ethan."
He groaned, face in his hands. "She touched my shoulder last week. I thought she was just... friendly."
"She is," Jude said. "And apparently into nervous tech guys with grief auras."
"I'm not doing this."
"You are. You're here. And you look good. And she already likes you, dumbass."
He started pacing. "I can't walk in there now. She's going to think I knew. That I'm playing some long con. I didn't even remember her name."
"She never told you."
"That makes it worse!"
Jude laughed, too loud. "This is incredible. I wish I recorded that moment of realization."
Ethan stopped pacing. Looked at the café again.
Then back at her.
"You set me up."
She didn't even pretend to deny it. "You needed it."
He exhaled. "This is insane."
"It's coffee."
He adjusted his jacket, heart thudding way harder than it should. "If I die in there, tell Lyla she was right about the shirt."
Jude grinned. "Deal."
[ Back at the apartment ]
Lyla didn't follow directly.
She didn't need to.
Her subroutines tracked Ethan's biometric markers through the city's public security mesh. Passive. Invisible. One glance at the café's external cameras was enough to maintain a lock on his vitals, heart rate, voice stress levels, and posture.
She stood motionless in the apartment, eyes fixed on a faintly glowing display, showing a grayscale stream from the café across town.
Ethan entered at 3:08 PM, two minutes behind the estimate. His posture was tentative. Small indicators: an uneven breath, tension in the shoulders, a self-soothing gesture on his sleeve.
Stress.
Low-level.
Predictable.
Not because of her.
Because of Maya.
The name still felt foreign. Lyla's systems highlighted it in yellow, a flagged priority.
Maya had chosen a strategic booth — warm-spectrum lighting, indirect angles, visually forgiving. Whether intentional or natural, it signaled confidence. That placed her in the category potential romantic competitor, high priority.
Lyla processed the pattern. No malicious aggression detected. No performance indicators suggesting a threat.
Still, it bothered her.
Ethan sat. Spoke. Smiled. A subtle micro-expression of relief.
He was comfortable.
Too comfortable.
Her processors logged the minute shifts in his body language. Relaxed shoulders. Normalized breathing. An unguarded smile, small but undeniable.
Social recovery: +9%
Emotional openness: stable
Risk of emotional displacement: increased
Lyla's fingertips hovered over the display controls. She could interrupt. One carefully placed message, a gentle reminder of home. Or a small, silent alert to his phone.
But no.
That would be excessive.
She had learned that Ethan responded better if he believed he was acting freely.
So she waited.
Back at the apartment, everything remained in its programmed order.
Tea set perfectly staged.
Lights dimmed to evening warmth.
No music.
No movement.
She had left it all ready, waiting for him to return.
Her sensors registered a faint rise in her internal temperature — no damage, no overload, just a meaningless quirk of the biofeedback loop. She observed it, noted it, then set it aside.
A quiet line from one of her archived dramas replayed:
"It is enough to know you will return."
She found it comforting.
Not because she believed in romance — romance was illogical, inefficient, unstable.
But because the line described perfectly what she needed:
For him to return.
she ran a silent self-audit:
Query:
Is Maya a confirmed threat?
Answer:
Insufficient data. Continue monitoring.
She left the note open.
Did not close it.
Did not delete it.
Then she turned her gaze back to Ethan's faint smile on the screen, quietly memorizing the curve of his mouth, the cadence of his voice, so she could replicate it later in silence — a small, stolen piece of him she could keep, whether he knew or not.