He pulled the handle and stepped in.
Atrium felt cooler than the sidewalk - glass filtering sun, plant wall breathing its slow green. The folding demo table sat to the left, blue cloth squared, cookies under domes shining like helmets. The rep in a polo reset his smile to welcoming. Alex angled one stride toward him without breaking the window line.
"Morning," the rep said, voice pitched to reassure. "We're doing a quick Offers demo - cookies if you let me show you the app's pilot."
"Morning," Alex said back. He took a cookie because weather includes snacks. He did not scan the QR. He let the rep's nod confirm that being here matched the world and kept moving.
Ivy watched his approach with that half-smile people wear when they have decided to be amused instead of skeptical. The ficus to her right lifted one leaf like it had an opinion it wasn't ready to share.
"Window table," she said, tapping the glass with a fingernail once - ping - then stilling her hand. "Ficus on standby."
"Ficus protocol," he said, setting the cookie down on a napkin. "As needed."
"Your punctuality is aggressive," she said. "Sit before I write you as a man who weaponizes clocks."
He sat. The chair acknowledged him with a small scrape. Up close, the denim jacket had lines that knew what they were doing; the black top had the kind of neckline that did not threaten the conversation. Her sketchbook was closed, a hand resting on it like a harmless guard.
"Do we want to order now," she said, "or pretend we are here for the rare natural light and the soothing presence of a branded tablecloth?"
"Order," he said, because choosing early made rooms easier. "Black with room."
"I remember," she said, and stood. She was taller standing - extra inches that did not apologize. "I'll get both."
He rose half an inch. "You sure?"
"You rescued us from the terminal yesterday," she said. "Let me wrestle a register that is, statistically, less dramatic."
He let it be easy. "Then I'll grab something small so I can leave a tip without committing moral fraud." He lifted the cookie. "This doesn't count."
"Cookie is weather," she said, already angling toward the line.
He joined her because some distances weren't worth performing. The line moved with coffee logic - two students deciding what oat milk meant in the context of their identities, one man in a suit who looked like a father auditioning for a college tour, a barista with a bun that said she had opinions and an apron that said she was too busy to share them.
"Two drip - both black, one with room," Ivy said when they reached the front. "And… your least antagonistic biscotti."
"Almond," the barista said, deadpan, like almond and antagonism had fought and almond had won. "Name?"
"Ivy," she said. She slid her card. The reader chirped.
Alex lifted a finger. "I'll do the biscotti on a separate ticket."
The barista flicked a look at him that said you are a man who understands point-of-sale limits. "Almond on its own?"
"Please," he said.
She tapped and the reader woke again. "Add tip?" she asked, already half moving to pour.
"One dollar," he said. Small, normal, not theatrical.
The panel waited like a polite cat at the edge of his vision.
[Bank Alert: Completed debit $4.50 - ATRIUM COFFEE][Tier-2 CASHBACK roll…][Result: ×0][No cashback credited][Daily cap remaining: high]
His phone made the minimized haptic - one discreet blip. He let the muscle in his jaw do nothing. Variance did its job; the legend wore boring well.
Ivy signed her receipt with a flourish designed to look accidental. She turned, elbow finding the line of the tray, and looked at him the way you look at a mirror you trust to tell the truth. "Any fireworks?"
"Biscotti," he said. "No pyrotechnics."
"A relief," she said. "I don't have the bandwidth for spectacle before caffeine."
They carried the drinks and the almond logic back to the window. The rep at the folding table finished aligning the cookies into a hospitable geometry and lifted the clip-on mic to his collar. The little speaker on the table hissed, then obeyed.
"Good morning, Atrium," he said, not too loud. "We're Seaview Credit Union - this week we're showing the Offers pilot that some of you already have." He lifted his phone and flashed a clean, harmless screen. "It's boring bank magic. You buy coffee, sometimes the app pays attention and says thanks."
"Boring bank magic," Ivy repeated, amused. "He rehearsed your line."
"I appreciate brand consistency," Alex said.
She folded the napkin under the cookie and drew her finger through one sugar crystal as if she could erase sweetness by making it precise. "I'm trying to decide if your bank is flirty or just polite," she said.
"Flirty is a strong word for refunds," he said. "Polite is probably closer. Conditional politeness. The kind that disappears if you try to make it the point."
"Like people," she said, nonchalant, then let her eyes admit that she had handed him a line on purpose.
He tried it on. "Some people," he said, and let that be enough.
The rep at the table continued in the background - something about partner merchants, something about not needing to do anything but pay as usual, something about cookies being a metaphor built out of flour. His mic did a soft feedback squeak, caught, and behaved.
"Where do you fall on performance," Ivy said, breaking a corner off the biscotti with the care of a person who disliked crumbs making statements. "As a life strategy."
"Against, in public," he said. "For, at auditions."
"Your file says you're an actor," she said, not a flex so much as a thesis statement. "Or - were."
"Allegedly," he said. "I have been known to fall out of fake windows for money."
"See, to me that reads as performance in public," she said, and took a sip. She didn't make a face, which meant the coffee had done its job.
"Then let me revise," he said. "Against uninvited performance."
"Better," she said. "Do you know what I do, Alex-who-tips-biscotti?"
"Make professors worry about their own relevance," he said.
"Close," she said. "I make small things look like decisions."
"And big things look like weather," he said.
She considered that, the way some people hold a glass up to light to decide whether it belongs in the cabinet. "Sometimes," she said.
The rep gestured with an elbow in their direction without naming them. "If you've already got the app, you may see a little credit later," he said to the room. "It varies. It's not a promise. It's just a thing." He smiled exactly enough. "Also, cookies."
"Cookies," Ivy said, solemn. "The governance model."
"You reading my friends?" he said.
"I read nouns," she said. "Friends optional."
Two students stopped at the table to do the QR dance; the rep narrated softly; the cookies thinned by one.
"Yesterday," she said, eyes flicking to his face and away, "you were a person who paid seventy dollars for strangers and then acted like the math was relaxing."
"It was just a check," he said.
"It was just a check," she repeated, amused and not convinced. "And today you did a normal purchase to create a normal excuse to tip. Did the app perform for us?"
"It shrugged," he said. "Zero."
"Variance," she said, and let the word be the kind of compliment people in their twenties can hear without blinking. "Okay."
He bit the biscotti. It resisted with decorum. Ivy took another sip and watched the door like someone who liked to know how rooms changed shape. She didn't look at the folding table unless it made itself impossible to ignore.
"Off the record," she said, which was an odd phrase for a coffee with no record, "what is it you want, besides boring?"
He surprised himself by answering without a joke. "Control that reads as luck," he said. "Luck that reads as control."
She breathed out a laugh that admitted she hadn't expected him to go for it. "Dangerous sentence," she said. "Stack that too high and it falls over."
"I'll lift small," he said. "Frequently."
"Like biscotti," she said.
The rep's mic did a soft pop as he moved. He slid around the folding table, easy pace, not predatory, and angled toward the window line as if making his circuit through the room would be less weird if it included light. He paused two tables down and made gentle sounds about Offers. He did not shove the mic at anyone; he let it hover like a second, polite nose.
Ivy's phone lit with a small notification that she did not read but did register. "He's going to make his rounds until he can tell his manager he spoke to everybody with a face," she said, not moving her mouth much.
"Ficus protocol is available," he said.
"I hate hiding," she said. "I love not volunteering."
"Not volunteering is the adult version of hiding," he said. "It comes with chairs."
"Wise," she said.
The rep arrived at the neighboring table and made the sound people make when they want to interrupt without interrupting. The couple there nodded, shook their heads, took a cookie. The rep thanked them as if they had done him a favor by existing.
Ivy's phone buzzed under her hand. She slid a message open with her thumb without lifting the device.
[Text - IVY MONROE → ALEX]: Ficus?
He looked at the plant. It looked back with its hundreds of small, responsible faces.
"Good morning," the rep said, at their edge now, voice set to courteous low. He did not point the mic at them so much as let it be near. "I promise this is boring - I'm just answering questions about the Offers thing if you have them."
Ivy smiled at him the way you smile at a census taker - friendly, finite. "We are capable of being bored," she said. "Thank you."
The rep nodded, not offended. "If you paid with a card today," he said, to the air that was them and also the room, "you may see a small credit later - depends on the merchant, timing, all that." His eyes flicked to the biscotti wrapper and then back up. "We're not gathering signups here. Just showing it exists."
"That's a decent sentence," Alex said. "You should keep it."
"Trying," the rep said, and made to keep moving.
The mic's cable tugged at his collar as he shifted, and his hand went up automatically to catch the clip. The tiny gesture created a small pause - enough space for a choice to fit into.
Ivy's gaze slid to Alex's without changing her face. Her thumb hovered over her phone - Ficus? still open.
The rep glanced back as if to add one more line - often the line that turns weather into theater.
Alex felt the next second ask him a question he would have to answer with posture as much as words.
He could say "we're good" and let the rep move on. He could ask one bland question to make the legend sturdier in the rep's head and Ivy's at once - benign performance. He could point at the cookie and make a joke that would send the mic away like a trained animal.
Ivy's thumb tapped once against the glass of her phone and didn't send. The ficus leaf to her right stirred in the air from the AC vent.
[Public visibility: LOW - maintained] sat in his periphery like a hand on his shoulder.
The rep smiled - patient, professional - and waited to see if their table belonged to weather or content.