Jack hated mornings the way other people hated jury duty: deeply, personally, and as a recurring feature of his life.

He was not a morning person. He’d never been a morning person. Mornings required waking up, and waking up required coffee, and coffee required someone else to make it, because the one time he’d tried to operate his own machine before 7 a.m. he’d put the filter in wrong and flooded the counter. This was a system. The system worked.

Then his shipping company moved into a drafty old building across town, and the system broke.

The new route had exactly one coffee option that didn’t involve a ten-minute detour in the opposite direction: a bikini barista stand. A little hut with a drive-thru window and a hand-painted sign. Jack had never been to one. He’d driven past them for years with the windows up, feeling vaguely embarrassed on everyone’s behalf.

But ten minutes was ten minutes, and he hated mornings more than he hated awkwardness. So he went.

She was mid-twenties, all bright eyes and quick hands, with a twinkle that suggested she knew exactly what you were thinking before you thought it. The bikini top was barely there — two small triangles of cloth and a few strings, and the cool morning air was doing it no favors. What it held was smaller, neat, the kind of figure that didn’t need much fabric to make its point — and the thin cloth gave back just enough to show the tight peaks beneath it, the shape of her shifting as she reached for the cups.

Jack’s mouth went dry. He tried very hard not to look. He was, he told himself, a gentleman. Gentlemen did not stare at the barista’s breasts. Gentlemen did not notice the way the little strings crossed at her back, or the way her skin glowed in the morning light, or the way she moved — quick, easy, unbothered — like being half-naked in a coffee hut was the most natural thing in the world.

She caught him looking anyway. Of course she did.

“Morning,” she said, like mornings were a personal friend of hers. “What’ll it be, grumpy?”

He told her. Black, large. She made it fast, and on the side of the cup she’d drawn a little sun wearing sunglasses.

“I’m Mia,” she said, handing it over.

“Jack.” He paid, tipped a dollar, and escaped.

The coffee was good. He hated that the coffee was good.

It became a routine, the way bad habits do. Every morning, the hut, the window, Mia’s twinkle. He told her bits of himself without meaning to — the analyst job he hated, the mornings that ambushed him, the new building with its rattling radiators. She asked, so he answered. Nobody at work asked.

He kept trying not to look at the bikini top. She kept noticing him trying.

One rough morning — the kind where the alarm felt like a personal attack — he got his cup, drove to work, sat down at his desk, and reached for it. And stopped.

On the side of the cup, big and cheerful: a large hand-drawn smile. And under it, two words: thank you.

Thank you? She’d already said thanks for the tip. Why put it on the cup? Why not the usual good morning or have a great day?

It ran through his head all day. He thought about it in a budget meeting. He thought about it while reconciling freight invoices. He thought about Mia’s twinkle and the smile on the cup and the way she’d handed it over like it was nothing.

Next morning he asked. She giggled — actually giggled, hand over her mouth.

“So you thought about me all day instead of the job?”

She leaned out of the tiny drive-thru window to say it, and the lean put everything on display — there was no decorous place to put his eyes. He felt his ears go hot.