"The Regular at Table Seven"

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He came the Monday after orientation week and took the one table nobody wanted, the cold one by the north window. Dark hair. Leather jacket. Medium drip, black, no modifications. He paid without looking at the total, sat facing the door, and read like the room wasn't there. The barista at the Blackbird Café never learned his name. Just the table and the order. Sixty small interactions, each under forty seconds, all through fall and into the rain. Then one October afternoon he ordered a second cup. Room for cream, one sugar. "Give it to the leader when they get here," he said. "Don't tell her it's from me." The Regular at Table Seven is a quiet, from-the-margins companion to Evidence of Desire, told by the one person who watched the whole thing happen and was never meant to notice. Best read after Evidence of Desire (The Evidence Trilogy, Book 1). A free bonus from C.S. Straid.