Every table was full. Every group had a rhythm I wasn't part of.
Then, near the window, a man in a gray uniform looked up from his sandwich. He was older, maybe sixties, with quiet eyes and the kind of stillness that didn't ask for anything.
He was older, maybe sixties.
"You can sit here, if you'd like," he said.
I almost cried.
It was the first kind thing anyone had said to me all day that didn't come with a smile attached for appearances.
"Thank you," I said, sitting down across from him. "I'm Charlotte."
"Charles," he said, and went back to his sandwich.
That was it. No big introduction. No story about himself. Just a name, a nod, and a chair across the table that somehow felt less empty than every other seat in that room.
I almost cried.
I want to say I sat with Charles that first day because I had nowhere else to go.
