// Caption: 'jordhughesphoto' - Our MPA 2025 Making Music winner - takes us behind the scenes of @the1975’s @glastofest headline set with a new (and now sold-out) zine shot entirely on Cinestill film 💚 Jordan captured everything leading up to the Pyramid Stage moment: rehearsals, production days, and the quiet hours of build-up that most people never get to see. A look at the moments before the moment… and the eye behind one of this year’s winning images 💚 //
chapter two of and (steamed) milk.
wc: 3.06k
warnings: n/a
a/n: thank you everyone for the love on the last part! <3 i hope you all enjoy and thank you for reading.
The café was already half-awake by the time Matty flipped the OPEN sign. The morning light slanted through the big front window, catching dust particles that looked like steam. The espresso machine hissed, the air smelled like cinnamon and dark roast, and the playlist he’d queued up– some pretentious mix of Fleetwood Mac, Hozier, and The Shins- filled the empty space with a sleepy heartbeat.
Adam, Matty’s right hand at the cafe, was in early too, pretending not to care about the way he lined the croissants. He wore his usual black flannel shirt with the sleeves cuffed, and that half-distracted, half-uninterested expression that made customers trust him instantly.
Matty had just pulled his second shot of espresso when Adam said, without looking up, “You’ve checked the door three times in the last ten minutes.”
Matty frowned. “It’s called customer service.”
“It’s called waiting for the girl with the baby to walk in.”
Adam’s smirk was wry and taut on his face. Matty only huffed. He knew he’d regret telling Adam about the girl and the baby that lived below him on their walk here. He also knew he’d regret scheduling Adam to work an opening shift with him.
“She’s not–” Matty stopped, poured steamed milk, and tried to look bored. “Oh fuck off, Hann. She’s just new and I’m being friendly.”
Adam’s mouth twitched. “Uh-huh. Friendly. That’s what you called it when you brought the old lady from the library muffins for a week straight.”
“She’d just lost her cat, Sparkles, what was I supposed to do!”
“Exactly,” He snorted, “Like Ross said, you collect strays, mate.”
Matty rolled his eyes but didn’t argue. He liked people who needed looking after– always had. It wasn’t about fixing anyone; he just liked being the reason the day felt a little softer.
He was restocking lids when the bell over the door jingled.
Her.
She walked in wearing faded blue scrubs and sunglasses perched in her hair, eyes half-lidded from exhaustion. Without a baby in her arms, she looked… lighter, somehow, but also lost. Like she hadn’t realized yet that the world kept spinning when she stopped to breathe.
Adam caught Matty’s glance, saw the way he reacted and smirked. “Your move, barista boy.”
“Shut up.”
Matty wiped his hands on a towel and stepped to the counter just as she approached.
“Morning,” he said. “Welcome back to civilization.”
She blinked, lips twitching in something close to amusement. “Morning. Can I get a latte? Oat milk if you have it.”
“We do. It’s the only milk we treat with respect.”
That earned him a soft laugh– a short, surprised sound that made the back of his neck warm.
Adam, pretending to clean, muttered under his breath, “Flirting before nine a.m. should be illegal.”
Matty ignored him and went to work. The rhythm steadied him: grind, tamp, pull, steam. He poured the milk with a practiced swirl, dusted the top with a pinch of cinnamon, and set the cup in front of her.
“On the house,” he said before she could dig through her bag.
“Oh, I can pay–”
“It’s the welcome-to-the-building latte. Comes with a side of unsolicited caffeine.”
She hesitated, then smiled– not wide, but real. “Thank you.”
“Anytime.”
She took a sip, eyes fluttering shut for a second. When she opened them again, she said, “You were playing last night. The guitar?”
Matty blinked. “Uh, yeah. Sorry if it was too loud.”
“No. It was nice.” She paused, fingers tapping the paper cup. “My daughter fell asleep to it.”
Something unknotted in his chest. “Then I’ll keep the volume just where it is.”
She smiled again– smaller this time, like she didn’t trust herself with too much warmth, then headed for the door.
Adam leaned against the counter, watching Matty watch her go. “You’re doomed,” he said, “I’m calling Ross and telling him that you’re doomed.”
Matty shot him a look. “Shut up.”
“Totally doomed,” Adam grinned, already scrolling on his phone and searching for Ross’ contact.
The bell jingled as the door closed behind her, and for a long minute, Matty didn’t move. The café hummed around him – espresso, laughter, Fleetwood Mac. He just stood there, trying to name the strange calm she’d left behind.
~*~
The morning air was cooler than she expected – crisp enough to raise goosebumps on Violet’s arms as she stepped out of the café. Her latte steamed against the chill, the scent of cinnamon and espresso floating up to her nose.
She hadn’t meant to smile at him. It just…happened.
The city moved gently at this hour: a woman pushing a stroller, a dog barking at a passing bus, a boy balancing a coffee carrier in one hand and a skateboard in the other. She walked slowly, sipping, letting the warmth spread through her chest.
It wasn’t that Matty had done anything wrong. It was that he’d been nice. Too nice. The kind of nice that used to mean something else.
Her mother’s voice replayed in her head from the call that morning: “Not everyone’s out for something”
She wanted to believe that. She really did.
But every kind gesture still lit a flare of fear in her gut. Kindness had been a weapon once— a mask someone else wore until she stopped seeing the seams.
Now, even good people made her nervous. Especially good people.
She adjusted her tote on her shoulder and took another sip. It was perfect– strong, warm, a little sweet. The note he’d left her flashed through her mind. For early mornings or long nights. She wondered if he knew that both applied.
By the time she reached the apartment building, her mood had softened. The sun had climbed higher, and she could hear the faint sound of a record spinning from somewhere above.
June was with her mom for the morning — Violet’s one sliver of freedom before her night shift. She took it slowly: washed the dishes, opened a window, folded a few of June’s tiny onesies. Every motion was deliberate, a reminder that she was still standing, still here, still building something new.
When she sat down on the couch with her coffee, the walls creaked — two sets of footsteps, one heavier than the other. Laughter followed, low and male and a shriek.
Her pulse quickened before her brain caught up. Next door, she reminded herself. It’s just them. The Steins.
She let the sound of laughter roll through her.
Violet leaned back and closed her eyes. For the first time in a long time, the world didn’t feel like it was waiting to end.
~*~
The afternoon swelled and thinned the way it always did: a rush at lunch, a dip at three, a small, inexplicable wave of people at four-thirty ordering decaf like they were cheating on themselves. By five, the café wore that gentle, lived-in glow — a smear of sun on the pastry case, a couple on laptops, one kid doing homework with his headphones on and a cookie crumbling quietly beneath his palm.
Adam stacked clean cups and glanced at the tip jar, where someone had dropped a folded paper heart. “You attracting origami now, or is that for me?”
“Definitely for you,” Matty said, rinsing the portafilter. “I only attract chaos and demo CDs.”
“Speaking of,” Ross grinned, rounding the corner with a water bottle in hand. His dress shirt sleeves were cuffed, tie loosened. It had been a long day, “Your chaos walk in this morning?”
Matty kept his eyes on the machine. “She had a latte.”
“Mm. And?”
“And she said my guitar wasn’t annoying. High praise.”
Adam smiled the way he did when he’d won a round without needing to gloat. “You gonna write an entire album about that sentence?”
“Already planning the B-sides.” Matty smoothed a damp ring from the counter. “She looked wrecked, though. Not just tired. Like exhausted, bone-tired.”
“Could be she’s a nurse,” Ross said, deadpan.
Matty squinted at him. “You knew?”
“Ran into her this morning. She was heading in with said latte while I was watering the plants in the lobby,” Ross said, shrugging. “Some of us are kind without being dramatic. Her name’s Violet by the way.”
“Wow. Betrayed by the plant guy.”
“I’m the building’s emotional support fern dad,” Ross said. He leaned in, dropping his voice. “Look, mate. You’re kind. That’s your thing. But be… light. Wind, not weather. A breeze she can feel when she wants to.”
Matty opened his mouth to argue and found none. “Wind, not weather,” he repeated, a little reverent. “That’s annoyingly good.”
“Put it on a mug,” Adam said, flicking a towel at him, “C’mon let’s finish the pre-close. Carly’ll have my head if I’m late to dinner with her parents again.”
The bell chimed. Two teenagers came in, arguing about a pop quiz; an old man asked for “whatever doesn’t taste like socks.” Matty poured, smiled, listened, let the café do its small magic. Every time the door opened he half-expected to see scrubs and a tired half-smile. He didn’t. It was fine. That wasn’t the point.
At six forty-five, the streetlights blinked alive, the window turned to a mirror, and the playlist drifted into older stuff — Ella, Etta, the kind of warm that curled around the hour. They flipped the sign to CLOSE at seven and left it unlocked for stragglers. A common habit.
“Drink?” Ross asked, when the last customer left. He meant tea; neither of them liked closing with anything harder than peppermint. Adam had ditched around five-forty, not wanting to be a minute late to dinner with the in-laws. Matty was sure he’d hear about it the next day.
Matty nodded and slumped on a stool, chin propped on his fist. “Tell me something true and unromantic.”
Ross filled two mugs. Steam coiled. “Alright. Something true: your muffins were actually good today.”
“And unromantic?”
“That is unromantic.” Ross slid a mug to him. “Something else true: you’re better when you have someone to make things for.”
Matty wrapped both hands around the heat. It lodged in his chest, that one. “I make things for everyone.”
“I know,” Ross said. “But sometimes one person makes it all… stick.”
Matty took a sip. Peppermint, sweet and simple. Wind, not weather, he thought, and felt himself exhale.
~*~
The hospital changed color at night. Daylight made it look like order; fluorescent made it look honest. Violet tied her hair back, clipped her badge, and checked the board: two incoming traumas, three admits waiting for beds, a psych eval that had stretched longer than anyone wanted.
“Hey, Vi,” Alice called from triage. “You get your keys sorted? New place treating you nice?”
“Locks click,” Violet said. “That’s all I need.”
“God, say it again,” Alice muttered, handing off a chart. “Room seven needs a lac repair; guy tried to prove something to a blender.”
The hours folded, sharp and sure. Violet stitched, assessed, soothed, charted. She moved like the person she trusted most; the version of herself who knew what to do and did it, clean and steady. In the pockets between, she heard the things that made night shifts… well, night shifts: an old woman singing to herself, the snap of a glove, an orderly’s chuckle rolling down the hall.
At 2:11 a.m., she took her ten minutes in the break room, slumped on a plastic chair that leaned left, sipped something hot and brown from the machine, and her mum texted a picture of June asleep, cheeks like sweet peaches.
How’s my girl? she wrote.
An angel, came the reply. Except when she’s not. Go save lives. I’ll see you at noon.
Violet smiled at the screen longer than she needed to. On the way back, she passed the visitor vending machines and thought of the café, cinnamon and vinyl. She’d left the last half of the welcome latte in the fridge with her name on it and a sticky note that said do not steal, I’m fragile. It had still been there at eleven. A small miracle.
Back at the station, Rafi, a new grad, slid into the chair beside hers and nudged a pack of crackers her way. “You look better,” he said. “New place working out?”
“It’s quiet,” she said, and realized how rare that sentence had been in her mouth. “My upstairs neighbor plays guitar.”
Rafi arched a brow. “Guitar as in ‘call the police’ or guitar as in ‘write a screenplay about it’?”
“As in… lullaby, accidentally.”
“That’s a screenplay,” Rafi said solemnly.
She snorted, then sobered. “He brought me coffee.”
Rafi made a face like he’d smelled romance. “And?”
“And that’s all,” she said too fast. “He’s—nice. I’m trying not to make that a problem.”
Rafi’s smile softened, not teasing now. “You’ll know the difference,” he said, the same words her mother had used. “Plus, worst case, I train jujitsu and rumor has it Alice's husband is an ex-mobster. We got you.”
Something warm unfurled under her ribs, simple and bright. “I’ll put you on speed dial.”
“Already am,” he said, and jogged off as a call light blinked.
Later, during a lull that wasn’t a lull so much as everyone’s bodies agreeing to keep going, Violet stood at a sink and scrubbed her hands and, unbidden, pictured Matty’s hands instead — the careful way he’d poured, the underlined note, the way he’d said I’ll keep the volume just where it is like he understood that the world had settings you could choose.
She shook it off, dried her hands, and went back into the deep end.
~*~
At home, midnight had put a silk ribbon on the building. The hallway bulbs hummed. Someone’s TV murmured behind a door; somewhere, water ran slow in old pipes. In the boys’ apartment, the air smelled like peppermint and clean counters; for once, they’d done every dish.
Ross had a spreadsheet open on his laptop — lectures, papers, study guides. “Don’t stay up all night,” he said without looking up. “Adam's not in tomorrow, so you’ve got open.”
“I’m just…” Matty hooked his guitar strap and let the sentence shrug. “Winding down.”
“Wind. Not weather,” Ross reminded him, and lifted two fingers in a lazy salute before heading to bed.
Matty stood in the doorway a beat longer, listening to the apartment settle around him. He didn’t plan to play. It happened the way breathing happens: one chord, then another, a loop that remembered itself. He sat by the window so the sound would fall softer — not a broadcast, just the hint of a song.
He kept it simple, like a hand held out palm up. No lyrics. No cleverness. Just movement and space, a rhythm that made his own shoulders drop. He thought of nothing and then of everything: the café in its evening light; the way Violet’s mouth had surprised itself into a smile; the small, faithful work of making something good and handing it to a stranger.
Downstairs, a floorboard clicked. A familiar hush settled — an absence of crying that had begun to feel like the note he was always trying to hit. He played through it, not pushing, just offering.
His phone buzzed face-down on the arm of the couch. He didn’t check it. The city’s far siren rose and fell; a bus sighed; somewhere a laugh spilled and folded. He kept the loop going until his fingers knew to stop. The quiet that followed felt like a choice.
He set the guitar in its stand, turned off the lamp, and paused, hand on the doorframe, to feel the small thread that tugged down and through the ceiling, as if two rooms could be stitched for a minute by a sound.
“Goodnight,” he said to no one, and meant it wider than the room.
~*~
Downstairs, hours later, Violet turned her key in the lock soft as breath. The apartment accepted her, night-cooled and familiar in the way new shoes sometimes surprise you by not hurting. She set her bag down like it weighed less, flicked on the kitchen light, and stood very still.
No baby wail — June was at Mum’s until noon — but Violet still listened for it, the way you listen for your own name in a crowd. What she heard instead, faint as a memory, was the last measure of a guitar settling into silence. She wasn’t sure if it was her mind playing tricks on her, but she welcomed it all nonetheless.
She toed off her shoes and crossed to the counter, where the jar of beans sat like a small hearth. She pressed her nose to the lid and breathed. Coffee, lavender soap, a whisper of something sweet.
Her body wanted bed. Her mind wanted to check the chain twice, the stove knobs thrice, the window locks once. She did the first two without resentment. The third she managed to skip, surprising herself on purpose. She drew the curtains closed, mentally thanked herself for paying extra for the same say delivery on the black out curtains, and stumbled to the bathroom.
In the bathroom she washed away the hospital — the fluorescent, the glove snap, the filo-thin edges of other people’s emergencies. In the mirror, her face looked like hers again. Not before; not after; just now.
When she slid beneath the blanket on the air mattress and turned out the lamp, the room held her like it meant it. She stared at the ceiling in the dark and let the thought arrive without shooing it: he’d played again. For no reason other than habit or kindness or both.
“Wind, not weather,” she whispered, having no idea why that came to her, only that it felt right.
Afternoon would bring schedules and bottles and calls to return and a list in her phone with find a cheap rug underlined. Afternoon might bring a latte with a cinnamon dusting and a dumb joke that made her mouth betray her. Afternoon might bring nothing at all, and that, too, would be manageable.
For now, early morning brought quiet. June would be back in a handful of hours. Violet would meet the day with a mug and a spine. And somewhere above, a boy who smelled like coffee had let the song stop at exactly the right time.
Her last thought was not about what he wanted. It was a simpler thing, plain as a note held true: thank you.
chapter one of and (steamed) milk.
wc: 4.4k
warnings: allusions to past dv, subpar writing with minimal editing.
a/n: im back???????? this is an idea i've been tossing around since i had paused writing way back when i first started school. i really love this story, matty and violet are my babies so please be kind to them. i hope you all enjoy 🫂💗
divider credit: @dividers-are-us
The stairwell smelled like dust and old coffee grounds. Violet hooked her elbow around a cardboard box and juggled the car seat on her hip, the straps creaking as June shifted. Six months old and already full of opinions; right now, the opinion was that carseats were not as comforting as her mother’s arms.
“We’re nearly there,” Violet murmured, breathless, nudging open the third-floor door with her knee. “Promise.”
The hallway was narrow and sun-faded, a runner rug anchoring buckets of spider plants that someone was trying very hard to keep alive. Apartment 3B’s door was a chipped rectangle the color of an old manila folder. She set the car seat down, fished for the key with her free hand, and missed the lock twice. On the third try it slid in. Relief arrived like cold water on a hot summer’s day. Much like the cold water Violet would be downing the second she set everything down.
Inside lay a small living room with scuffed, faded hardwood floors- the type that creak with each step, illuminated by a rectangle of afternoon light that streamed in from the windows. There was a kitchen big enough for exactly one human and a drying rack. A small table and chairs set just at the division between the two rooms- a welcomed gift from the previous owners. There was a tiny bedroom with faded rose colored carpet, a closet that would be a miracle if it held more than two winter coats, and a bathroom with tile the color of a robin’s egg. An apartment that had fallen into her lap. Not much, by any measure. It was worn and lived in and Violet could tell the wallpaper was lifting and yellowing… and-
But the lock worked. The door clicked solidly behind her. June made a questioning squeak from the carrier, then kicked her feet as if to say, “Okay, now show me.”
Violet exhaled into the quiet and set the car seat on the floor. “We did it,” she told the baby, and the baby blew a spit bubble in agreement.
She moved quickly: a box to the counter, a bag to the couch, another to the bedroom. In the kitchen she set the formula tin beside a thrifted kettle. In the living room she unrolled a faded throw rug she didn’t remember buying. June fussed from her bouncer, then laughed at the ceiling fan, then fussed again.
From somewhere above, a guitar drifted down. Not amplified, not aggressive. A close sound; fingers finding a pattern and riding it. Violet paused with a stack of plastic plates in her hands. The song wasn’t anything she knew, just a gentle loop, two chords and a stretch of something warmer than the building’s stale air. It was welcomed and drowned out the obnoxious yelling from her nextdoor neigbors. The Steins.
She had met the older couple once. Maybe it was in passing on the day she had signed the lease and fished out the crumpled check that signed away half of her savings from her bag. First month’s rent and a security deposit. Beth, Mrs. Stein, had cooed over June and fussed over the lack of hat on the baby’s head. It warm. Violet thought Mrs. Stein and her mother would get along well.
She listened long enough for the tight place behind her ribs to loosen by half. Then, because there were still eight boxes and a baby to feed and a text from the ER nurse manager, Alice, asking if she could pick up a night shift this week (“if you’re up for it, no pressure but we’re short TONIGHT”), she moved again.
By sunset, the bassinet was assembled beside the air mattress, the sheets smelled faintly like lavender laundry soap, and June had made it clear that this new room was foreign and therefore suspicious. Violet paced in a long figure-eight from window to kitchen, humming a song she couldn’t name. When June finally dozed, the kettle clicked off, Mr and Mrs Stein called a truce, and silence flooded back in—the electric kind that hummed in her ears and made every muscle recount its day.
She looked at the lock again. Locked, latched, chained. She touched each once, an old ritual. The baby sighed. Violet let herself on a creaky folding chair.
Thin, familiar guitar slid through the ceiling cracks again. She closed her eyes and let the music braid through her brain.
~*~
“Are you keeping the ‘Free with Purchase’ box, or did you finally realize that its a cry for help?” Ross asked, pen in his mouth, eyes locked on a page with font that was way too small. Criminal Procedure. His least favorite.
Matty lay on the rug with his guitar balanced across his stomach. His hair was a crazed mess of curls sprawled out like a halo. The window was open to let out the afternoon’s heat, and the record player spun a secondhand James Taylor record he’d rescued from the shop’s discount bin. On the coffee table: two cups with forgotten espresso rings, an unused coaster that said BE NICE OR GO HOME, a handful of demo CDs a kid had earnest-eyed into his hands that morning. He’d promised to listen. He always promised to listen.
“It’s aspirational marketing,” Matty said, plucking a gentle pattern from muscle memory. “One might land in the hands of some record label exec.”
“Or a landfill,” Ross said without looking up, too scared to lose his place among the neverending page. “What’s that, the lullaby loop again?”
“Mm?” Matty shifted. The chords had arrived without asking—something he found himself falling into late at night when words got complicated and thoughts were neverending. “S’calming.”
“Uh-huh.” Ross underlined something, flipped his book shut, and leaned back in his chair. “Neighbor downstairs moved in today. Baby, too.”
“I clocked the car seat.” Matty turned his head. “Thought I heard crying earlier.”
“Not her at first,” Ross said. “That was mostly Ben from 5E. Baby started a little later.”
Matty tried to pretend he hadn’t been listening in the quiet stretches: footsteps soft, door opening and shutting, the scrape of furniture on wood. He’d learned the building’s sounds over years—Mrs. DeLuca’s three-thump knock, Ben’s habit of humming aloud in the hallway at two a.m., the wooden stairs and upper floor tenants groaning on payday when everyone bought extra groceries. New sounds meant new stories. He was nosy like that, mostly because he liked people. Liked, in a way he’d sometimes felt stupid for, being useful.
“Don’t be weird about it,” Ross warned, as if reading his mind. “Let’s give it a week before you start the Welcome Basket routine.”
“It’s not a routine,” Matty scoffed. The guitar’s loop ran like a brook. “It’s kindness.”
“It’s you adopting strays.”
“Humans aren’t strays,” Matty said automatically, then snorted. “Okay, humans are absolutely strays. But I’m not adopting. I’m just offering coffee.”
He pictured the girl he’d glimpsed earlier: her dark hair knotted up, T-shirt gone loose at the neck, shoulders set like a person who’d learned the hard way not to spill things. The baby had been asleep. A cutie with the kind of face that made your chest soften.
“Don’t be weird,” Ross said again, gentler now.
“I’m never weird.”
“You’re always weird.”
Matty grinned at the ceiling, then set the guitar aside and padded barefoot into the kitchen. He rifled the cupboard until he found a fresh bag of the house blend. He could have written “free sample” on it and called it a marketing cost. Instead he grabbed a paper bag, slid the beans inside, and tore a square from his notebook. For early mornings or long nights, he wrote, then paused and signed it simply, —M.
Ross watched him with the fond exasperation of a man who knew exactly what he was like. “Hope she likes coffee,” he said.
Matty’s middle finger flew up while he was halfway out the door.
~*~
June woke unhappy. Violet could feel it in the way the baby’s body went taut in her arms, like a small vibrato. Milk helped for six minutes, according to the clock on the stove. Rocking helped for three. The world, however, was new and loud and definitely not the old apartment at her in-law’s, which meant protesting was both necessary and morally correct to the six month old.
At the soft knock on the door—three quick taps, no pause—June startled, hiccuped, and quieted for the span of one breath.
Violet peered through the peephole. The man on the other side looked like he’d walked out of a band photo and then taken a shower: hair curly and chaotic, clean tee, tattoos tucked into his sleeves and trying to escape. He white knuckled a brown paper bag like it might bolt.
She opened the door the distance of the chain.
“Hi. Coffee?” he said. His voice was lower than she’d expected—more gentle than gravel.
At her not-so-subtle reluctance, he paused before taking a breath and on the exhale tried, “Sorry. I’m Matty. Upstairs. This is—well. Coffee. Consider it a Welcome-to-the-building gift.”
Violet blinked. The smell hit her: rich and warm, the kind of roast that curled around your brainstem and clouded your olfactory bulb. June squawked softly on her shoulder.
“That’s… nice,” Violet exhaled, suspicious of nice but determined to be polite anyway. “I—thank you.”
“No worries,” he said, upping the politeness by sliding his eyes toward the ceiling instead of trying to peer around her door. “If you hate coffee, I also have tea. Or I can leave you alone. Leaving people alone is an option I’m fully capable of.”
The corner of Violet’s mouth twitched before she could stop it. He grinned like a person who enjoyed claiming small victories.
She unlatched the chain and took the small brown bag. The paper was warm where it had been cradled against his palms. He didn’t ask her name. He didn’t let his gaze linger. He simply nodded, both hands up in a goofy, harmless gesture, and backed away.
“Welcome, anyway,” his smile never faded. “Shout if you need… I don’t know. A screwdriver. Sugar. Directions to the closest laundromat. We’re an opinionated building.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Violet said.
He gave a short nod, then padded up the stairs, humming the progression she’d been hearing through the ceiling all day.
She shut the door and leaned her back against it, the cool wood anchoring her spine. The bag crinkled in her hand. And in a tentative lapse in judgement she peered in. Inside, beans and a note, handwriting blocky and careful: For early mornings or long nights. Underlined once, as if he meant it.
June relaxed a fraction against her shoulder. “We can’t drink this,” Violet told her, bouncing the baby gently. “No matter how persuasive the upstairs neighbor is.”
June answered with a gargle. Violet set the bag on the counter like a small altar, then went back to pacing.
~*~
Night threaded itself through the blinds and ran like ink across the ceiling. The city hummed quietly outside: a siren far away, someone laughing on the sidewalk, a dog negotiating terms with a fire hydrant. In their square of the world, time slowed and stuck.
June cried.
Not the end-of-the-world cry, thank God. The other one: the I-can’t-get-comfortable-in-this-new-house cry; the there’s-too-much-air, too-much-light, too-many unknown smells cry. Violet’s body remembered every version. The way you learn the difference between a I’m-hungry squeal and a my-sock-is-plotting my -murder-wail.
She tried all of it in turn. Milk. Rocking. Pacing. A pacifier. The white-noise app set to “waterfall in a pine forest.” Humming the song her mother had sung absentmindedly while doing dishes. June’s breath hitched and steadied, hitched and steadied, an ocean trying for shore.
“You’re okay,” Violet whispered into the baby’s hair. She could feel her own edges prickling the way they did when she hadn’t slept enough—light too bright, thoughts too loud. “You’re safe. I promise. I checked the lock three times.”
June’s cries echoed off the freshly painted walls. Then, without warning, another sound entered the room, as soft as a held breath: guitar. The same loop from the days prior, only slower now, steady as a heartbeat. Two chords. A shift. A melody so soothing it felt nostalgic.
Violet paused mid-sway. The guitar traced the room like the carress of a loved one. June blinked into the dark and went still. Violet took this opening to slip the purple pacifier back into her mouth. She adjusted her hold and swayed to match the rhythm. June’s mouth worked around the pacifier like a thoughtful fish, keeping time with the soft melody seeping in through the ceiling cracks.
“That’s it,” she whispered, as much to herself as to June. “There you go.”
The loop continued, unhurried. Violet pictured the neighbor—Matty—sitting cross-legged on an old rug, eyes unfocused, hands moving without looking. It occurred to her that he might not even know he was playing a lullaby. He might just be playing.
An odd ache arrived, a clean one, like a note struck in a newly tuned room. She held her daughter and let the guitar’s tide lift and lower them both until June went heavy in her arms, sleep curling up beneath her chin.
Violet didn’t cry—it wasn’t that kind of night—but she felt the prickle that comes before it. Not grief. Gratitude. For the music. For the lock. For the paper bag of coffee waiting for morning.
“Thank you,” she said softly, looking up at the ceiling like it might carry the words.
~*~
Matty didn’t think of it as playing for the baby. He thought of it as not thinking at all.
His fingers moved on their own, old grooves worn into them by years and then worn deeper by the last few months of closing down the shop and coming home jittery with caffeine and ideas. The city had been loud today—customers chatty, a kid bright-eyed about a new band Matty had somehow never heard of, a delivery guy with a story about a raccoon that had held him hostage outside the back door. Now, in the apartment, he could let all that noise thin and settle.
Ross had a highlighter behind his ear and his laptop open to a TA’s study guide. “You’ve played that same progression for twenty minutes,” he said without looking up.
“Minutes are a social construct,” Matty murmured. “Time is fake. Babies are real.”
Ross’s mouth twitched. “She quieted, though.”
Matty didn’t point out that he’d been listening for that, tuning for it the way you tune a radio station. The first time the baby had wailed, he’d stopped, not wanting to intrude. Then he’d felt—what? A tug? He’d fallen back into the loop carefully, like easing into a bath you weren’t sure was the right temperature. After two minutes, the cry had softened. After three, silence.
He wasn’t noble. He just liked when things were better rather than worse.
“You’re gonna adopt them,” Ross said conversationally. “Coffee first. Then playlists. Then free muffins. Then you’re installing a baby gate on our stairs.” He listed off his accusations while touching his right pointer finger to each coinciding finger on his left hand.
“I don’t do muffins,” Matty said. “I do biscuits.”
“Semantics.”
“Cuisine,” Matty corrected primly.
Ross flipped a page and let his pen fall. He watched Matty for a moment, eyes warm in a way that said he could be teased only so far. “You’re a good neighbor.”
Matty shrugged, because anything truer might tip something over. “She looked tired,” he said instead. “Like hospital tired.”
“You noticed.”
“You’d notice too if you came out in daylight.”
“Rude.” Ross pointed his pen at the guitar. “Keep going. It was working.”
Matty obeyed, letting the loop stretch and flex. He thought of the beans downstairs, the note underlined once. He hoped the bag hadn’t felt like a line crossed. There was a difference between kindness and interference; he was always swinging between them like a kid on a rope over a creek, trying to land on the right side.
A floorboard creaked beneath them—the small, ordinary sound of someone settling into a couch. The building breathed. Matty played the loop one more time, then let it fade until the strings went quiet under his hand.
For a minute neither of them spoke. The night pressed its ear to the windows. Somewhere in the distance a siren rose and fell, more lullaby than warning at this time of night.
Ross cleared his throat. “You working the morning shift?”
“Open,” Matty said, hanging the guitar from its hook on the wall adjacent to their worn couch. “Gonna try that new latte recipe.”
“Twelve customers will tell you it’s the best latte they’ve ever had.”
“Thirteen. I’m very persuasive.”
“Are you a shop owner or a used car salesman?”
“Rude,” Matty said again, bitterly, but he was smiling now—a quick, unforced thing he didn’t have to hide.
He rinsed two cups at the sink and left them to dry. He thought of the paper bag downstairs, and the kettle that might boil, and the way steam found its own way out into the air. He thought of the neighbor who’d said thank you like a cautious step onto an iced over lake. He hoped she slept.
~*~
When the guitar faded, the room felt larger. Violet eased June into the bassinet and held her breath for three counts. No protest. The baby sprawled like a starfish, one fist still gripping the hem of Violet’s shirt. Violet lowered the tiny hand with the care of a bomb tech and stepped back.
For the first time all day, the minutes of quiet didn’t feel like a test. They felt like a pause.
She used this time like a person who’d earned it: rinsed a bottle, stacked two plates, turned the kettle on just to hear it click and cool again. She rubbed at the place between her eyebrows where worry liked to fold itself. In the quiet she could hear the small sounds—the radiator’s sigh, the street shushing itself.
On the counter, the paper bag waited. She unfolded it and poured the beans into a jar, the smell rising dark and floral. The note she slid into the cookbook drawer where you put things you’d like to find again later, on purpose, when you need them.
Her phone buzzed with a text she didn’t open. It could sit there. She’d given the right people her new address. She’d bought a thicker door chain and the little plug-in nightlight shaped like a moon. She’d moved her life into a space where she could see end to end and feel the edges.
“Tomorrow,” she whispered to the room, not as a vow, just a map. “Open the box with sheets. Call daycare for pricing. Call Mum with new schedule. Walk to the corner store.” There was ill optimism in the air that she would remember even one of those tasks with an infant.
June shifted and sighed. The guitar upstairs didn’t return. It didn’t need to.
Violet padded over to the front door. Her finger tips ghosted over the lock. Once. Twice. Three times until they moved to the thickened door chain, that Mr. Stein had installed for her and repeated, the same pattern. The door stop would be coming the next business day.
Violet lay on the air mattress and pulled a blanket over her legs. Her body hummed like a live wire finally cooling. She watched the window square and let her vision blur until the light peaking in from the courtyard was a distant smear. The small bedroom with the fresh painted walls felt more warm and cozy than the past two years at her in-laws large house in the suburbs ever did.
She didn’t pray, not anymore. She didn’t bargain. Not like she use to. But she did think a simple thing, plain and without ornament: let it be like this. Let it be this quiet. Let the worst be over, at least for tonight.
She turned on her side, toward the bassinet. June slept with her mouth open just a little, a pale half-moon. Violet’s heartbeat met the building’s and then, drowsily, the city’s. The last thought that stuck before sleep was not about her ex or the ER or the way trauma carved grooves she kept finding herself in. It was about the knock on the door and the silly paper bag and the easy smile of the guy upstairs who hadn’t asked for anything back. Not even her name.
“Okay,” she told the ceiling, welcoming much needed sleep. “Okay.”
~*~
Ross shut his laptop and stood, stretching until his spine cracked. He padded to the small shelf where their books lived—cookbooks, liner notes, a dictionary with most of its pages used to prop a crooked table in the shop downstairs—and slid his study guide between The Savoy Cocktail Book and a copy of The Little Prince with espresso stains.
“Up at six?” he questioned.
“Five,” Matty said. “Muffin day.”
“Don’t you mean biscuit day.”
“Exactly.”
They ran their small nightly rituals— jimmying the lock on the window so Mrs. DeLuca’s cat, Lucas wouldn’t enter and sleep on Ross’ head again. Followed by the lights, watering the plants from a beer glass Ross had stolen from a weekend shift at McGees. Matty paused above where the crying had subsided only an hour or so before. He didn’t press his ear to the floor. He didn’t do anything dramatic. He just stood there for a second with his hands on his hips and smiled.
“Don’t be weird,” Ross murmured with minty breath as he passed him in the narrow hall on the way to his bedroom.
“Never,” Matty said, and meant it, or tried to.
They turned off the last lamp. The apartment went soft around them. Downstairs, a woman and her daughter slept. Upstairs, two men who weren’t related and yet were family moved through the darkness like they knew where everything was.
On the kitchen counter, a stray coffee ring dried into a crescent. In the cupboard, a fresh bag of beans waited for morning.
~*~
The next morning arrived in pale gray light. The kettle hummed, and Violet’s phone was wedged between her shoulder and cheek while she measured formula with one hand. June kicked her feet on the counter in her baby seat, drooling on a stuffed rabbit that had seen better days. Violet had thought she had thrown it out. The stuffed rabbit probably wished it had been.
“—so if I take the Wednesday overnight,” Violet was saying, scrolling through the schedule the hospital had provided to her on her laptop, “could you also do Thursday morning? Just until I get back and nap a little?”
Her mother’s voice was bright and practical, the way it always was when there was a plan to be made, “Of course, honey. Bring the baby bag Wednesday night. I’ll keep her till lunch if you want to sleep” A pause of mother’s intuition before, “Are they treating you alright at the new place?”
Violet looked around at the apartment—the one curtain she’d managed to hang, the open cans of paint, the stack of boxes pretending to be a table, the little jar of coffee beans on the counter catching the light. “It’s… good. Quiet. I can see the courtyard from the window.”
“That’s good,” her mother said, gentle now. “You sound tired, but different tired.”
Violet smiled, stirring the formula absentmindedly. “Yeah. Not scared tired.”
A small pause, the kind her mother always left open for her to fill if she wanted. Violet never did.
A sigh. Another pause. Then, before she could stop herself:
“There’s this guy upstairs,” Violet blurted.
Her mom chuckled immediately. “Already? I was going to give it a few weeks before you met anyone cute.”
“No—God, not like that,” Violet said, rubbing her temple. “He just—he brought me coffee yesterday. Like, an actual bag of it. Said it was for early mornings or long nights or whatever that post-it said.”
“That’s sweet,” her mom said, voice soft.
Violet frowned. “Sweet? Mom, that’s… weird, right? Who just does that?”
“Nice people, maybe? He was probably just being neighborly, Vi.”
“Yeah, well,” Violet muttered, quieter now while she picked at her cuticle, “he was nice too. At first.”
Her mother’s voice gentled. “Honey…”
“I just don’t get it,” Violet went on. “Nobody does something for nothing. People always want something. And he doesn’t even know me. He could be—”
“Vi.” Her mother’s voice cut through gently but firmly. “This isn’t the same.”
Violet let out a breath. The kettle clicked off behind her, steam curling up in the sunlight.
Her mom went on. “You’ve been through something terrible. Of course you’re cautious. But not everyone who smiles is hiding something. Some people bring coffee because it’s the kind thing to do.”
Violet leaned her elbows on the counter, staring at the peeling laminate beneath her fingertips. “You really think that?”
“I do,” her mother said simply. “And you’ll know the difference next time. You already do, I think.”
Violet didn’t answer right away. June cooed from the window, one sock half-off, hair sticking up like she’d been electrocuted. Violet smiled despite herself. “He smells like it, you know. Coffee. Even through the floor sometimes. June likes it.”
Her mom’s laughter was soft and low. “Well, maybe that’s all he’s bringing into your life right now — warmth and caffeine. Doesn’t sound so bad, does it?”
“No,” Violet admitted. “It doesn’t.”
“Good. Take the small kindnesses, Vi. Not everyone’s out for something.”
Violet’s throat tightened at that. “Yeah,” she whispered. “I guess”
They talked for a few more minutes — about schedules, about bottles, about how much June was growing — and then said their goodbyes. When Violet hung up, the silence that followed wasn’t heavy. It was gentle.
She set her phone down, scooped June up, and pressed her nose to her daughter’s soft hair. From upstairs, faint as a memory, a familiar sound drifted through the ceiling — the rhythmic strum of a guitar.
Violet smiled, but caught herself before it could get too comfortable on her face. She had a lot to get done today and with that many tasks on her to do list she could not waste time arguing with herself over some boy.
“See?” she exhaled, ignoring the jar of beans that stared at her from the counter. “S’just coffee.”
ahem... i was once shinycollarboneapologist... and i was SNIPED from this godforsaken website. all of my past work is GONE. im not sure if i will be back to write or not (because losing literally all of my past work has made me emosh), maybe just some blurbs and stuff on my own terms.
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