Malik: Glamorous.
Tessa: Extremely. Park walk Sunday? Late morning? If weather hates us, museum cafeteria coffee, still daylight-ish, still no white-cube hiding.
Malik: Sunday 11. Riverside Park, south entrance. I'll bring nothing thesis-coded. Maybe two good pens in case we need to write rain-check poetry. That was thirty percent cute. Reducing.
Tessa: Stay at twenty. Twenty is tolerable.
Malik: Twenty.
He walked back to the office in a light rain that did not commit to being weather. The city smelled like wet stone. He thought of Broken Refrigerator shining under track lights and of Tessa's hand raising on the sidewalk, unfinished on purpose.
---
Sunday came clear and cool, the kind of autumn clarity that made bridges look newly invented.
Riverside Park's south entrance held joggers, dogs with opinions, and a man selling coffee from a cart with a handwritten sign that promised no oat milk and somehow still had a line. Malik arrived at 10:52 in a navy sweater and dark jeans, jacket layered because dignity included not shivering through sincerity. He bought two black coffees and waited without performing waiting.
Tessa arrived at 11:03 in a long coat over the charcoal sweater from Beacon Roasters, bob tucked behind one ear and then shaken loose again as she walked. She saw the two cups and raised an eyebrow.
"Not thesis-coded," Malik said. "Just caffeine. You can reject one if it feels like a gesture with a caption."
"I'll accept caffeine," Tessa said. "Captions optional."
They walked the path along the water. The river moved like a slow argument. Across it, the opposite bank held warehouses and new glass and the stubborn older buildings that refused to become amenities. A child ran past chasing a pigeon with bureaucratic determination. An older couple sat on a bench sharing a pastry with the peace of people who had already survived their misunderstandings or at least catalogued them.
For a while they talked about nothing that could break.
Then Tessa said, "I told my mother I met someone at a gallery and it got weird and then less weird. She asked if you were kind. I said yes. She asked if you were careful with words. I said you're learning in public, which is rarer."
Malik felt that land in his chest with weight and warmth. "Please thank your mother for the standard. My father would ask if I made it weird. My sister already did."
"Did you?"
"Yes," Malik said. "And then I stayed to un-weird it without erasing it. That part I'm proud of."
Tessa sipped. "I'm proud of not turning June into a villain. She meant well. Meaning well is not the same as meaning accurately."
"Rafi too," Malik said. "I still made him sit in the wobbly chair. Justice requires furniture."