“I’m telling you so it doesn’t become one more thing waiting in a bin.”

She left her cup on the table with a dried brown ring beneath it.

I moved the cup onto a napkin so the ring wouldn’t set into the laminate.

At twenty past twelve I went to the counter and took the cupcake out of my lunch bag.

Chocolate, rainbow sprinkles, from a gas station, 2.49 written in red marker on the corner of the wrapper.

I peeled the paper down and laid the price tag flat against the cover of Charles’s notebook, which traveled in my bag now instead of his shirt pocket.