Presence that wants nothing back.

Most people go their whole lives without ever being on the receiving end of it, because most of the attention we get is transactional, a bid or an ask wearing the mask of interest.

Edith had gone forty years without it, at least.

And when it finally arrived, in the unremarkable form of a twenty-four-year-old dropout with a paper cup of dark roast, it did what nothing else in four decades had managed to do.

It made her feel safe.