The café was called Grão & Verso.
Fábio discovered it on his second day as an intern, when he got off the subway ten minutes early and decided to walk around the block instead of heading straight to the building. It sat on an unassuming corner, squeezed between a newsstand and a cell phone repair shop, with an exposed brick façade and a hand-lettered sign written in chalk. The kind of place that seemed to have been put there by someone who loved coffee more than money.
He went in out of curiosity.
He left in love.
The coffee was strong and full-bodied, served in a thick ceramic cup that warmed his hands. The aroma of freshly roasted beans mingled with cinnamon and something that reminded him of orange cake. There were dark wooden tables, tall stools at the counter, and a bookshelf at the back filled with books that nobody seemed to return.
On the first day, Fábio ordered a latte and sat by the window. On the second, he ordered an espresso and stayed at the counter. On the third, he walked in with Lucas and stopped dead in his tracks.
Alexander Monteiro was sitting at the table in the corner.
Alone. Reading something on his tablet, with a small cup of black coffee in front of him—without sugar, Fábio would have bet money on it. He wore a dark gray suit, lighter than the one he'd worn on the first day, and the morning sunlight streaming through the window fell across his face in a way that should have been illegal. His hair was swept back as always, but one strand had escaped and fallen across his forehead, and Fábio found himself staring at that strand as if it were personally responsible for ruining his morning.
“Fábio.” Lucas snapped his fingers in front of his face. “You’ve frozen.”
“I have not frozen.”
“Dude, you’re standing in the middle of the café staring into space.”
“I was deciding what to order.”
“You’re staring at the CEO.”
“I am not staring at the CEO.”
“Fábio, I’m literally following the direction of your eyes. It’s basic geometry.”
Fábio wanted to die. He wanted the floor of the café to open up and swallow him whole, backpack and three pens included. He turned his back on the corner table and headed for the counter with the determination of someone fleeing a fire.
“A latte, please.”
“Two,” Lucas said beside him, wearing a smile that promised nothing good.
They collected their coffees. Fábio looked at the available tables. There was one near the door—far away, safe, with no risk of making eye contact with anyone dangerous.
Perfect.
“Over there,” Fábio said, pointing.
“No,” Lucas replied. “Over there.” And he pointed to the table next to Alexander’s.
“Lucas.”
“What?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I said no.”
“Brilliant argument. Let’s go.”
Before Fábio could protest, Lucas was already walking toward the table with the casual confidence of someone who had absolutely no instinct for self-preservation. Fábio followed because the alternative was standing alone in the middle of the café, holding a latte and looking like a lamppost.
They sat down. Their table was less than a meter from Alexander’s. Fábio could smell his cologne—that same scent from the elevator, the one whose name he still didn't know but had already memorized.
Alexander didn't lift his eyes from his tablet.
Fábio breathed out. Maybe he hadn't noticed them. Maybe he was too focused on his work. Maybe Fábio could drink his coffee in peace, pretend to be a normal person, and leave without any incidents.
He picked up a sugar packet.
Tore it open.
The sugar flew everywhere.
Not a little. Not a polite pinch that landed discreetly on the table. The packet ripped along the wrong seam, and sugar scattered across the entire tabletop, the saucer, Lucas's phone, and an area that unquestionably included the edge of Alexander Monteiro's table.
Fábio froze, the ruined packet still in his hand, staring at the disaster as if he'd just dropped a bomb.
Lucas looked at the sugar on his phone. Then he looked at Fábio. Then he started laughing—quietly, his shoulders shaking, the kind of laughter that only gets worse the harder you try to hold it in.
“Dude…”
“Shut up.”
“Fábio…”
“Lucas, for the love of God, shut up.”
That was when Alexander raised his eyes.
Not quickly. Slowly, as if the noise had reached him a few seconds late. First, he looked at the sugar scattered along the edge of his table. Then at the torn packet in Fábio's hand. Finally, he looked at Fábio's face, which had turned a color that probably didn't exist on the Pantone chart.
Alexander said nothing.
He gave a barely perceptible nod. Just a slight movement of his head. The kind of acknowledgment that could mean good morning or I recognize you or simply I've noticed that you exist and are destroying things near me.
Fábio opened his mouth to say something—an apology, an explanation, anything that might make him sound like a functioning human being—but what came out was:
“The packet… it… the wrong side.”
Alexander looked at him for another second. There was something in his hazel-green eyes that Fábio couldn't quite decipher. It wasn't irritation. It wasn't indifference.
The corner of Alexander's mouth moved. Just a millimeter. Perhaps not even that. The ghost of a smile appeared and vanished so quickly that it could have been Fábio's imagination.
He almost smiled.
Almost.
Then he returned his attention to the tablet as if nothing had happened.
Fábio stared at his latte as though it contained the answers to the universe. His heartbeat thudded in his ears. His hands trembled slightly. Beside him, Lucas wiped the sugar off his phone with a napkin, biting his lip to keep from laughing again.
“You're a disaster,” Lucas whispered.
“I know.”
“A complete disaster.”
“I know, Lucas.”
“He almost smiled.”
Fábio looked up. “What?”
“The CEO. He almost smiled at you. I saw it.”
“He didn't smile.”
“I said almost. And I saw it. The corner of his mouth moved.”
“That doesn't count as a smile.”
“That's the closest I've ever seen that man get to smiling, and I've worked here for three days. Fábio, you nearly made the CEO smile by spilling sugar everywhere. That's a talent.”
Fábio took a sip of his latte. It was good. Actually, it was very good, but he could barely taste it because all his senses were too busy registering Alexander's presence less than a meter away.
They stayed there for another fifteen minutes or so. Fábio didn't look at the corner table again.
Well, that wasn't entirely true—he looked twice, but quickly, out of the corner of his eye, the way you look at the sun: knowing you shouldn't, knowing you'll get burned, but looking anyway.
The first time, Alexander was reading. The second time, he was lifting his cup to his lips, and Fábio noticed that he held it with both hands, his long fingers wrapped around the ceramic. Fábio found it so absurdly beautiful that he looked away as if he'd been struck by lightning.
Alexander stood up first. He put his tablet into his briefcase, left a banknote on the table without even checking the change, and headed for the door. As he passed Fábio and Lucas's table, he slowed down for half a second.
“Good morning,” he said without stopping or looking directly at either of them.
“Good morning,” Fábio replied half a second late, speaking to Alexander's back as he continued toward the exit.
The little bell above the café door jingled when it closed.
Lucas waited three seconds.
“Fábio.”
“No.”
“You're smiling.”
Fábio raised a hand to his face.
He was smiling. He hadn't even realized it.
“It's the coffee,” he said. “The coffee here is good.”
“Yeah. Definitely the coffee.”
Fábio finished his drink in silence, looking at the now-empty corner table. Alexander's cup was still there, with a faint mark along the rim of the ceramic. Fábio stared at that mark for far too long before quickly looking away, as if someone might be able to read his thoughts.
They left the café and walked toward the Monteiro Tech building. The morning sun reflected off the glass façades, making everything shine almost ridiculously brightly, as if São Paulo were trying to impress someone.
“You're coming back tomorrow, right?” Lucas asked.
“Where?”
“The café.”
Fábio thought for a second.
“I am.”
“Figured.”
They entered the building. This time, Fábio made it through the turnstile without tripping.
A small victory.
Inside the elevator, he pressed the button for the twelfth floor and watched the numbers climb.
He thought about the almost-smile.
He thought about those hazel-green eyes that had looked at him for two seconds—two seconds that had felt like much longer.
He thought that tomorrow, he would tear open the sugar packet the right way.
Or perhaps he wouldn't use sugar at all. Maybe he'd order black coffee, without sugar, just like Alexander's.
He shook his head. What a ridiculous idea. He didn't even like black coffee.
The elevator doors opened on the twelfth floor. Fábio stepped out, walked to his desk, turned on his computer, and began his day.
But the almost-smile stayed with him all morning. And all afternoon. And all evening, when he lay in his tiny apartment, staring at the damp stain on the ceiling.
Almost.
It was little. It was practically nothing.
But Fábio fell asleep smiling.