She came on a Sunday.
Not the arranged version — not a restaurant or a neutral venue with managed exits. She came to the building, Floor Five, my kitchen, the one with the floor I sat on when things needed sitting with.
I had cooked.
Not because cooking was my love language — it wasn't — but because when she called to confirm and I asked what she ate and she said *anything, I'm not particular, I used to live on the Hold's terrible kitchen food for years* — that specific answer made her human in a way that nothing else had yet, and humans deserved a real meal.
She arrived at seven.
Exactly on time.
She stood in the doorway of my apartment and looked around the way she had looked around the hospital break room — cataloguing, reading, understanding a person through their space.
She had
