He was already on the street when I arrived at seven.
Two coffees from the bakery. The milk one for me. He had the specific quality of someone who had been awake for a while and had been thinking and was carrying the thinking carefully, the way you carry something you have been working on and are not yet finished with.
We walked.
The morning was cooler than the previous Tuesdays, a shift in the Cebu air that meant the season was doing one of its gradual adjustments. I had learned to read these changes across two months in the city, the subtle differences that locals noticed immediately and that took outsiders weeks to feel.
"I have been thinking about what you said on Sunday," Rafael said. "About thinking about it."
"So have I," I said.
"I do not want to push," he said. "But I have b
