The Last First Kiss

Chapter 3: The First split in the Armor

By Wednesday, Maya had learned three things about Leo Chen.

First: he was physically incapable of walking past a crooked picture frame without straightening it. She'd tested this theory by tilting the framed photo of Gertrude's late husband—a man who looked like a walrus in a tuxedo—three separate times. Each time, Leo had silently walked over, straightened it, and walked away without a word.

Second: he had a soft spot for old people and animals. She'd caught him feeding bacon to a stray cat behind the pub, and when Gertrude complained about her arthritis, Leo had shown up the next morning with a jar of homemade CBD salve. "It's from my brewery's wellness line," he'd muttered, as if that explained anything.

Third: he was hiding something.

It wasn't just the way he deflected personal questions with sarcasm, or how his jaw tightened whenever someone mentioned relationships. It was the way he looked at Maya sometimes—like he was reading her, like he was trying to solve a puzzle he hadn't admitted existed.

She told herself she didn't care. She told herself he was a coworker, a means to an end, a grumpy obstacle between her and saving the pub. She told herself all of this while standing on a ladder at 9 p.m., hanging fairy lights from the pub's exposed beams, and wondering why she'd volunteered to do this alone.

She hadn't volunteered. Leo had simply left at 6 p.m. without saying goodbye, and she'd stayed because the lights needed to be up by Friday, and because the upstairs apartment was quiet in a way that made her think too much.

The ladder wobbled.

Maya grabbed the beam and swore. "Okay. New plan. Don't die before the relaunch."

"You won't die. The floor would break your fall."

She looked down. Leo stood at the bottom of the ladder, holding two cups of coffee, wearing a sweatshirt that said "Espresso Yourself."

"I thought you went home," she said.

"I did. Then I remembered you have the survival instincts of a golden retriever in a fireworks factory." He set the coffees on a table and climbed up two rungs. "Give me the lights. I'm taller."

"I can do it myself."

"You're shaking."

"I'm not shaking. I'm vibrating with competence."

Leo sighed. "Rivera. Give me the lights."

She handed them over. Their fingers brushed. His were warm. She ignored this.

He hung the rest of the strand in thirty seconds flat, then climbed down and handed her a coffee. "Drink. You look like you haven't slept."

"I slept."

"On your phone? I saw the light on from the street at 2 a.m."

Maya froze. "You were outside my window at 2 a.m.?"

"I was walking my neighbor's dog." He said it too quickly. "The dog has insomnia."

"You don't have a neighbor with a dog. You live above a bookstore that closes at 8."

Leo's ears turned that now-familiar shade of pink. "I have a lot of neighbors."

"Leo."

"What?"

"Were you checking on me?"

The silence stretched. A fairy light flickered. Somewhere in the distance, a train whistled.

"I was checking on the pub," he said finally. "It's a valuable asset."

"It's a failing bar with a leaky ceiling and a bathroom that smells like a crime scene."

"It has potential."

Maya stared at him. He stared back. Neither of them blinked.

"You're weird," she said.

"You're weirder."

"That's not a denial."

"I'm not denying anything." He took a sip of his coffee. "The lights look good, by the way. You have an eye for this."

It was such a small compliment, delivered so flatly, that it took her a moment to realize he meant it. Leo Chen, king of the grumpy one-liners, had just said something nice.

"Thanks," she said. "You're not terrible at fixing things."

"High praise from the chaos queen."

They drank their coffee in silence. It wasn't uncomfortable. That was the strange part. Maya had spent years filling silences with chatter, with jokes, with the desperate energy of someone who needed to be liked. But with Leo, the quiet felt like a shared umbrella. Like they were both hiding from the same storm.

She wanted to ask him why. Why he was here at 9 p.m. Why he'd come back. Why he looked at her like she was a math problem he couldn't solve.

Instead, she said: "What's your favorite book?"

Leo blinked. "What?"

"Favorite book. Everyone has one. Mine is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. It's about a magical competition and a love story that takes decades. I reread it every year."

He was quiet for so long she thought he wouldn't answer. Then: "The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss."

"The one that's never getting a third book?"

"The very same."

"Wow. You really do hate happy endings."

Leo's jaw tightened. "I don't hate them. I just don't trust them."

"That's the same thing."

"No. It's not." He set down his coffee. "Hating something means you care enough to be angry. Not trusting something means you've learned to protect yourself. They're different."

Maya felt the words land somewhere in her chest, right below her ribs. "Who taught you that?"

"My dad." He said it like it cost him something. "He was a great teacher. Terrible husband."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It was a long time ago." He picked up his coffee again. "What about you? Mom? Dad?"

"Mom died when I was twelve. Cancer. Dad remarried two years later to a woman who doesn't like me. I don't blame her. I'm a lot."

"You're not a lot."

"You've known me for four days."

"Four days is enough."

Maya didn't know what to say to that. So she said nothing. They finished their coffee in the quiet, and when Leo left at 10 p.m., he paused at the door.

"Rivera."

"Yeah?"

"The pigeon on your windowsill. I fed it. It's not hurt, just lazy."

She laughed. It surprised both of them.

"Goodnight, Leo."

"Goodnight, Maya."

He said her name like he was testing how it felt. Like he'd been wanting to say it for a while.

She locked the door behind him and stood there for a full minute, her hand still on the deadbolt, her heart doing something she refused to name.

Then she went upstairs, opened the Ask Auntie Heartbreak app, and found a new message from FermentedFiction.

"Hopeful – I told someone tonight about my dad. I don't do that. Why do I feel like I can tell you anything?"

Maya's fingers trembled as she typed back:

"Skeptic – Maybe because you want to be known. Maybe because you're tired of hiding. Maybe because I asked the right question. What did you tell them?"

"That I don't trust happy endings. That I learned it from watching my parents fail. That I'm afraid I'll fail too."

"Skeptic – Everyone's afraid of failing. The difference is what you do with the fear."

"What do you do with yours?"

Maya stared at the screen. The honest answer was: I pretend it doesn't exist. I laugh too loud. I fill my life with noise so I don't have to hear the quiet.

But she wasn't ready to say that. Not to a stranger. Not yet.

So she wrote:

"Hopeful – I keep showing up anyway. That's all any of us can do."

"Skeptic – That's terrifying."

"Hopeful – Yeah. But so is staying home."

Thursday morning, Maya woke to a text from an unknown number.

Unknown: The fairy lights fell down overnight. I fixed them. Don't climb the ladder again. – L

She saved the number as "Grumpy Cactus."

Then she typed back: You were outside my window again?

Grumpy Cactus: I was walking the neighbor's dog.

Maya: You don't have a neighbor with a dog.

Grumpy Cactus: I got one yesterday. Her name is Waffles.

Maya: You got a dog so you could have an excuse to check on me?

Grumpy Cactus: I got a dog because dogs are superior to humans. The fact that she needs late-night walks is a coincidence.

Maya: You're a terrible liar.

Grumpy Cactus: I'm an excellent liar. You're just perceptive.

She smiled at her phone. Then she caught herself smiling and stopped.

This was dangerous. This was exactly the kind of situation she always fell into—reading too much into small gestures, mistaking basic decency for something more, building a castle out of a single brick.

She'd done it before. With Jeremy, the artist who'd said her laugh was "like music" and then ghosted her after three months. With Danielle, the chef who'd cooked her dinner every night and then announced she was moving to Portugal without her. With every person who'd ever made her feel seen, even briefly, before disappearing into the fog of their own lives.

She was a collector of almosts. Almost loved. Almost chosen. Almost enough.

Not this time. Leo was a coworker. A partner in pub-saving. A grumpy acquaintance who happened to notice things.

That was all.

She repeated this to herself while she got dressed, while she made coffee, while she walked downstairs to find Leo already there, already fixing the jukebox, already looking up at her with those tired brown eyes that saw too much.

"The jukebox hasn't worked since 1997," she said.

"It works now. I replaced the tubes." He pressed a button. Patsy Cline's "Crazy" filled the room. "Gertrude wanted it for the relaunch."

"That's… really sweet."

"It's practical. Music increases beverage sales by eighteen percent."

"Of course you know the statistic."

"I own a brewery. I know a lot of statistics."

She sat at the bar. He handed her a cup of coffee without being asked. It was exactly how she liked it—oat milk, one sugar, a dash of cinnamon.

She hadn't told him that.

"How did you know—"

"You ordered it yesterday. I noticed."

"You notice everything."

"Not everything." He looked away. "Just the important things."

The jukebox switched to "I Fall to Pieces." Maya felt like she was standing on the edge of something—a cliff, a conversation, a mistake. She could feel the drop in her stomach.

"Leo."

"Yeah?"

"Thank you. For the coffee. For the lights. For not letting me fall off the ladder."

He shrugged, but his ears were pink again. "Someone has to keep you alive. You're terrible at it."

"I'm excellent at it. I've survived thirty-six near-death experiences."

"That's not a flex."

"It's a lifestyle."

He almost smiled. Almost. "You're impossible."

"And yet, here you are. At 7 a.m. On your day off. Drinking coffee with the impossible girl."

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"Rivera," he said. "Can I ask you something?"

"Anything."

"Why did you really take this job? And don't say 'because Gertrude is magnificent.' I know that's true, but it's not the whole truth."

Maya looked down at her coffee. The steam curled up like a question mark.

"Because I'm tired," she said quietly. "I'm tired of being the one who believes when everyone else has given up. I'm tired of hoping and hoping and hoping and never having it land. I took this job because I wanted to prove that optimism isn't stupid. That it can actually work. That if I just keep showing up, eventually the universe will show up too."

Leo was quiet for a long time.

"That's the bravest thing I've ever heard," he said.

"It's not brave. It's desperate."

"No." He shook his head. "Desperate is giving up. Desperate is deciding it's not worth the risk. Desperate is what I do every day. What you do—showing up anyway, believing anyway—that's not desperate. That's stubborn. There's a difference."

Maya's throat tightened. "You think I'm stubborn?"

"I think you're the most stubborn person I've ever met. And I think that's going to save this pub. And I think—" He stopped.

"You think what?"

He looked at her. Really looked at her. Like he was memorizing her face. Like he was trying to decide whether to jump off the cliff with her.

"I think you might be the person who proves me wrong," he said. "About everything."

The jukebox switched to "Sweet Dreams." The fairy lights flickered. The morning sun streamed through the dusty windows and landed on Leo's face, and for one perfect second, he didn't look grumpy at all.

He looked hopeful.

And then Gertrude burst through the back door, carrying a crate of pickled eggs and yelling about a pipe burst in the kitchen, and the moment shattered.

But Maya held onto it. She tucked it into the pocket of her heart, next to her abuela's words and her mother's memory and all the other small, fragile things she refused to stop believing in.

Maybe, she thought. Maybe this time.

That night, she wrote to FermentedFiction:

"Skeptic – Someone looked at me today like I was the answer to a question he'd been asking his whole life. And then he looked away. What does that mean?"

His reply came fast:

"Hopeful – It means he's scared. It means he's spent so long believing the answer doesn't exist that he doesn't know what to do now that he's found it. Give him time. He's trying."

"How do you know?"

"Because I'm him. Not literally. But I know what it's like to be so afraid of falling that you forget how to stand."

Maya read the message seven times.

Then she wrote back:

"Skeptic – What if I fall anyway? What if I fall and he's not there to catch me?"

"Hopeful – Then you learn that you can catch yourself. But I don't think that's going to happen. I think he's already reaching out. You just can't see it yet."

She fell asleep with her phone on her chest, dreaming of a man with tired brown eyes and pink ears and a dog named Waffles who definitely didn't exist.