I left the lab lights behind and walked toward Tide Market as the cliff poured its evening gauze into downtown. Neon woke along the containers in slow pulses, a polite hum that asked to be noticed. I paused under a QR mural finishing its weekly refresh—hex cells fading into a new shape—and waited for the urge to scan it to pass. When I stepped off the pavement and onto the pier’s wooden ribs, the hum slipped away and the waves took the air. Salt flicked my cheek. My shoulders eased like a door on fresh hinges.
“No show tonight,” the security guard at the corner container said, not unkind. He tapped the dark face of a ring light in his booth. “Staying off.”
“Good,” I said, and meant all three letters. I put my phone on Do Not Disturb and let it sit in my pocket like a warm stone.
The pier exhaled. Gulls traded gossip with the wind; a rope clacked against a cleat; the ocean read the boardwalk its old poem. From the coffee stall, steam carried a shy caramel note, the kind that doesn’t shout. I bought nothing yet. I wanted the air first.
A stall near the end had rolled metal halfway open. A woman I didn’t know sat inside on a crate, knitting a honeycomb pattern into a scarf that would take three winters to finish. A cardboard sign read End of Season—$12 Scarves in marker that had given up trying to be cute. I touched a soft, slightly frayed weave the color of tide-pool moss.
“Cash,” she said, eyes still on her needles.
“Deal,” I said, and slid a bill across the makeshift counter. The scarf smelled faintly like cedar and someone else’s drawer. I wrapped it once, then twice, and the wind discovered it couldn’t make a headline out of my neck.
—micro-hook—
I kept walking past closed doors and quiet windows. Inside one container, a neon sign shaped like a jar winked and dimmed; another tried to sell a candle called Contentment, and even the candle looked unsure. The city’s social compact held for an hour: don’t make a scene—unless it’s profitable—and tonight the ledger was closed.
“Water’s calmer than the forums,” a fisherman muttered from his stool. He didn’t look at me, and I didn’t turn; the remark didn’t need ownership to be true.
“Let it stay that way,” I said to the rail, voice barely above the salt.
My shoes found a slower tempo. I let the boards dictate. The ghost-click of notifications ticked in my head once—old wiring—but the waves folded over it like a mother over a candle. Presence didn’t announce itself; it arrived and took a seat, the way fatigue does in courtrooms after the sentence has already been read.
At the end of the pier, a teen couple leaned shoulder-to-shoulder on a bench cut with a honeycomb back. They shared a paper boat of fries, sliding them to each other without commentary. The boy shook an extra salt packet; the girl brushed a fleck from his lip with a thumb and pretended not to have done it. Grease shone on their fingers; ketchup stained the corner of the boat in a red comma that didn’t want to end anything.
“They’re better when they’re too hot,” the boy said.
“And when nobody’s counting,” the girl said, laughing into her scarf.
I looked away the way I would from a window where the curtains were open by accident. Ordinary sweetness asked for witnesses who wouldn’t narrate.
A gull landed on the rail beside me and eyed the fries with sovereign entitlement. I raised an eyebrow and the bird reconsidered its stance, then hopped two slats down, dignity intact. I let my laughter be a private sound.
The tide lifted something metallic under the pier—a ladder? a memory?—and let it fall with a soft bell note. Neon tried one last time to rehearse itself on the water, but the waves edited it down to a smear. I slid my hands into my coat pockets and felt the ugly pen from earlier, the one that blots like conscience. I left it there.
Two kids in Tide Market volunteer vests strolled past with trash grabbers, speaking a language only they needed. “No, like, you can love the vibe and still not buy the drop,” one said. “It’s legal to like things quietly.”
I nodded without making them a lesson.
—micro-hook—
I bought a cone of toasted almonds from a cart that had survived three recessions and six rebrands. The paper warmed my palm. Sugar dust kissed the air and found the back of my tongue. I ate slowly, one almond at a time, the crunch loud enough in my head to drown out any argument for speed. A woman passing with a beagle pointed at my scarf. “Good color,” she said.
“Good dog,” I returned, and the beagle agreed with a sneeze.
A container selling film stock—not content packages, actual film—had taped a printed rule to its door: We don’t rush your life; don’t rush our developing. I took a breath that reached my ribs and asked nothing of it. The ocean answered by being itself again.
“You’re smiling weird,” I told the black water. The water shrugged in small, shoulderless waves and kept moving.
I leaned on the rail, elbows cold through wool, and watched a paddleboarder coast toward the marina lights, tiny, unurgent. The cliff above the market wore fog like a scarf sharper than mine; neon below tried to flirt with it and failed. The city was gorgeous when it forgot to sell.
My phone shifted its weight in my pocket, a polite nudge. I took it out and unlocked the screen. No badge, no flare. I opened my thread with Lyla, which had most recently been grocery emojis and a photo of blistered tomatoes we didn’t post. I typed a single heart—red, uncomplicated—and sent it with no caption. I didn’t wait for dots. I put the phone away and let the act be the end of itself.
“Calling it a night?” the scarf vendor called from her crate, needles clicking time.
“Walking a little more,” I said, and the scarf agreed against my neck.
The teen couple stood, tossed the empty fry boat into a bin, and linked fingers like it wasn’t a statement. They passed me and the girl whispered, “That scarf looks warm.”
“It learned fast,” I said.
“Teach mine?” the boy asked, grinning.
“Twelve dollars, container three,” I said, pointing, and watched them jog back as if a bargain could be a memory.
The market’s ring lights slept in their boxes. A small QR tag on a bench had been peeled halfway, leaving a paper scar in the shape of a hex. I pressed the corner down with my thumb so it wouldn’t flap, then slipped my hand back into my pocket before I could turn the act into a metaphor.
—micro-hook—
I circled to the pier’s quieter side where the city’s neon thinned into a gradient that the ocean kept refusing to mirror. The rails were damp and tasted like old pennies when I licked salt from my lip. Somewhere below, a crab pot bumped, metal on wood, counting a rhythm nobody would clip.
“You made it boring,” I told the day. “Good job.”
A cyclist rolled past with lights that blinked like patient stars. He pointed two fingers at the ground in a gesture that said sharing the lane, and I mirrored it with two fingers of my own. Tiny choreography, no audience.
The wind came up with a colder edge and tried me again. I tucked my chin, slid the scarf higher, and felt how easy it would be to narrate the whole motion for a feed. I didn’t. I let my body have the gesture without letting my brain ship it anywhere.
At the coffee stall, the barista was pulling down the grate. “Last cup’s on the house if you promise no photos,” he said, mock stern.
“I promise,” I said, and meant the vow in ways he didn’t need to know. The paper cup warmed the chill from my hands. I took a sip and burned my tongue just a touch—the bright sting that says you’re still here.
“Busy week?” he asked.
“Busy enough,” I said, and left it there. He nodded like he understood the value of leaving a story folded.
The pier lights blinked to life in a line, one by one, a row of patient punctuation. The wave noise swelled and softened—conducted, not amplified—and in the lull between breaths I thought of tomorrow’s jars waiting at the bakery. Real honey, no etched code, no hidden file, just sweetness that would crystallize if left alone and still be good.
I looked down at my hands. Almond sugar traced a faint shimmer across my fingertips. I rubbed them together and let the grit disappear into the night, small proof that pleasure doesn’t need a receipt.
“Being unmissable is a trick,” I said to the boards, voice low enough not to travel. “Being here is the thing.”
A bell buoy answered with a lazy gong. Somewhere, a timer died without an audience.
I walked back along the rail with the scarf warm and the phone silent, the kind of quiet that builds stamina instead of suspense. The teen couple had vanished into the sensible part of evening, wherever fries decide to sit kindly in young stomachs. The fisherman packed up without showmanship. The guard locked his booth and gave the ring light a pat the way you pat a sleeping dog you don’t own.
“Night,” he said.
“Night,” I said, and didn’t add anything catchy.
At the mural, the QR code finished its morph into a cluster of pale hexes with one open cell—an invitation that didn’t insist. I took the long way around it. Presence doesn’t need a scan.
Just before the street, I stopped and turned once more toward the water. The waves kept up their stubborn editing of neon, and the cliff wore its fog like boundary tape. I put my hands on the railing, leaned into the cool, and let my breath out until my ribs felt orderly.
“One question,” I told the tide that made no promises and broke none. “When I open the bakery door before dawn and line up jars of real honey, can I keep them for gifts and stop my hands from turning sweetness into bait?”