The Captain's Favor

I'm Astrid. Twenty-eight. I roast coffee at a bus depot, which is exactly as glamorous as it sounds.

Actually no. It's less glamorous. The buses are loud, the hours are garbage, and by midnight I smell like a campfire that filed for divorce from a mechanic.

But the coffee part I love. You get a bean that roasts right and it's like the whole day owes you an apology. That's the good part. The rest is sweeping.

The dating part? The dating part has been a wasteland lately.

Six dates in five months. Six. And every one of them had the same problem. They were fine. Polite. Asked about my job. Said "oh, interesting" when I explained it, then never asked a follow-up. One guy checked his phone under the table. I could see the little blue glow reflected in his water glass. Classy.

One guy brought a spreadsheet about himself. On paper. Because his phone battery "couldn't be trusted." I did not ask what he planned to do with a spreadsheet about himself. He told me anyway. For forty minutes.

So yeah. Lukewarm is the theme. Lukewarm dates, lukewarm texts, lukewarm guys who say "we should do this again sometime" in a voice that means please never.

Then there's Neil.

We matched on an app six months ago. Tugboat captain. Thirty-two. His profile photos were mostly the harbor, one extremely serious boat, and a dog. A big gray mutt with one floppy ear, sitting on the deck of the tug like he owned it.

First message Neil sent me wasn't a compliment or a "hey!" It was: "Serious question. Does the depot cafeteria still have that pie? Asking for a friend. The friend is me."

I laughed out loud at my kitchen table. Alone. With a fork in my hand for no reason.

So we wrote back and forth. Months of it. He worked weird rotations, three weeks on the boat, then a week home, so the timing was bad and we never met. But the messages. God, the messages. The man wrote like someone who had thoughts and was bored enough to share them. He asked follow-up questions. About coffee! He called my roast "aggressively dark" and when I threatened him he said "good, I like a woman with a grudge."

That's flirting. That's actual flirting. I'd forgotten what it looked like.

But still nothing happened. Weeks on the water, a week on land, and on land he apparently slept, did laundry, and walked the dog. The dog! His name is Waffles. I knew this from messages. I knew a dog's name before I knew the man's face in person.

Anyway. Thursday. Late shift. Close to midnight. I'm locking the gate at the depot and there's this shape by the fence. Big. Gray. Breathing like it just lost a fight with the fence.

"Oh, hey buddy," I said. Because I talk to animals like an idiot. "You lost?"

He wagged. Weakly, but he wagged. One floppy ear. I did not need three guesses.

I crouched down and let him sniff my hand. He was filthy and his paws were torn up a little and he leaned into me like he'd been waiting all night for someone with a car.

"You're Waffles," I said. "You're Neil's Waffles. What are you doing all the way over here, huh?"

He answered with a sigh. Dogs are honest like that.

I looked him over. No collar. No tag. Just a very tired dog with a famous ear. Neil was probably on the boat. The harbor's maybe ten minutes from the depot, straight down the industrial road. If he was docked I could drop Waffles off and be home by one.

"Okay. Okay, big guy. Come on." I opened the passenger door of my car and he climbed in like he'd done it before. Probably had. "Don't judge my floor mats."

He judged my floor mats.

The harbor at midnight is all orange lights and fog and the smell of diesel. I've smelled diesel every day of my working life, so I don't even notice it anymore. I drove past the cranes, past the chain-link, down toward the water, and there it was. A tugboat. Not the one from the photos. A different, smaller tug, but there was a light on in the wheelhouse and a man's silhouette moving around.

I parked and let Waffles out. He took off toward the gangplank like a dog half his age. Floppy ear flying. So much for being exhausted.

A man came down the plank to meet him. Tall. Jeans and a work jacket and a knit cap. Even in the dark I knew it was him from the way he crouched for the dog. Hands first. Calm. The dog crashed into him and he just absorbed it, laughing low.

"Waffles! You absolute menace." He buried his face in the gray neck fur. Then he looked up and saw me standing there by my car with my hands in my pockets.

"Oh," he said. "You found him."

"Found him at the depot gate. Looked like he'd been out a while. His paws are rough."

He stood up. Up close he was better than his photos, which is not a thing that happens. Thirty-two, maybe, and built like someone who hauls rope for a living. Dark beard. Eyes that didn't rush anything.

"Astrid," he said.

"You do know my name. I was worried it was all a bot."

"I was going to say. Thank you. Seriously. He slipped his collar two days ago, the little jerk, and I've been driving around calling myself an idiot."

"Two days?" I looked at the dog, now sitting proudly at Neil's boot like he hadn't put anyone through anything. "Waffles, you're a criminal."

"He is. He knows it too." Neil scratched the dog's ear. The floppy one. Waffles made a noise like a deflating air mattress. "Thank you. Big. Let me buy you dinner, a drink, anything. I mean it."

And here's where my brain, which has been fed six months of funny messages and starved of actual men, did what it did.

"You can have coffee with me," I said.

"From you? That's a scam. I buy coffee from you and you pocket the money. That's money laundering."

"Wow. Accusing me of crimes in front of my own criminal dog."

"Waffles doesn't judge. He's not qualified." He was smiling. I could see it even in the bad light. "No, really. Dinner, a drink, you name it."

And I could have said take me to dinner the way anyone would. But it was midnight, I smelled like smoke, and I'd spent half a year trading jokes with this man through a phone. So what came out was:

"Or. Hear me out. The depot's got a maintenance bay and nobody in it after midnight. I've got a grinder back there and exactly one good bag of beans I've been saving."

Neil went quiet for a second. The good kind of quiet. The kind where you can hear the water slapping the hull.

"You asking me to your workplace after hours, Astrid?"

"I'm asking if you want to see how the coffee's actually made. By me. Tonight, since I know you're in port."

"I'm in port till Friday," he said. "Waffles, guard the boat."

Waffles wagged. Useless guard.

"Wait," Neil said, holding up a finger. "One thing, so it's clear. Finding my dog is finding my dog. It doesn't buy you anything and it doesn't buy me anything. Coffee is just coffee, and anything else tonight is only if we both want it, and either of us can say stop."

"Oh, we have rules now?"

"Captain, remember. Everything's logged."

"Fine. Coffee now, and the rest of it only if we both say yes."

"Agreed." He grabbed a battered thermos and a small wooden box from the wheelhouse, said something soft to the dog, and followed me to my car. Waffles tried to come too. Neil pointed at the boat. Waffles, unbelievably, went.

"He listens?"

"He respects the chain of command." Neil settled into my passenger seat, floor mats and all, and looked over. "So. Six months of messages. You nervous?"

"A little," I admitted. "You?"

"Terrified," he said, dead calm, and I laughed the whole drive back.

The depot at midnight is a different animal than the depot at noon. Fluorescents buzzing over an empty bay. Three buses parked in a row like sleeping animals. My little roastery in the back, all steel and heat and the smell of old smoke soaked into everything. I flicked the lights on and Neil followed