The kind waitress paid for the old man’s coffee. She didn’t know what would happen to her in a minute…

She looked around the cafe, every seat filled, the air thick with comfort. Years ago, she began, I paid for someone’s coffee. I didn’t know who he was, I just saw someone being made small, and I couldn’t look away.

She paused.

That cup cost me five dollars, but what it gave me was a new way to see the world, some nodded, others wiped their eyes. I thought I was helping a man who was lost, she said, but it turns out, he helped me find the version of myself I didn’t know I was allowed to become.

She set the cup down. This cafe isn’t about selling coffee, it’s about presence, about showing up when no one else does. Her voice grew softer.

A man once told me, kindness doesn’t need to be remembered, it only needs to be continued, she smiled.

So, that’s what we’re doing here, one cup at a time, and almost as an afterthought, she added, some loves don’t need romance, some lives change with nothing more than a kind gesture and the courage to mean it.

The room applauded, a saxophone began to play, and somewhere in the back a first cup was poured, for someone who didn’t know they needed it until they did, and so it began, again.