The Last Cup

The cafe was empty at midnight, save for one last customer who ordered a cold brew and never spoke a word. She sat by the window for three hours, watching the rain trace patterns down the glass, her notebook open but untouched. When the barista finally closed up, he noticed the only thing she had written was a single sentence: The best stories are the ones we never tell. He folded the napkin she left behind and kept it in his apron pocket for years. Whenever someone asked him what his favourite story was, he would pull it out, smoothed flat from a thousand readings, and hand it over without a word.