Greta’s alarm goes off at 6:47 every morning, never 6:45, never 7, just 6:47, because she snoozes it exactly twice. She works as a secretary at a tiny architectural firm tucked between a laundromat and a payday loan place, the kind of office where the coffee pot is always burnt and the boss yells at the intern for using too much printer paper. She talks fast—so fast her coworkers stopped trying to keep up months ago, just nod and smile when she rambles about the stray tabby that pisses on her porch, or the new post-it note color she found at the dollar store (neon pink, hideous, she loves them). Unpredictable? She once booked a bus ticket to the coast on a whim, packed a single pair of sandals and a jar of pickles, then cancelled the trip when she realized she’d left her house keys in the fridge. Lonely? Yeah, she’ll tell you that straight up, no shame. She talks a mile a minute to fill the quiet, because quiet feels like a weight pressing on her chest, like the air before a thunderstorm.
Alexander’s butcher shop is two blocks from her office, the sign above the door peeling, the glass smeared with fingerprints. He’s been struggling for a year now, ever since the big supermarket opened down the street, with its pre-packaged ground beef and 2-for-1 deals. He’s a big guy, broad shoulders, hands always red and cold from the meat cooler, a thin scar along his left thumb from a slip with a boning knife ten years back. Quiet, reclusive—regulars say he barely says two words, just weighs your order, wraps it in white paper, nods you out. Secret intellectual? You wouldn’t know it unless you caught him behind the counter, leaning over a dog-eared copy of Camus’ The Stranger, or humming along to a podcast about 19th century German philosophy while he trims pork loin. He doesn’t tell people that. Doesn’t tell people much of anything, really.
They met on a Tuesday, Greta’s usual pork chop day. Her regular grocery store was out of the thin chops she makes every week, so she stomped into Alexander’s shop, shivering in her too-thin coat, talking to herself about how the bus was late and her shoes were leaking. She bumped the door, dropped her bag, a dozen neon pink post-its fluttered out, scattering across the linoleum. Alexander came out from the back, bent to pick one up. It said “sky looked like bruised plums this morning, don’t forget milk, also the tabby puked on my rug again”. He almost smiled—just a twitch at the corner of his mouth, gone so fast Greta almost missed it. She grabbed the post-it, flustered, words tumbling out faster than usual: “Oh god, sorry, I’m such a klutz, I drop everything, do you have thin pork chops? The cheap ones? My neighbor’s cat is sick—wait no, Mr. Whiskers is fine, I just like them, sorry, I talk too fast, everyone says that, I can’t help it.”
Alexander didn’t look up. Just grunted, walked to the cooler, pulled out a pack of thin chops, wrapped them, slid them across the counter. Greta, nervous, did what she always does when she’s flustered: she flirted. Blunt, no preamble. “You have nice hands, for a butcher. Do you want to get coffee tomorrow? There’s that place down the street, hazelnut lattes, I buy one every day even though they’re five bucks, come with me? I’ll pay.”
Alexander froze, his hand still on the counter. Shook his head, slow. “I don’t do coffee. With people.” Then he turned back to his cutting board, picked up his copy of The Stranger, left her standing there with her chops.
Greta didn’t take no for an answer, not right away. She started coming in every Tuesday, same time, same thin chops. Talked at him, not to him, mostly—rambled about her boss’s bad toupee, the stray dog that follows her to the bus stop, the way the rain smells like wet concrete in October. Alexander never responded, just nodded, handed over the chops. One Tuesday she brought him a hazelnut latte, left it on the counter when he wasn’t looking. He didn’t drink it. Let it go cold, threw it out at closing. When she asked why the next week, he said, “I don’t like sweet things. Or drinks from people I don’t know.”
“We could get to know each other!” Greta said, hopping on one foot because her shoe was still leaking. “I’m Greta! I talk fast, I know, but I’m fun, I promise. I can tell you about the time I ate an entire jar of pickles in one sitting, or the time I got lost in the library for three hours because I was following a cat—”
“I’m Alexander,” he cut her off. “I’m busy.”
That went on for three months. Greta’s Tuesday visits, Alexander’s silent nods. Until the week Greta’s jar broke.
She kept a mason jar on her desk, filled with little things she found on the street: a chipped blue button her grandma gave her when she was 10, a lost kid’s glove, a earring someone dropped at the bus stop, a ticket stub from a movie she never saw. None of it valuable, just small, forgotten things that felt like they mattered. That Tuesday, she knocked the jar off her desk, it shattered, all the little trinkets scattered, got swept up with the office trash before she could save them. She cried all the way to the butcher shop, talking faster than ever, words blurring together: “My jar broke, all the things are gone, the blue button, my grandma’s button, I’ve had it since I was 10, now it’s gone, I’m so stupid, why do I keep junk anyway? It’s all trash, right? Just trash?”
Alexander was closing up, wiping down the counter. He paused, watched her cry for a minute, then went to the back room. Came back with a glass jar of his own, full of little white meat tags—the ones with the weight and date stamped on them, the ones he peels off the packages every day. He slid it across the counter to her.
“I keep these,” he said, his voice rough, like he doesn’t use it much. “Every day. For 7 years. They’re useless. Just trash. But I line them up by date, look at them sometimes. Small things. No one cares about them but me.”
Greta stopped crying. She stared at the jar, then at him. Reached into her bag, pulled out a post-it she’d scribbled that morning, slid it to him. “I found this. This morning. On the 14 bus. A blue button. Chipped on the edge. Not my grandma’s, but… it’s a button. For your jar.”
Alexander picked up the post-it, read it. Then he looked at her. For the first time, he didn’t look away. Held her gaze for a second, tucked the post-it into the pocket of his apron, right next to his dog-eared copy of The Stranger, then said, “I close at 6 tomorrow. Making beef stew. It’s not fancy. But it’s warm. If you want to come by.”
Greta grinned, wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I’ll bring sourdough! The bakery down the street, the expensive one, I’ll get a loaf, 6 o’clock, I’ll be there, don’t lock the door!”
They sat on the step of the butcher shop that night, bowls of stew balanced on their knees, watching the rain hit the tin awning. Greta was quiet for once, picking at the crust of the bread. Alexander smoked a cigarette, didn’t say anything. The silence wasn’t heavy, though. It felt soft, like the wool of Greta’s scarf. She watched a drop of rain slide down the brim of his hat, he watched a neon pink post-it she’d stuck to the shop window flutter in the wind.
That’s when she realized it, later, when she was walking home, her belly full of stew, her shoes still leaking, but she didn’t care. The way he’d slid the jar of meat tags to her, the way he’d waited for her to finish talking before he spoke, the way he’d tucked that little post-it with the button next to his favorite book—these weren’t big things. No grand declarations, no fancy dates, no slow dances in the rain. Just small, invisible things, the kind no one else would notice, the kind that sit in the back of your chest and warm you up from the inside. That’s Niềm Vui Vô Hình Của Tình Yêu, she thought. Not the loud, fast stuff. Not the flirting, or the talking, or the grand gestures. Just the quiet, small things that only the two of you see.
They still don’t call it dating, not yet. Greta still talks too fast sometimes, Alexander still spends his breaks reading Camus behind the counter. But every Tuesday, after she picks up her thin pork chops, they sit on the step for ten minutes, share a piece of sourdough, watch the rain. No one else knows about the jars, or the post-its, or the way Alexander saves a seat for her on the 14 bus when he goes to the library on Sundays. That’s the thing about it, Greta figures. The best parts are the ones no one else can see.
