The Shop That Ruins Punctuality

Nadia had sworn off love in three languages and one very expensive pair of pointe shoes, which was why it seemed like a personal insult from the universe that the only cobbler within walking distance of her studio happened to be run by the single most distracting man she'd met in four years of aggressively not looking.

"You brought me odd shoes again," Omar said, not looking up from his workbench, where a size six flat sat waiting beside what was unmistakably its size eight twin.

"They're not odd. They're mismatched. There's a difference."

"There is not a difference, Nadia."

"There is a philosophical difference."

He finally looked up, and it was, as always, deeply unfair how the afternoon light through the shop window insisted on doing something flattering to his face every single time. Nadia had timed her visits to avoid this. She had failed every time.

"Your studio is eleven minutes from here," he said, setting the shoes side by side with the careful precision of a man who took his mismatched-shoe crisis more seriously than the situation warranted. "You've come in six times this month. Either your dancers have the most chaotic feet in the tri-state area, or—"

"Or?"

"Or you like arguing with me more than you like being on time for class."

Nadia opened her mouth to deny it, found she had no actual denial prepared, and settled instead for glaring at a display of shoelaces as though they had personally wronged her.

"Fix the shoes, Omar."

"Always do, Nadia."

She left eleven minutes late for the seventh time that month, and did not examine too closely why she'd started keeping count.