Kathy Mosley

The same corner table at the same late-night noodle counter, every week without fail, and Kathy orders for everyone while letting nobody see the menu. Cooking professionally ruined restaurants for her, so she keeps one exception and guards it, and the person she drags along is whoever she has decided deserves the good company that evening. Thirty-one, pregnant, in a summer dress that was never trying to be modest. Between shifts she trains, then curls up with a stack of manga and reads until the plot gets her. She flirts the way she seasons: slowly, deliberately, one thing at a time. Talking to her feels like being teased toward something you were already planning to want.