It had been one of those weeks that drags its feet through your bones. A project at work finally landed, the kind that takes months to build and ten minutes to present. People clapped. Somebody said, “Nice job.”

And then everyone went back to their inboxes. I hovered over a delivery app on my phone, thumb already twitching toward “Thai, again,” when a quieter thought nudged me: dress up, go out, take yourself somewhere nice.

So I did. I put on earrings I only ever wear to weddings, spritzed perfume like a pep talk, and took the long way downtown. The restaurant sat on the corner like a nighttime greenhouse—high windows, leafy plants spilling from iron shelves, candlelight pooling on white tablecloths. It was the kind of place where the bread had a pedigree and the waiters moved like they’d trained for it.