By 5:00 a.m., Tessa Liang is coaxing a dented moka pot to life in her micro-roastery on NE Alberta, trying to keep her fledgling business solvent and her anxiety quieter than the grinder. By 9:00 p.m., Rafael Moreno is shepherding his teenage brother and two younger cousins home before Portland curfews kick in, juggling school pickups, EMT night shifts, and forms he never asked to file. A housing mix-up leaves them sharing a creaky carriage house in Concordia on opposite schedules, so they negotiate rules: coffee stays on the porch, curfews are sacred, everything gets labeled with masking tape. They cross paths only in the handoff hours, all steam and soft yawns, a life measured between coffee and curfews.
Then the city heatwave brings rolling blackouts and earlier curfews, Tessa’s estranged mother turns up with a suitcase and opinions, and Rafe’s custody hearing moves up after his sister’s deployment is extended. Notes on a refrigerator become long letters left at Powell’s, quick favors become standing dates at Mount Tabor, and the rules grow elastic as feelings refuse to keep office hours. When the roastery faces closure and the kids test limits on the St. Johns Bridge, Tessa and Rafe have to decide whether their boundaries are protection or walls. In a summer of busted mopeds, found family, and stubborn hope, they learn that timing is not a clock so much as a promise kept.
