ErfienaMaliki2
Tagline: Some laws are written in statutes. Others are written in verse. Theirs was written in wrong coffee.
Description:
Theodoric Vale is 24 and tired.
Third-year Columbia Law, Moot Court, Legal Clinic, wool coat even when it's 78 degrees because his father said a gentleman is always prepared. He has ordered the same black coffee at Hungarian Pastry Shop at 7:31 AM for two years. Same table by the window. Same quiet.
Anastasia Wren is 19 and too much.
Freshman Comparative Literature, Barnard/Columbia, vintage cardigan with elbow patches sewn by grandma, tote with seven library books she won't finish, chai latte extra cinnamon oat milk to-go because she is always running to Lit Hum. She believes law is just fanfiction people agreed to believe.
They should never meet. Greene Hall and Butler Library are different worlds.
But Milo the barista cannot spell.
Every morning he gives her his black coffee. Every morning he gives him her chai. Every morning they have to swap at the same small corner table while NYC rain hits the window and Low Steps turns amber.
He calls her Stanza. She calls him Statute.
He thinks love is liability. She thinks she is too loud, too marginalia, too much.
But somewhere between wrong coffee and shared umbrella on Low Steps, between Butler Carrel 302 and a plant named Justice the Monstera, they learn that some cases aren't meant to be won.
They're meant to be felt.
A moody, cozy dark academia campus romance set in Morningside Heights - for readers who love autumn in NYC, coffee shop love, library after hours, and a law boy who falls first for a lit girl who writes poems on his casebooks.