Saturday Afternoon

She had exactly two free hours and exactly one hundred dollars, which felt less like a budget and more like a challenge the universe had issued with a raised eyebrow.
She stood on the sidewalk outside her apartment, phone in hand, scrolling through options she didn’t really want. Massages were too expensive. Shopping felt rushed. A movie would waste the light. She wanted something that felt like permission—permission to slow down without needing to explain why.
So, she walked.
The first ten dollars went to a small café she’d passed a hundred times but never entered. Inside, it smelled like cinnamon and espresso and quiet. She ordered a latte she wouldn’t normally splurge on and a pastry she ate slowly, deliberately, like she was trying to remember how. She didn’t check her phone. That alone felt worth the money.
With the remaining ninety, she wandered into a bookstore a few blocks down. Not a chain—one of those narrow, overstuffed places where the shelves lean like they’re tired. She let herself browse without purpose, running her fingers along spines, reading first lines at random. After nearly half an hour, she bought two paperbacks and a notebook with thick, unlined pages. Forty-two dollars gone, and not a single regret.
Next came the park.
She stopped at a market stall on the way and bought a small bouquet of wildflowers—nothing fancy, just something alive—and a sandwich wrapped in brown paper. Another fifteen dollars. She found a bench near the water where the noise of the city softened into something almost gentle. She ate slowly again, watching people pass, letting herself be anonymous. With time still left, she opened the notebook.
She didn’t write anything profound. Just observations. Snippets of overheard conversation. The way the sun hit the water. A sentence she liked from one of the books. The act of writing without an agenda felt like stretching a muscle she’d forgotten she had.
When the two hours were nearly gone, she checked her balance.
She still had twenty-three dollars.
On her way home, she spent ten of it on a cheap candle that smelled like clean laundry and rain. The rest stayed in her wallet, unspent on purpose—proof that the afternoon hadn’t been about using every dollar, just enough of them.
Later, when someone asked what she did with her free time, she struggled to answer. Nothing special, she almost said. But that wasn’t true. She’d bought herself a pause. And for under a hundred dollars, it felt like a luxury.