Chapter 14 #2
Sette tightened her grip on her cup handle until she couldn’t take it anymore.
She wasn’t thinking about June. She was thinking about her own work. The blank canvases. Her hand hovering over her sketching pencil as if she had forgotten what it was for.
She was thinking about the way it felt lately, to wake up and already be bored.
To stand in her studio and stare at a canvas stretched over wood and feel…
nothing. To have everything she’d once wanted while delivering babies and realizing that just quitting and embracing the artist’s life wasn’t enough.
It wasn’t June’s fault she’d become a fixation. June was… a symptom. Something bright enough to stare at, so Sette didn’t have to look at the hollow space in her own chest.
Sette set her coffee down a little too hard. A drop sloshed over the rim and dotted the table like a stain of splashed paint.
She stared at it. Pathetic.
A movement cut across her peripheral vision, and her attention snapped sideways. A woman had stepped into the café and instantly commandeered Sette’s awareness.
Not in the entitled way of someone who believed the world existed to serve her, but in the way of someone who had never had to prove herself in any capacity.
She didn’t pause at the threshold to orient herself.
She moved through bodies and chairs and the brightness of the room as if she expected them to cater to her.
Her suit jacket was black and tailored for her shoulders and waist, the sleeves ending at her wrists.
Underneath, a white shirt popped, collar open.
There was the smallest glint of metal at her left wrist. A watch.
The stranger’s hair was dark and neatly styled back from her face. Not a single strand was out of place. Her shoes were… Sette couldn’t see them clearly, but she didn’t need to. The way the woman walked told Sette everything.
Butch. Not her type. Androgynous. Very womanly, but still evoking that old-school charm that once had Sette in a chokehold when she was a baby lesbian back in undergrad.
The kind Zara would be if she let the world see her for the American old money that she was.
Instead, she puts on khaki shorts and tank tops. The other kind of old money.
Yet Sette’s gaze was snagged, anyway.
The woman’s eyes swept the room with an ease that suggested she was used to taking in details. Her expression was neutral, but not empty. Alert. Clever. Like she was always two moves ahead.
When her gaze brushed Sette’s, it didn’t slide away. It paused for a beat or two, just long enough for Sette to feel the recognition land in her body like a pebble dropped into still water.
Yup. A fellow queer.
Sette didn’t look away first. The woman’s mouth curved as she turned to the counter.
Sette had to reestablish her breathing pattern. It was absurd how quickly her brain tried to make a story out of a stranger. There’s no meaning here. Besides, she wasn’t an author. She didn’t work with words. Why was she creating a narrative out of nothing?
She picked up her coffee again out of sheer stubbornness.
The line at the counter was long. The stranger joined the end of it without impatience, hands in her pockets, and weight settled back on her heels in a posture that read as relaxed only because she had been refined until she knew nothing else.
Sette took a sip, then another, as if caffeine would solve her problems instead of making them worse. She didn’t stare. She absolutely did not stare.
But she got a glance here. A glance there. The angle of the woman’s jaw when she spoke to the man in front of her... the way she smiled at his joke… the small lift of her brow when she looked up at the menu board… they were all translated into the roughest sketch on Sette’s pad.
Unexpectedly, the woman turned, holding the menu in her hand and scanning the room.
Her eyes landed on Sette again. She stepped away from the line and walked directly toward the table, where she stopped beside with the kind of casual certainty that made it clear she wasn’t asking Sette’s permission to interact with her.
Up close, she smelled faintly of something expensive and clean. Not perfume. Soap, maybe, and the crispness of dry-cleaned clothing. She smells like my dad. Sette didn’t mean that in a derogatory way. She admired her father’s simple approach to scents and pressed clothing.
The woman tilted her head with a practiced, almost coy expression… one that made Sette’s mouth want to twitch in response.
“Perdón,” she said, the Spanish confirming her European airs. “?Me ayudas con esto? No entiendo… cómo…” She trailed off, lifting the paper menu slightly, eyes flicking to the board and back to Sette’s face with exaggerated confusion.
It shouldn’t have worked. It shouldn’t have entrapped her, since she had studied abroad in Spain during undergrad, had done a medical rotation in Barcelona, and had learned enough to order food and navigate a hospital ward.
Sette should have said no. She should have smiled politely, gestured to the baristas, and returned to her coffee.
Instead, she jumped in like she was twenty-one and back on Ibiza for spring break. Ib-ee-the, not za, thank you very much. She wondered if this Spaniard would appreciate her knowledge of continental pronunciation.
“Claro,” Sette said, because she wasn’t immune to being asked for help, apparently. “What are you trying to order?”
The woman’s eyes lit up, a flash of triumph so quick that Sette might have been crazy. But she frowned again, almost comically. “I… want…” She leaned in closer to the menu, letting her shoulder brush the edge of Sette’s table as if by accident. “This. But it has… many words.”
Sette laughed despite herself.
“It’s coffee,” she said. “They like to pretend it’s complicated.”
The woman’s gaze snapped up to Sette’s with a look that said, Oh, you’re funny. Then, as if remembering something mid-act, she sighed dramatically and switched languages.
“Mon dieu,” she murmured in French, as if she couldn’t help it. The accent softened the syllables into something luxurious. “Je suis désolée… my English… it is…” She made a vague gesture with her hand, like English was a coat she had forgotten at home. “Not perfect.”
Sette narrowed her eyes. A French accent.
And it was… good. Better than her Spanish.
Too good. Sette had been a doctor. She had spent years listening for small inconsistencies and learned to detect lies, particularly when a patient withheld something important.
Drugs, usually. She hoped that wasn’t the case here.
This woman was not lost on the menu. She was flirting.
“Is that so?” Sette dryly asked.
The woman’s smile widened, as if she had been waiting for that exact response. She lifted the menu again, tilting it toward Sette. “Then you will be my translator, yes? My hero.”
“A hero,” Sette repeated, deadpan. “For coffee.”
“For coffee,” the woman agreed, and the mischief made the solemnity ridiculous.
Sette leaned forward, pretending she was taking this seriously. The scent of the woman became less like Sette’s father and more like… well, someone she would date in another life. Very clean. Very expensive. Hm, a hint of citrus.
“What do you usually drink?” Sette asked, because if she were to be dragged into this, she might as well steer the ill-fated ship.
The woman tapped a finger on her chin. “At home… espresso. Always. But here…” She waved the menu again. “You have… oat milk. Almond milk. Coconut milk. It is like… a farm.”
Sette snorted. “A farm.”
“Yes.” The woman’s lips twitched. “A very… fashionable farm.”
Sette pointed at a line on the menu. “This is just a latte. Espresso and milk. That’s it.”
The woman leaned closer, hair catching a strip of sunlight. “Just?” she echoed. “Nothing here is just. Everything is… curated.”
Sette’s gaze flicked up, meeting hers again.
Curated.
The word landed like a frivolous gauntlet. Said with humor, but too accurate. Too self-aware. Sette felt, abruptly, like she was the thing being studied.
“Do you want it iced?” Sette asked, shifting away from the sensation. “Hot? Sweet?”
The woman’s eyes slid down to Sette’s hands on the table. Not in a leering way, but more like appreciation. Sette’s fingers were faintly stained with paint that hadn’t fully washed out, a smear of ultramarine at the edge of one nail.
“You make things,” the woman said, tone light, as if she had simply noticed. “Art?”
Sette’s throat tightened. “Yes,” she said. “I paint.”
“Ah.” The woman’s smile turned softer for half a second. “Then you understand. The menu is… a performance.”
“It’s coffee,” Sette insisted, but she was smiling now, too.
The woman’s eyes returned to Sette’s face, and there was that sapphic recognition again. It was less about identity now and more about… attention. Intimacy. The ease with which a woman who liked women could see another and decide, almost instantly, to play.
Sette should have shut it down. Instead, she said, “Okay. Tell me what you want.”
The woman pretended to consider, then leaned in conspiratorially, lowering her voice enough that Sette had to tilt her head closer to hear.
“I want,” she said slowly, “whatever you would order. Because you look like you know what you’re doing.”
Sette huffed a laugh. “That’s your strategy? Flatter the local?”
The woman’s brows lifted. “Is it working?”
Sette’s gaze held hers. It was working, but she didn’t say that.
She took the menu from the woman’s hand and scanned it, pointing. “Get the flat white. It’s not too milky, not too bitter. And ignore the tasting notes. Nobody is drinking ‘hints of stone fruit.’”
The woman watched her with open amusement. “Stone fruit,” she repeated, savoring it.
Sette handed back the menu. Their fingers brushed. Accidentally, deliberately, who can say? It was a small spark that crawled up her arm.