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.Theotherkind 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 didnotstare.
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, haddone 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.”
