The woman laughed, and it was warmer than her polish suggested. “Maybe both.”
Sette’s heart raced, but she couldn’t pinpoint why. The fun of the game? The attention? “What’s your name?” she asked, before she could stop herself.
“Miquela.” She said it like she expected Sette to taste it. Instead, she merely repeated it in her head.Miquela.Very fashionable. Not at all what she expected from this slick foreigner who walked into an American café as if she feared nothing but the decadent lull in a conversation.
Sette lifted her mug in a half-toast. “Sette.”
Miquela’s eyes flicked over Sette’s face, lingering on her mouth for a heartbeat. “Sette,” she echoed. “Like seven. In Italian.” Her grin grew even wider, her accent dropping. “Like the mother Romance language.”
Sette’s smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Like seven.”
“It’s a lucky number.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” Sette asked. “Collecting your bet?”
Miquela’s gaze held hers, unwavering. “No,” she said, still teasing. “I am collecting… recommendations.” Sette lowered her mug. Miquela straightened, glancing back toward the line at the counter. “You will come with me?” she asked, as if it were the most natural next step.
“Come with you?”
“To order,” Miquela clarified, smile curling. “Unless you will abandon me now, after you have promised me a flat white.”
Sette hadn’t promised anything.
But she stood anyway, because the café’s bright noise had shifted around Miquela like water around a stone, and Settefound herself wanting to exist in whatever little pocket of sanity the woman created.
She followed Miquela back toward the line.
As they moved, Miquela kept glancing sideways at her, as if amused by the fact that Sette was coming. Sette reminded herself that this woman wasn’t her type and that she had come here to bealone.Because one came to busy coffee shops in the middle of busy cities to be alone.
Yet as they reached the counter and Miquela leaned forward to speak to the barista, the French accent returning just like that, Sette felt something loosen inside of her, as if her life had been too tight lately, too focused, and someone had finally tugged at the knot.
Miquela ordered the flat white flawlessly.
Sette’s eyes narrowed. “Your English seems fine.”
Miquela turned her head, mouth close enough to Sette’s ear that the words were hot. “I told you,” she said. “I am notperfect.”
Then she smiled as if she had said something far dirtier than it sounded.
While ignoring how flushed she was, Sette watched Miquela pay and then turn back toward her with the kind of satisfaction that suggested she had just made a point.
“Now,” Miquela said, “you will sit with me, yes? Or will you run away?”
Sette didn’t run. Instead, she rolled her eyes. “I don’t run,” she said. “I have standards.”
Miquela raised her brows toward her hairline. “Ah. And I have not met them?”
“You’re still on probation,” Sette replied.
“Good. I like to earn things.”
The barista called out the next order. A man in a navy suit brushed past them without apology, nearly clipping Sette’sshoulder. Miquela’s hand came up to the small of Sette’s back to steady her.
The touch lasted less than a second, but it was enough.
Miquela removed her hand as if nothing had happened. “Come,” she said, nodding toward Sette’s table by the window. “You have already chosen the drink. Please, supervise me.”
Sette snorted but turned toward the table anyway. She told herself it was harmless. Ten minutes. Fifteen. A distraction from the loop her thoughts had been running in since she had argued with Zara aboutJune.Hmph. If only this woman knew anything about June!
