Shay - Delphine AU | Parts 1-5 (edited)

[greywing]

The set up: Could Shay and Delphine have been a thing in a different universe?

Original posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,

--


Delphine almost drank too much that first dinner when Shay, much more petite, signalled an early end to the refills of her glass by covering the top with a hand. "Reds can be a bit strong for me."

"So I must finish this bottle myself?" Delphine asked, a bit archly.

"I have to drive," protested Shay.

"So do I," Delphine said. She gave the bottle a little shake. "Have one more glass. Help me."

Shay sighed. "Half a glass. But I might need to do coffee or something afterward."

Delphine smiled as she poured, eyeing a conservative half a glass under Shay's squeamish observation. "It is Friday, at least."

"That's not what I'm worried about," Shay said.

Delphine quirked a brow. "You should have said something. I would not have ordered a bottle."

"Usually I'm okay with whites," Shay explained, swirling the wine in her glass. "I think I underestimated how hard the wine would hit me."

"You ate so little," admonished Delphine lightly.

"No, I ate enough, thank you, Doctor," Shay countered. "I do study nutrition."

"That's good. You have to be mindful to get enough protein as a vegetarian."

"Pescetarian, actually," corrected Shay. "How did this become a conversation about my diet? I didn't think that was your field."

Delphine chuckled. "It's not. And it is possible you are not the only one feeling the wine. I may have also underestimated its strength."

Shay gestured expansively. "See?"

Delphine's mouth pulled in one direction to form a half-smile, not agreement or admission, but acknowledgement. "Usually I am mostly unaffected by wine but tonight--" Delphine shook her head. "I don't know."

Shay smiled, expression soft in the restaurant's lighting, and Delphine was struck by the realization that so many of their conversations were conducted without facing one another. "I'm glad you called."

Delphine picked up her glass and nodded slowly behind its cover. "I'm glad, too. I enjoyed this. It's been . . . not difficult adjusting to living here, but . . ." She shrugged. "Busy. I didn't realize I haven't taken many breaks."

Shay's smile turned sideways. "I know what you mean. I was a prairie girl and moving to a big city was . . . a bit of a shock."

"Prairie girl?" Delphine repeated. "What does that mean?"

"Think lots of open grasslands. And terrible winters."

Delphine nodded. "I have heard about Canadian winters."

Shay laughed. "Yeah, well, prepare yourself. I take it they weren't so bad in . . ."

"France?" Delphine finished. "In Paris, not so bad. There is snow, but not so much."

"I hate to tell you that you'll be dealing with a bit more than 'not so much' here," Shay said with the hesitation of mock regret. "It's not so bad here in Toronto, but it'll snow. Sometimes we'll get a blizzard or two."

Delphine sighed. "I hope the drivers are used to it, at least."

Shay peered at her in careful study. "You never really said what led to your injury. Was it a car accident?"

"A car struck me, yes," Delphine said. "I was on a bicycle, however."

Surprise blossomed across Shay's face. "You were on a bike?"

Delphine arched an eyebrow at her. "What? Why is that surprising?"

"Sorry," Shay said quickly, shaking her head. "I just had trouble imagining you biking merrily through Toronto."

"Why?"

"I only ever see you--" Shay gestured at Delphine's person from head to toe. "--dressed in immaculate business attire."

"Yes, well, I also enjoy exercise and fresh air," Delphine defended herself, perhaps with more heat than she'd expected to feel or project. The wine was warm in her bloodstream.

Shay raised her hands, palms out, surrendering or placating. "Sure. Exercise and enjoy all the fresh air you want."

Delphine tipped her glass at Shay. "Maybe not on a bicycle anymore."

Shay frowned. "Has it made you hesitant to bike around?"

Delphine's face scrunched in thought. "Well. I'm not sure. I have not felt fully recovered and the weather has not been so nice to ride a bicycle."

Shay nodded. "It would be understandable if you didn't want to go out."

"Also, I probably need to take my bicycle to a shop."

"That, too," agreed Shay.

"Do you bicycle?" Delphine asked.

"Sure," Shay said. "At some point we only had two bikes, so me and my brothers would fight over who got to ride them."

"Your brothers?"

Shay nodded. "I have two."

"Older?"

"Yeah. I'm the 'baby.'" Shay made a face, but the rancor and exasperation was all posturing. "But we're all pretty close in age." Shay considered her. "Do you have any siblings?"

Delphine shook her head. "No."

Shay grinned, amused, as if at a private joke.

"I think I would have liked to have siblings," Delphine amended, then was unsure why she'd added that tidbit.

"It can be fun, but it can be rough, too," Shay supplied.

"But as the youngest and the only girl, you must have gotten a lot of attention?" Delphine hazarded.

Shay hummed. "I guess? Maybe? I was sort of a tomboy, so for a while it was probably like having three boys for my parents. And then the whole being gay thing didn't go over so well at first. With my mom, at least."

Delphine blinked. "You are gay." She meant to angle the words as a question seeking polite confirmation, but it sounded more like a leaded, weighted statement when it left her lips--and maybe a statement was what it should have been.

Shay spread her hands. "Guilty as charged."

Delphine shook her head slightly. "Sorry. I did not mean to sound like that. I would not have--I would not have guessed."

Shay's smile was hard at the corners, her eyes wary. "Are you . . . okay with that?"

"Of course," Delphine said with a lift of a shoulder. "I am a woman of science and science demonstrates that homosexuality occurs more and more often in nature than we've bothered to notice."

A little chuckle rolled out of Shay. "Is that what it's like to be a hard scientist?"

Delphine cocked her head. "Guided and reassured by proofs and facts?"

"What about the things we don't know yet?" asked Shay.

"Merely questions we don't yet have the answers to--but there are answers and explanations. We simply haven't found the modes of inquiry or," Delphine shook her head, "acquired the degree of technological advancements to investigate them. Yet."

"Wow," breathed Shay, incrementally leaning back in her chair.

"Isn't that obvious?" Delphine asked.

"Thinking like that--about what remains to be done and investigated and what we don't know for sure yet--isn't overwhelming?" Shay wondered.

Delphine shook her head. "I don't think so. I find it reassuring. What I may not know today, we may know tomorrow or five years from now. It's not a question of the infinite unknown, but a matter of 'when.'"

"It doesn't feel reductive?"

Delphine laughed. "The world is far too complex to be reduced so easily. Scientists, you know, are very cautious. It takes a very long period of trials for us to accept something as law and fact. We must discuss it for a long time and exhaust all the possibilities before we will say, 'This is a thing for certain.' The goal is to reduce the chances of being wrong."

Shay gave her a long, thorough scrutiny. "I wonder if it can be so simple and direct."

"Humans are not perfect," Delphine said flatly.

"No, we aren't," Shay agreed, raising her glass and draining the last of it. She set the glass down with a grimace. "And this particular one needs a cup of coffee. What do you say?"

Delphine found herself smiling. "I guess we'll be getting coffee after all."

---

They met again, the following Friday. Not according to any formal arrangement, though in a way it aligned with the expectedness of such a step, what with nature, human nature, rushing to fill the vacuum of the cessation of their weekly sessions. There was a sense of habit about seeing Shay on a Friday, of falling into the threads of a pattern, that perhaps comforted a part of Delphine's nature, the scientist in her always seeking out the avenues of repetition, the laws by which the basest structures and instincts behaved.

Meeting like this wasn't exactly the same, of course, but change, too, was woven into the course of time, space, and evolution.

Strangers became acquaintances became friends.

Delphine didn't consider many people friends.

She probably wouldn't have called Shay that.

Even if she did begin to look forward to those nights after work when she drove out of the DYAD parking garage and coasted into a parking space across town, stepped out, and locked her car, leaving her laptop inside and her security badge in the glove compartment, how the air felt fresh on her face as she made the trek to the meeting location, how it felt to settle into a seat and wait with a glass of wine or a finger of whiskey on its way or, in the reverse scenario, to be greeted upon entering, to see, in either moment, the light of recognition in those bright eyes summon the familiar smile, the signal at last that the day, the week was over, that she had left behind Dr. Cormier and had become, for the moment, just Delphine.

--

It shouldn't have felt that way. The two of them were different. In appearance. In outlook. They should have driven one another crazy, like the time Delphine, an ounce or two of pinot noir beyond the ability of politely checking her amusement, laughed and said, "No. There is no evidence that souls exist. The 'proofs' that people present are hearsay and pure, erm, fancy. I can find the papers and print them for you to read."

Shay retreated into silence. She wasn't, really, the argumentative type. There was a quiet reserve about her, a need, Delphine suspected, to try to be respectful.

Delphine didn't see why one had to be respectful of beliefs patently false.

"What are you thinking?" Delphine asked when Shay had stared too long into the layer of film that was the last sip of wine in her glass.

Shay glanced at her through her lashes. "That I know I can't argue with you about this."

Delphine waited, then said, "Because there's not much of an argument to make."

The muscles of Shay's face flinched in a grimace. "Sometimes you just . . . feel things."

"Honed survival instincts," Delphine said, "to run or fight. Compassion and empathy are adaptations to communal living. We say things come from the heart, but all of that is happening--" Delphine tapped her temple. "--up here."

Shay squinted at her. "I thought the French were supposed to be romantic."

Delphine laughed. "C'est vrai. But what would you know about the French, harboring such great love for Spain?"

"Again, if you go to Barcelona, you'd understand," Shay said, smiling.

"Or maybe you need to go to Paris," Delphine argued.

Shay's eyebrows fluttered up and down.

"What?" Delphine asked, squinting suspiciously at her companion.

Gripping the stem of her glass between her fingers, Shay turned her glass in circles and studied the play of light and shadow on the tabletop intently. "Maybe I have been to Paris."

Delphine hissed through her teeth. "See, now I know your opinion cannot be trusted."

Shay smiled at her glass. It faded a second later. Shay snuck a glance at Delphine out of the corner of her eye. "Haven't you ever been in love?"

Delphine brought her glass to her lips and hummed against it. "Evolutionary trick to promote reproduction and the propagation of a race."

Shay cocked her head. "You think animals fall in love?"

Delphine arched an eyebrow at her. "Do you?"

Shay's lips pressed together in consternation.

Delphine shrugged. "We have performed scans that show activity in the brains of animals that is similar to how we understand our emotions operate. So perhaps dogs are as affectionate of us as we are of them."

Shay sat up straighter. "Do you like dogs?"

Delphine laughed. "That's what you took away from that?"

"It's an important question," Shay insisted.

"I would not own a dog," Delphine said by way of answer. "Not any time soon."

"No?"

"Who has the time to walk a dog? Not me."

"Fair enough," Shay said.

"Do you have a dog?" Delphine wondered, reconsidering the enthusiasm with which Shay had asked the question.

Shay shook her head. "No. But we had one growing up. Some crazy mutt with too many bloodlines. He was a big dog--and the biggest scaredy cat. Imagine a hundred-pound dog trying to hide behind a group of scrawny kids."

"Is he still around?" Delphine asked delicately.

"No," Shay confirmed her suspicions. "He passed away years ago. He was a good dog."

Loyal, Delphine thought but did not say. Pack mentality.

Still, a part of her could not resist. "Do you think he had a soul?"

Shay looked wistful. "I don't know. I hope so. He deserved to have one far more than most of us."

Delphine regarded Shay. There was, sometimes, something sad about Shay Davydov. It shone through her eyes. At first Delphine suspected Shay harbored some degree of depression, but more and more she was beginning to wonder if the small woman perceived some sense of sorrow in the surrounding world that pressed upon her, bending and refracting through her small frame and emerging through the soft, glassy blues of her eyes in a way that almost made Delphine want to believe that maybe Shay Davydov did feel things that pointed to depths otherworldly and unknowable.

"You didn't answer my original question," Shay pointed out, penetrating Delphine's thoughts.

Delphine replied only with a smile.

--

Delphine and Shay shared standard meals less often than they simply enjoyed meeting at happy hour for drinks and snacks. It was easier, more casual, somehow less of an obligation and yet more likely to prolong the length of their rendezvous. Perhaps it was because a bar was less likely to mind a pair of friends chatting and drinking away the hours, but a restaurant on a Friday night was always in demand of its tables.

Dinners happened on occasion, in particular after long busy days when either of them might have skipped or skimmed on lunch, or simply days so busy that the prospect of being subjected to the din of a bar was exhausting. On days like these, Delphine secretly wished she could have retreated into Shay's office, lain down upon the table, and let Shay's hands smooth and erase away the day's trials and tedium.

Delphine never asked her to. Though she was tempted.

Proper meals tended to be more subdued affairs. Shay was amenable to any restaurant suggestion, claiming she could find something to eat anywhere, and for the most part she did, content to poke at monstrous salads and tear into bread--or what passed for bread in Toronto--if nothing else was available. Delphine found herself becoming more mindful of choosing restaurants, taking the time to peruse online menus, and, for a moment, weighing her own choices.

"Does it bother you when I order meat?" Delphine asked over an open menu once.

Shay didn't glance up. "No. That's your choice."

Delphine lay her hand upon the menu and mulled over the matter-of-fact, straightforward, unperturbed response. "Okay. Now I'm curious."

"About what?" Shay asked, still engaged with the appetizer options.

"The reason you don't eat meat. Is it ethical? Spiritual?"

Shay, hearing her, smiled but didn't reply at first. After a moment, she snuck a glance at Delphine. "What do you mean?"

"What do I mean?" Delphine echoed quizzically. "I'm asking after the reasons you don't eat meat."

"Yes, but you said ethical or spiritual reasons, and I'm wondering what you think those reasons would be," Shay clarified.

Delphine considered demurring and pressing Shay to answer, but settled back in her chair and regarded Shay gamely. "Ethical reasons being the mistreatment of livestock. That they are raised and kept in poor living conditions, artificially fattened and given questionable or inappropriate feed." Delphine cocked her head, considering. "Perhaps those are more practical concerns than ethical."

The smile on Shay's face stretched and stretched as Delphine continued. "And the spiritual reasons?"

"Well." Delphine gathered her thoughts. "You are not Christian," she hazarded and Shay nodded in confirmation, still smiling, "so you're not following Biblical restrictions. However, you are . . ." Delphine hesitated. Shay raised an eyebrow. Delphine cycled through the options and chose what seemed the least objectionable. "Zen."

Shay laughed and Delphine bottled her own laughter, encouraged by Shay's reaction. When she calmed down, Shay said, "Okay. What does that mean? In the scheme of not eating meat, I mean."

"I don't know?" Delphine admitted, gesturing helplessly. "Maybe that we are all connected and thus we should not eat other living things, just in case we might be eating a parent or a sibling or a lover from a previous life?"

To this Shay simply sat smiling at Delphine, withholding comment, until she simply shook her head.

"No?" Delphine asked.

"No, no," Shay said quickly. "That was--that was pretty good. Those are good reasons. I'm just . . . impressed by how much you know."

"My knowledge of these topics is . . . rudimentary, at best," Delphine said.

"She says, using excellent English vocabulary," Shay deadpanned.

Delphine shrugged off the compliment for the unnecessary commentary it was. "So is the reason you don't eat meat one of those reasons or something along those lines?"

Shay ducked back into the refuge of the menu. "No."

Delphine waited but Shay didn't elaborate. "That's it? Just no?" Shay nodded. Delphine's mouth thinned in consternation. "Is it that you don't care for the taste or the texture? Why eat fish, but not poultry, swine, or beef?"

Shay flipped to the back of the menu, flipped back to the front. "It's personal."

An edge lined her voice that Delphine had not heard before. Shay, she'd learned, had a light dancing sense of humor and, maybe a bit to Delphine's fascination, a degree of self-assurance and -confidence that weathered Delphine's bouts of skepticism and studied remarks. Shay actually seemed to find Delphine's efforts to poke holes in her casual, relaxed spiritual mien amusing, which could be simultaneously frustrating, like assaulting a wall, and goading, as if a dare to try again. Entreaties that Delphine stop were always accompanied by giggles or smiles, in no way deterrents that curbed Delphine's audacity and almost certainly guarantees that further discussion would dip into the ridiculous.

So this was different.

Delphine's curiosity urged her to push, but tact held her back. She watched Shay, who appeared engrossed in parsing seafood entrée descriptions had it not been for the fact that her gaze remained fixated on the same spot for nearly half a minute.

"I was in the military," Shay said abruptly. "The army, actually. Got deployed for a time to the Middle East." She shook her head. "It was supposed to be some quiet little outpost. It was, for the most part. Boring, even." She fell quiet, breaths even but heavier. "One day there was an incident, with an IED--like a landmine. I saw it take a man's leg off. I tried to help him, to stop the bleeding." There was the smallest shake of her head. "There was just this . . . ragged mess where his leg ended. And he--" She stopped, licked her lips. "After that, I--meat reminds me of . . . that. For a while even the smell of it brought me back to that moment. So I stopped eating it." She glanced at Delphine, exhaling heavily through her nose. "That probably sounds silly to you. You've probably seen a lot of things being a doctor."

Delphine was quiet, processing the deluge of information Shay had just divulged. She breathed deeply, released it in a soundless sigh. "It doesn't sound silly."

Shay shrugged. "Fish doesn't trigger the same association. I don't know why. Maybe because my dad and my brother love to fish and they'd always bring back their catch. We'd descale and fillet them ourselves." She smiled, the lines of her mouth hard. "So I eat fish. It's more like a happy coincidence that not eating meat seems to align with everything else, but truthfully my body just doesn't crave it anymore."

Delphine nodded. "I'm sorry," she said softly.

Shay shook her head. "What's there to be sorry about?"

"I mean that I didn't mean to pry," Delphine said. "I just thought--"

"That seeing how I'm 'zen' that I'd be a crusader about not eating meat," Shay finished when reluctance stopped Delphine short. "I get it."

Delphine nodded, lips pressed together. Her eyes narrowed. "You must have been very young."

Shay laughed. "You're one to talk. You're not much older than I am. You're not even thirty yet and you've got a PhD and an MD."

Delphine shook her head. "That's--that's different."

"How?" Shay demanded. "You must have been 'very young' when people were trusting you to handle sharp and pointy things around them."

"Only under the guidance and observation of someone more experienced," Delphine insisted.

Shay smiled and only shook her head, signalling her own skepticism. The response, to Delphine's mild surprise, wedged and lodged beneath her skin like a splinter. Was that how she made Shay feel on occasion?

Their waiter appeared at that moment and the diversion of placing their orders eased the tension. When he departed, Shay crossed her arms, placed her forearms upon the table, leaned forward, and asked, "Did performing surgeries or autopsies ever gross you out?"

"No," Delphine said immediately and without guile. "I found it fascinating. Understanding how something works, like the body, makes it less mysterious and frightening." She studied Shay from a different angle. "But you deal daily with the aftermath of injuries. Doesn't that bother you?"

Shay shook her head. "It's different. They're healing and I'm helping them. They get better." Her hand flapped about in a conciliatory wave. "A lot of them get better. They're survivors. They have scars and pain but . . . they're still alive. Doing their best to live, trying to improve--and sometimes I can help them with that." Shay smiled at her. "They come to me after you guys are done with them."

"Not me," Delphine cautioned. "I'm not a practicing medical doctor. Not exactly." She passed her fingertips over her lips. "I think I understand what you mean." She smiled. "I improved with your help."

Shay answered with warmth that softened her gaze. "I was happy to help."

Delphine gazed back at Shay and saw what she hadn't seen before: a fellow healer. Not a medical doctor, but analogous, whose concerns and methods operated in a different but no less qualitative realm of human health. Delphine couldn't have said why she hadn't recognized it before. Perhaps it was because she'd glimpsed something else entirely in the crack Shay had opened up into her history. Something broken, something fractured. A scar. A legacy. Something that Delphine suspected drove Shay to try to repair others.

And wasn't that what Delphine as a medical scientist attempted to do every day in a laboratory?

Discover viable means to fix humanity.

But looking at Shay, thinking about the stiffness in her shoulder and hip that greeted her first thing in the morning, pondering the whimsy of Neolutionism's wildest dreams, Delphine began to wonder: Afterwards, then what? When humans became what they could be, what would they be?

Delphine almost asked Shay. It sounded silly, though, and intuition told her Shay would put the question elsewhere. Instead, Delphine steered away from ordering meat and took to patiently explaining why bread in the Americas simply was not worthy of bearing that name.

--

Shay wouldn't have said she had a type but if she had had a type, Delphine Cormier wouldn't have exactly fit the bill. There was the obvious, glaring complication, namely that signs indicated Delphine was way closer to a 0 than even a 3 on the Kinsey scale. Then there was the slightly more problematic, slightly more worrisome streak of skepticism that threaded through their conversations whenever they veered into the metaphysical. It was never outright hostile, but at times maybe no more than a half-step removed, when Shay could see Delphine fall just shy of open dismissiveness. Which, coming from any other party, would have edged into repellent.

But the inconvenient thing about having a crush was that through it filtered the object's every word, expression, and appearance and to these were lent a heightened brightness to every trait already appealing and a soft sheen to anything that in normal circumstances would have been considered objectionable.

There were also the simple facts that Delphine was possessed of bright eyes speckled with subtle gradients, a throaty laugh and a charming accent, a sly smile, a head of curls that tempted touch, and legs that went on for lengths unfair for comparison but just right for admiration.

It was borderline offensive that Delphine Cormier was so damn gorgeous.

And intelligent. Curious. Passionate. Articulate. Driven. (Maybe too driven.) Slightly sarcastic. Just a little out of place. Maybe just a bit lonely.

Impish. Cute. Adorable.

A friend, probably seeing a dopiness in Shay's expression when she'd happened to mention Delphine, simply advised, "No, Shay. Stop. Don't do that to yourself."

Crushes, though, didn't work that way. There wasn't a switch in her heart--or, if she followed Delphine's assertion, in her mind--that Shay could voluntarily flick. It was a matter of distance or time or time and distance.

Shay wasn't a big fan of distance. The reassurance and comfort of contact had been a big draw of her current career, not just for her clients, but for herself, in the way it constantly connected her to other people, their health, their recovery, their progress.

Yet a part of Shay had hoped spending more time with Delphine would scour away the rosiness her perception had settled upon the other woman, for one-hour snatches of a person in a vulnerable state often didn't translate to the persona that navigated the larger social and professional worlds, but meeting with Delphine had uncovered shades of warmth Shay hadn't expected. She'd assumed she'd find emotional and intellectual disconnection or runaway ambition in the scientist-by-way-of-medicine, but Shay caught glimpses of a flame of compassion in Delphine. She'd seen it when Delphine had apologized about inquiring into her choice to be pescetarian. She saw something like it--something tinged with apprehension--whenever the topic strayed close to discussion of Delphine's work.

Whatever Delphine was working on, it wasn't, Shay intimated, just for money or glory.

There was maybe even something dangerous about it, something that shed its air of intrigue onto Delphine herself.

Delphine posed just a bit of a mystery.

One just out of reach, one that Shay wasn't sure how to approach or if it was an enigma that could be approached. Maddeningly, Shay wasn't even sure what about Delphine had captured her attention in the first place.

It was a question Shay tried not to pursue too hard.

Unfortunately, to someone like Shay, that just made the whole picture far more alluring.

Maybe it wasn't her greatest trait at all times, but Shay had a need to know things about people. And there seemed something worth knowing about Delphine Cormier.

But Shay refrained from inquiring.

It was, in its way, a self-defense mechanism, just as spending time with Delphine was supposed to unveil a personality too diametrically opposed to Shay's for them to be companionable, much less compatible, and demonstrate that any casual period of time they passed together would be brittle and strained, not asking questions meant Shay couldn't get to know Delphine too well, couldn't fall into the trap of inciting and investing her curiosity.

That didn't mean that Delphine couldn't volunteer information. And opinions. And lectures. And generally fill in the broad strokes that had comprised Shay's impression of her with color and shading and hints of shadows.

It didn't stop Delphine asking questions of her.

Another pesky thing about a crush was how it repetitively bent reality through a series of refractions and reflections that circled around and compounded atop one another, where beneath the surface of constant doubt--Delphine only wanted to get to know Shay in the way that acquaintances were curious to learn about burgeoning friends--there lurked and reared a ray of senseless hope: Maybe there was more than just innocent platonic curiosity in Delphine's interest.

Dangerous thoughts. Exhausting, if she let them run through their endless iterations. Futile, because--

Well. Straight girl.

Shay thought about this whenever she fired up the Sapphire app on her phone and gave the faces that cycled through a cursory scan. She thought about how she had a whole network of queer women at her fingertip--swipe left, swipe right--and she was stuck on the straight woman who liked to grab drinks on Friday because--

Not because of Shay, specifically.

"Hey."

Shay nearly fell out of her chair at the intrusion of a voice so close to her ear. Twisting around, she found Delphine standing by her chair, smiling in a way that struggled between apologetic uncertainty and wholesale amusement.

"Jeez, Delphine," Shay uttered on a thin exhalation.

"Hey. I thought it was you," Delphine said, smile easing into cheery pleasure. "I wasn't sure because this cafe is a bit far from your office. Are you not working today?"

Shay took a few steadying breaths, easing her galloping heart into a steadier trot of a pulse. "My afternoon cleared up." She fixed Delphine with her own questioning look. "What are you doing around here?"

"There's a doctor at a nearby hospital who is conducting clinical trials that we thought might bear some interest for us. I just finished consulting him and thought I would get some coffee before returning to the office." She lifted the besleeved paper cup she clutched in one hand as corroborating evidence. "I was leaving when I noticed you."

Calmer, Shay smiled up at her. "On the go, then?"

"I have a few minutes," Delphine said. "I don't have to be back at any specific time."

"Yeah? Do you want to join me?" Shay invited, indicating the empty chair at the table.

"Sure," Delphine accepted, sliding into the space across from Shay. She set the coffee cup down on the table, fingertips maintaining tenuous contact and slowly turning the cup in circles in its spot. "Did I interrupt anything? You looked really . . ."

Shay almost laughed. "No. Not really." She wondered what she'd looked like. "Just fooling around with an app."

"A game?" Delphine asked.

"No," Shay said evenly, "not a game." She hesitated, considered, then asked, "Do you know what Tinder is?"

"Tinder?" Delphine repeated in a tone of cluelessness. "It sounds familiar."

"I'm . . . actually not surprised at all that you have no idea," declared Shay drily.

"Why?" Delphine asked, sounding unsure if she should be offended or defensive or alarmed. "What is it?"

"A dating app, more or less," Shay explained.

"Oh," Delphine said. "You were using it?"

"No, I was using Sapphire, which is like a lesbian version of Tinder." Shay unlocked her phone and flipped it to show Delphine. "See, you swipe right if you like a person, left if you don't."

"And this . . . helps you find dates?" Delphine asked, squinting at the photograph on the screen. The subject was smiling, which earned Shay's approval.

"It can," Shay said. "It helps you meet people." She reclaimed her phone and set it aside. "When I first started using it, I figured it was a way to meet people--well, gay women--in the city."

Delphine nodded slowly. "Did it work?"

"I met women," Shay said neutrally, "yeah."

"And have you gone on dates with women you met using this . . . ?"

"Sapphire," Shay provided. She nodded. "Yeah. A few."

Delphine studied her. "No success?"

"Not yet," Shay admitted. Her shoulders lifted in a small shrug. "Maybe it's me."

Delphine's eyebrows pinched. "What do you mean?"

Shay waved a hand. "Obviously something's not working. It might be me. Although sometimes it's because people fluff up their profiles and you only find out when you meet them."

"People do that?" wondered Delphine.

"Yeah," Shay affirmed, matter-of-factly. She avoided Delphine's eyes. "I did. A little bit."

"Really? Why?" It was a little gratifying that Delphine sounded and looked genuinely confused.

Shay shrugged. "Because just saying I'm an RMT doesn't sound that exciting?"

Delphine sat quietly, looking on the verge of a frown but settling on the side of a thoughtfully closed expression. "I see. But doesn't that upset people when they find out?"

Shay smiled half-heartedly. "It usually doesn't get that far."

"Okay," conceded Delphine, "but you didn't explain how you are the issue."

Shay slid her phone between her hands and, fixing her attention on it, pivoted it this way and that. "Maybe I have bad judgment. Or bad taste. Or bad intuition."

"Do you not get along with the women you meet?"

"For the most part, I do. If I don't, it's usually because a woman was completely not what I expected."

"What's lacking, then?" Delphine asked.

"Chemistry?" Shay suggested. "A spark?"

Delphine laughed, a low, short sound originating deep in her throat. "Maybe the problem is the expectation of romance."

"You are really not romantic, are you?" Shay grumbled. "Tell me you're not dating."

Delphine laughed again, but there was a thin, thready harmonic that hummed beneath the effort. "I'm not, but that is beside the point and has no correlation. What I mean is that you go into these meetings with the purpose and understanding that you are looking for romance. In that way, you are so focused on that one thing that you are blinded to the possibilities. You want something big and flashy when it might be small and subtle."

"What about trusting your gut instincts?" Shay retorted.

Delphine learned forward on her forearms and caught Shay's gaze. "Your relationships in the past--were they predicated on 'gut instincts'?"

The number of discernible shades in Delphine's eyes distracted Shay for a moment almost awkwardly long. "Some of them."

"Yet here you are," Delphine said in a low voice, not unkindly but not comfortingly, "single."

"Harsh," Shay breathed.

"Sorry," Delphine offered, not sorry at all. She leaned back. "Are you so eager to fall in love?"

Shay regarded Delphine's lovely face. "Maybe I'm not eager to be lonely."

"Are you lonely?" Delphine asked with a softness that Shay thought was almost tender. "You have friends. Like me."

Shay chuckled, hearing but consciously not noting Delphine's qualification. "That's not the same."

"Why? Because there is no sex?" Delphine's clipped accent lent a hard quality to the last word.

"No," protested Shay, startled, but she quickly amended, "Well, maybe that's a part of it, yeah, but no, it's not just because of the sex."

"Then what? It can't be trust," Delphine insisted. "You trust your friends. I think many people trust their friends more than they trust their lovers. You can probably find a study saying so."

Shay grinned. "Do you only believe something if there's a study to back it up?"

"No, but it's nice to have corroborating evidence to prove you're right. How is 'romance' different but for . . . desire?"

"I don't know," Shay admitted. "Maybe it's--" Her breath caught. "--risk. You put so much of yourself into someone--all these hopes and feelings, like trust, and love--and you have to put faith in another person to value those things and cherish them and--and entrust the same to you."

Delphine perched her chin upon a hand. "What you described sounds like expectations to me. Expectations that are unclear and very difficult to meet."

Shay narrowed her eyes at Delphine. "Could you be any less romantic?"

"I think 'realistic' is more accurate," Delphine countered.

Shay shook her head. "I can't wait for the day I see you in love."

Delphine laughed. "The way you say it makes it sound like a punishment."

"It should be," Shay muttered. "But the aggravating thing is that love finds people like you when you're not even trying. Whereas people like me--" Shay snatched up her phone and wiggled it in the air. "--have no luck."

"You're trying too hard," Delphine said, tone approaching gentle.

Shay met Delphine's eyes squarely. "Or not hard enough."

Delphine didn't blink. Or contradict. Or scold.

Shay smiled, feeling silly and hopeless and all around like a fool. "You should get back to work."

"And leave you to that?" Delphine asked, indicating Shay's phone with a nudge of her chin.

Shay clutched the phone to her chest in a show of mock protective indignation. "Don't judge."

Delphine stood up and gathered her possessions, including her untouched coffee. "I'd like to, but somehow you make it hard." She flashed a smile that projected she was teasing. "Good luck." She bent down and pressed a kiss to Shay's cheek, then, as Shay held herself still to repress flinching back, bestowed another on Shay's other cheek. "Ciao."

"Is that going to be a thing now?" Shay asked to cover a second's daze.

Delphine's laughter rippled in delight. "It is a French thing." She waggled her fingers at Shay. "Later."

Shay shook her head in light admonishment and gave her a shooing motion. "Bye."

Straight girls.

One straight French girl in particular.

Shay knew better. She only wished her heart--or her body--or the rest of her brain--knew better as well.

--

"No," Delphine intoned absently as she dragged the tip of her finger across the small screen's width from right edge to left. "No, no--"

"Whoa, whoa, wait," Shay exclaimed, lashing out in a panic to arrest Delphine's whirlwind progress by capturing the relentless woman's hand between her clutching fingers. In her haste Shay overbalanced, tipping halfway off her stool and nearly keeling into Delphine. Her free hand darted out to brace herself, finding counterbalance upon Delphine's thigh.

The Frenchwoman's alarm and confusion across the display of the unexpected acrobatics quickly abated into amusement when Shay didn't tumble or take Delphine with her.

"You okay?" Delphine inquired drily.

Shay laughed, surprised by her own clumsiness. "I'm fine. Sorry."

Delphine graced her with dubious concern. "Does this one excite you so much? She doesn't look that special."

Releasing Delphine and resettling on her stool, Shay picked up her phone, which they'd laid on the bartop between them, and peered closer at the profile picture of the candidate she had spared from Delphine's judgment. "I like her smile."

"Really? That's probably the only thing remarkable about her," declared Delphine.

Shay regarded Delphine consideringly. "How do you know? You've been going through these so fast, have you even read the profiles?"

"Of course." Delphine pointed to the phone. "This one lists her occupation as 'artist,' but adds dog walker on the side. Putting it all together, I'd say she's not a very profitable artist."

Shay laughed. "Maybe she likes dogs a lot and dog walking is a business practical way to be around them." Shay propped her forearms upon the counter. "Even if what you said were true, I'm, what--" She flicked a hand lazily through the air. "--too good for that?"

"Yes," Delphine said without hesitation, brow crinkling with consternation. "As your friend, I expect better for you. I want better for you."

Shay snorted and didn't bother to fight off an incredulous grin. "Thank you?"

"Besides," Delphine continued, shifting in her seat and ignoring the sarcasm in Shay's tone, "she wrote that she is a 'foodie.'"

"So? I like food," Shay said defensively.

"Yes," Delphine agreed, waving a hand nonchalantly, "but she doesn't indicate that she follows any dietary restrictions, so she probably eats meat."

"You eat meat," Shay reasoned.

Delphine flinched back, looking decidedly unimpressed that Shay should draw the comparison. "One, I don't consider myself a 'foodie'--"

"Just a bread snob."

"Two," Delphine continued, holding up two fingers, allowing the state of bread quality to pass without criticism for the sake of the greater matter at hand, "you and I are not dating, so your diet doesn't affect mine on a routine basis."

Shay leaned toward Delphine suspiciously. "Are you saying it's annoying to date a vegetarian?"

Delphine lifted her shoulders. "It could be if you really love food and eating a variety of foods. Restricted diets are . . . restrictive."

Shay's eyes narrowed. "Are you trying to tell me something?"

"Yes," Delphine said seriously, "that you and a foodie are not a match."

Shay's smile returned for a second, but softened into something more placating and gentling the next. "Well, maybe she wouldn't feel that way. It's something you find out by asking. That's the point of messaging one another and chatting and meeting up. You get to clarify these things and feel each other out."

Delphine's brow furrowed. "But I thought the point of using this app was to filter out improbable candidates quickly and efficiently."

Shay's eyebrows shot up and she stretched back, mouth tight. "You certainly have 'quick and efficient' down pat."

"Just because I read quickly--"

"Seriously."

"--doesn't mean I'm not dedicating the same degree of attention to each profile that you would. Besides," added Delphine, getting comfortable, "studies show that first impressions and snap judgments are formed very, very quickly."

"Uh huh," Shay said, propping her chin in hand. "What was your first impression of me?"

Delphine didn't let herself hesitate. "'Is this hippie really capable of helping me?'"

Shay laughed, startled by Delphine's frank honesty. "Yeah? But I proved you wrong, didn't I?"

"I didn't say first impressions were final impressions. My point was that you would be moving just as quickly as I am through the list."

"Yeah, well, hearing your criteria, I'm not sure I trust that your judgment aligns with what I'm looking for," declared Shay, but in a tone just this side of teasing.

"But according to you, your judgment hasn't proven reliable, either." Delphine grinned. "Like a good scientist, you are applying new methodology to test your hypothesis."

"I think," drawled Shay, "that you're enjoying this too much and that we should sign you up for Tinder."

"What? No!" Delphine burst out, laughing. "Why would you repay my kindness and help with a perverse form of punishment?"

"You're not even a little curious?" Shay wondered.

"No," Delphine said, definitively.

"Okay," Shay said lowly, "what about sex?"

"What about sex?" Delphine lobbed back casually.

Shay tilted her head. "Don't you ever feel, you know, frustrated?"

"I don't have that problem," Delphine said, curt.

Shay drew breath to inquire further, but stopped, giving Delphine another pass of consideration. Delphine met her study coolly, unbudging, revealing nothing. When Shay didn't fill the silence, Delphine tapped Shay's phone with an insistent finger.

"What did you like about her smile?" Delphine asked.

"It's happy."

"Happy?" echoed Delphine, almost on top of Shay's explanation.

"Maybe a better word is 'expressive,'" Shay reconsidered. She unlocked her screen and put the picture between them again. "Her eyes are bright, like when she smiles her smile reaches her eyes. It's a good picture."

Delphine shoved back the curly mass of her hair and rested her head in her hand, gazing at Shay from a sideways vantage. "That's all it takes?"

Shay spread her hands. "It's a good place to start."

"I thought you were being too difficult, but maybe you're being too easy," Delphine admonished.

"What, like you've never seen a smile that just made you feel . . . welcomed and at ease? Warm?"

Delphine merely looked at Shay for a beat longer than comfortable. "Not immediately."

Shay nodded, reaching for her glass. "You don't trust easily."

"Maybe," Delphine afforded, shrugging. Something in her shoulder twinged in protest, eliciting a wince.

Shay frowned. "Your shoulder?"

"Mm," Delphine hummed, moving gingerly to flex the muscles. "It's a little stiff."

"Have you been stretching every day?" Shay asked, sliding off the stool to her feet.

Delphine, eyes closed, rotated her arm in small circles. "Most days."

"That's not every day," Shay said as she slipped behind Delphine and placed her hands upon Delphine's shoulders.

"What are you doing?" Delphine asked in alarm, turning her head to focus all her confusion in Shay's direction.

"Relax," Shay urged her. "I'm going to work out those knots and kinks."

"Right here?" Delphine asked, voice tightened.

"Mmhmm," Shay said, fingers digging into Delphine's tender flesh. After a second, Shay asked, "Would you please relax?"

"People are looking," Delphine pointed out.

"Who cares?" Shay countered. "I usually charge for this, you know."

Delphine bit back a groan of satisfaction. "Yes, I--" She inhaled sharply as Shay's discerning fingers encountered a knot. "I know. Well, my insurance knows."

"Mmhmm," Shay agreed. "You could always come back, you know. You've got some serious tightness going on."

Delphine, submitting to the pleasure-pain of Shay's ministrations by hanging her head to the side to allow Shay greater access, swallowed a gasp. "It wouldn't be--ah--awkward?"

Shay laughed, twisting to get some leverage. "No. We'd have more to talk about now."

"Ah, who wants to talk?" Delphine wheezed.

Shay smiled. "Okay, come and don't talk and let me work."

Delphine surrendered wordlessly. Shay probed and kneaded at her shoulder for probably no more than five minutes. Giving her shoulder a gentle cooling rubdown, Shay drifted away and back into her seat. The absence of her touch bit into Delphine keenly. She made a pathetic sound in her throat that made Shay laugh.

"It would feel better if you stretched everyday," Shay told her. "You should really look into yoga classes."

Delphine hummed in complaint as she did a few more arm circles. "Who has the time?"

"I'm sure you have time waiting for your mysterious lab results to do a few toe touches and shoulder stretches."

"I'm sure I'll look very professional stretching in the lab," Delphine remarked drily.

"I didn't realize you were so self-conscious," Shay teased.

"Do you know how many women are in the hard sciences?" Delphine said.

Shay leaned upon the bar. "No."

"Not enough," Delphine said.

"Does that go for this bar right now, too?" Shay asked. "Is that why you were so self-conscious?"

Delphine peeked at her archly. "I should think there are not enough women here for you."

"Ha ha," Shay said flatly. "I'm not a lech."

Delphine smiled. "Perhaps another one of your problems."

Shay laughed. "You have no idea how many women would hit on you at a lesbian bar."

"That sounds amazing." Delphine lifted her eyebrows suggestively. "Maybe we should find out."

"Oh my God," Shay gasped. "Really?"

"I can be your, um, what do they call that person who approaches people on behalf of a friend?"

"Wingman?"

"Yes. Wingman. I can be your wingman."

"Are you kidding me? You would seriously be too busy fending off women interested in a new face to be my wingman."

"I'll redirect them," Delphine assured her.

Shay shook her head, laughter on her face. "You're hilarious."

"Why not?" Delphine insisted, spurred by Shay's resistance. Her eyes sparkled. "You've made me curious."

"What, you're saying I should take you to a lesbian bar for science?"

Delphine gestured aimlessly. "Sure. If that's how you want to qualify it." She leaned in closer and dropped the volume of her voice. "It can't be more obnoxious than when we regularly meet."

Shay shook her head, smiling faintly. "It's just . . . different."

Delphine peered at her closely, their proximity heightening the impression of her scrutiny's intensity. "Now who is self-conscious?"

"Would you please stop?" Shay said, leaning away.

Delphine smiled. "Think about it. I think I would make a good wingman."

"In that case, step one would be to stop looking so gorgeous, so that you don't draw all the attention," Shay said.

"I can dress down," Delphine insisted.

"That's not the problem," Shay droned.

Delphine laughed. Shay shoved her phone at her.

"You can continue to be my Sapphire wingman."

"Does that mean you'll stop complaining?" Delphine asked, shaking the phone.

"I reserve the right to offer constructive criticism," Shay said.

"So no," Delphine said, holding the screen out to Shay for her to unlock.

"If you eliminate everyone, then there are no possibilities," Shay pointed out.

"Were there many to begin with?" Delphine asked.

Shay made a face. "That was low, Delphine."

Delphine studied her out of the corner of her eye. "When was the last time you went on a date?"

"Not getting into this right now," Shay said.

"What do you mean?" Delphine asked.

"I'm sensing way too much judgment coming from your direction to have a nice conversation about that right now."

"Okay," Delphine agreed gamely. "I'll ask you another time." She studied the photograph of the woman who had brought about the original interruption in her wingmanning. At last, she said, "Her smile itself isn't that nice, you know."

Shay rolled her eyes. "It's what's behind her smile. Try looking a little deeper."

Delphine suppressed her own smile. It was almost too much fun teasing Shay Davydov. Fun enough to play into Shay's expectations. Certainly fun enough to play at being wingman. Maybe even worthwhile enough to actually be her wingman.

The thought nearly broke Delphine's composure. To distract herself, she swiped left.

//

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