#mysensitiveside

When she was small, her “WHY?” refrain hadn’t distinguished her from her peers, but while most other children eventually gave up the incessant repetitions of that question, she never did. She discovered early on, however, that knowing whom to ask made an enormous difference in the quality of the answers she received: her mother’s exasperated “Because” was endlessly frustrating, as was her father’s equally unsatisfying “It’s magic.”

Which was why she became a research chemist, her choice of career happening for just that reason: it was always going to be a science of some sort, for the “why” questions—which she tended to ask internally now—had answers, if she put enough effort into finding them.

So it struck her as strange, that morning, to find herself asking “why” of a neighbor’s dog, out loud. The quality of any answer she got wasn’t likely to be high.

She had never seen the dog this dirty before. He... was it a he? maybe? she thought she’d heard “boy” at some point... had always seemed a little disheveled, his coat fluffed but lopsided, like he always slept on it wrong and nobody bothered with a comb. But never like this. Never with actual dirt.

She picked up the dog—he weighed less than she expected; she hadn’t realized how much of him was fur—and with some trepidation went to knock on Sam’s door.

No answer.

Myka took the dog back to her apartment. “Are you hungry?” she asked him. He blinked.

She had no idea what dogs ate, other than dog food, and she had no dog food.

She discovered that dogs ate several slices of cheese, a ham sandwich, a peanut butter sandwich, and a corn tortilla. Then dogs took a nap, no doubt exhausted from all the eating.

After numerous fruitless attempts at Sam’s door throughout the day, Myka called Mr. Nielsen, the super. “Sam moved out,” she was told. “Couple weeks ago. No forwarding address.”

“But I have his dog.”

“That’s nice of you,” Mr. Nielsen said.

“You don’t understand. I didn’t intend to have his dog.”

“Then maybe it isn’t nice. It’s not my problem either way.” He hung up.

Myka hadn’t liked Sam. He had asked her out, and she had said no, because he made her nervous. Anyone asking her out made her nervous, but this felt... different. She sensed she’d been right to turn him down, for he got visibly offended, in a way that made her even more nervous, such that she avoided him as much as possible afterward. He didn’t seem like a good person. But to move away and leave his dog behind?

She considered taking the dog to the animal shelter. What was she going to do with a dog? “What am I going to do with a dog?” she asked the dog in question. He blinked.

“I guess it’s you and me, dog,” she said after that Saturday turned into a weekend, the weekend into a week, one week into two.

And he looked at her as if to ask not “why?” but “what took you so long?”

She bought a leash. A bed. Actual dog food. So many products. “I’ve never shopped this much for myself,” she told him. She couldn’t decipher his blink in response to that information. Was it “But of course you should buy more for me” or “You should buy more for yourself”?

As it happened, he was a responsibility in ways she had not expected to enjoy. She had to leave work at midday, every day, to go home and walk him. She had that thing to do, and she did it. Her lab neighbor Abigail teased her about the dog being just an excuse to escape the lab, an excuse who probably didn’t even exist. “He’s real,” Myka protested. “I even had to come up with a name for him.”

Abigail laughed. “Sure you did.”

“Leukotriene.”

Pause. “Okay, now I’m convinced. Mostly. But I still want photo evidence.”

It hadn’t occurred to Myka to take a picture of the newly named Leukotriene, but she did so that night. She included a ruler in the photo for scale, lest Abigail mistake him for a Pomeranian, which was the breed—as far as Myka could tell, given her limited dog knowledge—he most resembled. The next day, “That’s him,” she said.

“Your dog.”

“I guess so.”

“He’s really... pretty.”

At home that night, she told him, “Abigail thinks you’re pretty.” He did the blink. “Yes,” she affirmed, “I do too.”

She shortened his name to “Leuko.” He didn’t seem to hate it. Then again, he wasn’t very vocal, positively or negatively.

She took him on walks, increasingly long ones, on the winding trails of the city’s largest park. She had never been a walker, but Leuko was... well, no: he was a trotter. A delighted, peppy trotter. Myka tried to match his bright energy, but she didn’t ever feel the same shine. It made her unaccountably happy, though, to see him that happy.

When she bathed him, he suffered it (no bright energy there), but she had a sense that he knew how impressive he looked when he was clean. His fluffy tan coat expanded into even greater glossy magnificence, an invitation to sink fingers in, and it rewarded the venture.

The best part, though, was when she would sit on the sofa, reading a journal or, less frequently, a novel, and he would lie against her, sighing as she rested her hand against his soft, warm body.

It was easy to forget that Sam had ever existed. Easy to sink into the belief that she and Leuko had always been a team. That this new texture of her life—this sneaky, responsibility-laden velvet—was a reality that had simply been held in abeyance until the right time. And now was that time.

One Saturday, as they walked in a nearly empty park, enjoying an early cold snap, Myka heard from a great distance an exclamation: “Monty!” She wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but suddenly her leash hand was empty, and Leuko was tearing across an open field, toward a solitary female figure, barking, making noise like he’d finally learned, or just remembered, that he had a voice.

Myka took off after him, drawing near at the moment he leapt—yes, leapt—into the woman’s arms.

She was striking, with dark eyes that rhymed with Leuko’s... in fact, she rhymed entirely with him, with his beauty. She looked up from him to Myka, those dark eyes widening, seemingly shocked to find another person present. “This is my dog,” she said, a little halting, as if she were trying the words out. Or as if she were coaxing them back into her mouth from far away.

Myka’s breath seized. “No,” she said, forcing the word out. “He’s my dog.”

“He is not. He’s mine. You can see it.”

Myka could see it. It drove ice in her heart to see it, to see him so ecstatic to see someone else, but it was there to be seen. It was there to be heard, too: Myka would never, she was sure, forget that declarative bark.

“He was lost for so long. How did you come to have him?” the woman asked, and Myka, trying to hide that heart-ice, explained about Sam. The woman said, shortly and with pain, “So that’s what happened.” She didn’t offer anything more, and while Myka wasn’t the most sensitive of souls, she could tell that this was not the sort of thing a stranger could ask any question about, not why or wherefore or anything at all.

A stranger. She was a stranger to both of them now, this woman and her dog, a stranger in their way, on the path in front of them—on a path she never should have been on in the first place. And if there was one thing Myka knew how to do, it was get out of the way.

She tried, mightily, to tell herself that that was what she should do: just step away. Let them carry on down the path. You didn’t have a dog before, and you were fine.

Leuko—Monty—looked at her from his perch in the woman’s arms. He blinked.

In response to that, Myka found herself babbling, “Can I... I mean, would you maybe let me... walk him sometime? Because he and I. I mean, or maybe just me. I. I’ll miss... it all.”

“I’m disinclined to let him out of my sight,” the woman said, with seeming care.

Myka didn’t have to ask why. “I don’t mean alone,” she said. “Just to see him.”

The woman looked at the dog in her arms. Did he blink? Whatever he showed her, it was enough. “All right,” she said. “Next week?” At Myka’s nod, she continued, “I should introduce myself. I’m Helena Wells.”

Myka understood even that was a matter of trust. “I’m Myka Bering,” she said, “and let me give you my number so you—”

“I’d rather not,” Helena Wells said, with the same care.

Not overmuch trust. “I can bring you what I bought for him,” Myka said, and maybe it was a flail to show that Helena Wells did not need to doubt her intentions. “If you want.”

“Thank you, but I still have all his things. Always holding out hope.” She said that with a quirk of her lip that Myka envied. Hope—what was it?

But of course Helena Wells had held out hope. Even after Myka’s own short time with Leuko—Monty—she would have done the same thing. Had he suddenly been gone, had she not known why.

The next Saturday morning, Myka spent some time pondering a very strange question: what do you wear to walk your ex-dog with someone who probably wants to forget that you exist?

The relief Myka felt when Helena and Leuko—Monty—appeared... it nearly felled her. There he is, she thought, and he’s all right. Not that she had expected anything different, but it was a relief. After a week she had not understood as a ratcheting up of anxiety, she at last felt relief.

They walked, side by side, Leuko—no, Monty—leading the way, shining even more brightly than Myka had known he could. “I didn’t intend to have your dog,” Myka started. “I didn’t mean to keep him... I mean, to keep him from you. The super can testify to the timeline, and I—”

“It’s all right,” Helena said. “I see that.”

“But I’m trying to tell you why this happened.”

“It doesn’t matter why. He’s here, and I told you, it’s all right.”

“Of course it matters! You’d care if I did try to steal him.”

“But you didn’t,” Helena said, and her words were gentle. “You cared for him. You didn’t have to.”

That left Myka strangely perplexed, because now, in retrospect, what else could have happened? “Of course I did.”

And Leuko—no, Monty—looked up at her, and he did the blink, and Myka knew what it meant: “Of course you did.”

Meeting, walking. They fell into a regular Saturday-walk schedule. As the weeks progressed, Myka’s anxiety gave way to, made room for, anticipation. Leuko—Monty—never barked when he saw Myka, but he did pull on the leash as she approached and gave her a nuzzle when she knelt to greet him.

“Why did you name him Monty?” Myka asked, one Saturday.

That made Helena smile. “I didn’t. His breeder did.”

“His breeder?”

“He’s a Mittelspitz.”

“He’s... a medium? A medium spitz?” Well, that explained his looking like a Pomeranian.

“Precisely.”

Myka felt dim. “But what does that have to do with being called Monty?”

“Nothing, as far as I know. The breeder named his litter after the stars of A Place in the Sun; he’s Montgomery Clift. His sister is Shelley Winters, and his brother is Elizabeth Taylor.”

“His brother? Why?” Myka really did try to limit the asking of that question out loud, but this seemed extra-justified.

“He’s even more beautiful than Monty.”

Did Monty the Mittelspitz turn his head and harrumph at such blasphemy? Myka surely was imagining that. He must have just seen a squirrel. “Poor Shelley Winters, though,” Myka said.

Helena laughed... and Myka felt that she should name that laugh “Elizabeth Taylor” as well. Helena said, “No, no, she’s pretty too. A remarkably lovely litter, and in fact Shelley was the only one who was show quality. If beauty were all it took, Liz would have ruled the circuit.” Another harrumph. “Don’t pout, darling,” Helena said to the dog, then to Myka, “Why did you name him Leuko?”

“After a peptide,” Myka admitted. “Well, a group of peptides.”

“A peptide.”

That was an implicit “why,” and Myka was strangely comforted. “I’m a chemist,” she said.

“A chemist.” Helena furrowed her brow. “How funny that I didn’t know that. How have we not got around to professions?”

Myka wanted to say, “Because when we get close to anything about our real lives, one or both of us backs away.” They still had no contact outside the park, and even as they shared and deepened this strange long-walk familiarity, Myka did not know where the line was. Had it shifted? If not, would it ever? She tried, very cautiously, “I don’t know. Will you... will you tell me yours?”

“I teach writing.”

For some reason, Myka couldn’t hold back her next question, even though it was not justified: “Why?”

“I have knowledge and expertise to impart. Due to having studied writing. And having made a living in the past as a writer myself.”

“That’s a good reason,” Myka said, and she thought, That’s more than you’ve said about yourself in weeks of walks. Was something different about this day?

“Thank you. Though I may not need your imprimatur, I’m pleased to have it.”

Was she... teasing? “I like good reasons,” Myka tried to explain.

“Good reasons. Recognizing them is not inapplicable to the craft of writing.” Helena said this with a funny little bow of her head.

Myka’s facial capillaries flooded with blood.

She knew why, but she hid the answer in her heart, for she remembered all too well Helena’s desolate “So that’s what happened.”

On one of their earlier walks, they had run into Abigail. “How’s little Leukotriene?” she asked. “Or I guess he’s not so little. That’s weird; I thought he was a Pom.”

Myka resisted the impulse to remind her of the ruler in the photo.

The next day, “Who’s your girlfriend?” Abigail asked.

It was the first time Myka really registered that she had continued her habit of going home in the middle of the day. To no purpose at all, she went home, stood in her kitchen, ate a sandwich that no one else wanted any of, and then went back to the lab. It was not a responsibility anymore, and it did nothing for her. She resolved to stop.

“Not my girlfriend,” Myka said, but she was appalled at herself: for a rash moment, she had wanted to let Abigail believe otherwise.

“Walking your dog with her?”

“Not my dog.” On that point, of course, Myka wished she could let herself believe otherwise.

“Pretty sure the dog matched that picture you showed me.”

“He’s her dog.”

“You were trying to pass your girlfriend’s dog off as yours?”

“She’s not my girlfriend. And he was my dog... for a minute.”

Walking in the park every week was not a responsibility. It was a reward.

And as Myka enjoyed her reward, each week, she studied Helena’s face, listened to her words. She tried to tell herself she was merely continuing to assess Helena’s relationship with Leuko. No: Monty. And she was doing that... but she was doing so much more.

How much could Myka continue to hide in her heart? And for how long?

As if in answer, the Saturday following their “professions” discussion, Helena (and Leuko—no, Monty) failed to appear. Myka, desolate at the absence of them both, walked by herself. It was terrible.

The park was empty of them the following week as well. Still, Myka walked, taking the isolation as her punishment for having misunderstood lines and crossing them, for having been so foolish as to let any part of her secret heart show on her face.

The aftermath of that second lonely walk left Myka restless, anxious. Should she try to find Helena and ask her why she had so abruptly decided against... whatever they were doing? Could she then beg her to reconsider walking a dog together to no purpose? “I’ll stop wanting anything more than that,” Myka thought to tell her. “I promise.”

But of course trying to find her was out of the question; if Helena didn’t want even to walk with Myka, she surely didn’t want to be stalked by her.

So Myka did the only thing she could do: the next Saturday, she returned again to the park. And she hoped.

Ten years have gone by nearly unnoticed, both of us had someone who we lost but under different circumstances. Sam died in a car crash and Amanda left. Eventually I started to believe I was cursed so marrying my best friend instead seemed the perfect idea. He was handsome to say the least and was a good kisser. We still needed to work some things out about sex but… I’ve had worse. I couldn’t decide if it’s cute or annoying or both that he always asks my permission to make a move. What I did decide is that if this worked for my granny, it might as well work for me too. And it did. No fireworks, but comforting solid warmth. We lived together for a few months and exactly ten years after our agreement here I stand, between the aisles in a white dress looking at Pete and thinking maybe I’m not so cursed after all. As I walk towards him slowly, I turn my attention to the others. Leena and Abigail as my bridesmaids, my best friends from work who did not exactly approve my decision, but they are here anyway. On the other side there was Steve, the calmest person I’ve ever known and the only other one who puts up with Pete.  My gaze shifts as I see movement at the side of the church, a raven-haired woman in ordinary clothes, probably leaving the building. The sun’s rays glimmer on her hair, a hint of a smirk showing on the corner of her mouth and then she looks at me. Our eyes lock and I see eternity. Past, present, future, all revolving around that exact moment when I look at her, feeling that I know her and I’ve known her forever. Then the moment, or was it a minute? A year? As far as I know it could have been a billion years that passed in a single step and I continue my journey to the altar, to Pete, but I feel I’m forever changed. My legs are doing the walking, I am still stuck at that moment, mesmerised. As I arrive, the music stops and he looks at me. The minister tells everyone to sit down but Pete cuts him short. “Myka, listen. I know I’ve told you already a hundred times you can cancel and call off all this anytime you want…” “But…” I try to speak without truly being able to. “But! You told me a hundred times back that you won’t. Now, I saw that and I’m having a major vibe here and you already know you should trust my vibes because they never lie. If you won’t cancel, I will. Ceremony is over.” on this there were some sounds of disappointment from the crowd so he turned to them as he continued “Don’t worry, we are still having the party and the food! I wouldn’t miss it! So please just go to the reception while we’ll have a little chitchat with my almost wife.” then he turned back to me as all the others, including the minister, shuffled out so we were alone. He probably sees my panic as I scream at him quietly “I don’t even know her! And she’s a woman! I’ve never been with a woman and we don’t even know if she’s into women and what the hell are you thinking?” he just smiles and I want to punch him. “I know her, or at least, I met her some half hour ago. She’s the florist, pretty good one if you ask me, as you can see her handiwork on the decoration. Steve is pretty sure she is into women, you know he has this gaydar thingy. And, for you my dear Myka, you might not consider it with your brilliant head, your body says otherwise, especially when you are near your sister’s girlfriend.” this is not happening “You mean Sameen?” “I mean the grumpy little brunette with Tracy who I think is carrying a gun.” I cover his mouth with my hand and nervously look around. Fortunately the church is empty by now. “Don’t say that out loud!” I whisper “They are both some government agents that Tracy doesn’t want us to know but I know it anyway. So shut up about that!” I slowly remove my hand ready to shut him up again if necessary. “So I shut up about that but not the other part with your body language?” I blink. Twice. “Yeah about that…” he looks at me expectantly “Alright! You win. I was just afraid before.” his warm eyes never leave mine as he grabs my upper arms. “It’s okay. You don’t have to be afraid. I love you and I will protect you and we will get you the girl.” “Thank you Pete, that means a lot. But we are still not sure if it is even possible for me to ‘get the girl’.” he let me go, wildly gesticulating while he explains “Aw come on, we’ll trick her to say it! I invite her to dinner to us and we get Steve there and we’ll make her think that Steve is into her!” “You do realise people say that sometimes just for men to go away.” “But not to Steve! Have you ever known any straight girl who didn’t want to date him?” “I didn’t! Oh... You might have a point there.” “Then we’ll know for sure AND you’ll have the opportunity to get to know her! See?” his excitement is contagious. “Okay! Okay. I’m in.”

We went to the reception, had some fun, Pete ate plenty of food and I didn’t see the florist again because she left after she walked out of the church. She probably still thinks we got married. I really hope this will end well.

***

A few days later Pete, as he promised, called the florist, I learned that her name was Helena. The most beautiful name I ever heard. Pete invited her to dinner the next day so as to thank her for the gorgeous flower arrangements and before I could stop him, he told her that as I did not have the chance to meet her, I’d love to do it now so she must come. She agreed. The next problem was that none of us can cook, and we didn’t want to order or bring anything from a restaurant but I had an idea and asked Leena who lives nearby to cook for us. I had to tell her everything in order for her to say yes and said it with that mysterious smile of hers when she knows something which she won’t tell you because it would ruin the fun. At least she doesn’t have that smile very often so I might consider it a good sign. We had everything prepared, the doorbell rang. Here it goes.

It seems to me that her raven hair just flows perfectly and her leather jacket emphasises her hips and her waistline and I can’t stop watching until I recognise the bouquet of flowers she’s holding. She brought me tiger lilies! How does she know they are my favourite? She just looks at me and I’m feeling nauseous. Myka Bering, get a grip on yourself. I extend my hand in greeting. “I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. Myka Bering.” “Helena Wells. Nice to meet you and thank you for the invitation.” she says this with flawless British accent and I think I am seriously consider killing Pete for not mentioning that earlier for a fraction of a second but than she touches my hand it sends a jolt through my body and her dark eyes just mesmerise me. I feel a soft nudge from Pete that wakes me and I let her hand go. “I ah we should be thanking you and again this gorgeous bouquet…” did I just forget how to talk? “Did you know these are my favourites?” okay, casual. Keep it up, you’ll get through. “Your friend Leena visited me yesterday. She knew about the dinner and told me to bring tiger lilies.” I may have stopped breathing for a moment there. I feel Pete is barely containing a laugh beside me but he comes to my rescue anyway. “Well let’s hang these flowers and get that jacket in some water.” says Pete, perfectly oblivious to his… Or was it just to throw me off again? He winks and hands the bouquet to me to put it in water.

As I hunt for vases to hold the throng of lilies and start to rearrange them, I hear some pieces of a conversation between Pete and Helena. There is definitely food among the topics so it must be Pete telling about his idea of writing a blog about every state’s own street foods and desserts. Well he sure grabs every opportunity to try them out. That’s the moment when I hear the doorbell again. Steve is really dressed for success but I think he still can’t match the vest Helena is wearing. I greet him warmly and start preparing the meals Leena made for us.

I saw an eye roll from Helena when Steve entered so that is again a good sign but still far from enough. Most of the meal went with meaningless chit-chat then somehow we got to Steve’s love life. “Listen, it’s sometimes easier to manage lots of short term things than to have one long term.” he says, some past hurts clearly seen in his eyes. “There is a right one for you, maybe you met that person already, you just don’t know yet. It takes time to recognise the other.” I tell him comfortingly. “I do hope you are right.” he answers “I’m with her.” says Pete, pointing at me “And you?” looking questioningly at Helena. “I don’t agree with the whole” and she starts to explain “I think there are three types of love. The easiest way to describe them is with fire. The first one is the camp fire – warm, comforting, not really dangerous. If fed properly, it’s enough for decades. Then there is the firework – hot, flaming, raging and passionate, but also very dangerous. Most of the times it ends with someone getting hurt and it doesn’t last more than a year. Both are very common, most people experience both in their life.” she stops for a moment, and I feel her hesitation. “What is the third like?” I ask and she looks directly at me as she says “The third one is the mysterious one. The one the movies and the novels are about. Everyone knows about it but in reality it is so rare, that most people don’t even believe it exists and experiencing it is like winning the lottery. Neither campfire, nor firework but in between and it resembles a stove. When it’s ignited, you instantly feel it. A controlled high level burning, both passionate and comforting and though it is dangerous and frightening, the people lucky enough to have it, value it so much that they are more caring to each other, than anyone else on this world. This is what soulmates are and it has the potential to last for all eternity.” she only looks away when she is finished and I just realised Pete and Steve are still here and judging by their expressions they actually wish they weren’t.

After putting away everything, I find her on the balcony alone, in the rain under an umbrella. She truly looks like an apparition, like she isn’t real. I open the balcony door and tell her to come in so she won’t catch a cold. She comes and apologises and I put a robe around her to soak up the residual water while I’m in a constant dilemma of touching her or not to do so, as it is still sending jolts through my body. As I watch her I start to feel that I’m zoning out again so I turn to look out the glass door and she does the same. I still feel her presence affecting me so Pete calling to us really saves me again. Steve offered to take Helena home so we go downstairs and hug her goodbye. Yes, definitely touching her. Way better than not. I hug Steve too, whispering him “Thank you for doing this for me.” and he just whispers back to me “No need.” and smiles and they leave. I turn around and Pete has that meaningful gaze of his on his face. “Next time you are going with her alone and you are gonna tell her we are not married.” he says “Oh and by the way, she already told me she was gay before Steve even arrived.” he adds with a smile “WHAT?” and I hit his shoulder but then I just can’t help but smile too.

Sometime later Steve called, I already lost track of time and was in a weird trance like state so Pete answered the phone. He came back grinning. “She was subtle, but she is indeed into you not just women. Congratulations I guess.” I need to hug him and as I do I feel tears in my eyes and start sobbing. He hugs me back, fiercely. “It’s okay, Myka, everything will be okay, I promise.”

Eventually I calm down but I don’t really sleep in the following two days.

***

After Friday’s dinner Pete called Helena again that he will have a ‘work thing’ on Tuesday and asked if she could keep me company. When I told him I am perfectly capable of calling her myself, he looked at me dead seriously and told me that right now I am too nervous and afraid to do that. I couldn’t argue. The next two days passed in a slur and here I stand Tuesday evening near her flower shop watching her coming towards me and trying not to swoon.

“Hello Myka, nice seeing you again.” that smile of hers is going to be the death of me “Hi um you too.” we just start walking without any direction. “I’ve been meaning to ask, am I right presuming you grew up in the UK?” “Yes.” she looks nostalgic “I still have some family there” “And is there anything you miss from the old continent?” “You are going to laugh, but I miss fish and chips and soccer.” “Fish and chips I get but soccer? What makes it so special?” “My brother goes to soccer games and concerts to feel the flow the people generated. It helped with his depression. He invited me along quite a few times and I must admit I really enjoyed it too.” “You have a brother?” “Yes, he stayed in London, I am the more adventurous type.” she says it like she doesn’t want to talk about it further so back to the original topic. “Let’s see, I can’t help you in the food department, but you should ask Pete about that…” “I actually did! I asked at the dinner and he promised to find a place providing proper fish and chips” she cuts in and I smile. Of course he will. “Good! Then I get soccer and google says there is a game not too far from here if you are interested.” she is beaming “That’d be lovely! Thank you!”

To my greatest surprise, I found myself screaming at the players, completely captured by the game and the spectators. Up until Helena says "You know, you're kind of shrill." "What?" I'm still under the effect of the crowd so I'm a little slow "When you shout. You want them to hear your abuse better, you've got to project it." okay, then let's just turn this back around "Teach me." that throws her off a little "Okay."  "First off, tighten your stomach muscles." "I don't think I've got any." she smirks "Yeah, you do. You really do. They're right here." she puts her right hand stomach and I feel a jolt running through my body just like on Friday "There?" "Mmm-hmm. Tighten." I don’t feel like I’m in control of my body at this moment so I just repeat "Tighten." "Tense them." like I could any more "They're pretty tense." this earns me a lovely smile "Okay, next, broaden your diaphragm." "My what?" "It's here." she puts her hand just under my breasts "Oh." "Okay, push it out against my hand." I can't "You feel my hand?" of course I do, that is why I can't push and that feeling makes me bold enough to say "Maybe if you put them both there." "Okay." she moves behind me, putting both her arms around me and I lean into her embrace as she continues "And now, for the big one.” she almost whispers in my ear “Imagine the roof of your mouth is a cathedral." my senses are too overloaded to be able to do metaphors right now "No, you've lost me." "Oh, come on." she lets me go and I immediately miss her touch "No, the muscles, the diaphragm, I'm there, but..." "It's a space thing. All right, your mouth is that big that you have to fill it with sound. Deep from inside, filling the space, then throwing it out." she explains "Like how?" "Like this." she takes a deep breath and opening her mouth yells loudly "You're a wanker, Number nine!" echoing through the whole stadium. I really feel bad for poor number nine as everyone present, including myself, just looks at Helena with respect.

As we leave the stadium after the match, Helena turns to me.

“Okay, Myka, it’s your turn. What is your guilty pleasure?” she asks. Subtle. ‘You, actually’ my mind would react but fortunately I’m still in control. “Now you are going to laugh, but Dance Dance Revolution. I just love it and I feel like dancing right now. Wanna try?” I ask hoping she will say yes “Lead the way.” Yes! I feel enthusiastic.

I’ve never ever imagined that I will be able to move in such perfect synchronisation with someone. I couldn’t stop myself looking at her, touching her all the time. By the way, the DDR played ‘Feels Like I'm in Love’ by Kelly Marie and I truly started to think this is either a conspiracy or some higher power decided that signs won’t do for me as I am not Pete so it is throwing everything it has at me. And as I think about it a little further, I actually feel like I’m in love and it feels different than ever before. It feels… Like a stove. The realisation hits me and it is both amazing and frightening.

***

When we leave the arcade, Helena probably notices that I retreated to myself because she doesn’t speak. She walks beside me as we stroll and I contemplate within myself for a solid half an hour and then I arrive at the decision that right now I have nothing to lose but her. So I turn to Helena, and softly touch her shoulder, again feeling the almost familiar jolt. She looks at me and I ask “Is there something else I should know about you?” she thinks for a few seconds debating in herself, then answers “Only a few are aware of this but sometimes I write.” this woman is full of surprises and I can feel my desperate hunger for knowing anything and everything that is her. “Please elaborate.” I look with my puppy eyes which always make Pete bend to my will and it seems to work here as well because she sighs and tells. “Well the universe blessed me with an imagination that is both wide and wild and sometimes arranging the flowers into intricate shapes and forms still doesn’t satisfy my mind. Those are the times when I write, mostly trying to imagine the shape of the future in the form of novels that I keep to myself.” she seems a little embarrassed which makes her the cutest thing I ever saw. “Is there a possibility for me to read them?” I ask with a smile and this makes her blush a little more “Maybe…” she smiles, suddenly finding her courage “If you ask nicely.” now it’s my turn to blush.

As we are nearing her apartment something comes to my mind.

"Tell me about the lily." "You don't want to know about the lily." "It's my favourite." her answer just sparked my curiosity more "Ask me about the azalea." I'll play along "All right. What about the azalea?" "The azalea means, 'May you achieve financial security.'" "Bah." nice but boring "See?" I smile so she can think she got away with it and then "Lovely. Now, tell me about the lily." she sighs defeated "The lily means..." she still hesitates but eventually continues "The lily means, 'I dare you to love me.'" then turns away and crosses the road and I almost have to run to catch up with her after I get out of shock. A few seconds pass then she turns back to me "Well, thanks for this evening." "Thank you." she looks nervous. Why is she nervous? "It was my birthday." now that's a surprise "No, today? You should've said." why am I nervous? Oh, the non-existent perfect moment… "I enjoyed it nonetheless." okay Myka, now or never. “Then I have a present for you which might be a little unsettling as well…” I can’t look at her “You see, Pete and I… We… Are not married. Pete had a feeling and we didn’t go through the ceremony.” then I gather the courage to raise my eyes to meet hers and… “You are not surprised. How did you know? Who told you?” before I blow up Helena gently grabs my hands and gives me a warm comforting smile and this is enough to calm my nerves “When Leena came by before the dinner, she gave me some hints. She said I should trust my instincts about the lilies, and that you have tragedies in your past that made you more sensitive and less trusting towards people. She also told me that Pete will always try to protect you from getting hurt no matter how big of a fool it would make him look like. So I decided to be straightforward and see where I end up with it” at the end of the sentence I realise that I slowly inched closer to her while she was speaking so I decided to close the already theoretical gap between us.

***

Myka was still high on the first kiss, not quite ready to dilute it with a second. “Tuesday?” she asked, and “Tuesday,” Helena affirmed, remaining near.

“I like this,” Myka said, and it might have been a warning—to herself and to Helena.

“I’m glad,” Helena said, a comfort against the caution.

I will see them three days from now, Myka told herself as Helena drove away, her dog buckled safely into his harness in the back seat. Myka had a similar harness, limp and empty, in the back seat of her own car.

I know what it’s like to see him without a week having passed. I have no idea what it’s like to see her.

How long could three days feel?

Long enough to make her tell herself, on Sunday, “You should cancel.” Because she hadn’t slept. Instead she spent open-eyed hours retreading her limited romantic past: college boyfriend, who lasted all of one semester; grad school girlfriend, who lasted longer, but only because they rarely saw each other, and when they did, they were too exhausted from long, long lab days and nights to do much of anything but share a cheap meal and go to bed. Nevertheless their breakup blindsided Myka, who expected reasons but received nothing more from her suddenly ex-girlfriend than “I was into it; now I’m not.”

Since then, the occasional night with another lonely chemist at a conference had been the extent of it. That was what Myka figured she would always be most comfortable with: no entanglements, no consequences. No nerve-wracking anticipations.

Tuesday was consequential, with accompanying nerve-wracking anticipation. Hence, “You should cancel.”

Entanglements. Leuko had been one, but he at least had been very clear. Food, walks, baths. Obviously Myka’s emotions had been involved, but it wasn’t as if Leuko was going to do anything to blindside her.

Except bark at someone.

In his defense, she conceded, he had a pretty compelling reason.

So what about cancelling? Myka knew why she wanted to. Why didn’t she want to?

I like walking with her in the park.

Everything she says about herself makes me want to know more.

She is physically more attractive than anyone I’ve ever seen in my life.

Kissing her one time made me wish I had keys to a castle, so I could give them to her.

On a parallel track, there was Leuko. Monty. The idea of interacting with him in his real home felt wrong—but the kind of wrong that could one day become right. Like seeing his leash in Helena’s hand.

Would I have been willing to keep walking in the park if she hadn’t been the one walking him?

Impossible to know. Traitorous to consider an answer of no.

And would I have felt that I could walk in a park with her in the absence of him?

Also impossible to know. Not traitorous to consider an answer of no, but surely cowardly.

So in the interest of at least a facsimile of courage, Myka spent some time pondering yet another question: What do you wear to watch a dog show with your ex-dog and his person, who might be your... well, who could say? Certainly not Myka. She landed on “clothes.” Just wear clothes. Because her ex-dog wouldn’t care, and if his person did—well, that would tell her something, wouldn’t it?

Knocking on a door on Tuesday night, clothed in clothes, she was a mixture of trepidation and, yes, hope.

“Come in!” Helena called, so Myka did. To her surprise, she was received into the house by Montgomery Clift. She’d found, over her days of thinking, that it was easier to call him that in her head; its length and formality kept her from slipping and thinking “Leuko.” Mr. Clift then escorted her down a hallway and into a large living space. “Are you a butler now?” she asked him.

He blinked. It meant either “Of course not” or “I am the most perfect butler who ever buttled,” and Myka said, “You’re right,” in answer to both.

Helena appeared a second later, and Myka held out the gifts she’d brought: wine in one hand, a paper bag in the other. They had cost her far less pondering-time than the clothes had, though she hadn’t realized that at the time, and that probably meant something, though Myka could not think it through now, not with Helena standing right there in front of her. Myka could barely think at all. Instead, she tried to explain: “I thought at first I should bring you something related to writing—a pretty pen?—but then I figured a writer wouldn’t be any less picky about equipment than a chemist, and I’d hate it if some well-meaning person gave me for example a pipettor I’d never use. Nobody would do that, because they’re insanely expensive, but that’s why you’re getting a boring bottle of wine. I brought this”—she extended the bag—“for Monty.”

Helena had gazed at her throughout that recitation, and Myka had in turn felt herself prolonging it, to keep those attentive eyes on her. Now Helena said, “You’ve gifted him...” She took the bag, looked in it. “Several corn tortillas?”

“Fresh ones. He likes them.”

“I didn’t know it.”

Which, Myka had to acknowledge, made her happy. But it was a selfish happiness, so she said, “I didn’t intend to know something you don’t. It was an accident: he was hungry, and that was what I had. And then when I bought fresh, they turned out to be his favorite.”

Helena said, to Montgomery Clift, “More favorite than cheese?”

He failed to respond, most likely due to his laser focus on the now-open tortilla bag. Myka offered, “Probably depends on the cheese.”

“It’s true he is discerning.” Helena paused. “So am I.”

Myka’s nerves, which had ebbed, returned—not fully, but as a vague itch of discomfort. “You don’t need to...” she started.

“What don’t I need to?”

“Try? Like that. Like any way at all.” For it was when Helena tried—as she had in the park, with her “so are you” about prettiness—that Myka lost her bearings.

“I don’t know where you are,” Helena said. Such a reasonable justification: of course she would try, if she wanted to move Myka to some particular place, some place she felt Myka was not.

“Here,” Myka said, but it was a yearn—to get closer to where Helena might have imagined she, and they, could be—rather than the truth. She needed to tell the truth, though: “Or at least I’m trying to be.”

“You don’t need to try either,” Helena said, her tone a balm. “Let’s start by getting to know each other better. I hope that’s what this evening is for.”

“I hope too.” Myka had never said anything more true. “I don’t like that I know your dog better than I know you. I regret it.” But, “Sorry,” she said to the soft butler-or-not who looked up at her, blinking wounded eyes. Or more likely, he was blinking tortilla-wanting eyes.

“We need to remedy that. Or rather, I want to remedy that, and I think you do as well. As I said, I’m not confused.”

“As I said, I am.” Important to be clear about that.

“Tell me why.”

Oh, the invitation. How could she respond? Weighing ideas of entanglements, consequences, anticipations...

Helena, blessedly, went on, “Because I feel that if I hadn’t told you I wasn’t, you wouldn’t be.”

That was indeed the entirety of it, so... “I like that you’re smart,” Myka said. “I like it so much.”

“I like that you are as well, chemist. Sit down. I have food to cook. On that topic, I regret I didn’t ask about allergies, so tell me now. I don’t want to inadvertently attempt to murder you.”

“You can’t. I’m basically insensitive.”

“Ridiculous. Monty knows better, and so do I.”

She delivered that perfectly, not trying, but rather as if she had a doctorate in quashing self-deprecation, and it made Myka smile. “If I were allergic to anything, leukotrienes would be involved,” she said.

“Do you want to explain them to me now?” Helena asked.

It was even more perfect, as an invitation, but Myka turned it down: “You’re busy. Food to cook. Can I help?”

“Sit. You look tired. Is that an awful thing to say? I don’t mean that you look in any way bad. You’ve most likely had a long day.” She stopped, her expression devolving into a sheepish wince. “I’m digging a hole.”

“It’s okay,” Myka said to banish that wince, charming as it was. “You’re right about the day.”

She hadn’t improved much on her Saturday sleep in the subsequent nights, but at least last night had been anticipatory rather than self-castigating. During the day, her concentration at work had been... not ideal. She broke some glass—dropped from nervous fingers—and Abigail asked her if she was intending to go on a rampage. She’d had to redo more than one assay. It really was a miracle she’d been able to get here on time.

So she sat, as instructed, and she found herself pondering various miracles: Helena was cooking food, and Myka, on the sofa, had Leuko—no, Montgomery Clift—beside her, as he used to be, and she wished she were a poet, so as to put into words what suffused her heart. “Does he sit like this with you?” she felt compelled to ask.

“He does,” Helena said. Weeks ago, Myka would have felt that as a knife.  Now it was confirmation of all-encompassing comfort. “With me,” Helena went on, “and now with you. I’ve never seen him do so with anyone else.”

“Have you, though?” Myka asked him.

Of course he blinked those dark, beautiful, secret eyes. “Did she teach you to do that?” Myka asked him, and she dared a glance at Helena.

“I can’t imagine what you’re talking about,” Helena said. “All I personally taught him was that he should shake hands. And clearly that is not what is occurring.”

“Shake?” Myka suggested to him.

Montgomery Clift sat up immediately and held out his right front paw.

“Impressive,” Myka told him—told Helena—after a convivial shake had occurred. In all her time with him, she hadn’t thought to see whether he would do that. She hadn’t thought about training at all. He was so quiet and sweet. What else would she have wanted him to do? How often would they really have needed to shake hands? “How often?” she asked, softly, and she took his blink to mean “Not very.”

Helena said from the kitchen, “It’s starting in not very long, and I’d like to let Monty out. Will you watch him in the yard?”

“You’re going to watch me watch him, aren’t you?

Helena smiled. “Honestly, yes. But not for the reason you fear.”

“I’m not sure you have a true handle on the extent of my fears.”

“Educate me.”

“What do you write about? Or I guess I mean, what did you write about?” Myka asked. The question had come to her that instant, fully formed—not a fear, not as such, but rather a gray gap in her knowledge.

“Hm,” Helena said. “Let’s talk about that when you come back indoors.”

Montgomery Clift enjoyed his time in the yard. “Sorry we can’t walk,” she told him, but he was cavorting, sniffing, investigating, and didn’t seem to care. It made her sad that she’d had no space for him to do that, untethered.

They came back indoors, so: “So, writing,” Myka said. “I didn’t Google you. So I don’t know.”

“That is both slightly insulting and exceedingly considerate.”

Myka, flustered, said, “Point being I don’t know.”

“It begins with my having been a rather unusual sort of child.”

“That isn’t hard to believe,” Myka said, then cringed. “That’s probably also slightly insulting.”

“On the contrary, I think it’s exceedingly complimentary. Don’t we all want to be unusual? I do now, and did then... I would fix my attention on a thing that struck me as interesting, and I would not rest until I became expert in it. The smaller and stranger the better. An arcane slice of history, some esoteric gadgetry, a figure of obscure influence. As it happened, I could write about such things in a readable way.”

“Showing off what an expert you’d become?” Myka asked. She hoped that wasn’t insulting at all.

Helena smiled in affirmation. “It began like that, yes. One tried to become less insufferable when it was for wider publication. In any case, I sought such topics out for years—the rarities, the curiosities. I made a reasonable amount of money doing so, which is better than many can say.”

“So why stop?”

“I had it in my head to write a novel. Something with that same depth, but also breadth.”

“Do you still have it in your head?”

“Unfortunately, yes. Mainly in my head. Not on paper.”

“Should I not ask why?”

“Monty’s disappearance... derailed me.”

“Are you un-derailed now?”

“Not precisely.”

“Should I not ask why?”

“I’ve found myself distracted.”

“Should I not ask why?”

“You should know why.”

Was that trying again? It felt softer, not quite as discomfiting. “When does this dog show start, anyway?” Myka said.

“Very soon,” Helena said, and the way she spoke those very simple words reminded Myka, viscerally, of why she wanted to be here—Helena’s eyes were bright, her voice low but engaged. An edge of something like hunger crept around the periphery of Myka’s awareness.

The show itself was astounding. Myka had known she had very little knowledge of dogs as animals, certainly prior to her brief ownership experience. But she had not known that she had not known how vast the world of dogs, as rankable, judgeable animals, really was. An entire additional universe was folded into the one Myka thought she knew. The idea of breeds, okay, she got that. But groups? Handlers? Stacking?

“Can he do that?” Myka asked, about the stacking, that stance seemingly required for the judging of... dogness?

“Oh, watch. Monty, sit,” Helena said to the dog who was curled between them. She raised her hand as she said it, and just like that, up he sat. She pulled her hand forward then and said, “Stand.” He stood, his entire self on display, just like the dogs on the television. After a second, Helena said, “I should have cheese in my hand. Or one of your tortillas. He hates when there’s no reward. You see how the handlers hold the treats in their mouths, when they’re in the ring. Often they use liver.”

“In their mouths...” Myka shuddered.

Helena offered a sympathetic echo of the movement. “It’s apparently quite compelling as an incentive, and they can’t hold the brush or the lead that way. But it’s certainly among the many reasons I myself wouldn’t have been able to show him.”

“I don’t understand why being pretty doesn’t count,” Myka said.

“Shapes and sizes matter more than anything, and he’s slightly too small for a male.” Montgomery Clift turned away from her, seemingly intentionally. Helena laughed and told him, “You’re exquisite and you know it.”

“Why did you even want a Mittelspitz anyway?” Myka asked. “No offense, Montgomery Clift.” After trying it out loud, she realized it didn’t work nearly as well that way as it did in her head. “Monty,” she amended, and now he reoriented himself toward Myka, as if he were pleased. She was probably attributing far too much intentionality to him.

Helena said, “I didn’t want one.” Did Montgomery Clift turn even further toward Myka? “As I told you, there was a novel in my head, but I was too busy investigating those curiosities. Then I began to imagine that I might find time for it if I settled into a more routine everyday life.”

“So you got a dog?” Myka asked, recalling her own Leuko-routines.

“Accidentally. While looking into teaching positions, I was finishing up one of my last pieces, on the insular, sectarian cultures around rare breeds of dog. I met Monty’s breeder, and she happened to note that having a dog would certainly create routines... I scoffed, but then I met Monty himself, as a wee puppy, and there was no longer any question.”

“I can’t even imagine.”

Helena showed Myka several photos of that wee puppy.

“Oh my god,” Myka said. It was the only logical response.

“He didn’t seem real,” Helena affirmed.

And yet there the real Montgomery Clift was, clearly the grown-up version of those photos, blinking back and forth at both of them. A curiosity.

“You’re coming back tomorrow night?” Helena asked later, as Myka prepared to leave.

What a confounding question. “I... am I?” Myka staggered out.

“The show. It’s two nights. I thought you knew.”

That had probably been conveyed at some point, but Myka hadn’t paid sufficient attention. She had lost her purchase on the unfamiliar new dog-parade production-number world unfurling itself for her perusal on the television, as she was far more interested in the equally new world composed of one disconcerting woman and one unreal dog. What did it say that the latter outranked the former?

Right... as if that were a mystery. “I think if this evening has demonstrated anything, it’s that I know absolutely nothing,” she lied.

“Not nothing,” Helena said, mindreading. Then she read some more: “Surely you know that I want to kiss you goodnight.”

“I want to know it,” Myka told her.

“Then do.” She moved close to Myka, a sidle not dissimilar to her move in the parking lot, and this time Myka did lean down, did find out. It was not confusing at all, but rather like good clear water, bracing and inundating, roaring, silent, everything. If this was the first night, what would the second entail?

The next day in the lab, Myka allowed to Abigail, “Maybe she’s my girlfriend.” Tempting fate, probably, but fate was certainly doing some tempting of its own...

Abigail crossed her arms. Never a good sign. “Why do you always have to lie first?”

“Why... what?”

“You lie about having a dog,” Abigail said. “You lie about having a girlfriend. What’s next? Your side job for the CIA?”

“Very funny.”

“If you deny it, I’ll know it’s true.”

“Fine. My side job is CIA. What do you know about dog shows?”

“Are you going undercover at one?” Abigail countered.

“My maybe girlfriend knows a lot about them.”

“Then ask her, not me. People like to talk about what they know a lot about. Except you, but you’re weird like that.”

Valid advice, and an accurate description. Myka thanked Abigail for them both.

“And you’d lie anyway,” Abigail continued.

Myka didn’t thank her for that.

As she prepared to leave for Helena’s that evening, she found herself thinking on clarity. That she might at last have some.

Her phone buzzed—a text. She never got texts.

The text was from Helena.

It said: Don’t come.

TBC

Anything could happen... but nothing did happen, not that day, other than an extremely unsociable walk.

Nothing happened the next week either, other than her developing an annoying in-the-moment habit of counting her steps in her head. It distorted the time, focusing it, bending. How long did one hundred feel? One thousand? How long did each of these interminable waiting weeks feel?

Myka seriously considered not going the next weekend, hope aside. Wintry, overcast mid-February Saturdays were made for staying indoors, weren’t they? Staying indoors and getting reacquainted with your not-a-walker self.

Still: hope.

She couldn’t, in the end, reckon with reverting to that self. Doing so seemed not just unhopeful, but cowardly. So she went to the park—unfortunately forgetting her gloves, but she leaned into the cold: perversely welcoming it, marking and measuring the slow leach of feeling from her hands. If I’m going to do this, I’m going to DO THIS. She walked for longer than she ever had, freezing, freezing, as if she were a medieval monk who knew in his soul-bones that the only sure path to rewards in heaven was suffering on earth and he was by God and everything else going to make that torment happen.

And maybe it was because of the cold, or her willingness to endure it, or her having at last given up any idea of giving up... but she saw first a figure that resolved, as it approached, into a woman in a long, dark coat, one that rhymed with long-dark hair. Then Myka’s eyes dropped to behold a trotting, fuzzed blur of canine, and she wanted to bark, bark and bark and bark and bark, but instead she walked, with steps as measured as she could manage, toward them.

As they neared, Myka couldn’t bring herself to look directly at Helena, lest she betray something inappropriate—something Helena might experience as dangerous—so she knelt in front of the dog who was not Leuko, but Monty. She’d been schooling herself, as far as she was able, to ensure that if she ever got the chance again, she would call him by his real name. And she did say then, out loud, “Monty.” She was now grateful for having forgotten her gloves, for being able to warm her hands against and within his coat. He snugged his body up against her bent legs, and Myka was reborn. If this was the extent of the reward she received, as a result of her ritual walks? Not enough... but enough.

From above: “You haven’t called him that before,” said the softer, now-familiar version of the voice that had rung out so loud, so many weeks ago. Myka didn’t know what to say, other than “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry as well” were the next words out of Helena’s mouth.

“For?” Myka asked, still not looking up.

She was terrified that Helena would say, very politely, that she was sorry to report that this was the end, that the walks would really truly be over, that she couldn’t continue to do this pointless, purposeless thing. Because what if hope was, after all, a zero-sum game? Helena had got her Monty back; her hope had been rewarded. Someone else’s hope would then need to be frustrated. Zero-sum.

“Let’s walk,” Helena said.

They did. Slowly, though—even not-Leuko-but-Monty now seemed subdued, in the cold fold of this day. Quietly but insistently, Myka’s fingers began to numb again.

“I haven’t told you what happened with Sam,” Helena said at last. Slow. As if she too were measuring, marking.

“You shouldn’t have to,” Myka said.

“I don’t want to.”

“Then don’t. Let’s just walk. Or I could tell you about leukotrienes. They’re inflammatory communicators, and the most important thing to know is—”

“But I need to.”

“Okay,” Myka said, bracing herself.

“Because these past Saturdays. I’ve been rethinking.”

Would she sound as inscrutable if she didn’t have an English accent? “You have?” Myka asked, but she couldn’t bring herself to add “Rethinking what?”

“You named Monty for a peptide. I found that... moving.”

That didn’t seem like rethinking. “You shouldn’t,” Myka said. “It’s just a peptide. I liked the way it sounded.” She shrugged. “It should have been a pretty peptide.”

Helena tilted her head in a way Myka hadn’t been privileged to observe before. “Are there pretty peptides?”

“That depends on whom you ask,” Myka told her, because it was the truth.

“I suppose the same could be said about what happened.”

“No,” Myka said, involuntarily. Because that could not be the truth.

“If you were to ask him,” Helena said, as cold as the day, “he would most likely say I was insufficiently responsive to his advances.”

“I would rather ask you.”

“I failed to protect Monty from the consequences of my being perceived as insufficiently responsive to his advances.” Still cold. Away from what had happened, but also away from the here and now.

Trying to bring her to now, to give at least a little warmth, Myka said, “If I’d known, I would have stolen him from Sam. And brought him that minute back to you.”

“I know. I genuinely do know.” A thaw, of sorts. “Monty does too.”

Myka looked at not-Leuko-but-Monty. Even on this heavy day, the sight lightened her. The photo of him on her phone, which she had resisted making her home screen but had pulled up a vast number of times, did him insufficient justice. “The only thing I genuinely know is that he’s so pretty. Abigail said it, when she first saw a picture of him, and I know you know, and of course there’s Elizabeth Taylor, but he really is just so pretty.”

They walked, step after cold step along the path. Then: “So are you,” Helena said.

Did she mean it? That was... well, “disconcerting” was too weak a word. “No, no,” Myka strained to clarify, “that’s what I’ve been thinking about you.” That was not what she’d intended to say. Fix it, fix it. “I mean, you and he are more suited.” That was better. “More than he and I ever were. Ever could have been.” Straining to prove that she knew what was real: that not-Leuko-but-Monty did belong, completely, with Helena. And that neither of them should ever have had to suffer the loss of the other.

Helena said, “I’d like to imagine I’m even more suited to Elizabeth Taylor.” It was sweet, even playful, and Myka ached, even as Elizabeth Taylor’s brother turned a “really?” gaze on Helena. “Don’t start,” she told him, then said to Myka, “but you’re changing the subject.”

“Am I?” But of course she was, because what Helena said made no sense. In a new, even more unparseable way than usual, it made no sense.

Helena took pity on her, as far as subject changes went. “I told you I was sorry,” she said.

“What are you sorry for?” Because now, certainly: never and nothing. Myka would not burden Helena. Obligation, trouble—no, no, no.

“For taking time without explanation. It was inconsiderate. But I wanted to make sure I wasn’t confused. About... anything.”

At that, Myka laughed. “Why would you ever apologize for not wanting to be confused? My entire life I’ve been trying to get clarity on just about everything. And of course speaking of not being clear, I thought your dog was mine, which had to be the most—”

But then, astonishingly, she was being kissed, cold lips to cold lips. A touch, a press, a dreamy linger.

Had she known that such a thing would be perfection? Possibly, in her secret heart, but now here it was—outside that secret—in the world and real, soft, pretty; softer and prettier even than Leuko, or Monty, or whatever his name was in her head now, because nothing was making any sense at all, and “I’m sorry,” she now felt she ought to tell him, but it was true, the soft, the pretty, the unprecedented: Helena was kissing her, and she was kissing back, warm against the cold, warm because of the cold, warm never mind the cold, because this was at last what Myka had never imagined understanding as something that could banish forever any cold.

As they broke apart, Myka held her breath—that kiss had unrolled for her the full map of her wants, but how had Helena meant it? Had Myka made a mistake by responding? It might have been an “are you like Sam” test, and if she had failed...

Helena held her eyes closed for a moment, prolonging Myka’s agony. Then she opened her eyes. She smiled and said, “The first night of the Westminster Kennel Club dog show is three days from now. Would you like to watch it with me?”

How many times could Myka be reborn in the space of one walk? “Yes,” she said, immediately.

“I can’t promise you Shelley Winters.”

Was that supposed to have changed her answer? Myka, still in the dazzle of the kiss, said, “I don’t even know what the whatever you called it dog show is.” She suspected she would live from now on the dazzle of that kiss.

“The things you will learn,” Helena said. “Isn’t that right, Monty?”

He was sitting, waiting. And then, with a look back and up at both of them, he pulled strongly against the leash, conveying that whatever their putatively compelling interaction had been, it had caused them to neglect their obligation to attend to him in a correct manner.

The rest of the walk was a joy, during which they did so attend—although, admittedly, Myka did that while shooting different, newly attentive glances in Helena’s direction. And while catching Helena’s eyes darting toward her in what seemed, so miraculously, to be the same way.

“So why exactly are we doing this?” Regina asked, reaching a hand out to brace herself on Zelena’s dashboard, as Zelena leaned her BMW into a hard turn.

“We’re doing this because you, my darling little sister, need to get your shit together,” Zelena said cheerfully.

“Right. And we’re going to Mal’s so that you and she can… what? Give me a stern talking-to?”

“Something like that,” Zelena flapped a hand lazily in reply, and sped up, revving the engine a little.

“Could you slow down?” Regina clutched her seat belt. “And drive with both of your hands on the steering wheel? I hope you don’t drive like this when you have my son in the car.”

“I don’t. Henry likes for me to go much faster than this.” Zelena cackled at the strangled noise coming from Regina. “Oh, relax, sis. You know I treat my nephew like the precious cargo he is. Just sit back, take in the scenery. It’s a beautiful drive, in a lovely car meant to be driven fast, expertly handled by your gorgeous sister. I’ve never once had an accident, and I could drive this route blindfolded,” Zelena trilled.

Regina opened her mouth to retort then snapped it shut as they approached another turn. The winding road that led to their friend Mallory’s beachfront mansion was nerve-wracking enough without Zelena’s fast and loose antics behind the wheel. It was a relief when, after pausing at a gate while Zelena confidently punched in a security code to be let in, they finally pulled up in front of Mal’s newly-built home.

It was the first time that Regina had been there since Mal had moved in. Regina hadn’t really done much of anything since moving back to her hometown after leaving her job in Boston. She’d wanted Henry to experience life at a slower pace and she’d wanted a change in career. Regina scrambled out of the car, happy to have escaped unscathed with life and limbs intact. She shielded her eyes and craned her neck to look at the oversized house, its windows gleaming in raw newness in the sun.

“Lovely, isn’t it?”

“It’s… big,” Regina answered diplomatically. She privately thought that although it was slightly on the gloomy side and ridiculously large, it did suit Mal’s tastes, and the scenery and view were lovely.

“Come on,” Zelena said, linking her arm through Regina’s and leading her up to the door. She rang the bell and Mal answered almost instantly.

“You’re here! Come in, come in!” Mal practically yanked Regina inside the cool and quiet house, pausing to give both her and Zelena quick hugs, and then led them through the porch and spacious hallway into a living room.

Zelena flopped down into a sofa, right at home, and Regina carefully sat down on a vintage chair that looked like it belonged in a museum somewhere.

“Could I get the two of you a drink?”

Regina shook her head. “Too early.”

“Oh, live a little, Regina,” Zelena drawled from the sofa. “And Mal’s Bellinis are to die for.”

“It’s fine, Zelena.” Mal glided over to a sideboard, and opened a hidden mini fridge and came back towards Regina with a glass, a coaster, and a small bottle of sparkling water. She set them unceremoniously on a coffee table in front of Regina and gave her a wink. “I’ll be right back, girls,” she said and disappeared out of the room.

“This?” Zelena pointed at Regina’s bottle. “Is exactly what I’m talking about. Everything is too safe, too routine. It’s time for you loosen up.”

Regina frowned and picked up the bottle, twisting the cap off. “I know you mean well, Zelena, but I don’t see what this is going to accomplish when I’m already well aware of what my life is like and what I’m comfortable doing.” She poured the water out as Mal and a housekeeper reappeared bearing trays, one filled with plates of hors d’oeuvres and small sandwiches and the other with two Bellinis in comically large cocktail glasses.

Mal set her tray down and handed Zelena one of the glasses before taking her own and sitting down next to her on the sofa, looking like she had news to share, as the housekeeper disappeared out of the room. Mal was practically wriggling with excitement, which made Regina wary. She’d learned from experience to know that when Mal was excited over something, it most likely wasn’t going to be anything practical.

“So,” Regina said. “What’s this all about?”

“We have a plan,” Mal burst out, looking especially pleased with herself.

“A plan? Plan for what?”

“A plan to help you get back into dating,” Zelena said brightly, settling herself further among the plush pillows of Mal’s sofa.

Regina was annoyed. “I don’t think that’s really necessary.”

Zelena and Mal exchanged knowing glances. “Oh, yes it is, sis. You’re in dire need of our help.” Zelena took a sip of her cocktail, her tone matter-of-fact.

“First of all,” Regina said, crossing her arms, “Who said I want to start dating again?”

That threw them. Mal looked at Zelena, confused. “But you do.” She paused. “Don’t you?”

Zelena narrowed her eyes at Regina. “What are you playing at?”

“Why don’t you two tell me, since you obviously know what I’m thinking?” Regina tried to remain stern, but the corners of her mouth had a tell-tale twitch that she could feel.

Mal put on an aggrieved look that Regina had come to know so well over the course of their friendship, and with the expression on the other woman’s face Regina knew she was about to be “handled”.

“Look, Regina, we mean no harm.” Mal placed her glass on the table. “But as two of the people who love and know you best, we feel that it’s our duty to –  ”

“To help get you back out there,” Zelena finished Mal’s thought.

“And how do you expect to help me do that? Tinder? Blind dates? Clubbing?” Regina couldn’t help the hint of sarcasm creeping into her voice.  Zelena had a penchant for trying anything, at least once. She’d dated using various means, smartphone apps and dating sites alike, had casual hook-ups from people she’d picked up at whatever club she felt like frequenting, all recounted to Regina with a carefree candor that only Zelena could pull off.

“No, we know none of those are quite your thing.”

“Dating in general is not my thing, Mal.”

“Right, so your dear sister and I have thought up the perfect scenario by which you can meet several eligible men at once – no pressure, no awkward small talk, well, not much anyway, done in such a way that will be fun for all.”

“Fun for all?” Regina raised a skeptical eyebrow. “I'll be the judge of that – once I hear some specifics. And if either of you mentions speed dating, I'm leaving this house and never returning.”

When Zelena and Mal's laughter died down, there was a moment of silence to draw out Regina's dread and her friend's sense of suspense before Mal spoke, sounding very pleased with herself. “I've decided to host a masquerade ball.”

Regina blinked. “A costume party? Really?”

“Not the same thing and you know it,” Zelena retorted. “Just about everyone in town is invited,” she continued.

“I just didn't think it would be right not to invite everyone,” Mal interjected.

Zelena gave her a wry sidelong glance before going on, “Yes. Anyway, every eligible bachelor you’ve met since moving back will be there.”

“Plus a few you haven't,” Mal said with an air of mystery.

“Meaning Zelena's dating app rejects?” Regina smirked.

“That's not exactly how it works,” Zelena began before shaking her head with an exasperated sigh. “But you're not getting me off subject. The ball. You'll attend?”

“No.”

“You must,” Mal said breezily. “Everyone's already been invited and people are expecting you to be there. You wouldn't want to disappoint your potential suitors.”

“My potential suitors,” Regina repeated testily. “Archie, Doc the miner, Whale the doctor...” she said, ticking them off on her fingers.

“There are others,” Zelena said. “The point is to help you relax and at least talk to a few of them.”

“I talk to them every day.”

“I meant in a social setting! We figured everyone being dressed up and the drinks flowing would, you know. Make it a little easier for you.”

“We've gone to a lot of trouble to set this up,” Mal said, shamelessly playing on Regina's sense of guilt.

Regina shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I'm going to feel ridiculous, dressed up like a child on Halloween.”

“Everyone is going to dress up. They won't be allowed in otherwise, I was very clear on that.” There was a pause. “So? Will you be there?”

Regina sighed, resigned. “When?”

                                                            ***

Regina sighed as she followed Henry into Granny’s Diner, who had skipped ahead with the sort of boundless energy only the pre-pubescent possessed. She tutted at his forgotten manners as she pulled open the door. He’d begged to go after she picked him up from school, waving a math test marked with an ‘A’ and a declaration of ‘Good job!’, reasoning that he’d earned a cheeseburger and milkshake for a special treat at Granny’s. Knowing that he had been adjusting, both with the move and with the school subject, Regina had acquiesced and found herself preparing to face the looks from curious patrons and to ingest a potentially unhealthy meal at the place Henry had proclaimed the ‘coolest’ in town.

She pushed the door open and found that Henry had already sat down in the only available booth. Considering the time of day, it was surprisingly busy in the restaurant and she smiled nervously at the few patrons whose gazes she’d caught as she approached. He’d hung his coat on the hook at the end of the bench and she removed her own and folded it neatly beside her and placed it and her handbag down before sliding into the seat opposite a widely grinning Henry.

“You forgot to hold the door like I’ve taught you, Henry. And you needn’t think that you won’t be getting a salad as well, young man.”

“Mom!” Henry’s smile faltered a little and he had the grace to look slightly embarrassed when she raised an eyebrow and pointedly shifted her eyes towards other customers. He lowered his voice slightly and continued, “I’m sorry I forgot the door but I can still get fries with my milkshake and burger, right?”

Regina pretended to think for a moment. “Well, I suppose.” She laughed gently at the slight bounce Henry did in his seat and was just about to ask her son about the rest of his day at school when one of the staff came over with a bright “Hello!”.

Regina thought she recognized her, but didn’t know her name; the handful of times she’d been into the diner, the other woman had been either behind the counter or coming from the area housing the back offices and staff room, and whenever they’d made eye contact the woman would smile warmly in return before getting on with whatever she’d been doing.

She wasn’t dressed in the normal attire for the staff at Granny’s, crisp white shirts with red piping and black skirts or trousers and black aprons. Instead she wore a soft red sweater with a deep V-neck and a pair of tight, skinny black jeans hidden under an apron. Regina took in the red pendant dangling rather lowly from a chain around the woman’s neck and had just moved her gaze to the woman’s somewhat tentatively smiling face, when she heard a throat clear. Regina’s face warmed as she realized that she’d been caught staring, and that Henry and the woman had been waiting for her to say something.

“I – Sorry – I’m – Hi,” Regina finished lamely, smiling back.

“I’m Ruby. I’ll send someone right over after you’ve had a chance order but can I get you something to drink in the meantime?” She handed Regina and Henry each a laminated menu and then turned to Henry with a smile. “I’m guessing a… chocolate milkshake for you, and a sparkling water on the rocks for your mom?”

“How’d you know?” Henry looked surprised and a little awestruck.

“Oh, I like to keep up with what all of my customers like.” Ruby winked at him and Regina both. “I’ll get Ashley to come with your drinks in just a bit while you two look at the menu, but if I was to guess… I’d bet she’d be taking an order for a couple salads–” She paused to smile even wider when Henry made a little noise of protest, “And probably a cheeseburger and fries.”

“Yep!” Henry beamed back.

Ruby gave them both another wink and went to the swinging door leading behind the counter. Regina looked on at her retreating figure thoughtfully for a moment as the woman walked away then turned back to her son.

Henry leaned forward and, much to Regina’s amusement, didn’t bother to keep his voice down. “This place is so cool!”

                                                                ***

 Regina looked at her reflection critically. Not bad, she thought. After being pressured into going to the ball, Regina was reluctant to wear anything dramatic, but Zelena had insisted. Hence, Regina was dressed as a courtesan, in a dramatic purple ball gown with a lot of décolletage. She looked down at the jeweled eye mask in her hand. She may have looked good but she still felt foolish.

Zelena and Mal had meant well, but she wished they would simply let her handle her own private life the way she saw fit. She had been widowed long ago – so long ago, in fact, it almost felt like a lifetime had passed. She was certainly not the same person. She had all but given up on finding someone else, but she had been okay with that, if not expressly overjoyed with the reality of the situation. What was so wrong with that?

She fastened a cloak over her gown and slightly adjusted the wig she wore. If she was going she might as well try to enjoy the night. She smiled at herself in the mirror and let her face drop again into its usual unreadable expression. With a deep breath, she descended the stairs of her home and looked in on Henry and the sitter who had already arrived.

Henry looked over from the old black and white horror movie they were watching to smile at his mom. “You look nice,” he said simply.

“Thank you, sweetheart.” Regina glanced disapprovingly at the television with a raised eyebrow. A wolf/man hybrid was heaving hammy breaths and arching his clawed fingers at the camera. Regina thought the actor should go ahead and fully commit to the role and gnaw at the scenery.

“Laura,” Regina said, addressing the sitter with a reproving note in her voice, “You know I don't like Henry to watch such garbage.”

“It was my idea, Mom. It's just a movie,” Henry said practically. “I'm not scared at all.”

“Just this once. Homework done?”

“Yep!”

“Alright. You can watch this cinematic masterpiece but I expect you to be in bed before I get back.”

“I will, Mom. Have some fun tonight,” Henry said with a smile. “For once.”

Regina sighed in spite of herself. Even her son was getting in on the conspiracy of “fun.” She had plenty of fun. Was it her fault if she was good at keeping herself company and preferred it that way?

With a few more instructions for the babysitter and a big kiss on the cheek which Henry squirmed at but submitted to in silence, instead of the usual protestations that he wasn't a little kid any more, Regina was off.

She took a much more leisurely route to Mal's home than Zelena had, and on the way there she thought about Zelena's words as she'd helped Regina pick out the dress she was wearing. Regina hadn't been in the best mood but Zelena had blithely ignored all of Regina's cutting remarks and simply said it was all for Regina's own good, and that it wasn't possible for Regina to see the situation as clearly as Zelena could. Was that true?

If she was being honest with herself, she did get lonely sometimes. She did want some romance in her life. She missed companionship, and no matter how busy she kept herself, she couldn't ignore that completely. But the men in this town? She wanted to cringe just thinking about dating any of them. Her heart wasn't in it, and she was going into this knowing it would fail. But hey, at least she'd be able to say she tried. She could get Zelena and Mal and their matchmaking over with, at least for a while.

She parked her car and fitted the mask over her eyes with the help of her visor’s mirror before going inside. She got out of the car and took off her cape, and with a grim determination in her step to see this thing through, marched up to Mal's door. Another couple was in front of her that she recognized, and she saw the woman take her date's arm and give it a squeeze as the door was opened. “Isn't this exciting, honey?” Regina heard the woman squeal.

Regina pressed her lips together. If their costumes had left any doubt, that insipid squeal was all too familiar. Regina hung far enough back from David and Mary Margaret Nolan that she wouldn't have to acknowledge them, but followed on closely enough that people may have assumed they were coming in together. She didn't want to appear to be walking in alone, for some reason.

She handed her cloak to a liveried butler and took another glance at herself in the entryway mirror.

Here I go.

Regina had to hand it to Mal – the house looked beautiful, and she had really committed to making this event feel like a masquerade ball. There was a string ensemble playing somewhere out of sight, but the music was filtering into the huge living room. There were long tables with wait staff behind them, serving delicious looking food.

Regina hesitated near the entrance, looking around, recognizing some immediately and others not at all.

She and Mal saw each other at the same time and started towards each other, moving around the periphery of couples dancing. Before she could get there, Regina's progress was impeded by Archie, who was inexplicably wearing his glasses outside of his mask.

“Good evening, fair lady,” he said with a stately bow.

Regina forced a tight smile. “Hello, Archie.”

“Oh, come on! You're not supposed to say my name.” He dropped his voice to an exaggerated whisper. “It ruins the mystery.”

“Sorry,” Regina said, not feeling particularly apologetic. She looked more carefully at his costume. “What are you supposed to be, anyway?”

“You can't tell?” Seeing Regina only look back at him in steady silence he went on. “A cricket.”

“Right, of course. Isn't it a little late in the year for you to be out at night?”

Archie's guffawing laugh drew several pairs of eyes their way. “That's a good one.”

“Well!” Regina said brightly. “I'd better go say hello to our hostess. Excuse me,” she said moving past Archie, who was too good natured to mind being brushed off so quickly.

Regina made a beeline to Mal, who was dressed as Marie Antoinette and was brandishing a huge feathered fan as she spoke to a couple of partygoers. She turned her attention to Regina as she approached.

“Darling! Don't you look beautiful tonight! You've captured the eye of everyone here. I saw you laughing with Archie. I knew this night was just what you needed to get back into the game.”

“If you call exchanging a few words with a man who thinks crickets wear vests getting back into the game, then yes. Mission accomplished. Can I go home now?”

“Nonsense!” Mal scoffed with a smile. “Let's get you some champagne and I'll introduce you to a few people.”

Regina sighed and tried to put a pleasant face on. She accepted the champagne and let Mal lead her around and meet her acquaintances. After a few minutes she was starting to vaguely sort of enjoy herself. Or maybe that was the champagne. She had to admit her friends were right. Something about the atmosphere and having this annoying mask on made it easier. She agreed to dance with the third person who asked because she feared that Mal, who was glancing her way with Archie in the proximity, would send him over to dance with her. Not keen on the idea of having her feet stepped on, Regina let herself be led out onto the dance floor as the music changed. The guy she was with didn't look like he'd draw extra attention to himself, which was the preferable option.

Doing an approximation of a waltz with her partner, one of Zelena's dredged-up singles she hadn't met before, Regina made the appropriate noises to all of his questions, mostly paying attention to the surroundings and trying not to be too bothered by the other couples dancing who looked so very much into their partners.

“Not a bad spread at this deal,” her partner was saying.

“Mm,” Regina hummed, smiling her vague agreement.

“Never been here before. Had to make a promise to a friend to come though. She was apparently desperate to fill this place up with every bachelor from here to Boston under sixty for her sister to hopefully meet someone. She must be a real dog or dysfunctional in some way, if you get what I mean. Going through all this to try to set her up? Red flags.”

Regina's dancing slowed to a near stop, but her partner didn't seem to notice. “I confess I just wanted to spend some time with my friend, you know how it is. I didn't think there'd be lookers like you here.”

“Aren't you the charmer,” Regina said, pulling away from the man and feeling satisfaction as the smirk on his face faded into confusion. Regna fixed him with a cold look and turned to move away.

He grabbed her arm, “Hey, I didn't... Ohh.” Regina looked at him once more and hated the dawning recognition she saw spreading on his face. “I didn't know. Sorry. You're –  ”

Regina snatched her arm away and marched off the dancefloor toward the door where she'd come in. She saw Zelena standing there and stopped. Zelena looked her way and approached with a quizzical look on her face.

“Regina? What's wrong?”

“Your idea of helping me ‘get my shit together,’ as you so elegantly put it, is to make every jackass you know think that I'm desperate?”

“What? No!”

“I've just been dancing with one of your carefully selected suitors, who informed me that you practically begged him to be here tonight. Oh, and then he said that he only came here to get a shot with you.”

“Oh, Regina. I'm sorry someone said that, but I promise, I –  ”

“You know what? This was a bad idea,” Regina said. “I'm going home.”

“I'm just trying to help!” Zelena said, pulling off her mask. “You can't mourn forever, Regina. It's not what Daniel would have wanted for you!”

Zelena's exasperated tone carried to those nearby, who turned to look at the curiously. With a scoffing noise Regina shook her head. “Thanks, sis.” With as much dignity as she could muster, she stalked past Zelena, who knew better than to follow her, and didn't turn back.

To complete the rest of the evening's illusion shattering, she found the liveried doorman on his phone, intensely swiping. Rather than disturb him, Regina found her own cloak and left.

Once outside she ripped off her mask in disgust. How utterly humiliating. Well, that was it. She wasn't going to play good sport and go along with any stupid plans to set her up ever again. Halfway to her car, her steps slowed and she heard Zelena's words echoing in her mind.

You can't mourn forever.

But that wasn't what she was doing. She might not have been actively seeking a relationship, but it didn't mean she was totally against the idea, either. She felt ready, she was sure – but it had to be done in her own way. What was so wrong with that?

With her car in sight, Regina imagined herself arriving home and going to bed, earlier than even Henry. Maybe she actually was as pathetic as her ungallant dance partner thought she was. Well, she wouldn't go straight home. She stood by her car, feeling like a total loser as she realized there wasn't any place in town to go, especially dressed like this. As she stood there, she heard the sound of a couple men who had emerged from the house to smoke and the tell-tale scritch of lighters and matches being used. Making a decision, Regina moved through the semi-darkness, hoping not to be seen by whomever the men were. She headed towards the sound of the ocean as it led her away from the murmuring voices near the house. She pulled her cloak around her and noticed a figure standing on the cliff behind the house, looking out toward the ocean. In the moonlight she could see the figure was in a hooded cloak not unlike her own rented one. She paused, not knowing whether to approach or not, but came closer.

The figure turned and she recognized Ruby, from Granny’s Diner.

“Oh,” Regina said. “Hello.”

“Hey,” Ruby said with a little smile. She turned back to the ocean. Instead of awkwardly turning and walking away, Regina came closer until she was standing next to Ruby. The view was stunning, Regina had to admit. A huge harvest moon hung in the sky, high above the ocean, illuminating the water and hypnotic waves. She was content to simply look as Ruby was doing, without breaking the silence.

“It's beautiful, isn't it?” Ruby said at length.

“Yes, actually.”

Ruby faced Regina. “So what are you doing here? Party too much for you?”

“Something like that. And you?”

“I just wanted some air. Something about the moon... I don't know. I felt kind of drawn to it. Is that strange?”

“Not at all. Given the choice between this view,” Regina said, “And those oafs inside?” Regina took a deep breath of the ocean breeze. “I'll take the moon every time.”

Ruby smiled. “No contest.”

“No contest,” Regina echoed. The two of them laughed lightly.

“I don't know why I bothered to come here,” Ruby said with a hint of sadness to her voice. “All these guys... they treat me like an object. So do a couple of the women, at that.”

“Oh,” Regina said. “You...?”

“Yeah. I thought everyone knew.” There was a silence. “Feeling judgemental?” Ruby asked dryly, raising an eyebrow.

“No,” Regina shrugged. “Everyone can do what they want.”

“So what's your story?”

“I don't follow.”

“Why did you come here?”

“I didn't want to,” Regina said.

“I figured.” When Regina looked at Ruby questioningly, the other woman continued, “I mean... you aren't exactly a woman about town, if you know what I mean. Apart from the few times I’ve seen you at the diner, I almost never see you out after dark.”

Regina studied Ruby's pale face in the moonlight. Her green eyes held a gleam of something Regina couldn't quite place.

“It's not like that,” Regina said, even though it was exactly like that. “I just keep myself busy, I guess. As for why I'm here, my sister and my best friend thought I needed to socialize more, break out of my routine. Seems like a running theme. I don't see why that's anyone else's business but my own, though.”

“I'm sure they mean well.” After a moment of thought Ruby added, “Probably.”

That got Regina to smile. She wasn't the only one with a reputation around town, at least. “This ball was unofficially held in my honor,” Regina said. “They wanted to throw every bachelor in town and out of it at me, hoping one of them would take. It failed miserably of course.”

“Why?”

Regina blinked. “What do you mean, why?”

“Why did it fail miserably? There wasn't one person in there you were interested in?”

“Not really. I don't know why – well except for the man who was a total ass to me – but none of them interested me at all.”

“Well... maybe you're looking in the wrong direction.” Ruby held her gaze for a long moment.

“Meaning?” Regina stared back and found it difficult to breathe as the air shifted around them.

“Like I said the other day, I like to keep up with what all of my customers like.” And then Ruby was closing the distance between their lips. Her kiss was soft, warm, and, Regina found, too brief. She pulled away and looked at Regina.

“So… yeah. I think you know what I'm talking about,” she said.

Regina didn't think about what she did next, she just acted on impulse and pulled Ruby close to her, kissing her with all the pent up, turbulent emotions she'd held within for so long.

When they broke apart, Regina noticed Ruby's green eyes were ablaze with something that she hadn't recognized at first as desire.

“Wow,” Ruby said teasingly. “I had an inkling, after the way you were checking me out –  ” She giggled when Regina started stammering.

“I wasn’t, I didn’t –  ” Regina trailed off, face warm with embarrassment.

“But,” Ruby continued, “I didn't figure on this.”

“Figure on what?”

“On you being so passionate. You've got some hidden depths.”

“Oh,” Regina said, slightly mollified. “You could say that. I guess you were right...”

“About?”

“I was looking in the wrong direction. I didn't know what I wanted... until just now,” Regina said sincerely.

“Give me your phone.”

“What?”

“Just give it to me,” Ruby said.

Regina handed the phone over, too caught off guard to think of a good reason to say no. She watched in silence as Ruby punched some numbers into the phone and handed it back.

“There,” she said. “Now you have my number.”

“You... want to go out with me?”

“That's the general idea, yes.”

Regina tilted her head. “You don't think I'm... too boring for you, or something?”

Ruby laughed, her smile white in the moonlight. “Nobody who kisses like that could possibly be boring. And I’d like to keep uncovering new surprises in you, and get to know you better. A lot better. I'm betting you feel the same way.”

“I do...”

“Well then,” Ruby said smiling wickedly. “I guess this night wasn't a total failure after all.”

                                                              ***

 Driving Ruby home, Regina took the curves in the road with abandon... or at least as much abandon as she could muster. She still wanted to make it home to Henry in one piece, but there was something wild that had been freed inside... sparking to life and burning brighter every time she looked across to the passenger seat where Ruby gazed back, a smile quirking at the edges of her mouth.

Mal and Zelena's plan had worked better than they could have imagined, Regina realized. She felt alive again. And she couldn't wait to see what would happen next.