Chapter Text
It was Tuesday when Helen finally gathered herself out of an empty bed and into a scalding-hot shower with every intention to finally return to the coffee shop. She didn’t want to consider her true motivations for going to return this coat, and so instead she mentally declared it as an act of kindness for an intriguing stranger. The guilt that sat thick and cloying at the pit of her stomach was nothing more than nervousness, and this is how she lied to herself. Evelyn was an intimidating woman, after all, it was not much of a stretch.
Her ride on the train with the tweed coat laid across her lap was an anxious one, her mind whirring with fantasies that ended in both joy and disaster. Her fingers brushed back and forth across the material of the garment absently as her thoughts swirled, and the underlying scent of perfume that came from the cloth had become so familiar that it was hardly even distracting anymore.
The rushing sound of the train on the tracks buzzed in her ears, sending subtle vibrations throughout her body. Her car was both full and not, enough bodies to take up most seats, but not enough to crowd. The track went around a bend, and she looked out above the empty seat across from her to watch the bright city move rapidly past the thick window.
Helen was slowly realizing that she romanticized Evelyn in a dangerous way, seeing their lives play out like every fantasy and desire she had ever projected onto a perfect outsider, a blank page to rewrite everything she had ever found wrong in Bob.
She tried once more not to think about how many things there were, and for how long she had secretly been holding on to them with cold, bitter hands.
The day before had been lovely enough, sure, spent cuddled in each other’s arms and catching up on shows that they had binged together long before he got too busy and tired to stay up with her as of late. She had been kind enough not to continue without him, but she realized that she had willingly gone almost a year without watching several of her favorite shows because Bob couldn’t— or wouldn’t— set aside time to watch them with her anymore.
She tried not to think too much about that, either.
She had made them lunch and dinner, and that was a welcomed change of pace, but when they laid down to go to bed, things got a bit dicey. Helen had been burrowed beneath the comforter with her face nuzzled into her memory-foam pillow when Bob’s hand started to wander. He began with caressing her ass, and she wanted to want him so badly it broke her heart.
Because then his lips were on her neck, and his hand was between her legs. His fingers were too thick to be the ones she found herself trying to think of instead, the ones dexterous enough to build a microchip for artificial intelligence, and the guilt hit her so acutely that she pulled away for the night.
This left Bob going to sleep agitated and with his back to her, and Helen staying up until three in the morning staring at the ceiling. She had wished that a hole in the floor would open up as big as the one in her chest and swallow her.
But she didn’t want to think about yesterday anymore.
The train was pulling up to her stop, and she gathered the coat that still smelled so much like Evelyn it was practically like walking beside her, and got off onto the platform with thoughts that still raced a million miles a minute.
The frigid walk down the street toward the building in which she used to work was slower than usual. She could imagine that it was because this time she was not doing a frantic half-walk half-jog toward the entrance as she usually did. She supposed that the only upside of no longer working at the yoga studio was no longer having to stress out over the haphazard travel time on public transportation. She rarely ended up actually being late, but she had felt that she was rushing more often than not.
This time, though, she got to walk at a normal pace toward the tall, holiday decorated doors while burrowed into the fluffy, cream scarf around her neck.
Evelyn’s coat was clutched tightly to her body as she made her way inside the warmth of the building. Helen went directly to the family owned coffee shop as she had been anticipating doing for days. With a deep breath, and with her free hand unzipping her own coat to adjust to the warmer temperature, she entered through with a newly added chime following her push of the door. No one looked up at her entrance, the music was loud enough that it wasn’t disrupted, and no one had any reason to be looking for her in the first place.
But then her eyes landed on that long wooden table, and her heart swelled until it blocked her next breath from travelling down her airway. Evelyn sat there, a white suede coat hung over the back of her seat, and those magnifying goggles over her eyes just as they had always been. Tiny sets of tools were at her disposal, and one was in between dexterous fingers working ever so carefully at the device in front of her as if nothing at all had changed.
Helen stood there gaping for far too long before realizing that she was being weird . Evelyn was just a stranger, one with whom she had some bizarre fascination, but a stranger nonetheless. She slowly walked forward until she was standing beside the other woman’s chair and waited to gain her attention, but it didn’t come. She was far too focused on the task in front of her. Instead, Helen chewed her bottom lip between her teeth and tapped on the other woman’s shoulder twice before retracting her digits and pulling them back up to join her other hand in holding the tweed coat.
Covered eyes looked up immediately, and the only hint at an expression on Evelyn’s face was the parting of her full lips. Her eyes were hidden behind the glasses at first, but then she put her tool down and reached up to remove them so that cold blue eyes could stare, lidded and intrigued, up at her. A bemused smile tugged at the corners of her lips as her brows scrunched a bit.
“Oh… hey,” she said politely. Her eyes dropped down to look at the coat tucked up in Helen’s arms, and her parted lips widened until they were in a shocked ‘O.’
“Well, I’ll be damned. You had it.”
Helen felt her face warm as she realized she hadn’t prepared exactly what she was going to say. The last thing that she needed was for this woman to think she had stolen her jacket on purpose— though the reason why she would bring it back if that were the case was one she had yet to take into consideration.
“You ran out last time I saw you and left it on the chair… I tried to take it out to you, but you and the guy you were with were already gone,” she explained sheepishly.
Evelyn rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, leaning back in her seat dangerously far until the front two legs were off of the ground. She rocked back and forth that way for the rest of the time that she spoke.
“Winston,” she growled under her breath, “Sorry he interrupted us, I appreciated the cheesecake. Though, what I had meant to tell you,” Evelyn chuckled a bit to herself with some strange mixture of embarrassment and amusement at what Helen assumed to be what she was going to say next, “was that I might’ve… lied a bit about what I had been staring at before.”
The way that she said it, with her eyes flicking up to dig deeply into Helen’s, that wry smile on her pretty lips, head turned to the side to face her, but also forward to give the illusion of undivided attention—
Helen swallowed and opened her mouth to respond, but quickly realized she had nothing to respond with. No words were available to rise from her throat and spill from her lips with half of the allure or confidence that radiated off of Evelyn like she bathed in it. And with nothing to say to match the way that Evelyn made her heart thud and the pit of her stomach ache, she said nothing at all.
Evelyn continued to stare her down as she reached forward and held her hand out for Helen to return her coat. After a brief moment of fogginess, she did so, laying the tweed material over the other woman’s pale hand, and not knowing what to do with her own once they were empty.
A large part of her wanted to be running her fingers through the floppy, chestnut colored, short tresses upon Evelyn’s head, but if she didn’t put a cap on those thoughts immediately, she had no idea what she was liable to say. The last thing that she needed was to sabotage this moment that could make or break whatever future relationship they could have together— as friends, she meant.
Half of Helen wanted her to cut this short, to get out of the cafe and out from in front of Evelyn’s gaze before she did something, or said something, she would regret. The other half of her wanted to sit down at this table claimed by such a brilliant engineer, and ask all of the questions that had been bogging down her brain since they first met.
“What were you looking at?” Helen asked finally, her words hardly a whisper and possibly only audible at all because the music playing softly in the background was in the middle of transitioning into another song, and it was briefly quiet enough to allow for that pocket of silence.
Evelyn tilted her head to the side and down a bit, one eyebrow raising in disbelief while her hands held her steady on the edge of the tabletop.
“Uh,” she laughed a bit, “you? Didn’t peg you for the oblivious type, but I guess we all have our flaws.”
The grin on her face as she said the last part took the sting out of her words, and Helen wanted to touch the back of her hands to her cheeks to see if they were truly as hot as she thought they were.
It was too hard not to feel scandalous when staring into the flirtatious eyes of a stranger whom she had just fantasized about instead of being present beneath the hands of her fiance the night before.
“I didn’t want to assume.”
“Don’t worry about it... ” Evelyn tilted her head up, suggesting suddenly, “sit with me.”
Helen’s hands felt clammy at her sides, and she paused for a long moment before beginning to shrug her coat off and take the seat across from the woman whose eyes followed her every movement with a patient calmness that made her stomach twist.
“What’s your name again?”
“H-” Her voice got stuck in her throat with anticipation, something stifling and damp, “Helen.”
She watched Evelyn’s lips pull back into an intrigued grin, those full lips painted a red so deep it was nearly purple. They somehow added to the uniqueness of her face, all ninety-degree angles and a jawline that Helen ached to prick her fingers on. Her brows were thin, but not too thin, quirked in a way that made Helen feel scrutinized, but in the way that an art piece would in front of a potential buyer.
“A lit torch— the bright one,” Evelyn murmured speculatively to herself, “Pretty.”
Helen sat stiff-backed in her seat, hands folded atop the table like she was sitting down for a job interview. Her coat was slung over the back of her chair, and she watched as Evelyn gently sat her tweed one across the seat beside herself.
“Thank you,” Helen said, a bit of surprise at the compliment in her tone. “No one’s ever known the meaning of my name before. I never even think twice about it.”
Evelyn slipped her goggles back down over her face and picked up the tiny tool she has been using before once again, going back to work on the minuscule device while continuing the conversation as well.
“One of my favorite stories as a child was The Legend of Helen of Troy,” Evelyn didn’t glance up, but she was surely smiling as she continued. “Don’t ask why a seven year old was that deep into Greek mythology— the answer is exactly as nerdy as you’d expect.”
Helen found herself laughing, and some of the tightness in her limbs loosened up, her shoulders dropping from where they had been tensed around her neck. She watched Evelyn move her hands with confidence and speed, prompting her to finally ask:
“So why do you work here in public? I’m sure there are better places to focus on your…” her hands gestured vaguely as she tried to guess exactly what it was Evelyn was working on. She recalled hearing someone mention an AI, but didn’t want to misname it in front of the genius herself and end up embarrassed.
“Implantable Artificial Intelligence chip,” Evelyn murmured distractedly as her face scrunched in particular concentration on a certain part, “and I work here because my brother keeps kicking me out of my lab to take care of myself by getting lunch, or whatever—“ Evelyn paused for a second to look up at Helen through her magnification glasses, “that’s why he stormed in here the last time I saw you. He caught me just doing more work instead of taking time off.”
Suddenly, the interaction with the strange man made complete sense upon hearing that, and the relief that flooded through Helen now that she knew that the man was Evelyn’s brother was also one to ponder at a different time.
“I’m surprised he trusted you not to come back here after last time,” Helen murmured eventually.
Evelyn snorted, “Yeah, like he has any idea where I am. Not that he’s not smart enough to check the same place twice, but he’s a busy guy. I doubt he’ll be coming back soon.”
Helen hummed for lack of anything else to say and found her gaze wandering down to her hands clenched together atop the table. She chewed at the inside of her lower lip as she wracked her brain for anything to continue the conversation, but came up horrifyingly short. Before she could panic though, Evelyn was speaking once more.
“Hungry?”
Helen’s eyes shot back up, brows reaching toward her hairline at the question, “Well,” she started, remembering that she hadn’t actually eaten anything yet, “sure. A bit.”
At her confirmation, Evelyn pushed the glasses off of her face all together and set them carefully upon the table top, “What are you in the mood for?”
“...Huh?” Helen asked, dumbfounded and taking the question a different place than it had been intended.
“You’re hungry, what do you want?”
Helen grasped at nothing for a long moment, her brain trying to rationalize the idea that this enigma of a woman was offering to buy her lunch when she had no reason to at all. The random act of generosity, or maybe if the flicker behind her gaze meant anything, flirtation, had taken her so far off guard that she froze.
“...How ‘bout a sandwich?” Evelyn offered eventually, her words hesitant as she seemed to be worrying over Helen’s blank stare.
“Y-Yeah, sure. Thank you,” Helen finally got out, clenching and unclenching her hands on the table top a few times before flattening them down to the wood entirely.
“Any particular kind?”
“Surprise me,” Helen nodded once, pleased with having found her voice. She watched as Evelyn dug into her purse atop the table for her wallet and gripped the leather item in her right hand, the pinky and index fingers decorated with two thin, silver rings around each.
She didn’t want to think about Evelyn’s fingers because of how much she knew that she wanted to think about Evelyn’s fingers.
“Watch my stuff,” the other woman threw behind her shoulder as she sauntered off, and then she was standing in line beside the counter and Helen was trying not to stare too intently.
She was guilty, and of what? Her thoughts? She couldn’t control those as much as she wanted to, and Bob didn’t need to know about this strange phase of fantasy she was indulging in with this woman. As if he had never fantasized about other women— she told herself this to feel better, but at least she knew that about him already as a fact.
When Evelyn returned, she was moving a bit more quickly than before, and dropped the pristinely wrapped sandwich down in front of Helen before hurriedly moving to pack all of her numerous objects up from the table.
“Wha— where are you going?” Helen asked.
“Winston just sent me a text, he needs me back at the office,” Evelyn rolled her eyes, “Some investors are coming by and they’d like to speak with both of us instead of just him. Sorry about this,” she said as she shoved all of her things into several cloth bags and threw her arms into her white suede coat before piling the bags up to her shoulders.
“Investors? Where do you work?”
“DevTech, sorry, hi, I’m Evelyn Deavor,” she paused in all of her frantic motions and held her hand out for Helen to shake.
Helen took it slowly, blinking twice and opening and closing her mouth several more times.
Evelyn Deavor , that name sounded far too familiar. She would look into it later.
“Nice to meet you too… good luck with your investors!” She called out, as Evelyn was already retreating, toting all of her bags and her tweed coat as soon as she retracted her hand.
“Thanks, Helen of Troy,” Evelyn called back without turning around, one partially free hand shooting to the sky to wave once above her head as she went.
Helen looked down at her sandwich and unwrapped the foil.
It was one of her favorites, minus the tomatoes.