"Can we talk?" The woman in the green dress didn't wait for an answer; she simply sat down in the seat next to Christine and put her hand on Christine's knee with the kind of familiarity that usually left people pulling back a stump. (Well, a metaphorical stump. Christine was only five foot two and had biceps like pipe cleaners, but she never let that stop her from losing her temper around the kind of people who saw short blonde girls with blue eyes and curly hair and thought they could get handsy. She called it her 'terrier stance'.)
"I'm sorry I'm late," the woman continued, as though her presence at the restaurant where Christine had decided to eat breakfast was some sort of pre-arranged appointment. "I thought that downtown would be pretty quiet on a Sunday morning, but traffic was a beast. I hope you haven't been too bored by the wait?"
Christine stared down at the woman's elegantly manicured hand, still resting on Christine's knee as though she was reassuring a nervous puppy. She looked up at the woman's face, almost the exact opposite of Christine's--chiseled features instead of rounded curves, deep brown eyes instead of sparkling blue, long raven-dark waves of glossy hair compared to Christine's short, frizzy curls. Even their heights were different--they were both sitting, but Christine still had to look up almost a full foot to meet the stranger's gaze. (And over a goddamn shelf of boobs--another way they were distinctly different.) The woman was striking, impeccable, unrepentantly beautiful... and Christine had never met her before in her entire life.
"I haven't been waiting for anything," she said, letting the naked bewilderment show in her voice. "I think you've got the wrong person." She glanced down at the hand on her knee, allowing her confusion to shade into contempt as she added, "Very much the wrong person."
But the woman in green only chuckled. "That's good to hear," she said, as though replying to an entirely different conversation that happened in her head. "I'll be honest, Trevor thought that you might have had a little trouble with some of the suggestions--he said you were a little bit tricky to put under when he first met you last night. But I could tell you just needed to be shown that first step. After that, you'd follow the path wherever it led."
"I... what?" Christine raised her eyebrows incredulously, her fingers itching to swat the woman's hand away like an annoying mosquito. "What, I... what? What are you even talking about? I don't know you, I don't know any Trevor, I didn't meet anyone last night, and I just came to my normal restaurant like I do every morning to get breakfast like I do every morning. I'm not waiting for anybody, or anything. Especially. Not. You."
Infuriatingly, the woman in green just gave her knee a condescending little pat before returning her hand to its perch. "That is just so perfect!" she said. "Oh, I could tell you were going to work out well, but I never thought that..." She gestured down at the table. "Tell me, Christine. What do you see in front of you right now?"
Christine tore her eyes away from the hand on her knee with great difficulty--the bitch was actually sliding it up a couple of inches like she thought Christine wouldn't even notice--to look at the table. "Nothing," she said. "I mean, a cup of coffee, a couple of syrup stains, and a used napkin, but nothing important. Why? What does it matter?"
The woman in green's fingernails brushed the inside of Christine's leg, just above her knee. "You don't see a plate, do you?" she asked, her voice teasing Christine with the insinuation of some secret that only she knew. "You ordered breakfast, didn't you?"
Christine furrowed her brow in annoyance, picking up the implications of the other woman's words and not liking them one little bit. "I, I already finished eating," she said, unable to avoid sounding defensive. "I was just doing a little people watching before I went home. It's a Sunday morning, I don't have anywhere I need to be, what's wrong with that?" She felt her hackles raising, her entire body tensing as if preparing for a fight. It wasn't just the woman's attitude--Christine felt like she absolutely had to refute the unspoken accusation for some reason.
The woman's giggle made it even worse. "Oh my gosh!" she said, putting her free hand to her lips as if to stifle a laugh so loud it would make the entire restaurant stare. "You don't remember being told to meet me here, you've spent the last hour just staring vacantly out the window, and Trevor still thought you might not be suitable? Oh, darling! That is just..." She squeezed Christine's leg, as though mere words couldn't convey the affectionate amusement she felt at Christine's actions.
