Daya unlocked the door, sending the key a mental order to scrape quieter. Let the bag on the floor by the door with barely a sound. Tip-toed into the kitchen.

A fresh pot of the pale-green liquid was waiting for her on the counter. She grabbed the cup out of the cabinet and lifted the teapot to pour the lifesaving substance. "Oh, Mike, thank you... But you did not have to get up early, this is your day off."

A soft grumbling came from the couch in the living room. The red frizzle of untamed hair crested the cushion, but the TV was off.

She thought that the lack of sleep could be creating an extra stressor, stagnating the weight-loss, but... it sounded too stressful to tell him. Also, she was too beat to care if Mike lost a single ounce of fat ever again. Maybe his karma was to be an oasis in the sea of anxiety.

So, she poured herself a cup and scooted over to ruffle his hair. It was too familiar a gesture, but he must have just had a shower and the mop was an irresistible mess. If he would flinch, she'd apologize and would never do it again.

He did not flinch; he rolled his head back to smile at her. His eyes had a soulful cast to them. 

"What are you up to, Mike?" she asked and glanced down at the laptop screen. A couple of flow charts occupied most of the space. Circles with bows, crossed swords, explosions etc on a sliding ruler. In the far right corner, shuffled to the side, a folder spilled out a few pdfs with undigestible names.

"A new game?" she asked, leaning against the back of the couch. Her hip was sore, and her head pounded.

"The same one. I am just trying to build a different skill rotation for the Undertaker battle. I don't want to drop the difficulty down."

"Uh-huh," Daya said. "The boss would be so effing disappointed if you kill him on hard vs. nightmare."

"Devastated. So far he was handing me my behind in canape-sized pieces. But I figured out how to beat him. My new electricity-focused build should do the trick." He clicked a button, adding points to a thundercloud with a bolt of lightning, then closed the folder. "How was your practice?"

"I have all the doubles as stable as could be, but I've tried a triple T, and the jam hit the fan. Only landed it one in ten, and it was under-rotated, though Joy thinks it would pass. The coach says I'm rushing, but I need a triple, if I want to advance into sectionals in the spring."

"Uh-huh." An uncomfortable silence inserted itself between them. She thought Mike would forgive her for holding out on him about her sneaking out to skate before, but he acted distant since her confession. Purposely distant. Like right now, when she sat next to him, and he shifted a cushion between them. And he didn't want her to know he was browsing his abandoned thesis materials. 

She wished she at least was sure that she had ruined everything, but the expression that flickered behind his glasses before that cushion fell like a barricade... That expression made her just as pointedly dislodge the cushion and put it on her lap. Hey, the tea in her mug was too hot to handle, she needed it...

"Maybe the coach is right?" Mike offered, staring straight ahead.

She sipped the tea. "Maybe. But I had a vivid reminder why I quit. I'm bruised, my head is pounding, and I suck."

"You don't suck!" Mike dipped his head after raising his voice, sighed, then repeated in a normal tone.  "You don't suck."

And he still avoided looking directly at her. Would it kill him to meet her eyes?

"If I keep saying that I do, I'll sound needy." She massaged her temples. "If I say that I don't, I won't get the external validation I want. Sometimes I wish you could come and see me practice. It's foolish, I know. My sister watched me all the time, and I miss it, but you're not my brother. And my brother used to hate my skating, so... okay, I'm not sure where I'm going with it."

"I had seen you practice," Mike said. "From the viewing window on the second level. Your sister is made of sturdier stuff than I'm. Your falls make me nauseous."

"I didn't know, but thank you." There must have been occasions in her life when she felt stupider for whining, but she couldn't think of a single one. Simultaneously, her head vibrated with joy — Mike was there... and it hurt too. "I'm sorry for bugging you when you are playing. Winter must be getting to me. And the stupid Chinook wind. It makes me moody, teasing me with spring that wouldn't come... and the headaches."

"Carol told me the same. She had mentioned a place she likes to go when she needs a break from winter. Do you... do you want me to take you? If you have time?"

"Yes!" She pressed her hand to her mouth, embarrassed by her own eagerness. Her and Mike going somewhere together, like a date. 

She cleared her throat. "I have nothing scheduled till the afternoon. As long as the Undertaker doesn't mind?"

"I'll let him live another day."

That smile he gave her before climbing from his cushioned fortress... Was it tentative? Hopeful? Surprised?

Part of her loathed his intractable nature, wanted to shake him for a simple True or False answer. Is this a date? Do you like me? Like like me? 

The rest of her didn't want to ruin things. She was no longer fifteen, dying to get kissed, getting kissed, then dying to shake off the disappointment.

Then again, she kissed him. And maybe she was dying to get kissed. Just a little bit...

Okay, a lot.

***

Mike took SantaFe to the Deerfoot Trail, driving toward downtown, the same route they took to the medical center on the day they had met. Mid-morning, the traffic was less desperate. As a passenger, Daya got to enjoy the freeway speed and the unfolding cityscape on the high river bank.

The Bow River threaded its way below the road shoulder. Pedestrian pathways zigzagged the river terrace, with a couple of joggers and plenty of dog-walkers taking advantage of the warmer day. The trails converged at the suburban houses crowning the bluff. Next to the frantic road, it looked particularly peaceful.

Mike turned off the Deerfoot Trail, but before Daya could ask him if they were going downtown, they took another turn. In a couple more minutes, they drove past a gorilla made of bronze metal stripes, making the destination obvious.

She giggled. "Mike, are you taking me to the Zoo? I am a big girl." Maybe if she wanted to emphasize being a grown-up, giggling was not the way to go. But she could not help it. The giggling gods pumped her lungs full of the laughing gas.

"Stay your judgment, Daya. There is a method to my madness." Ponderous as it sounded, a smile nested at the corners of his lips.

The parking lot, big enough to handle weekend inundations, stood almost empty. A school group in winter hats with pompoms, cat's ears and baby-animal eyes was disappearing down the tunnel leading to the Zoo. The kids were holding hands, but they jostled in all directions.

Daya reached out to find his hand. "Let's set a good example."

"Always." He wrapped her hand in his, and walked her briskly through the tunnel with color-changing light fixtures and carved animals, past the statue of a gigantic penguin by the Penguin House, and over the Bow River bridge.

During the journey, she didn't ask him a single question. The gusts of warm wind made talking difficult, and maybe a little weekday mystery was what she needed. Besides, he held her hand, and she was dying to get kissed like a schoolgirl. And to get kissed, you needed a long enough lull in a conversation.

Finally, he brought her inside a glass-domed building. "This is it, Carol's secret retreat, the indoor gardens in the Zoo. In the summer, they have butterflies in the smaller one."

"I wish they had butterflies." Daya sighed wistfully. "They're so pretty."

"Let's pretend that they are invisible." He flicked his fingers in front of her face like an amateur magician about to extract a coin from a toddler's nose.

She silently pointed at the plastic stripes used to keep the winged creatures inside the room. They were all pinned up. 

He shrugged in a well-I've-tried way. 

She clung to his arm again. "Let's go in."

Inside, the butterfly abode assaulted her with the profusion of color.

The glass ceiling and walls admitted bright prairie sunlight. A decorative pond, perhaps seven or so meters in length and five in width, sat in the middle of the Butterfly Garden, circled by a tiled border one could perch on. Mirrored benches, overhung by small tropical trees, waited patiently for those who wished to contemplate the outlandish lotuses and papyrus in peace.

All along the walls, more tropical fare packed the flower beds. Vines climbed the walls to the ceiling. The bougainvillea was in magenta bloom, anemic compared to the warmer, sunnier lands, but it was bright enough for February in Calgary.

But what made Daya grin, was that the spaces between the tropical plants were filled with pink azaleas, tulips, and kalanchoe. And big hearts, plastic and made of the coils of lights. "They decorated the room for the Valentines!"

Mike coughed. "The feast of St. Valentine commemorates an obscure bishop martyred in Rome in the 3rd century. It has nothing to do with romantic love."

Just like you? Then why did you offer to fall in love with me by Christmas? That deadline had passed.

She waved him away and went to peek inside the pond. It had purple water lilies next to the plants that brought to mind the pharaohs.

"This is so cheesy, Mike. It reminds me of the primary school, when our teachers made us sign the Valentines for the entire class. Shanti always had to write the names of the kids I did not want to give the cards to. Then, I had to do exactly the same thing for Nihal. So silly... Did they make you do that too in your school?"

"Yes." Mike stuffed his hands into his pockets. "And I signed all the cards diligently."

She reached out, meaning to cup his face in her hands. "Oh, you were so good, Mike."

His cheeks flashed scarlet momentarily under her fingertips. He shook his head. "I didn't do it out of the goodness of my heart. I did it because I had guessed that it was an empty gesture."

The warm building with thick floral scent made her giddy. Her soul craved light, silly words to flutter around if she couldn't have the butterflies.

"Mike Wilson!" Slipping her hands down his jaw, she caught the collar of his jacket, stepped in closer, opened her eyes dramatically wide like a flirt of the bygone days. "What of your speeches, how love is a force of good in a person's life? All lies, damn lies?"

"Those are not mutually exclusive beliefs, Daya Dhawan."

Her hands felt trapped where they rested, with him standing motionless. If only he gave her a signal, any signal, she would forget about Toronto, about Pavel, about everything but him. But he just looked into her face through his glasses, and... nothing. She couldn't even feel him breathing. No butterflies.

She released her grip on him, but stayed her ground right in front of him. "And when you were no longer under the obligations to express your friendship to thirty random kids? Did you do your Valentines?" 

His head tilted toward her, still maddeningly too far for kissing. "In some years, yes. The others, no. In retrospect, I've enjoyed the years when I didn't more than the years when I did. Valentine Day felt like it had as much to do with love as it had with martyrdom."

He didn't ask her, but he was looking at her expectantly.

The memories felt too distant to matter, but she confessed. "I thought I would marry my high school sweetheart like Shanti. But it was Shanti who said, give it a year... He went to McGill University. And that was the end of that. Nothing really stuck after that."

Her flirty mood dissipated as suddenly as it engulfed her. She realized that she was standing in a glass bubble with greenhouse flowers, in a company of a man who sometimes felt like the closest person to her, and at other times—like a faraway stranger.

He would not make the move, and her own were clumsy. If this was choreo sequence, they'd be stumbling at the opposite sides of the rink, their backs turned to one another. Sweeping and bold, that's what she needed.

"Mike!"

But there was no going back after sweeping and bold. What if she read him wrong, projecting her own foolish feelings on a friendly fellow? If she kissed  him again, Valentines' kisses didn't have the same fallback excuses as the New Year's. 

"I... I like it here." She looked around with far more attention than the topiary deserved. "It makes winter in Calgary tolerable."

"Tolerable, yes..." Mike mumbled, also studying the plants. "Tolerable..."

Maybe he was picking a replacement for the poinsettia that lost all its red leaves a few days ago. Daya wouldn't be surprised to find a pink kalanchoe on the empty plant stand by the window tomorrow.

He cleared his throat and stuck his hands deeper into his pockets. "The second garden is bigger. Do you want to stretch your legs?"

"Yes." She was ready to leave the butterfly room without the butterflies.

All the invisible ones swarmed her chest. There, trapped, they desperately beat their wings. What's happening? the wings asked. What's happening? What's happening to us?

Nothing.

I don't know.