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If there was one thing Shay hated, it was being unsure of herself. She could take pain, illness, heartbreak, as long as she knew where she stood. Not knowing was a bitch. Not knowing yourself, that was… that was what would kill you.

Shay knew why she was with Cosima, why anyone would be with Cosima. She was a genius, she was beautiful, she was adorable. You could get high with her and have her explain frog biology to you and kiss her… you could really kiss her. But there’d been someone else for a while now. Shay had noticed it and tried not to notice it and it had still been there.

Cosima was sick, but that wasn’t the problem. Shay could take care of her, wanted to take care of her. It was herself she didn’t trust. The little ways she weeded Cosima’s sickness into her arguments. If someone cut her off in traffic, she tried to be charitable, think about her own driving mishaps—then yeah, her brain went, but are any of them dating a dying girl?

Are any of them as good as you, as caring as you, as amazing as you, as perfect as you? Religion wasn’t the opiate of the masses; thinking you were a good person was. So was she being a good person, doing right by Cosima, or was she really just in love with this sainthood of herself? The more time she spent with Cosima, the more she loved her—or the more she loved who she could think of herself as being?

So when Shay saw Cosima in her kitchen at three AM, lit only by the cigarette she was smoking, she latched onto her happiness to see her. She would be caring and supportive because that was the right thing to do. She wouldn’t let thoughts of her own generosity, her own supremacy, taint what she was doing.

The only joy she would take was in how much Cosima loved her.