"You cooked last night."
"Pasta doesn't count."
"Since when?"
"Since I'm offering to make eggs and you're arguing about it." He nudged her with his elbow. "Sit down. Let me cook."
Clara sat at the kitchen table—the one he'd fixed the wobbly leg on during his first week—and watched him with an expression he couldn't quite read. Amused, maybe. Or something softer than amusement that she was trying to disguise as amusement.
Jack cracked eggs into a bowl, added salt—too much, Clara would say, she always said—and whisked.
"You over-salt everything," Clara said on cue.
"And you under-salt everything. We balance eachother out."
The words landed in the kitchen and sat there, heavier than he'd intended. We balance each other out. Like they were a unit. A pair. The kind of thing that had a future tense.
Jack focused on the eggs.
"So," Clara said, wrapping both hands around her mug. "Last night."
"Last night," he agreed, keeping his voice light. "And this morning."
"And this morning." A pause. "Are we going to be weird about it?"
"Define weird."
"Awkward. Stilted. Pretending it didn't happen and then being painfully polite about everything like two strangers sharing a hostel room."
Jack turned from the stove, spatula in hand. "Is that what you think I'm going to do?"
"I don't know what you're going to do. That's kind of the thing." Clara's voice was careful, but her eyes were direct. "I'm not asking for a blood oath, Jack. I just want to know if you're here. Like, actually here. Not already halfway out the door in your head."
The honesty of it hit him square in the chest.
Because the old Jack—the Jack from two weeks ago, before the lighthouse, before the tower, before Clara—would already be calculating his exit. Packing the mental bag. Framing the goodbye in his head so it would sound kind when he delivered it.
But right now, standing in her kitchen with a spatula and eggs that were about to burn, Jack couldn't find the exit. Not because it wasn't there, but because he didn't want to look for it.
"I'm here," he said. "Actually here."
Clara studied him for a long moment. Whatever she found must have been enough, because the tension in her shoulders eased and she nodded.
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay." She took a sip of coffee. "Your eggs are burning."
"Shit—" He spun back to the stove, rescuing the scramble just before it crossed from golden to tragic. He divided it between two plates—over-salted, obviously—and brought them to the table.
They ate breakfast in the kind of easy silence that used to make Jack nervous. Silence meant intimacy. Intimacy meant attachment. Attachment meantloss. That had been the equation for seven years, as reliable as gravity.
But this silence just felt like morning. Like coffee and eggs and sunlight on stone walls and a woman across the table who'd stopped pretending she didn't want him there.
Clara ate her eggs without complaining about the salt. Jack noticed and didn't comment, but something warm spread through his chest at the small concession.
After breakfast, Clara retreated to her drafting table and Jack washed the dishes—another routine that had established itself without discussion. She drew. He cleaned. She played music from her phone—some indie folk playlist that had become the soundtrack to their mornings without either of them choosing it.
