“So what?” said Jess. “And he isn’t.” He wasn’t. Clara folded her arms and met her stare. Jess said, “Why are things only okay when they happen to you?”
Clara started speaking, “Jess—”
She cut her off. “You knew I liked Clayton. You could have anyone you wanted, and you could have left him alone—”
“He was literally over here all the time.”
“Andyou made him like you.”
“I didn’t make him do anything,” said Clara.
“You didn’t have to,” said Jess. “That’s the thing.” She flopped back onto the bed. “You should have told me.”
“Told you?”
“That he had feelings for you. That he’d told you he did.”
“He told youthat?” asked Clara.
“Somebody had to.”
“And that made you want tosleep with him?”
“Well, no,” said Jess. “I slept with him anyway.”
“But, why?” asked Clara.
“Because I wanted something to happen,” Jess sputtered. Surely it wasn’t so hard to understand. She took a breath. “This whole year has felt like waiting.”
“The whole year?” Clara sounded sad.
“Well, not entirely,” said Jess. “Not the parts that were you.” Was Clara jealous? Was this even possible? “But those parts can’t be everything,” she continued. “You know that. Youshowed methat.” She tried to imagine how she’d feel in Clara’s place and didn’t have to reach very far.
After a while, Clara said, very slowly, “I could be happy for you. I could. If Clayton was what you wanted. If you’ve really thought it through.”
“But I haven’t thought anything through.” For all Jess knew, Clayton thought he’d gone to bed with Clara. “It might just be a one-off thing.” It might be a disaster.
“How did you leave it?” Clara asked.
“We didn’t. He was asleep.” Clara said nothing, so Jess continued, “I guess we’ll see.”
“ButClayton? Really?” Clara said, but there was warmth in her tone now. “He didn’t sleep through everything, right?” Jess started to answer, but Clara put her hand up. “Nope,” she said. “Actually, I really don’t want to know anything at all.” She got up to turn the overhead light out, returning the room to the desk lamp’s soft glow.
Jess wiggled around to lie the right way on the bed, to place her head on the pillow now, staring up at the ceiling as Clara lay down beside her and nudged her head against her shoulder. “I want good things for you,” Clara said. “That’s all. The things I want for you are better than ordinary.”
“But I’m going to be living with you,” said Jess. “So I think better than ordinary is all locked up.” She paused, thenadded, “If that’s really going to happen, I mean.” She was kidding, but not entirely.
Clara got up again. “I’ve got to wash this stuff off my face,” she said, waiting for Jess to come along, to wash off her own makeup, brush her teeth, but Jess was too exhausted to move.That night she would fall asleep in her clothes, waking in the morning with that delicious kind of ache and regret that affirms that, while your life might be ridiculous, at least you’re actually alive.
THE APARTMENT
2001–2002
Clara spent the summer after her third year at university assisting in the excavation of a 400,000-year-old firepit in the south of England, analyzing the soil to determine its sediments and that the pit had been a hearth and not a less deliberate burn. No, none of it had been an accident: for hundreds of thousands of years, people had been settling down in spaces with fire at the centre.
And unlike so much of what Clara was learning at school, this wasn’t merely theory, as evidenced by the apartment she’d shared with Jess for the last two years, a tiny place up a narrow flight of stairs above a Chinese herb shop, where there wasn’t an actual hearth—the closest thing was an old electric oven where only two of the stove elements functioned, and the oven handle kept falling off. But their kitchen always felt warm, with the window facing south so the light was usually golden.
Clara loved that kitchen, even with the oven’s faults, and the family of mice that lived under the fridge. It was the first kitchen she’d ever had that was properly hers, a basil plant on the windowsill, spice jars lined up along the counter. Jessdidn’t cook enough to be territorial and was happy enough to sit at the oak table, a relic from Clara’s parents’ basement, eating whatever was being served. Just being there pleased all the senses: candlelight, the warmth, the flavours, and the conversations that continued long past the time the candles had dripped down to nothing.
