Page 25

Chapter 10

When Laia walks into the parking garage, she has to squint to make sure she's seeing right, and when she confirms that she is—that Claudia's Mercedes is actually there—she checks the time on her car's clock to confirm she's not running late herself, and sure enough, she isn't: it's twenty minutes before eight in the morning, which is her start time and also the start time of Elvira's niece.

Laia almost always arrives at this same time, and not once in all this while has she pulled in to find Claudia's silver car already in the lot. It surprises her, but no more than anything else that's happened this week, because it's already Thursday, and not only has Claudia been on time every single day, she didn't go out Tuesday night—what she'll do today remains to be seen.

When the shift ended that day, Laia walked out to the parking garage and found her there, standing beside her car with her arms held slightly away from her body, opening and closing her hands with her mind somewhere else, the way it often goes with her. Laia's car was quite a few spots away, but she decided to walk over, because whenever she sees Claudia like that, something uneasy stirs in her chest.

Claudia had her gaze fixed on some point out toward the sea, her mind working like a pair of scales. On one side, she was thinking about that night—going home, showering, changing, and heading out after a quick dinner. She'd go to Nadia's place with Pol and probably end the night sleeping with the club owner or some other woman. On the other side was the next morning. If she stayed in, she'd wake up clear-headed, no hangover, and that would let her get to work on time and show up for Remei, where she'd already put in two days during which she'd barely noticed the hours passing because time flew when she was in the pattern-making section.

The decision seemed straightforward, but her mind resisted, because one part of her knew exactly what she wanted, and the other part kept sabotaging it—unable to understand how she, a person who hated the life she had and knew she didn't want to continue in the family business, could be looking forward to walking back through those doors the next morning and picking up where she'd left off with Remei and the patterns.

Claudia doesn't know exactly how old she was the day she finally worked up the nerve to walk into the office her mother keeps at home and tell her she wanted to study fashion design. Her mother didn't even look up. She kept reviewing the documents on her desk and answered as though Claudia was interrupting her.

"That's not your future. Your place is in our offices, learning the business so you can carry on honoring this family's name. Who's going to run things when I retire if you're off somewhere making little drawings? Get it together, Claudia—you're old enough to be mature about this and know what's good for you. Any girl your age would kill for the privileges you have."

Any girl but me, she thought, but she didn't say a word. She stood still in front of the family's head, and it was the first time it happened to her—that drifting sensation, as if she'd floated out of her own body—and her mother was paying so little attention that she didn't even notice her daughter's eyes had gone unfocused for nearly four minutes.

It still happens to her, ever since. By the time she managed to come back to herself, her mother was still absorbed in her own things, so Claudia walked out of the office and accepted that she had a fixed destiny, that her parents had expected something of her since the day she was born, and that that was what she had to do.

"Claudia." Laia's voice startles her, and she spins around with her heart in her throat. "Were you thinking about where you're going tonight?" she says, keeping it light so the moment doesn't turn awkward, because Laia always catches that flicker of embarrassment in Claudia's eyes whenever she finds her like this.

"Actually, no. I'm not going out," she answers, and Laia's eyebrows shoot up so high they nearly leave her face.

"Seriously?"

Claudia frowns and then shrugs.

"Yeah. I don't feel like it."

Laia's mouth opens and lets something out before she can stop it.

"You don't want to see your friend—the one you left with the other night?"

It comes out all at once, and the moment she hears the words outside her own head she wants to swallow them back down, because she knows perfectly well it sounds like a reproach—worse, like jealousy—and she has absolutely no right to feel any of that. But she does feel it. She's very jealous of Nadia, of whatever that woman has with Elvira's niece.

Claudia's amber eyes blink, and a smile crosses her face as she lets out a slow breath through her nose. Laia braces herself mentally for a sharp comeback that she no doubt deserves, because she's overstepping, but Claudia is gracious even about that, and Laia adores her and resents her for it in equal measure.

"No, I'm tired. I just want to shower and go to bed early."

Laia blinks, and her heart does a couple of quick leaps in her chest in response to the relief that washes over her when she learns Claudia has no desire to see her lover. She feels pathetic for it, but she can't help it.

"You can save yourself the drive to Barcelona—I promise I'm not going anywhere," says the most elegant woman Laia has ever known, unlocking her car to close out the conversation.

Laia nods without opening her mouth, because she isn't sure what she's supposed to say, and then she just stands there, rooted to the spot, watching Claudia start the engine and pull out of the lot until her taillights disappear as she turns left.

She snaps back to herself and hurries to her own car, because as much as she wants to—and she does, badly—she can't take Claudia at her word, so she drives to Barcelona, parks near Claudia's building, and when eleven o'clock comes around, Laia heads back toward Mataró with a stupid grin on her face, because Claudia hadn't lied. She usually leaves between ten and ten-thirty at night, and she hadn't. On top of that, the apartment Laia believes is hers—because so many nights standing out there have to count for something, and she'd been quietly working out which one the light goes off in just before Claudia comes through the door—had been dark since ten. What Elvira's assistant doesn't know is that Claudia isn't asleep. She's in her bedroom—which faces the other side of the building—sitting on her bed with her iPad propped on her bent knees, sketching a pantsuit.

Laia doesn't have absolute certainty that that's her apartment, but the idea that she isn't wrong helps her decide to leave, and she concludes she made the right call the next morning when she gets to work and Claudia shows up on time to take her place, face clear, not a trace of dark circles or a bad mood.

And now she's here again, early, and Laia has to look at her car twice to make sure she isn't dreaming. She parks beside it and stays in her seat for a few seconds, looking at the Mercedes the way she would a placebo—something that lets her think that at least here she has a part of Claudia she can look at without fear of being caught. She finally cuts the engine, grabs her bag, and walks into the factory. She goes up the stairs to the top floor, drops her things in the office, and comes back down to make her rounds through the factory before getting to work. She greets Irene as soon as she steps onto the floor, and the supervisor brings her up to speed on what she found when she arrived—a quick summary to let her know everything is under control and there haven't been any issues.

She walks down the aisles through all the sections, and when she reaches the pattern-making section, a sudden flutter rises from her stomach to her chest, then drops and sinks lower, past her belly. Claudia is on the other side of the glass, hair pulled up in a high ponytail, neck bare, shirt sleeves rolled up to her elbows.

Claudia leans over the table beside Remei, focused, talking and pointing out spots on a pattern they have spread out between them while Remei listens with her arms crossed, nodding at everything she says. Laia has never seen Claudia like this. She knows that wherever you put her, she commits and does it as well as she can, even when she has no interest in it whatsoever—but not here. Here there's no trace of the woman who drifts away from the world, or the one who shows up late because the night before had no end for her. Claudia doesn't look lost. She looks like the opposite. She gestures a lot when she talks, and she seems so caught up in what she's doing that it's as if nothing else can reach her.

Laia pushes the door open without being able to hide her smile and stops in the doorway.

"Good morning."