Page 40

She turns and disappears through the factory door, leaving Laia rooted to the spot with a thousand questions running through her head.

"Good morning." Elvira startles her as she walks in and finds her frozen on the stairs, so far inside her own head that Laia feels for a moment like the same thing that happened to Claudia has happened to her—her mind has drifted somewhere else and she doesn't even know how long she's been standing there.

"Good morning, you're in early," she says, flustered.

"Should I leave then?" Elvira replies with that dry wit of hers that sometimes catches Laia off guard.

"What? No, of course not."

She turns before she can say something else stupid and hurries upstairs to drop off her things and start her rounds. Then she walks the floor beside Irene, who brings her up to speed while she jots things down on her phone, because if she tries to memorize them she knows she'll have forgotten them in under a minute—her head is somewhere else today, split between the night she spent with Marta, which wasn't bad, but which, just as she already knew it would, left her feeling emptier afterward, and the strange conversation she just had with Claudia.

"Can you call maintenance?" Irene asks.

Laia looks at her for a moment before answering, needing a couple of seconds to rewind the conversation in her head.

"Yeah, sorry, I'll handle it—don't worry."

"Great," Irene says, and even though she keeps talking, Laia hears her from a distance because they're passing the sewing section and Claudia is there, sitting in front of one of the machines, headphones on, a garment in her hands that she holds while her eyes are fixed on the thread spool.

She's somewhere else again, and Laia wonders whether that's normal.

They don't run into each other again that day. Since it's Wednesday, Laia doesn't need to follow her around, so she kills some time at her desk to avoid crossing paths with her on the way out.

And the rest of the week stays like that—strange. When they see each other they say hello as if nothing happened, and even though that's technically right because there's no reason for anything to have changed between them, something has changed. They talk as little as possible, look at each other too much, and both look away when they catch the other one noticing.

Ten days pass that way. Claudia goes out every Tuesday and Thursday without fail—she drinks, she talks to Pol, she sleeps with Nadia—while Laia stays in her usual corner at the bar with her eyes on her drink, but Claudia doesn't enjoy any of it anymore. She's permanently irritable, her natural ease gone and replaced by a sharp expression that radiates so much hostility that women barely approach her.

Deep down she knows where her bad mood is coming from and why she can't enjoy herself, and the reason is as simple as this: she's too focused on Laia. Her eyes drift to that corner every few minutes, waiting for Marta or some other woman to show up—she loses track of conversations with Pol, and her time with Nadia is over so fast that she's barely caught her breath before she's heading back out to the main room, afraid of not finding her there when she comes out.

"Have you had some kind of falling-out with Laia?" Nadia asks, making Claudia spin around and pull her gaze from the other girl to lock onto her lover's eyes.

They're at the bar, having a drink the way they sometimes do before disappearing through one of the doors.

"No, why do you ask?"

Nadia gives a smug little smile that irritates Claudia, because it's the equivalent of telling her she knows she's lying.

"You've been acting really off for a few days now—you're here but you're not here. It's like your body is with me or with Pol, but your head is with her. And don't tell me that's not true, because you've been craning your neck toward that corner all night."

Claudia frowns, not sure what to say.

"Have you slept with her?"

Nadia is always direct as a bullet, but this one catches Claudia off guard.

"Of course not—where is that coming from?"

"If you could see it from the outside, I promise it would seem like a very logical question," Nadia says with a calm that sometimes makes Claudia want to scream. "For the past few weeks you two have been giving off this kind of electric charge that seems to overwhelm both of you—you can't stop looking at her, and she can't bring herself to look at you when I'm with you. I don't know, if one of you ever pounced on the other like an animal, I wouldn't be surprised in the least."

"Are you serious?" she asks, stunned, trying not to let on that her heart has climbed straight into her throat.

"Completely. Are you going to deny she attracts you?"

The question fills Claudia's mind with noise, like a swarm of bees taking over every corner of it. Does Laia attract her? Her lungs compress and the air drains out of her, leaving her breathless. She's attractive, no question, and there's something about her that makes Claudia feel very comfortable when she's around her—except for these last ten days, where everything has been so strange—but saying she's attracted to her feels like too much.

"I'll ask you a different way, since I can see I'm giving you a mental breakdown," Nadia continues. "If you had the chance, would you sleep with her?"

Claudia turns her head toward the corner, where Laia sits on a barstool with her phone in her hand, glancing up only occasionally before lowering her eyes again when she confirms that Claudia is still there.