She had remarkably specific rules, Claire thought. 'Found anybody yet?'
'Not yet, but I know what to do. I go to the places that those kind of men show up, like the upscale food stores, and the opera, and I wait for one to notice me and talk to me. I've gotten loads of conversations. Sooner or later one of them will date me.'
That was ... well, Claire didn't have any other word for it. Bizarre. 'Don't you want to, I don't know, meet somebody and fall in love because you're just ... right for each other?'
Liz shrugged. 'Don't really care about that,' she said. 'Romance is for idiots. I'm done with all that stuff.'
'Liz-' Claire didn't know how else to put it. 'What the hell happened to you? Because you're just not ... not the same.'
Elizabeth gave her a long, bitter look. 'You don't want to know,' she said. Claire remembered the flash of fear in Liz's eyes at the airport, and wondered even more. 'I'm just telling you, your boyfriend? He may pretend to be Prince Charming, but he'll show his true colours. They all do.' She stepped into her room and took hold of the door. 'Let me know when you're unpacked, we'll make some dinner.'
Then she shut the door, and Claire was left standing on the stairs, feeling very alone. Elizabeth had changed, all right - far more than Claire herself had, even with all the pressures of Morganville. She was trying so hard to be adult that she was going to break something - probably herself, Claire thought.
But Liz was right ... she did need to unpack. Though when she went back upstairs, and surveyed the depressing blue room again, the first thing she wanted to do was take her suitcases and run, run away, run back to ...
... To Shane.
Claire took out her phone and scrolled the address book. All the familiar, aching names. I can call him, she thought. I can call right now.
Instead, she put down the phone, took a deep, slow breath, and threw the first suitcase open on the low, creaking bed.
Maybe putting things in drawers and in the narrow closet would make her feel less ... lost.
An hour later, though, the suitcases were empty, and the drawers were full of underwear and T-shirts and clothes, what needed to be on hangers successfully on the closet rod, and her battered assortment of shoes neatly arranged ... and she put the small number of personal things she'd brought with her around the room. She hadn't bothered with posters, but she had framed photos of Shane, and an album of photos of Michael and Eve and Myrnin and Amelie and everybody else she knew in Morganville who'd stand still for it, or even those who wouldn't, like Oliver, taken on the stealth. A record of what she'd left behind, the good and the bad. Even Myrnin's pet Bob the Spider had his own close-up. He was surprisingly kind of cute.
And Claire still felt lost and alone. Having the familiar around only made all this seem more alien.
She kept arranging things until she realised it was verging on obsessive, and finally hooked up her computer, logged on to the house Wi-Fi (at least that was decent) and found e-mails had exploded like popcorn in the microwave of her inbox. One was from her dad, telling her to call to confirm she was safe in her new place. Ditto from Michael, and from Eve, and even an awkward, formal note from Myrnin that boiled down to the same thing (she was surprised he'd actually figured out how to manage it on his own). It was all really sweet, but she couldn't stand to talk to them right now; the despair of having made the decision loomed all over her, and she knew she'd break down and cry if she heard a familiar voice. So she sent out e-mails instead.
It was all she could do not to beg them to come get her and take her back home.
No, I won't do that. I didn't quit, she reminded herself. I didn't quit when I got to Morganville, and people were actually trying to kill me. I'm not going to quit now, just because I don't like my room and my housemate's kind of nuts.
It suddenly struck her that there was no message from Shane. Not one.
A lump formed hard in her throat, and she involuntarily looked up at the closest picture she'd placed of him. It was her favourite. She'd caught him relaxed, laughing, and the warmth in his face always made her feel safe and happy.
But what if that light was gone? What if she never saw it in him again - if he'd forget about her while she was gone, or everything changed between them? It'll be your fault, something in her said. Because you walked away.
Claire reached for her phone and ran her finger lightly over the screen. So easy to call him. It only took a couple of motions, and then the phone would ring, and ...
... And what if he didn't pick up?
Claire dropped her phone and rested her burning forehead against her palms, and just as she was ready to crawl into her crappy, sagging bed and cry, her computer let out a little musical tone to tell her a new message had come in.
She grabbed the mouse and frantically clicked, and a video came up. It was murky at first, and then a light clicked on, and she saw Shane's face gilded by it. He was in his room, she saw ... it was just as messy as ever, and the sight of it, and him, made her throat close up with frantic longing.
'Hey,' Shane's image said. It wasn't Skype, not real time, just a recording, so she controlled the almost crazy impulse to talk back to him, blurt out how much she missed him, loved him, needed him. She couldn't stop herself from touching the screen, and tracing the lines of his lips with her fingers. 'So, I guess you're there, at your new place. Hope it's awesome. If it's not, you'll make it awesome, because that's what you do. It's your superpower. Also, this is for Claire, so if I hit somebody else in the list by mistake, stop watching now or I'll have to kill you.'
That made her laugh, and he must have known it would, because he smiled just a little. It made the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkle slightly. 'So anyway,' he said, 'Claire, if you're seeing this, and you're not so pissed at me you just delete the whole thing without watching ... I miss you. I miss you so bad it hurts. I keep walking around the house and wishing you were here, and that I could - that I could figure out how to fix the screwed-up stuff I did. Until I can do that, though, I guess what I'm saying is that I miss you. That's all. So if you're lonely there, not out partying and meeting fancy Boston guys, maybe we can be lonely together.'
He'd been avoiding the camera, but now he made eye contact with it, and she felt like he was staring right into her. And that smile ... it broke her heart.
'Love you,' he said, and logged off, as if he was afraid to be caught at it.
It made her eyes fill up with tears, and she sat for a few more minutes, starting it over, replaying it, watching his lips say the words.
We can be lonely together.
She was reaching for her phone when Elizabeth - without knocking - threw open her bedroom door with such force it knocked over one of her empty suitcases. 'Hey!' she said brightly. The dark mood she'd been in was already gone, and looking at her brilliant smile, Claire wondered if she'd imagined some of it. 'Ready for some delicious home-made dinner?' Liz asked. 'Because I'm totally starved.' She put her hands on her hips and looked around the room, then looked around again. 'Um ... did you unpack?'
'Yes.'
'Wow. I really need to show you how to decorate, don't I?'
Not if this paint colour is any clue, Claire thought, but she kept it to herself. She'd quietly get a can of something neutral and redo things to the way she wanted them - no confrontation, no drama, no fuss. 'So, what's for dinner?'
'How about mac and cheese with some chicken? It's leftover KFC, but it's still good, I swear.'
It did sound good. Claire hadn't even realised she was hungry until her stomach started growling, and she slid out of the chair behind her computer and stuck her phone in her pocket on the way out the door.
Dinner wouldn't take that long.
... Except, it did. Elizabeth was hell to cook with; she wanted everything done just right. Claire stuck the macaroni in boiling water, and Liz got upset and took it off the burner because she wanted to check the temperature of the water first. Claire asked why, and that brought on an insane volume of information about cooking pasta at just the right temperatures, and the physics and chemistry of food, and honestly, even as much of a physics junkie as Claire was, she couldn't really apply it to box pasta with reconstituted cheese substance that sold for a buck a box. She just backed off and let Liz conduct all her temperature observations, mix the sauce, and generally obsess about getting the chicken chunks just the right size to go into the pasta once it was done. All this took about an hour, which was about half an hour more than Claire wanted to spend on mac and cheese, even if Liz added something she said were Chinese herbs and white truffle oil. In the end, it tasted pretty much like she expected, but by then Claire was willing to eat the box, too.