As much as she tossed and turned, Clarke just couldn't seem to make herself comfortable. For a week she tried to get reacquainted with an actual mattress, running water and the dull noise of her ceiling fan rather than the hum of mosquitos. She had gone to bed hours ago but her mind just wouldn't shut up. Finally, she decided to cut her losses. Rest would be pointless anyway. She swung her feet over the edge of the bed and reached for the pair of jeans she had worn she the past three days to complement her favorite pair of underwear and oversized t shirt that had once belonged to Bellamy, but had since been forgotten after he had left it at her place.
Turning on lights as she went, Clarke headed for the kitchen down the hall of her small and rather poorly laid out apartment. Before Clarke really knew what she was doing, she started pulling her hair up into a lazy knot, then found a bowl, measuring cup and some vegetable oil. Next, she grabbed some eggs and a box of cupcake mix. She mindlessly preheated the oven to the specified temperature and mixed the required ingredients together. She spooned the mix into the cupcake tray. The instructions required the cupcakes to bake for twenty minutes, so after putting them in to oven, Clarke sat on the counter and watched the numbers on the timer. She admired their consistency. Time, she thought, is a very funny thing. Everyone counted on time. Numbers never skipped or doubled or stopped. Time only sucks when you run out of it.
The timer beeped, startling her. The sound rang in her ears, seeming louder in the dead of night. Clarke carefully removed the steaming tray from the oven, setting it aside on the stove while she dug for a can of frosting in the pantry. She left the cupcakes to cool for a few minutes and then began to slowly and charitably frost them.
Her seventh cupcake, however, either hadn't been allowed to cool long enough or was not cooked all the way through, because it fell from her hand and landed on the floor in a gooey mess. All she could do was stare. The cupcake was disposable, she knew, and did not matter in the grand scheme of things, but that didn't stop the flow of tears that began to stream their way down her pale and tired face. She sank to the floor, crossed her legs, and sobbed into her hands. And suddenly, she wasn't crying because of a ruined cupcake, but for everything that came before it, for everything that led to her tears hitting the linoleum at 2:37 in the morning. She was crying for the friends she once had and the lover she lost. She cried for her selfishness and for her compassion and her big mouth. She cried because she was sorry and because she couldn't turn back time.
Time is such a bitch.