I. don't panic
Clare sits in the psychiatry section in the University of Toronto's Medical School library. She needed two buses and about four months to get here, but better late than never. Maybe.
Jake is amazingly uncomplicated. He has never driven her to this, a quest for further understanding. And still she's here, with journals and textbooks at her lap, words and phrases catching her eye: frequently undiagnosed, anger, social stigma, suicidal ideation, mortality.
She is shaking by the end, sick, full of information and regret. Yesterday Eli made things right with her. How could she ever do the same for him?
—
II. dead and gone
Adam is in the surgical stepdown unit, broken but neatly stitched back together. He's drifting in and out of consciousness (and thank you, Fentanyl), but that doesn't deter Clare, who is curled into his (untouched, unmarred) side, crying softly.
"Clare," Adam says, voice laced with sleep and sarcasm, "the nurses just changed those bandages."
From the uncomfortable hospital chair to their left, Eli snorts, and Clare can't help but laugh. She looks up, and notes that he's watching her with affection, familiar and warm. Her heart (literally) stops.
(She has never been able to put herself back together, not really.)
—
III. nowhere to run
At sixteen, Clare, like most teenagers, believes that she's entitled to at least a little melodrama when her life is seemingly spiraling so far out of her control that she can't even stop to breathe before something else goes to shit. She thought she could at least find comfort in safety, but she hadn't counted on him making out with her best friend.
And this is now: the woods are deep and cold, but Eli's leather jacket is around her shoulders and his hand is at her back. She exhales; she'd forgotten that this is where she'd always felt safest.
—
IV. underneath it all
The magazine quiz is an exercise in self-sabotage, the final nail in the Cake coffin. "It's over," she tells Adam later. Beautiful, understanding, wonderful Adam, the only person in the world who loves her.
"Maybe it isn't such a bad thing," he replies. "You haven't been single in forever. And you're always saying that you don't know who you are anymore. Spend time getting to know yourself again."
Clare grips her teacup so hard it almost crumbles underneath her fingers. "Why should I bother?" She knows it's defeatist, but she can't help it. "I doubt I'll like what I find."
—
V. not ready to make nice
She listens to angry music and writes letters that she'll never send. The one to Eli is eighteen pages long, and the backspace button groans every time she erases I miss you(six hundred and twelve at current count.)
You burned yourself into my skin, and now I'm marked, irrevocably changed, picking at the scar you left behind. It's a constant reminder of the apologies that I owe you, the ones I'm not brave enough to actually deliver. I am selfish and wrong, and I don't have the right to miss you, but I do anyway.
(Six hundred and thirteen.)
—
VI. need you now
There is a growing list of things that Clare is forcing herself to reluctantly accept: her brother, this Jakenna abomination (as dubbed by Adam), and being terribly lonely pretty much all of the time, but nothing is harder to acknowledge than Eli and Imogen practically making out in the memorial garden. She stops and starts again about a hundred times before forcing herself to move forward, one foot in front of the other, until she collapses in a heap in a bathroom stall.
Everyone is growing and changing and leaving her behind, and it's no one's fault but her own.
—
VII. smash into you
As Clare is turning the corner to Adam's locker, she realizes that someone's already beaten her there. "Where have you been, Torres?"
It's unfair that Eli's voice can still trigger in her a physiologic response; her heart is in her throat, her breath is short, and she can feel her fingers tingling. She pastes herself against the wall.
"Clare was helping me with stuff."
Eli's tone is unreadable. "I suppose it would have been totally unreasonable to have us both help you with stuff."
The next response is the hardest to acknowledge: this flutter of hope building in her chest.
—
VIII. hollaback girl
Clare stares at her computer screen, willing her article about the holiday food drive to suddenly transform into something interesting. It doesn't. Anyone could have penned this piece, a memory whispers, and, disgusted with herself for multiple reasons, she closes the article and pulls up Facerange instead.
The truth is - If you never try, you'll never know.
Now the voice in her head belongs to the face staring back at her. Wonderful. She slams the laptop shut and drops onto her bed, curls flattening against the pillow. Why was she always reaching for something that was never there at all?
—
IX. in the cold, cold night (I)
He looks at her from across the room and she knows (or maybe she's always known) who she really is. Underneath it all, despite everything, she is the Clare Edwards that fell in love with Eli Goldsworthy.
It frightens her to the core.
She's so frozen with fear that she almost doesn't hear him ask, "If that's alright with you?" His voice is shaking, but she can't hear his nerves over her own heartbeat. No, this isn't okay, but she says that it is, and they're both smiling somehow –
(and there's that hope again, threatening to burst from her ribcage).
—
X. in the cold, cold night (II)
Clare dreams of crisp winter air, laced fingers, and being loved. In what capacity she isn't sure, but she finds that it hardly matters. She can't remember much else except for the peace within her, how happy she feels, and the snow falling between them as his lips brush her ear. His words are so muffled that she has to ask him to repeat himself, but then when he does, they are exquisitely clear.
"I was just waiting," he says, "for you to fight for me."
For the first time in a very long time, Clare Edwards wakes up smiling.
—
Notes: An attempt to bridge the (silent) months between an adamant denial about rekindling a relationship and being all in.