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Cataclysm
Disclaimer: Disclaimed.
Chapter Nine
The rising sun broke through the blinds easily, painting golden lines along walls and furniture. Clare sat at the kitchen table, hugging her knees to her chest as she traced the paths of light with disinterested eyes. She paused on the floor near the doorway where the sun got tangled in a mess of glass splinters, fragmenting tenfold, ricocheting out into the room and blinding Clare with its white gleam. She turned her head, letting it rest against the tops of her knees.
After three nights alone, she'd given up trying to sleep in their bed.
She knew she was sabotaging herself. She needed to clear her mind, distract herself. Her thoughts were all racing down different paths to the same fatal destination - an inevitable and debilitating train wreck of emotions. She'd been planted in this spot, or a contiguous variation of it, for days. She gripped her cell phone tightly, glancing at the screen repeatedly. Its consistent inactivity felt mocking, and a surge of tears overwhelmed her each time it flashed with a call regarding her failure to show up for work, instead of a return to the many messages she'd left Jake.
Her muscles were drained of strength and her eyes were sore with lack of sleep. Her head felt heavy, her fingers constantly wringing through unwashed hair to support the weight her neck couldn't withstand. She'd cried herself raw, the skin around her swollen eyes beginning to feel papery and delicate as though the constant torrent of tears had burned through the top layers like acid. Her hands were spotted with blood that had transferred from her knees, the latter splayed with tiny cuts from when they'd given out and she'd fallen onto hundreds of tiny pieces of glass. The relentless flux of emotions had drained her entirely, to the point where she could barely even breathe without conscious effort. Even when she did, it made her lungs sting.
Everything hurt, but she knew that she deserved each second of pain that she suffered.
She was a horrible person, and this was karmic justice.
His precedence over Julia's memory was almost impossible to face. To go through each day and know that the person who consumed the majority of her thoughts was someone who should have lacked relevance entirely was unbearable. Ridden with guilt, she couldn't even use sleep as an escape from the disturbing prison of her mind. It made her want to vomit to think that he could even cross her mind at a time when she should be so wholeheartedly concerned with her failing relationship and the boyfriend who had deserted it.
She had been so stupid, risking everything like that. Letting him into her apartment, her world, her life. He'd always been able to render her defenses useless and ten years apart had not bolstered her ability to bear up against him in the slightest. He'd reduced her head to a battle-ground where she was at war with her own thoughts, infinitely antagonizing herself.
The sudden chirp that her phone let out startled her, and it took a second for her to slow her heart. She tried not to be hopeful, but her desperation could not be suppressed. She blinked a few times quickly before reading the screen.
New Message from Jake.
Clare felt a rush of oxygen in her lungs, as though her body had been waiting for this very moment to let her breathe. Tears flooded in her eyes, excited and overwhelmed. With shaking fingers, she opened the message.
At Katie's, trying to work things out.
Once more, Clare couldn't catch her breath.
When Eli answered the quiet but insistent knocking at his door, he did so with a pen in his hand and a carton of cigarettes burning a hole in his pocket. He'd felt frantic for days, pulling out notebooks so he wouldn't pull out his hair, attempting to channel his frenzied thoughts. He felt erratic and irritable. He'd snapped at Imogen for hovering over him, and again for being so distant. He spent his time pacing between his bed and his desk, chain-smoking cigarettes in front of the building and closing his eyes to the sound of aggravated heavy metal on full volume. When he'd opened the door, he'd done so with the intention of barking out a dismissal at his visitor, but it took him a split second to switch tracks.
She was wearing the same clothes Eli had found her in days ago, the knees of her jeans now shredding and flecked with dark red. The dark blue beneath her eyes made them seem even paler and less lively than they were on their own, and the only other colour on her face came from splotches of red around her eyelashes and on her nose. The rest of her skin was ashen and papery looking, as though she'd aged years since he last saw her.
He felt his heart drop and his fingers went numb, but when he thought of Imogen meditating in the living room, and his angrily crumpled papers all over the floor, he shut the door behind him without a word and stepped into the hallway. She stepped back to allow him the room.
His eyes searched her face for some kind of explanation - there was a reason she was here, and their recent history with face to face interaction left him less-than-confident that he could make a correct assumption. She looked up at him, her face failing to reveal her intentions, though any expression she might make would be masked behind the tendrils of messy curls blocking most of her face. Instinctively, Eli reached out and used a single fingertip to push them aside. Sighing, he pulled his hand back and reached into his pocket.
"Come on," he muttered, holding up the package of cigarettes. The muscles in Clare's face contracted slightly to show her contemplating his offer, but it was hard to miss the small nod that came afterwards.
When they left the dark hallway of their building and stepped into the lot outside, they both immediately shielded their eyes from cruel rays of sunlight, finding their eyes from every angle as it reflected off the snow. Clare wrapped her arms around her waist, quick to lower herself onto the steps in an effort to wrap herself up in her own body. She brought her knees close to her chest and leaned forward, rubbing her hands up and down her shins. Eli sat down next to her, less affected by the drop in temperature, and held out his box of cigarettes again. Clare hesitated, but took one delicately. Eli followed suit in a much less graceful but far more experienced manner, letting the smoke hang from his lips loosely as he dug into his pocket for a lighter. He lit his own expertly, and then held out the flame to Clare.
She rolled the white stick between her fingers for a few seconds before putting it into her mouth and letting Eli light it for her. Slowly, she inhaled the thick smoke, glad that she was able to hold back a cough.
"I never thought I'd see the day," Eli muttered, smiling as he blew out a stream of creamy gray. Clare laughed, inspecting the glowing amber tip of her cigarette as she held it in front of her.
"I always hear people say, 'I need a cigarette, I need a smoke.' This seemed like one of those times."
"Ominous." Clare snorted at Eli's unaffected response. They sat on the steps for a minute, smoking their cigarettes in slow silence.
"I'm sorry for scratching your car," Clare suddenly said. Eli raised an eyebrow at her.
"There aren't any scratches on my car..." Clare's face contorted in confusion.
"At all? I kick the stupid thing as hard as I can every time I see it. Admittedly, it's hard to see a black car in the dark but I'm almost positive that-" She was cut off by his laughter.
"Clare, my car is silver." Her mouth formed a small 'o' at this information, her face heating up in embarrassment at her glaring mistake. She watched Eli's eyes crinkle with laughter and his mouth was wide with the sound of his amusement at her horror, and soon she was gripping her own sides tightly, the pain almost unbearable from laughing so vigorously. Minutes later, as the sound of their joy subsided and a solemn atmosphere descended on them once more, the silence seemed much more tangible than it had to begin with.
"Jake is at his ex-wife's house," Clare let out casually, taking another drag of her cigarette. She stared up at the sun as she let it out.
"I take it that's not normal," Eli answered, leading her to elaborate. Clare shook her head.
"They were separated for two years, divorced for months now. He hasn't seen her since the split was official. Not that I know of, anyway." Eli nodded, furrowing his eyebrows as he shook the ashes off the end of his smoke.
"So, why is he there now?"
"According to him," Clare began bitterly, "They're 'trying to work things out.'" Clare fixed her gaze on the parking lot in front of her.
"Why?" Eli finally asked after a full pause. Clare turned her head to the side, finally allowing herself to look at him properly.
"Because I'm an idiot," she whispered, her voice lost and tangled in smoke. Her tone confused Eli, the defeat in her words tired and unopposed. "Because after way too many years, I'm still in love with you." A sudden gust of wind blew by, and Eli's skin ran cold and the hair on the back of his neck stood up. He felt a chill down his spine and nearly shivered.
"No, you're not, you-"
"Eli," Clare insisted, her voice determined and intimidating, tones of annoyance seeping through. "Don't. It's hard enough to live inside my own head, constantly fighting my own thoughts, without you making me question them too." Eli forced himself to meet her eyes, the flash of vulnerability in them making him feel weak.
"Clare," he whispered. He couldn't keep the sadness from his voice. He tilted his head, taking in her tangled hair and sleepless eyes, and whatever words had been forming on his tongue dissipated into the smoke he inhaled next. As he steadily blew out into the cold air, Clare's eyes remained unwavering on his face, unblinking and patient.
"I don't know what to tell you," he finally told her, looking out to the parking lot. His words were honest, but difficult for him to say, even more difficult for her to hear. Sighing, she forced herself to swallow the lump in her throat, shaking her head imperceptibly. She blinked slowly, turning her head away.
"I didn't think you would," she muttered, her vision growing blurry behind more tears. A familiar ache formed in her head, and she longed to return to her apartment, alone, to wallow in the mess that was her life. "Well," she said after a long and daunting silence, "Now this is definitely one of those times. Do you mind?" she asked, motioning to the pack of cigarettes. Eli furrowed his eyebrows, thoughts racing but unsure of what to make of this situation, unsure of what he was supposed to do next. Absentmindedly he held out the box, barely registering when she had taken one and only remembering to hand her his lighter when she prodded his shoulder gently.
"Imogen is upstairs," he suddenly blurted. Clare's eyes widened briefly, before she looked away dejectedly.
"I know, I... I'm sorry." Eli felt guilty for shaming her, but the situation was proving too unreal to fathom, let alone respond to. "This really is disgusting," she mumbled, tossing away the half-smoked cigarette. She wiped her hands on her jeans, standing up slowly. Eli watched wordlessly as she disappeared into the building.
He stayed down there long after she left, holding his head in his hands and thinking. As hard as abandoning her had been a decade ago, rejecting her now felt so much worse.