6

Clarity.

Unusual clarity, the kind you got when you woke up after a night of drinking. Everything seemed sharper, but at the same time you were numb to it. That was what I had right now.

I was in my bed, feeling like I was lost in a dream. The window was open, but I wasn't cold; a warm breeze was wafting through. Fickle April weather, cold one day and warm the next... Too, there was that nice, earthy smell of rain. I never liked rainy days much, but I always loved their scent. Even cloudy days had their good points.

The sheets were in a big heap at my feet. I was staring up at the ceiling thoughtlessly. ---Er, well, not totally thoughtlessly. I was thinking about a lot of things while I was tracing the cracks up there with my eyes.

I didn't remember anything after watching Sef walk away. Somehow, I managed to get into my pajamas and into bed. The scent of rain brought all the memories of last night back to me. I was thinking about how Sef seemed to be hiding something, something very painful. He was hurting badly, and I thought in my drunken state that I could do something about it, that I could heal his tremendous ache.

But who was I kidding? I was no healer. I was just an ordinary woman who occasionally managed to get into situations that were too big for her.

I remembered something else too while I was lying there thinking. I remembered how much Sef resembled---of all people---a certain someone who'd been dead for two years now, just about. It was really odd, how much they were alike, but I assured myself that it was only physical. Just a whole big bunch of coincidences. Yep. Absolutely. As far as personality went, Sef was no Sephiroth. He wasn't crazy.

Besides, like I always said, dead people didn't come back to life. It just didn't happen.

Thinking about that made me think of Aeris. After her death, I spent a lot of sleepless nights dreaming and crying and agonizing over it, wishing that she'd somehow come back to us. Regretting having let her go off on her own, stuff like that. I missed her like hell.

My eyes felt swollen and wet. I was doing what I hadn't done in years over her death. Oh, sure, the wound was a healed one, but I'd been picking at a scar so to speak. I sat up in bed and wiped the tears away.

What time was it? I gave my bedside clock a good look. Eleven-eleven. Four ones. I heard somewhere that whenever all the clock digits showed the same number, you were supposed to make a wish. I didn't know what to wish for, so I let the opportunity go.

Then something else hit me---pay. Work. At noon. Gigi would be over in less than an hour. Then I heard something clanging downstairs and I realized that Cloud was in the kitchen. He must be trying to cook something.

There goes the house, I thought, smiling. Well, I didn't smell anything burning, so maybe he was doing all right. I got to my feet and headed downstairs. I made my way to the kitchen. Along the way, I picked up the smell of bacon. "Cloud!"

He answered me with a "not now."

I reached the kitchen and found him at the stove, lording over a frying pan, spatula in one hand. And lo and behold, there was bacon in the pan, sizzling away. I was stupefied. "You're cooking again?"

He looked over his shoulder at me. The corner of his mouth curled into a smile. "Yeah. I felt like giving it a shot."

I walked over to his side and peered down into the pan. "Hey, it's coming out nice!"

"Oh? I wasn't so sure. I'm just guessing here."

"Well, that's what cooking's mostly about. Guessing, common sense, stuff like that."

"Hmmm," he said, and then he was still. A few moments passed, silence filled only by the sounds of frying bacon. My stomach was begging for a strip or two. Soon Cloud shot me another look, a more...mischievous one I'd say, and asked me, "So. How was work last night?"

I gaped. Work? What happened at work again? Oh... "Oh, uh, yeah, it was fine."

Cloud's smile widened. "You came home piss-drunk. Don't you remember?"

"Oh, yeah, I do, I just didn't remember what happened after I..." After Sef walked me home.

I thought Cloud would be upset with me, for one reason or another, but instead he leered at me, and I knew he was going to tease me about something I did. I could tell. I hoped I didn't do anything too embarrassing. "You came in, woke me up makin' all this noise---"

"What else?"

"You were calling my name. You were upstairs by the time I got out of bed. You were in the bathroom and I thought you were gonna get sick---"

"Did I?"

"No, but you were pretty delirious." He smiled fully there, laid the spatula on the kitchen counter, and turned around to face me. "You kept goin' on and on about some guy who walked you home..."

I blushed and started chewing my lip. "I did?"

Cloud laughed. "Yeah, you did."

"Did I say his name? Did I tell you what his name was?"

"No. But you went on and on about him like he was the greatest thing... Now I wanna meet this guy and see if he's worth all that stuff you said."

I was still blushing a little, and sort of shifting from foot to foot as I stood there. I wasn't out of the woods yet. "Then...what did I say about him?"

"Oh, lots of stuff. He carried you home, didn't he? In his arms..."

I burst out laughing at the way he said that. "You're jealous," I blurted out. And that was a statement, not a question.

His eyebrows raised, almost to his hairline. "Jealous?"

"Yep," I said assuredly. "Why else would you want to tease me about it so much?" I walked off to get some plates and things for the bacon. I spared him a little flirty look over my shoulder, hoping he'd get the idea that I was pulling his leg. I didn't really think he was jealous. He had no reason to be. We weren't together, not in the romantic sense at least.

His face got serious and my hopes fell. "I'm not jealous."

Shit, I blew it. So much for joking then; I should've known he'd be touchy about that. Our feelings weren't things we liked to joke about. I had no intentions of pushing an argument-in-the-wings any further, but I didn't want to abruptly change the subject either. The silence became oppressive, but we were saved by the smell of something burning. "Cloud, the bacon!"

He turned around. "Oh, shit." He reached for the spatula and began scraping around in the pan. "Damn it."

We ended up picking at a meal of blackened bacon. It would probably be mean of me to say that I was glad it happened, or he and I would've been giving each other the silent treatment for the better part of the day over the jealousy issue. But I'll say it anyway: I was glad he burned the bacon. We ended up forgetting about our little would-be fight. I made eggs for the both of us a few minutes later, since Cloud said he wasn't about to touch the stove for the rest of the day.

Then I got dressed and at noon Gigi came over. I was relieved: The thought crossed my mind that she might have forgotten.

"You wanna go shopping afterwards?" she asked me. "Money burns holes in my pockets. Ain't good for anything unless I'm spendin' it." She grinned, and all her freckles lit up.

I told Cloud I'd be back in about an hour or two and left with Gigi. On the way to The Cafe, we talked about Sef. He must've been the first thing on Gigi's mind when she woke up that morning. She wanted to know all about our walk home.

"There's not much to tell," I said. "He asked me how I got here and I could've sworn he asked about Cloud, like he knew him from before or something..."

Gigi chewed her lip, obviously not very interested. "Hmmm." I knew she was expecting something more juicy gossip-wise. "Well, maybe they met before, a long time ago."

"I thought that might've been it, but now that I---"

"But...that's not what I really want to know." She faced me, a strange expression on her face. "Did he say anything about me at all? Anything?"

Anyone else might have found Gigi's self-centeredness to be shocking (it was that straightforward), but I was used to it. "No, he didn't say anything about you at all. He just asked stuff about me. When we got to my place, I thanked him and he left." I paused there, going over what I wanted to say next. "There's something he's hiding, Gigi. I always felt that way about him, ever since we first saw him. It's almost like he's in mourning, like he lost a family member or something..."

"Maybe he was married and his wife died," Gigi suggested.

Her reaction was more indifferent than I expected. I thought she was actually going to be concerned at what I told her. A part of me seized the chance and hoped she was losing interest in Sef for good, because right then, I thought I could go after him myself, find what he was hiding and cure that hurting. Yes, I was still clinging to that silly notion.

I turned to Gigi. "You don't seem interested." I had to proceed with this cautiously.

"What? Oh...no, I am, I'm listening..."

"I don't mean listening to me. You don't seem concerned with Sef anymore." I was mentally crossing my fingers. I might have crossed the line there already.

Gigi sighed and eyed her shoes. "No, actually, I'm not," she admitted, and relief flooded my mind. "I dunno. I got up this morning, and I did a lot of thinking, and I realized... What the fuck, he's not interested in me. He didn't even want to walk me home last night; he wanted to walk you home. You were just nice enough to make him stop at my place first." She threw a wan smile my way.

I was taken aback by how graciously she conceded. She was practically handing him to me on a silver platter. No fight, no abrupt end of friendship, just a gentle end to her affections. I was really impressed; I didn't even know what to say right away. "Gigi... Thanks. I mean that. Because, well, I've been doing some thinking myself, and---"

"You like him," Gigi finished for me. She was grinning mischievously, back to her old self again. "Hmmm. Well, we'll see if I can't give you a little hand, if ya know what I mean..."

My eyes grew wide. "Oh my God, you're... Tell me you're not going to try and hook me up with him." Was that a bad thing or a good thing?

Gigi laughed. "I said we'll see!" She threw an arm around my shoulders. "What kind of friend would I be if I just bitched you out and never talked to you again?"

"A really bad one," I answered with a smile.

She jerked me towards her. "Hey, I was about to say 'don't answer that'!"

I was beaming inside. I was on the threshold of a possible new relationship and that could've ended an old friendship but didn't. Now all I needed to do was find Cloud a new (and stable) job and things would be perfect all over again. Maybe Sef's coming into my life wasn't as bad as I initially thought.

I felt good. I could've skipped all the way to The Cafe, if making an ass out of myself didn't matter to me. I'd taken longer than usual doing my hair today too, which probably had something to do with me expecting Sef to show up: it was half up into a loose knot. The strands of hair that fell down and framed my face were nice touches. I didn't usually bother much with my hair; clothes were more my thing. But it made me feel very pretty, to primp more than was usual or necessary before going out.

Then there was my skin-tight black shirt that caught the attention of a couple of passersby. Really, I just wanted them to look at the hair.

But maybe I was too happy and too proud. We got to The Cafe, and inside Gigi ran into one of the workers, whom she seemed to know. He was a redhead like her, and very tall. "You're in deep shit," he told us.

"For what?" Gigi sneered. "What'd we do?"

"Last night, you guys drunk a lot. And you didn't pay for all of it either."

Gigi shot me an accusing look. "I thought we did! Didn't you say---"

I grew defensive. "Oh, don't even start on me! I wasn't the only one drinking! I used up all my money on that last night!"

"So did I!"

"Look,"said the redheaded guy, "Weiss is probably expecting you right now, so you should get back there and face the music."

"Fuck the music," Gigi snarled. She was about to storm off for the back when Mr. Weiss emerged from there, frowning. He saw Gigi and I and said nothing, but coaxed us towards him with a crooked finger.

There was one word in my head at that moment: shit.

Gigi and I followed our boss to the back, not to the break room but to the other side where he had a little office. It was there that we got...interrogated, for lack of a better term. Mr. Weiss took a seat behind his desk and Gigi and I took two of the four chairs lined up against the wall facing him. It was a nice-looking office, a little shoddy but not by much. The rug was gray and all the furniture was dark. Pictures littered the corners of the desk, probably of Mr. Weiss' wife and kids. There was a potted plant in the back corner, green freckled with yellow. My eyes were glued to it. I could feel my face turning red. Beside me, Gigi was outwardly calm.

"Now," Mr. Weiss started, but he didn't get beyond that word. Gigi cut him off.

"Oh, how's your wife?" she asked, and I remembered Mr. Weiss' sudden departure last night. His wife had been mugged.

Mr. Weiss looked disconcerted---naturally---but he answered her question. "Oh, she's fine. She just got a little roughed up; nothin' serious."

Gigi was trying to throw him off track, but I didn't think it would work. "That's good," she said in a slightly smaller voice. I could tell she was wracking her brain for more things to say, but she didn't come up with any.

Mr. Weiss picked up right where he left off. "Now...I think you two know why you're back here."

"For our pay?" Gigi asked meekly.

"That's one reason. You wanna guess the other?"

We're fired, I thought.

No one answered, so the ball kept on rolling. "The other is that I'm upset about what happened last night." Gigi opened her mouth there, but Mr. Weiss went right on talking. "When I first came in, I saw the place was cleaned up, and everything seemed all right, and I thought, 'Oh, I did good leaving it in their hands. I should give them a little bonus or something, to show my appreciation.' Then I go over to the bar, and I'm checking things, and it didn't take me long to see that I was short about..." There he paused, looking at a note or something on his desk. "...Ten gil, more or less. A lot of liquor, and ten gil."

I blushed. That miscalculation was my fault.

"Tifa," Gigi started, "didn't Sef give us twelve gil?"

"Yeah, but obviously it wasn't enough."

Mr. Weiss raised an eyebrow. "Who's Sef?"

Gigi gave me a look, which I took to mean that I was supposed to answer that question. I shook my head dismissively. "Sef's just a friend. We had to borrow twelve gil from him to pay what we thought we owed."

"You were off by ten," Mr. Weiss said. "But that isn't the reason why I'm so disappointed. Ten gil's a drop in the bucket. And the booze can be refilled. But I trusted the three of you---"

"Two of us. Antoine had to leave early," Gigi said. There was a subtle sort of venom in that remark, like she was hoping to get Antoine into trouble somehow by bringing up his absence.

"Oh yeah, that's right. I almost forgot." Mr. Weiss leaned back in his chair contemplatively, stroking his chin. "Yeah, I forgot about that. It was just the two of you..." My hopes rose a bit there, but it didn't last long. Mr. Weiss leaned forward again and resumed the lecture. "But that doesn't matter. The point is that I trusted you two to handle things for me when I couldn't be there. Instead I find out that you've both been drinking, and I know you both know better than that. Having drunk workers doesn't say much about this place."

I swallowed hard. I'd been biting my lip hard again, hard enough to open the old wound I'd given it last night, when I'd been staring at Sef. Sef... I wished he were here now. He'd find a way of getting us out of this...wouldn't he?

Gigi pulled another miracle for me then. "Don't fire Tifa over this," she said out of the blue. She wasn't looking Mr. Weiss in the eye. "I started it. I sorta goaded her into doing it with me. Besides, she's a good worker! Do you really wanna get rid of her for one little mistake? How many Tifas do you think you're gonna find out there?"

"Gigi," I started, but it seemed like she didn't hear me.

"No, I'm not gonna fire her," said Mr. Weiss. "And I'm not gonna fire you either, though let me tell you Gigi, you try me too often..."

"Yeah, I know, I fuck up a lot." She turned to look at me there, smiling a little, that same pixyish smile that spoke bibles about her cunning nature. Mr. Weiss coughed a little there, and Gigi spoke up again. "Sorry. I screw up a lot." The room slipped into silence for a moment or two before Gigi was at it again. "But your girls'd miss me if I was gone," she pointed out confidently.

Mr. Weiss chuckled. "Yeah, whenever I bring them in, they always ask if you're gonna be there."

"So bring them in sometime! It's been too long! And I think Tifa'd like to meet 'em."

I smiled. Thank God for little miracles...and Gigi, who occasionally worked a few of her own.

"Now you know this's gonna come out of both your pays," Mr. Weiss told us. "Not just the ten gil, but a little more to teach you a lesson, make sure you two think before you try something stupid in the future." He smiled there a little.

"How much are you taking out?" Gigi asked, getting excited.

"A little more than five apiece." Mr. Weiss winked at her.

We got our pay and our schedules for next week and left. I knew we wouldn't be "punished" much---just ten gil out of each of our pays. That hardly mattered, considering we got paid under the table. Most people in the world today did. The only difference was that the honest people actually took out some pay for city taxes and other people didn't bother. Pays were in cash---no checks, because there was no banking system, not in a world where most cities were electricity-free. Today's bank accounts were basically money under the mattress. I couldn't imagine how many robberies and things went on in the less organized towns out there, and I didn't want to either.

Ten gil out of my pay, and I deserved it. "We're never getting drunk on the job again," I told Gigi.

The corner of her mouth twisted a bit. "Ahh, I'm just glad we didn't get fired."

"Yeah. Oh, thanks for saying what you did in there." The girl could really be impressive, when the mood struck her.

"No problem, Tif."

We walked out, a great weight no longer on either of our shoulders. I felt as happy as I did when I left my house, maybe even happier. And I think Lady Luck was walking on my other side, opposite Gigi, because no sooner had we stepped outside than we saw Sef standing there, waiting.

Waiting for me, like he said he would.

He looked nice, all the more so now that I didn't have to worry about Gigi liking him, or trying to hit on him to no avail. Coatless, and rightfully so because it was warm out, the white shirt he wore was stretched tight over his chest and I could've busied myself for the better part of a day counting all his muscles. Nice? Did I say he looked nice? That was an understatement.

He looked great---and nervous, like he couldn't wait to take off. I saw why he went out of his way to hide himself by now. That Sephiroth resemblance must get him a lot of crazy looks. His hair looked darker under the cloudy sky, his long bangs hanging disheveled around his face. His eyes were glowing, Mako-green. I found myself flashing back to those days long past when I saw similar eyes gloating over me, corrupt with insanity. He was pale too, but I assumed that came from spending most of his time inside, writing as he did.

There was an awkward several-second moment of no speech whatsoever. Then I said something at the same time that he did. We stopped and laughed a little.

"I almost forgot you'd be here," I told him. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gigi watching us closely.

"Well, I almost thought I wouldn't make it here on time to catch you." He glanced at a watch he wore, on his right wrist. Right wrist, meaning he was left-handed. "Quarter after twelve. You're a little late," he jested. His smile was so shy. I found myself reflecting it immediately.

"We were ten gil short last night, you know."

He looked confused for a moment. Then it must've hit him. "Really?"

"Yeah. I feel I owe you that twelve gil. I can pay you back now, if you want---"

"No, don't. I told you, consider it a gift."

I had a vague feeling that I'd be smiling throughout our entire conversation. "Okay then. I thank you for it."

His smile grew wider, more forward. "You're welcome." A pause, then, "So, when are you working next week?"

"Oh---" I unfolded my schedule and gave it a look for the first time. "Um...Tuesday and Wednesday...oh and Sunday! Gigi! We have work on Sunday!" I looked over my shoulder at her.

"What time on Sunday?" she asked.

"Six 'til closing." I turned back to Sef. I was beaming again. The question was on the tip of my tongue and I was almost too nervous to ask it. Almost. "Then...you'll be dropping by on Sunday?" I must've sounded like a little girl asking for a toy at the store.

"I might," he said, but the glint in his eyes told me that "I might" really meant "yes." Then he said something unexpected. "Your hair looks good that way." Before I had enough time to bask in the flattery, he reached out and brushed a few of the strands away from my face. His fingertips just barely touched my cheek. I forgot Gigi was even there. My knees turned to water. Then the stars plummeted and the planets tilted.

And then I stopped blowing things out of proportion.

I had to get a grip on myself or I'd end up embarrassed. But fortunately, he did nothing more to tempt me. His hand pulled away as quickly as it had shot out.

"Sounds like a date to me," Gigi interjected from behind me. I was far too deep in the thick of things to bother to look at her.

Sef raised a brow. "Date? I just want to talk to you a bit," he said, speaking to me. "I like talking with you. That and the coffee where you work." He half-smiled.

Coffee? Coffee. For a split second I was hit with the idea of Sef and I in a giant cup of coffee, naked, me luxuriating in the feel of all those nice muscles pressed tight against me. And the things he could do with those big hands... In a really big coffee cup. I almost burst out laughing right then and there.

"Your thoughts are elsewhere," Sef remarked.

"Oh...oh! No, no, I was just thinking. Now I'm looking forward to Sunday." And he had no idea just how much. Suddenly Sunday became the greatest day of the week.

He was studying me closely. God, I would've cut off my left hand to be able to read his mind right now. "Look for me around seven," he said at last. "I have something to take care of before I come here."

We parted then with a curt change of goodbyes and see-you-on-Sundays. I was in a trance. Gigi was right; that was a date, more or less. A date timed for my work hours, yes, but a date nevertheless. A convenient date. ...Where was I? Was I really standing on the sidewalk outside The Cafe? And my hair... He liked my hair. Wow. Everything normal seemed so strange and otherworldly at the moment.

Gigi came up from behind and spun me around. She looked at me oddly, then said, "Was it just me, or could you see his nipples through his shirt?"

We were in two different frames of mind. "I'm gonna wear my hair like this forever," I murmured.

"Well...that's good," said Gigi appraisingly. "It does look good this way." There she started adjusting some of the loose pieces. "Damn, though---didn't expect him to just come out and ask you out like that."

"He didn't really ask me out per se; he just...I don't know. It was implied, I think." I recalled my little split-second coffee fantasy and grinned a little. I couldn't believe something like that came up so fast, the moment he touched me. And Gigi's suddenly giving up on him around the same time that I was thinking about pursuing him... Were those more coincidences to add to the pile? This all seemed like it had been previously worked out---the run-in on Monday, the walk home, the idea of thinking that I could ease the hurt I felt in him...and now the idea of mating with him in a coffee cup.

"What're you smiling at?" Gigi asked me.

"Where do you want to go now? I'll tell you on the way." I knew she'd love to hear about it, but I'd love telling it to her much more. Mmm, coffee. "And how do you feel about coffee right now?"