Chapter 8: The Claire Expert.
Moonlight illuminated the window in my bedroom, in its gorgeous blue. I got so lost in the sight of it, I couldn't sleep. Sitting down at the edge of my bed, I couldn't even imagine sleeping through this view. Seriously, I'd show you if I could.
I couldn't keep the mood heavy, so I went to play some music.
Following my window wall, I got up to walk around my living room, and looked around for what I had to play. It's moments like these where I really feel like I've got so, so much damn junk. Stuff I've collected over the years, hobbies I've come in and out of. I've got a whole cabinet filled with literature, lots of it handed down from where I used to live. My family loved to hoard 'knowledge', so, that's a thing I inherited presumably. Whenever I'd see the boxed-up sim gear, I'd just be reminded of my whole pilot-era. Don't really do that anymore, and for most people, that'd be a large investment just gone. I could only handle helicopters, anyway. Most importantly, for now, I've got a metric shit-ton of records. That's where the night-lighting would guide me, as I had dedicated piles of them. I put my favorites on a separate shelf, all analogue through the whole chain, none of that new-age digital shit that leaves factories somehow. Walking up to the turntable, and checking on the stylus, I heard footsteps behind me.
"Square don't stop for no-one, do it?"
The stylus seemed clean as it could be, at least with the limited lighting I had. So, I got a little creative. "Hey, Claire. You wanna pick an album?"
She rubbed her eyes. "I'm wearin' a white tee and shorts, at one in the morning, and you want me to pick one of your dozens of records?"
I looked at her, for once this entire time, excited. "Yeah, I actually do! I'll make it easier for you. The shelf on the left is the one with all of my favorites, so you won't have to flip through all of them."
After a brief groan, she looked over at my favorites shelf and flipped through the fifteen or so albums I practically eat at as my test records. "It's hard to read these names, let alone my own hand.", she remarks with her growly snap. Watching her finger, one after the other, slide between the LPs, I found myself enjoying the view. What is it they always say? 'Sharing is caring'?
"What makes this special anyways?" Claire asked, starting to take some out. "Most people just collect these, put them on walls and stuff."
I walked up to her, and called back to some older memories. "Do you remember, that girl you got mad at?"
She scoffed. "Which one?".
I jumped at her definitely-fond memory. "The, uh, the one with pink everything. She had bought this car that you thought was sooo cool, and you were soooo jealous, the uhh… R-something, right?" I stood there, confused, finger on my lip as I felt what I wanted to say right at the tip of my mouth.
Claire seemed to find the whole lane-change funny. "It was fancy, though? It was a RS… ugh." Leaning her left elbow on the cabinet, she fed her face into her hand. "It's right there in my mind, somewhere."
I laughed, giving up remembering the car and getting lost thinking at how stupid it was. "And you were all like, 'who drives like that?', I mean properly furious! It was hysterical."
She sighed, but I could tell from looking at her face she enjoyed thinking back as well. "You know, you got real good at this Cherri." The tone of her voice was in rare form, as if she'd lost once in a while.
Giving up on being right, Claire finally picked out a record. "This, uh, big ol' white face? Hearts on the cheeks, I'm seeing this right?"
I perked up. "Oh! My, what an awesome pick!". Live on stage, one of the greatest vocalists of the past century, immortalized on quarter-inch tape, and brought to wax. What, a treat. I must've made a funny face or something, as Claire had no less fun just watching me. That little smirk of hers, I swear, it could tell me anything.
The album in one hand, my anti-static brush in another, I walked towards my turntable ready to lay down some real tunes. Placing the LP down, getting the weight in the center, setting the speed to forty-five, this was a process I loved every second of. Taking my sweet time with the brush, Claire seemed bewildered. "You ever just press 'play' on your phone?"
I couldn't help but remark the tiniest bit sassy. "You sure talk a lot for one of those old-school evangelists."
She rolled her eyes in such a textbook fashion it could've been stock footage. "I guess we've all got our 'things', eh?"
Turning on the pre-amplifier, I listened for those satisfying relay clicks. The tubes lit up in their orange-glow, subtle but there. Considering how early it was in the morning, the light seemed brighter than usual, but I'm no stranger to late-night listening. I never really turn off my speaker amplifiers, as they're solid-state, so it's really just free heating at times like this. When, you know, I'm out of bed at one in the morning for some reason.
"You know, I kinda missed the place." Claire remarked, taking her seat on the sofa.
I smiled back. "I'm just about done. Sit in the center, it'll be the best there!". Late night listening really is one of my favorite things to do, and with the moon out like that, it's beyond words. It bathed the room in a mixture of warm night-lighting on my right, and the beautiful blue from the window on my left. In front of me? A bunch of my favorite gear. How could I go wrong?
Dropping the needle, I rushed down to sit next to Claire. With a few seconds of silence, and a few crackles here and there, it was finally time. Sitting to her right, the first note played, and the liquidity of Ella's voice just hit me. Before I knew it, a whole song went by. Then another one played, and then we're half-way through the song before either of us said anything.
Claire poked my shoulder and whispered me her truth. "I've always found this hobby stupid. But it really does sound like she's in-front of me."
We laughed together, enjoying the music for a bit longer. I had one of my favorite records on, playing in my living room, looking at that window. Thinking of this memory, I don't even care if it's true or not. For a few minutes, I had bliss.
She inquired once again. "Alright, you got three wins over me tonight."
Getting sleepy, I asked if I could lay down by pointing to the other side of the couch. That level of body-language is something I missed from us. Stretching my legs beyond hers, facing the window, I knew this was a good time. But then it dawned on me-
"Wait, three wins? The memory, the music, and what else?"
She did her damn scoff again. "Your looks. Never thought I'd see you like this again."
Pushing my neck forward to look at her eyes, I must've seemed bewildered. The only reason I know that is because she looked bewildered back. "What?" I said, "I never thought I'd see you again at all, are you serious?".
She nodded 'yes'. A strange weight hit me, one that I could only handle right then and there. I guess she knew I was confused, because Claire spoke up and clarified. "You're in a black sports bra, matching sweatpants, and you're still you. That's true Cherri form."
I couldn't believe it. Sarcastically, I snapped back. "Oh?! Okay, I see, because wearing a white tee means you look like garbage, but I look good, alright."
Sharing some laughs, she added on. "I mean, you said it yourself."
I snapped back again, playfully this time. "I'm just wearing black! *laughs* Everyone looks good in black, it's like a default colour."
She had a smile that basically told me what she was gonna say next. "Yeah, anyone can wear black, but they don't wear black like Cherri Rain wears black, you know?"
I kept insisting. "Alright, alright. Sure." Not taking her seriously, I was lost in the moment between us. I don't know exactly what it was, but, I just missed us. I missed being by her side. A lot, actually.
The record played, and we listened. The thoughts came swarming once again, and as I became teary eyed, so did she. The only thought that translated into spoken word was simple.
'What a time to be alive.'
I woke up to the silence I'd become pretty familiar with. The day felt pretty normal, but I was pretty refreshed after it all.
While stretching, as I do every morning, I found myself in my own bed somehow. Most likely moved by Claire, I skipped the social media part of my morning routine, favoring self-care instead. Jumping to my bathroom, I spent a solid thirty minutes prepping myself for the day. Back then, I'd only really spend two minutes on self-care, so it's fair to say that I surprised even myself. 'I feel awake today!', is what my mind boiled down to. It was eleven in the morning, so I didn't even get a large amount of sleep, and yet here I was. Living, I guess.
The shower gave me a lot to think about. At that point, it'd been days, but these few days could've been years in my mind. Every second dragged onto minutes, minutes dragged into hours, being lost in my mind turned years of my life into compressed, digestible, practically edible portions of pure thought and emotion. Every once in a while, I felt like I mattered, and these feelings would go away. But even when I'm awake, like this morning shower, these types of thoughts still arrive. As a writer, I don't owe you shit. But this is a gift, and to some of the most important people in my life no less. I owe you all some honesty.
This is something I still do, in my own strange way. I'll still fry my own body, and I'll still reminisce for what feels like months at a time, only for it to be an hour or two. I don't listen to music while cleaning up, I just experience. Life's fine, for the record. It's never not fine. Not financially, not emotionally, I've always got something to do. And, you know, it's okay to feel like shit. In moments like this, I do it all the time. Back then, the night after Claire came back, I really only thought about Keri. All this time, I had thought I just needed to hear she was alright. That never really happened the way I envisioned it, you know. Always ends up differently.
Getting out of the shower, I heard an unusual amount of nothing. The kind of nothing that makes you question if something's wrong. After putting on some basic clothes, I cautiously walked over to the living room area, just to see if Claire was even there. Unsurprisingly, no luck. Shutting down the pre-amp, I wondered why she'd even leave so early. I could still see some of her belongings on my kitchen table, but that could've been my eyesight messing up. That was, until I heard some movement. From Keri's room, out of all places.
Out of sheer curiosity, I walked over unsuspectingly, thinking it was just my mind playing tricks on me. What I didn't expect to see was Claire, sitting down on Keri's bed, looking around.
Leaning on the right side of Keri's bedroom door, I wondered what Claire could've possibly thought. So, I tried to be kind, and asked. "Wh-, what's on your mind?"
Claire looked at me, and her eyes said it all. Nothing in her mind was okay. I didn't even need to know what.
I closed my eyes, knowing that this wasn't going to be an easy conversation. Trying to start this talk, I questioned. "Are you-, do you ever, I mean-"
"Stop."
I immediately felt defeated. The sheer weight of her face stunned me. I couldn't finish my thought without having ten others pop up, all in the name of concern for a friend, but never being able to accomplish that.
Claire looked over to the images Keri had on her bed-side. One of them was a framed photo of the two, looking out into the sunset. She grabbed it, and in her body language I could tell she wondered where the time went. "You remember this photo?"
Appalled by her theatrics, I couldn't respond rationally. "Yes, I took the damn thing."
"Yea'... that's it, isn't it?" She stated sharply. "You be everywhere in my life, without even speaking to me." Throwing her hands in the air, and her back falling towards the bed, I couldn't even begin to understand her behavior.
Sighing over it all, fingers in-between my eyes, I came to the conclusion that maybe I was never meant to understand. At the very least, I could try to help her get me. "You've just hopped right back into my life, with every single piece of baggage you carry still intact. Can you at least let me be? You know? Whatever this means to you?"
She (allegedly) kept staring into the ceiling, the one I had no fancy of even looking at. Understanding whatever 'this' was to her, meant more to me than I could measure. Finally, the chance of being friendly again, ripped away from me in real time. I wanted things to be better, badly. I spoke up, trying to lighten the mood. "We had so much fun that day, didn't we-"
"When will you get to the point?" She gave me a side-eye that could pierce steel. I didn't even have a response for her at that moment, and with my eyes closed in shame, I could hear her packing her things. Placing the photo back, and putting on her shoes, she seemed over me. I didn't face back.
As my mind raced through the possibilities and the past, I heard her open the door to the entrance. Over her attitude, I blurted out my truth. "You should be thanking me!"
She stopped. "For what?"
"I'm the only one who saw the spark between you two. And you know that." Claire stood at the entrance, in silence. I've always yearned for Claire to say 'wait, really?', or show any sort of interest in my bullshit. But no, it's almost always silence. So, I continued. "That photo? It was my gift to her, six months after you two met. I had it professionally transferred by the guys at Sqji, I got Keri to pick out the frame without her knowing, the whole thing."
She scoffed, as I remained unmoved from Keri's doorframe. "Why'cha even do it?", she asked.
I couldn't believe it. Claire, asking me a damn question. My eyes turned back towards her, snapping in the process. "Because I give a fuck, Claire! You expected me to just stop giving a shit when you told me to shut up?"
Claire turned her back on me, in her infinite wisdom. "Yeah, actually. I did." She closed the door with no answer.
At that moment, I realized the truth was never the issue. It was all about how I'd given it to her.
April 2nd, 2024. Author's Notes: Wow, let's hope these sites don't butcher my spell-check.
I know it's a strange two chapters here. I want to make it clear that I'm aware the main story isn't really moving, and that can be boring or bothersome to the audience. Alright, I hear you. And I'm happy to say that you'll get your fill soon. However, to the ones who like this kinda stuff? Well, all I can say is that I hope you enjoyed it.
This is a story with its characters at center stage, and I wanted to give time to showcase relationships we haven't yet really seen. Hope you enjoy the early drop (because April 4th would've been the date otherwise).
Here's to more in the future!
