He looked up. She was grinning, pointing at the screen. "The 2019 fundraiser video," she said. "Remember this? You wore that blazer?"
He abandoned the table and walked over and immediately wished he hadn't because there he was on the screen 31 years old, freshly divorced, visibly sleepdeprived, wearing a navy blazer that his mother had bought him and that fit him approximately the way a paper bag fits a watermelon. He was shaking hands with a city council member and smiling with the specific terror of a man who has not slept more than four hours in two weeks and is faking absolutely everything. "You told me that blazer looked professional," he said. "I told you it was professional," Clare corrected, laughing. "I said nothing about looking it."
That is the worst distinction anyone has ever made. She bumped his arm with her shoulder, laughing harder now on the screen. The 2019 version of himself was doing something with his hands that made present-day Malcolm genuinely embarrassed. "You were such a mess that year," she said. And there was something warm in her voice.
Not cruel, the kind of warmth that only exists when someone watched you be a mess and stuck around. "I was keeping it together," he said. "Baby, you were not keeping it together. You called me at 2:00 in the morning, three separate times that March, because you couldn't figure out how to get the car seat installed in the new apartment. It was a complicated car seat.
Ava was 4 months old. She couldn't even hold her head up yet. You had months before she'd outgrow the carrier. I needed to be ready. Clare was laughing so hard she grabbed the edge of the television stand to steady herself.
And that was when the stand already on wheels, never properly braked, shifted under her weight. She made a sound that was half laugh and half genuine surprise. Her balance going sideways and Malcolm moved on instinct. His hand shot out and caught her hand forearm. His other hand caught her shoulder.
She turned her head to say thank you. His face was six inches away. For one single suspended impossible second, neither of them moved. And then, because physics and proximity and 9 years of something, neither of them had ever properly named. All converged at exactly the same moment their lips met.
It was brief, barely a second, less than a breath, but it happened. And when they separated, when Malcolm pulled back and Clare turned to face him fully, the laughter was gone. All of it. Every trace. The room felt different.
The air felt different. The familiar, easy comfort of two people who knew each other better than almost anyone else on Earth had shifted into something charged and uncertain and terrifying. Clare stared at him. He stared back. "I'm sorry," he said immediately.
The words came out fast, almost stumbling. Clare, that was I was just trying to catch you. That was an accident. That was completely an accident. I'm sorry.