Exactly. But its close cousin, the particular loneliness of a person who had been so busy being someone that they had almost lost the thread back to themselves. He knew that look. He wore it most mornings when he got up before his alarm. "You're going to be okay," he said.
It wasn't a reassurance. It wasn't a prediction. He said it the way he said things he was certain of quietly. Factually, with the same tone he used when he told a junior maintenance worker that the boiler pressure was off, "And here was how you fixed it. " Clare looked at him for a long moment. "How do you know? " she said.
"Same way I know anything that's fixable," he said. "You can already see the problem clearly. That's the hard part. The rest is just work. " She held his gaze. Then she turned back to the ocean.
Marcus Hayes," she said softly. "Yeah, I'm glad I tripped on that rope. " He looked at the water alongside her. "Me, too," he said. "And he meant it. " Three weeks after the beach, Marcus Hayes was standing in his kitchen at 6:15 in the morning, staring at a coffee mug that had Claire's lipstick on the rim from 2 days ago. And trying very hard not to think about what that meant.
He hadn't washed it. He told himself it was because he had been busy. He told himself a lot of things in that kitchen before the sun came up, and the coffee mug stared back at him with its small, unambiguous evidence. And Marcus turned away from it and started making breakfast. He was not a man who entertained complications.
He had made a decision sometime in the second year after Diane that his emotional life had reached its full capacity and would not be accepting new applications. He had Jallen. He had work. He had the quiet satisfaction of being the person people called when something was broken and needed to be made right again. That was enough.
That had been enough for four years, and he had no reason to believe it would stop being enough simply because a woman four houses down the street had started appearing in his kitchen on Tuesday mornings with Crossby from the bakery on Elm. And ape laugh that did something complicated to the air in the room. You're making that face, Jallen said from the hallway. Marcus didn't look up. I'm not making any face.
The thinking face where your forehead does the thing. My forehead doesn't do anything. Jaylen climbed onto the kitchen stool with the author of Sor someone who had been assigned this seat at birth. Is it about Clare? Marcus sat down.
Dispatched Paula. How about we talk about your math test? I got an 87. That's good. Clare said if I got above 80, she'd take me for ice cream.
Marcus turned around. When did you talk to Clare about your math test? Jaylen blinked with an innocence. So deliberate it was almost architectural. She texted me.