Marcus sat in the kitchen with a glass of water and a feeling he hadn't had in so long he almost didn't recognize it. Something that might have been curiosity, not about a problem to solve or a task to complete or a situation to manage. Just the plain simple curiosity of wondering what would happen next. He thought about what Clare had said. Bup, you seem like a man who has completely forgotten to apply that standard to himself.
He thought about how clearly she had seen it, how she hadn't said it to diminish him, but simply because she had looked directly at him and told the truth about what she found. When was the last time someone had done that? He thought about her voice when she talked about going home to an apartment she hadn't bothered to furnish. The way she had said for just myself, not bitterly, but with a kind of worn acceptance that he understood completely. Two people, Marcus thought, who had become extremely competent at surviving and somewhat less competent at living.
He finished his water. He went to bed. For the first time in 4 years, he didn't stare at the ceiling before falling asleep. He just closed his eyes. The coffee happened that Tuesday morning, not planned in advance.
Exactly. Clare knocked on his door at 7:45 while he was getting Jaylen ready for school, and she held up a bag from the bakery. Two blocks over and said, "I walk past every morning and I always mean to stop. Today I stopped and then I thought of you and then I felt strange not knocking. " "So here I am," she said. All of this in a tone of slight exasperation with herself that Marcus found immediately charming.
"Is this a bad time? " "Dad has a friend," Jallen announced loudly from behind Marcus' legs. "Go get your backpack," Marcus told him. A lady friend, Jallen clarified. For no reason except that he was 9 years old and had the social instincts of a very small attorney. Jallen Jallen retreated highly satisfied with himself.
Marcus opened the door wider. Come in. I've got coffee made. They sat at the kitchen table. Clare in the chair across from Marcus.
Both their hands wrapped around mugs and Jallen ate a pastry from Clare's bag and washed her with the open unhurried assessment of a child who had not yet learned to disguise his curiosity. "Do you have kids? " Jallen asked. "Jalen? " Marcus started. "No," Clare said. She looked at the boy directly the same way she looked at adults without softening it or simplifying it.
"I don't Jallen said her this. " "Do you want them, Jallen? " That's okay, Clare said to Marcus. Then to Jaylen, I haven't decided yet. Dad says deciding not to decide is also a decision. Clare looked at Marcus with something that might have been amusement. Does he?
I say that about what to eat for dinner, Marcus said. Not as a general philosophy. It applies generally, Jallen said serenely. Eating his quissasant. Clare laughed that same reel.
Startled laugh from the beach and Marcus sat back in his chair and thought about how the kitchen felt different with the sound of that laugh in it. Not because it was romantic necessarily or because he was reading anything into it, just because it was present, because someone was in his kitchen on a Tuesday morning who hadn't been there before, and the house held it differently. When Marcus walked Jallen to the bus stop, Clare waited in the kitchen and refilled her own coffee without asking permission, which Marcus noticed and approved of without saying anything about it. She came back the next week and the week after that, not every day. Their lives were both full enough that scheduling was real and complicated, but with a regularity that became something Marcus' week shaped itself around without him quite making the decision for that to happen.