Epilogue
I'd never had someone in my space before.
Sure, my family or friends would shoulder their way in every now and again, wanting to make sure I wasn't wading in my own filth and that there wasn't expired milk in the fridge.
Like I ever kept milk in the fridge.
It always grated having them around, no matter how well-intentioned they may have been. It felt invasive. It felt like they were judging me.
Now, Clarke was everywhere. Literally and figuratively. She was in my bed, reminding me that it was just a tad too small for two people. She was in my shower, belting out to her heart's content. The smell of her body wash wafted out from under the mostly closed door, filling the whole apartment.
As I stood in the kitchen making a pot of coffee, I found myself taking a deep breath, breathing her in.
Her extra mug was on the counter.
Her shoes were by the door.
A strand of her hair was on the floor near the sink.
She had touched more places, inserted herself in more spaces than anyone before her.
Yet it didn't feel like an invasion.
In fact, I kind of found myself trying to find more things she had touched, other ways she had made her presence known.
Maybe a huge part of it was because I didn't feel judged.
I wasn't left wondering if maybe she was coming to conclusions about me in her head.
Mostly because Clarke tended to say things when she was thinking them.
So she'd commented on my game collection, my inability to bring my files back to the office, the fact that I didn't have an extra blanket.
Fifteen mugs but only one blanket. You're such a guy.
I liked having her around.
More than I thought I could.
But I was also seeing the fact that I really should have moved to someplace bigger a long time ago.
I had somehow overlooked the fact that the water had no happy medium—only running hypothermia cold or scalding hot.
There were cracks in the ceiling long and wide enough to be troubling.
In the winter, the heat was suffocating no matter how low you set it.
In the summer, the AC could make your bones ache.
Hence why Clarke had wanted another blanket.
It was an apartment for a kid fresh out of their parents' house. Which was what I had been when I had first moved in.
I simply never remembered to trade up when it became financially possible.
Part of it was the fact that I didn't like change, was often far too attached to things, getting antsy at the idea of change.
But it was also the fact that I was really never around long enough to notice all the reasons why I shouldn't have been there anymore.
I was usually practically living at the office, only stopping home to sleep and shower before I was gone again.
I had a feeling, though, that with Clarke around, I was going to be spending a little less time at the office.
Hell, it had only been a day, and I was already in my place longer than I had been the week before Clarke came into my life in a new capacity.
Normally, I would barely be awake before I got to work. And I often wouldn't step into my place at all until I got to the bottom of a case.
It said something that I had barely even thought about the new cheating spouse case since the woman left my office.
Change.
There was a lot of change going on.
Yet I didn't seem to have any anxious sensations building in my system.
"Well," Clarke said, coming into the kitchen, still drying her hair with a towel. "I think I burned off about three layers of skin, but at least I know I am clean," she said, holding out her arms to show me how red the skin was.
"Is the water at your place so finicky?" I asked, handing her a coffee.
"No. And I have this badass double shower head thing. And the water pressure is amazing."
"We could maybe crash at your place tonight," I suggested, not sure how she would feel about having me in her space.
"That could be fun. Especially since this isn't the kind of case where we might need to be back in the office in a blink since my place is a little further. But there is this a-mazing Indian place right around the corner. And this sub shop that actually gives you your money’s worth.
And you know what else?" she asked, lips twitching.
"No, what?"
"I have more than one blanket. I know, I know. It's such a revolutionary idea. In fact, I have four extra blankets. It's a little ostentatious, but I treat myself well,” she told me, eyes dancing over the lip of her mug as she took a sip. "Know what else?"
"What?" I asked, feeling a bubbling of excitement inside, finding her mood contagious.
"I have a bed we haven't broken in yet."
"Well, we can't leave a bed unbroken-in, can we?"
"No, we certainly can't."
She felt that way about my kitchen counter, the shower, and my couch too.
"Hey, Barrett?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm hungry."
The smile twitched before it spread, big enough that my cheeks hurt.
"Of course you are."
"I'm half-tempted to eat those stale saltines in your cupboard."
"How do you know they are stale?" I asked. I mean, they were. I didn't even recall ever buying them, so there was no way they were still good.
"Well... I needed a little midnight snack..."
"After you complained about being too full for an hour leading up to falling asleep?"
"What can I say? I like my food."
"What do you want for breakfast?" I asked, watching as her lips curved up.
"French toast," she told me. "And eggs."
"And breakfast potatoes," I finished for her.
"Exactly."
Clarke - 2 Weeks
"This is something you will almost never hear me say, but this whole thing is something I agree with your father about.
" My mother told me this without—and this was a miracle—a grimace.
Meaning she wasn't even resentful about having to agree with him like she had needed to do a handful of times when it came to parenting decisions over the years.
My mother is what I imagined I would look like in another twenty or so years, with her gracefully aging face that she did fight with creams and serums but refused to fix with injections and fillers.
There were lines beside her eyes from nights laughing with her girlfriends, light smile lines from cheering me on with whatever endeavor I was trying out at any given time.
She still colored her hair—as I was sure I would always do as well—but hers was a softer, ashy blonde that would never work on me.
Also like me, she tended to carry her weight in her thighs and rear, and middle age had softened her a bit, though in general she kept in good shape.
"Do you feel that?" I asked, watching as her chin jerked up. "It's getting chilly in here, isn't it? I think hell may have just frozen over."
"Oh, ha-ha," she said, rolling her eyes. "I know there isn't much your father and I agree on, but one thing we always have is that his obsession with the job made three lives less happy than they should have been."
"Not everyone gets obsessed with the job, Mom."
"No," she agreed, lips pursing a bit. "But is that a good thing?
If you sign on to take all the scumbags off the streets, I would sort of hope there was a bit of an obsession involved, wouldn't you?
Rather than some guy who hangs up his gun then goes home and forgets there is a pedophile on the loose snatching little girls.
Your father sacrificed a lot, and he also made us do the same—though some of that blame is on me for not knowing what I was signing up for ahead of time—but he served a greater good.
He created a safer space for you to grow up.
That said, you are very much your father's daughter in that way.
You can get too focused, obsessive. I know that the job would never just be a job to you.
And, quite frankly, I am just selfish enough to not want that life for you.
So I get why, when he found out, he had a bit of a mental lapse. "
"You're okay with him sabotaging me?"
"Well, I mean. I hate that you got hurt in the process..."
"But the ends can sometimes justify the means," I concluded.
"Sometimes you can like a result without liking the process that brought it about. Like that time I took that boot camp kickboxing retreat. I loathed every damn minute of it, but God, did my arms look amazing for two point seven minutes after it was done."
"I have to admit that I am pretty happy with the end result," I told her. "What?" I asked when her lips pursed again.
"You're happy here?" she asked, shooting her gaze around the room.
My mother had a lot of hobbies. Redecorating was possibly the biggest of them all.
Every year, you could expect for one set of furniture and curtains and various textiles to be shipped off to the local Goodwill or Habitat for Humanity store while she pored over design magazines and Pinterest boards to find her new style.
To a normal person's eyes, this office could be painful to look at. For my mother, I was almost surprised she hadn't developed some sort of ocular bleeding disorder.
"It could use some work," I admitted. I'd been championing for a new door since we had cleared up the whole relationship thing, wanting to get one with a cutout in it, so we had a hint of natural light at least. I had even brought innocent Diego into the debate, spouting off about the importance of natural light for avian pets, how their plumage and general health could suffer, how they could even stop seeing color sometimes if the deficiency was severe enough.
I was promptly informed that he, of course, had a full-spectrum sunlight bulb hanging above Diego's tree stand. He did this in an almost offended tone, mildly insulted that I would insinuate he had overlooked a single aspect of the bird's health.
So I had to regroup and find another reason to prefer natural light.
"Or a bulldozer," my mother responded, tone dry.
"It's not that bad. Maybe a coat of paint and some more filing cabinets."