Chapter 11 Claire
Claire
Claire’s hotel was functional. It wasn’t beautiful or remarkable, but it was clean and close to the hospital, which was all she really needed. The nurses had been kind enough to allow Claire a little bit of time with Matías, but it was only that—a little bit of time. Then they gently nudged her and the de León family out of the ward, with assurances that they could visit again tomorrow during regular hours.
Now, Claire was faced with a long stretch of evening and a night all by herself. Matías’s family had invited her to come over to Aracely’s apartment, but despite their good intentions, it was just too much. Aracely and Luis spoke English fluently, and Matías’s parents, Soledad and Armando, also spoke quite well, but the other dozen or so of the extended family spoke mostly Spanish. Because of that, Claire was still figuratively alone, even in the warm ocean of their family’s embraces and attention.
Just for some human connection, she turned on her laptop to let Yolanda and her other friends at the firm—as well as George, her assistant—know that she had arrived safely in Madrid.
While she waited for it to boot up, Claire lifted the corners of the bedsheets to check for evidence of bedbugs. She did this at every place she stayed—even at the five-star hotels that her clients booked her in during business travel. Then, satisfied that there were no bugs, she unpacked her suitcase. It had been haphazardly thrown together—ironic, given how meticulously she had wanted to fold Matías’s clothes just a handful of days before.
It was only now that Claire realized she’d forgotten to pack any underwear.
She kicked at the now-empty suitcase, as if it were somehow its fault that it had failed to produce her underwear, then sank to the floor, head in her hands, and cried.
Her laptop chimed on the hotel desk.
“Not now,” she said, and went on sobbing, even though it was probably her friends checking in on her and that had been the reason she turned on the computer in the first place.
Ding
Ding
Ding
“Later! Please!”
It went quiet for a minute and let her cry in peace.
Ding
Ding
Ding ding ding ding ding
Was it getting louder?
DING
“Ugh! Fine, I’m coming, I’m coming!”
Claire swiped her sleeve over her eyes and snorted in the snot that had clogged up her nose.
Incredibly unattractive, she thought .
And then, But who even cares?
The laptop chimed four more times.
She crawled over to retrieve it from the desk. The carpet left a disconcerting, grimy tackiness on her skin, like rug cleaner that hadn’t been quite washed out, mixed with several decades of the dirt off other people’s shoes.
On the laptop screen, the Windsor the flight over had been mortifying, and so had collapsing at the hospital when she’d first been denied access to Matías. Claire was used to keeping her vulnerability under lock and key, and the recent overexposure had left her feeling too raw.
So she closed her laptop and headed back to the lobby. Next to reception, the hotel’s café had plenty of open seats because it was only open for breakfast and lunch, and it was just after 9 p.m. now. Claire set herself up at a table that had a view of the street through the floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows, still flooded with the light of the slowly setting sun. She opened her laptop and dove into responding to merger questions. There were a number of “so sorry to hear” and “wishes for a speedy recovery” notes from colleagues who were acquaintances, not friends. George had been the one to book her plane ticket while Claire raced to her apartment to pack, so she supposed word had gotten around the firm by now about what happened. Still, she resolutely ignored those messages of sympathy in favor of the purely practical.
What is the status of open items in Disclosure Schedule 5(b)(ii)?
She quickly typed a reply.
The Freshfields team in London is following up on the assignment clause in the Cunningham contract and will have an update to us by Monday close of business GMT.
Claire, do you remember where we landed on sublicensing Einstein’s “Project Titanium” database to Sine Wave Enterprises?
Two-year sublicense, but non -exclusive. $150K per month.
Not sure if we can get the Czech apostilles in time for closing this deal in two weeks.
Reach out to Ane?ka ?erny in the Prague office. She’s a paralegal and has contacts in the notary community who can fast track this for us.
As expected, it helped to sit in the cockpit and feel like she was in control of something. Here in the middle of this merger, Claire was Puppet Master of the Universe. She understood every detail. She knew all the players and the timing and how to avert disaster when things went wrong. She had worked on enough deals in her career that she could preempt problems before they arose, and when something unexpected happened, she had the experience to come up with a solution. Unlike with—
Unbidden, her thoughts went to Matías, lying still and broken in the hospital.
Tears started leaking out of her eyes even though they weren’t allowed to. She was in public, goddammit!
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck !
She couldn’t do this by herself. The last time this happened—when her parents had died—Claire had at least still been living near her college campus, and not everyone had scattered yet after graduation. There were friends’ shoulders to cry on; people who would bring her chocolate cake from the twenty-four-hour grocery store in the middle of the night.
But now Claire was in an unfamiliar country, where she knew no one except future family members she’d only met a few times via video calls. And she couldn’t even go to a bakery to buy herself chocolate cake since she’d never learned the Spanish word for cake. It didn’t occur to her that she could just point at a cake in the display case, because…because…
“I need you, Matías,” she whispered even as she angled her body away from reception because one of the women there was already looking her way, concerned.
For almost a year, whenever Claire was stressed or when something went wrong, Matías was the one who grounded her and made her feel safe. With him, she could feel like the world would be okay, that whatever she was freaking out about could and would resolve itself. He always believed fiercely that everything would turn out for the best, even if that “best” wasn’t at all what you had imagined it to be.
But the crisis right now was Matías himself, and he couldn’t be there to help Claire through it.
Her computer dinged again, but she was too far down the well of grief for work to save her now. She slammed the laptop lid shut and curled her fingers into fists, as if she could hang on to hope and Matías by the strength of her grip alone.
Her fingernails dug into her flesh.
Her left hand tingled, and suddenly she remembered.
Matías, his lips warm against her skin.
This kiss is for you to keep until I come home, so you can carry me with you while I’m gone. But if you find yourself missing me too much, just press your lips against your palm and imagine your kiss meeting mine, and I’ll be right here with you.
Through her tears, Claire unfurled her fingers and stared at her palm. She wanted to smash her lips against it, but at the same time, what if that used it up? Panicked, she curled her hand closed, as if that would preserve the kiss, and her brain began to fire off irrational hypotheticals. If Matías dies, will this kiss always be with me and I can still have him forever? Or is this the very last I will have of him? And if I use it up, then what will be left?
But in the end, she couldn’t hold out. Claire’s whole body shook from needing him—needing some connection, however small—and she opened her hand. Before she could change her mind, she pressed her lips against where his had been.
Matías.
The whole world trembled.
She felt his mouth against hers, the kiss he’d left her so tender and soft—a velvet caress. The memory of his touch dissolved her tension, and her muscles relaxed into the safety of Matías, of knowing that she had a partner by her side, someone to protect her not because she needed him to, but because they were stronger together.
Time froze, or maybe it went backward, because everything felt safe and secure and normal again. The kiss united her with Matías, and for that long moment, all was perfect.
She didn’t want to open her eyes. Didn’t want to pull her hand away from her lips and face the harsher reality.
But Claire didn’t have a choice because too soon the feel of Matías began to fade. Her palm grew cold, her mouth dry and alone.
With a sudden hollowness in her chest, she reluctantly lifted her eyelids.
The summer sunset glared off the mirrored windows of a nearby skyscraper, nearly blinding Claire. She yelped and turned away.
Then the flash was gone, and in the spot that had been too bright to look at just a second ago stood…Matías.
Claire’s breath caught.
“No, you’re seeing things,” she told herself sternly.
But it was him. She’d know him anywhere. Those broad shoulders in the blue canvas jacket with the splatter of green paint across the right sleeve. The waves of black hair, always tousled because he ran his hands through them whenever he caught sight of something that inspired him—which, with Matías’s capacity for curiosity, was often.
But mostly, it was the gleam of those golden eyes, richer and more beautiful than any Spanish sunset could ever be.
It was impossible. Just a couple of hours ago, he’d been bandaged and bruised and hooked up to all those machines.
But here he was. It was really him, and he was healthy and whole and alive, and he must be looking for her!
Claire let out a small cry and ran out of the hotel into the driveway.
“Matías! What are you doing here? The hospital…you’re supposed to be—”
He cocked his head and the corner of his mouth quirked up, as if she was another thing in the world that he found fascinating and might use in a future painting.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and Claire thought she might faint at hearing the dulcet tone of his voice again. “But have we met?”
Every cell in Claire’s body went rigid. There was no recognition in his eyes. None whatsoever. Was she hallucinating, casting some stranger as her boyfriend? But no, it was him, in every detail, from carriage to voice.
“I-I’m Claire.”
“Claire. Un placer —a pleasure. I’m Matías.” He gave her one of his charmingly crooked smiles. “Now, what were you saying about a hospital?”
The setting sun glared off the mirrored skyscraper again, and the beam went right through Matías.
He was still there, but—for that split second—he was transparent.
Oh god, Claire thought. A ghost.
Which must mean…
Matías was dead.
“No…” she breathed. “You can’t…I…”
And for the second time today, Claire’s legs gave out beneath her.
But this time, there was no one to catch her.