Beyond the end

Dumb

"I brought you coffee" Valerie tried to comfort Clare, who had returned in the middle of the night with a broken soul, but refreshed by the fact that her father was better off.
"We'll talk about it tomorrow morning, good night," so she said goodbye when she came back and Valerie didn't understand what part of the evening she was referring to.
Clare took the boiling cup in her hands. She really needed it.
"Thank you Val; I tried to sleep, but it wasn't a big success"
"I guess. How is your father?"
"The only thing I know is that he doesn't risk his life. And that's enough for me. They implanted him a by pass, but I couldn't see him. Now I get ready and go to the hospital. Did anyone call?"
"None"
"Steve?"
"Steve what?" Valerie blushed. This straned Clare, known for having an out-of-ordinary intelligence.
"Did he call?"
"Ah, no. I say no one, it means no one" and she got up.
"It's okay. Calm down," Clare reproached her weakly.
Clare didn't mind the tone of Valerie.
Clare looked around still stunned "I'm going to take a shower" she said slipping out of bed.
She opened the water, get undressed and stuck the dress in the dirty laundry basket.
"Ah Steve," she exclaimed when she saw the laundry bag he had left for a few days.
sHe thought he would find it in front of his door, she wasn't his waitress.
A little bit made her smile. She had just returned. They hadn't even spoken and had resumed their old habits. They were together without telling each other they were together.
Her father's thought came from her stomach. She felt a gloomy feeling.
she charged the matter to her father's health concern.
She seemed to have experienced a parallel reality. Unstable. Losing him after she had already lost her mother was an inconceivable idea. She besieged her decision to come back to California and decided that for some time she would go live with him. He needed help, assistance. She didn't want him to spend too much time in the hospital.
Under the jet of the shower she relived the terrible night just passed. The hospital run, the surgeon's news, the crying on Steve's chest. Steve. Steve preparing the barbecue with a flowered shirt.
She opens her eyes for a second. Clare narrowed her eyes. She remembered touching the plaid. To have slept. Steve welcoming her in tears to the hospital. She tried to focus. The night before Steve was wearing a hawaiian shirt; in the hospital he was wearing a t-shirt. She got out of the shower without looking for the bathrobe, she was dripping but didn't care. She opened the duffel bag and the shirt was there. She smelled it, Valerie's smell and Steve's smell were mixing. Valerie. She went back to the affly memories of the night before. Let's take it easy. The gloomy feeling came up. Valerie waking her up with a little undone makeup, Steve coming out of the bathroom with a t-shirt. She squeezed his shirt in his hands. She tried to calm down, to be the master of herself. She wiped herself, went to her room and dressed calmly. She took the still smoking coffee lying on the bedside table and went to face Valerie.
"So Val, do you want to tell me something?"
The girl looked at her calmly"no why? "
"Are you sure?" Clare punctuated the words well, while sipping coffee.
"What?" Valerie began to nervously tidy up the kitchen.
"Like what happened with Steve"
Valerie was on her back and stopped her hands rubbing on the hob.
"What game are we playing, Val?"
"I don't know what you're talking about"
"That's not what Steve just told me," Clare risked.
"So he told you"
"He had no choice"
"Clare, believe me, it wasn't our intention. You fell asleep, it must have been the beer, the alcohol we couldn't hold, I don't know. I know it's not an excuse but that's what happened."
"I was sleeping with me less than three meters away, but don't you feel sorry for me?"
"You haven't even been together officially. Come on. It was a mistake. We are adults. It has no value"
"It's the two of you who have no value."
"Clare"
"I thought that time could change you and instead you are the same as you were – Valerie listened mercilessly – now I prepare my things and move in with my father. Our cohabitation ends here; let me know if you want to stay or if you want to be looking for another accommodation."
Clare went to her room, picked up her cell phone and wrote to Steve "I know everything."
Bip bip. The phone woke Steve, who looked at the alarm clock:
When he read the message, he swallowed with difficulty, his mouth was dry, salivation zeroed, he began to sweat cold. It didn't take a genius to understand.
He got up and began to look around, lost. Beep beep, another message.
Valerie: "What need did you need to confess everything?"
"me? And what would I have confessed?" He said it out loud and wrote it. A few seconds. Bip bip.
"Clare knows everything and you told him"
"But I didn't say anything to ness... Silver!". He immediately called David, who answered at the first ring "Here Dr. Strangelove , who is speaking?"
"What the hell did you do!!!"
"Calm down Steve, I didn't do anything"
"Clare knows everything!"
"But will you want to joke? I don't even have Clare's number. We said goodbye at 3 o'clock. It's 9 o'clock, but do you think I rushed to Clare's house to do Deep Throat in the middle of the night? But did you go crazy?"
"So who was it? Only you know"
"And how do I know? Steve is right, but why would I have to do such a thing?"
"she just sent me a message saying she doesn't want to see me anymore; and Valerie wrote to me convinced that I had told her"
"And what did you do?"
"I called you"
"But call Clare, you idiot! "
"You're right ... damn it"
Twenty minutes later Steve was at the beach house, Clare was getting in motion, when he positioned himself in front of the Beetle.
"I thought I was concise, but clear: you suck!"
"Clare give me at least a chance to speak"
"I don't want to listen to you and I have to go to my father!"
"I wasn't in me"
"Already heard Steve. Now you disappear."
"Clare"
"I have to go to my father."
Steve was speechless, he had never seen Clare so resolute or so angry. He felt the earth missing under his feet again, for the second time in just over an hour. Staggering, he went inside the apartment. She found Valerie on the couch.
"Val"
"Why the hell did you have to tell her?"
"I swear, it wasn't me. She deceived me" Valerie was now talking to herself.
"What do you say?"
"sHe told me you had told her. And I believed her. I didn't think about it. I thought taken by the eroticism of sincerity you really told him. I was clinging in guilt.
Steve threw himself on the couch next to her "My godness"
"You're such a kid"
"No, it's just that I still have a conscience. Why you don't care about" now Steve found it easy to dump his frustration on the girl.
"You are unfair"
"Sorry," Steve said, "we were both wrong"
"It's true. But you're not the one who, once again, passes for a slut."
Steve didn't answer.
"I wanted to start over, have my own house, a new job, my friends. But at the slightest mistake, my past goes back to presenting me with the bill. Valerie Malone. What else can you expect?"
Steve couldn't help but think that if everyone had a precise idea of Valerie, maybe there was a fund of truth. But he didn't say it.
"Now what do we do?"
"I don't know Steve, I don't know."
Sanders was confused and hurt. He scrolled through the column, his finger instinctively stopped on Brandon's name. Brandon Walsh.