tulips
5 months, 10 days before
"Would it help at all to hear some kind of inspirational quote?" Clara offers.
Rain streaks mar the second floor window of café, a short walk from the flat Dev had moved into. The iron balcony just outside the cold window holds a tiny garden. Leaves and tubers bloom out, spilling over the balcony's sides and framing the yellow tulips just within Dev's eye line.
"Hit me," he replies tiredly.
She rolls back her eyes, trying to think of the best one. "Um...Sunshine all the time makes a desert?" she tries.
It's strange to be sitting with her like this, talking like they used to. Well, almost like they used to. Now there's a strange, viscous awkwardness smeared over everything, and Dev isn't sure if it will go away. That afternoon he agreed, over text, to come and meet her here expecting some kind of explanation for the last four years, but all he's getting is small-talk and advice about his breakup.
He hasn't been doing fine. It's been far too weird to live with Rebecca, so he's found the best place he could with such little time and money. Sometimes when he gets home from work, he thinks he can hear her in the shower like their old routine, but it's usually just a gas leak. He's had three of them this last month, and it's a miracle he's not dead yet. It's still preferable to living with Rebecca.
"People keep telling me these weird proverbs," he sighs. "They're all like 'Dev, flowers need sunshine and rain to grow'," he mimics. "But I hate it when people say stuff like that. Sure, you've got to take the bad with the good – that's life – but I mean, flowers don't need their girlfriend to hook up with girls behind their backs. That's not a thing."
"You're right," Clara agrees, looking down at her cup of hot tea. "You don't need to suffer to grow. That's not something that needed to happen to you. That's just a shitty thing that shouldn't have happened at all."
"But it did," Dev says. "And now it's raining."
He's not growing though. If anything, he feels like he's shrinking. He glances out at the tulips on the balcony, trembling in the storm, and he can't really see how it's helping them.
What's worse is the people telling him to 'get back out there'. That's not healthy. That's not even remotely good advice. As much as he wishes otherwise he still does love Rebecca, and that's a horrible thing to burden onto somebody new. No woman deserves to be a distraction, at least in his opinion.
He wants to wait this one out on his own. If he's miserable on his own, he'll be miserable in a relationship. It seems more sensible to just suffer it out. Kinder, even.
There's no hysterical strength here, exactly. Dev feels as though every truck in the world got together in some sort of international truck conference and ran over him in quick succession, just to spite him. He doesn't feel as if he can lift a truck. He feels as though he should try.
"Clara," he says. "Why did you just disappear?"
Her eyebrows jolt, and she leans backwards in her seat. Their table is tiny, so they're close.
"Before I left," she says very slowly, "I said something, and I shouldn't have said it. But I meant it." She looks up at him, matching his gaze nervously for some sign of understanding. "You didn't reply. I thought you hated me for it."
Dev shakes his head. "I don't know what you're talking about."
She rephrases it. "I said something – well, I didn't say it, I – I mean, you never brought it up in our messages, and I thought you wished I never mentioned it or something."
"Mentioned what?"
She shakes her head. "It just got so weird and unbearable, and I thought I should bring it up again, but I couldn't. So I just said nothing. For four years," she adds, sounding more disgusted with herself than Dev would have liked.
If anything, Dev is more frustrated now than he was before. But then he remembers how Clara only speaks in riddles like this when there's something pretty heavy weighing down on her, so he drops it for now. It doesn't seem fair to push something that's worrying her.
"So," he says slowly. "Fine Art. Are you very philosophical now?"
"Oh," she says, a surprised smile washing over her face like the rain. "Yes, I am very philosophical! I'm just pondering life's intrinsic dubieties," she jokes.
"Dubieties," Dev nods. "Good word."
"Isn't it!" she agrees, laughing.
Taking a sip of his hot tea – herbal and spicy – Dev says, "So tell me about life's intrinsic dubieties, Clara."
She clicks her tongue and thrusts her nose into the air theatrically, still held a little stiff by a dwindling self-consciousness. "Oh, you wouldn't understand," she says, slipping into what Dev assumes must be a caricature of her Moscow peers. "You have the listless, apathetic spirit of a scientist! You could not possibly comprehend the magnitude of the philosophical questions I...philosophise."
"Good start, clumsy finish," he rates.
"Shut up, I tried," she laughs, tearing up a piece of her serviette and throwing it at him. It floats down to the no-man's-land between their teacups.
"Sure, sure. So what is your philosophical virtuoso brain pondering today?"
"Important stuff, you know?" Clara says, smirking teasingly. "Like if 'MIKA' is an acronym or just his name in capital letters."
Dev frowns. "That's...actually a fair question."
"See! My degree paid off!"
He laughs, picking up the little serviette fragment and playing with it between his index finger and his thumb. "So how's your life in Leeds?" he asks.
"Well I'm crashing with Marcus for a bit," Clara tells him. "He's my mum's boyfriend's sister's son." Her eyes roll in concentration as she maps out the family tree in her head. "I call him my cousin. It's easier."
Marcus. The boy who had taken the forget-me-nots photo.
"But while I was in Edgecastle, I found an animation course up here," she finishes. "I need another job alongside it – just part-time – but if all goes well I'll be an animator!"
"That's amazing!" Dev grins. He doesn't know whether it's even a difficult accomplishment, but the way she looks when she says it tells him it must be important to her at least.
Clara looks as if she's about to reply, but instead she just smiles. The storm dwindles slightly, and she says, "Thanks for not pushing me about the... About what I was saying."
Dev sighs deeply and shakes his head. "Yeah. No, you don't have to worry about that. It's basic human decency; you can take your time."
"It's just," she says gently, "you don't make me feel nervous. I missed that." She's looking intently at her tea, but she glances up at him quickly. "I mean, I know it should be the norm, but when you talk to a lot of people, or when you're waiting for them to text back, or when you're nervous about saying something, do you get this feeling..." She gestures to her abdomen. "Here?"
Dev knows the feeling. He's had this tightness in his stomach ever since he found out about Rebecca. "Yeah," he says. "I know of it."
"Well, you never give me that," she says. "And you never have. And I just want to say thank you, because that feeling should never be there."
Dev stops. If there's anything he's learned from this breakup, it's that when people load advice onto him, they're always really talking to their own past selves.
She looks at him and says, "This is going to sound really stupid, but I don't want you to feel like that either. Because you're maybe my best friend, and I love you, and people who make you feel nervous and stressed and bad don't deserve your love, so I hope..." She takes a deep breath. "I hope I haven't made you feel like that."
He doesn't want to reply straight away. Something like this deserves a measured response, but he can't find one to give. "I feel like that all the time," he says eventually. "But it's never you."
The look Clara gives him is sceptical but relieved, and she smiles. "I love you," she says.
"Yeah, and I love you too," he says, and then he adds, "Dude."
"What was that?" she laughs, and the tension is broken. "Like a heterosexual 'no homo'?"
"No hetero, dude," he tries, and it feels ridiculous.
"Ha, that's what she said. And by 'she' I mean your lesbian girlfriend."
"Clara!" Dev cries, but soon enough he's laughing.
Clara is cackling so hard she's bent double, and her eyes have squinted shut.
"Stop cackling at my misfortune!" He gives her a light kick under the table, but she's laughing too hard to return it. "Clara, this is like the worst thing that's ever happened to me and you're laughing, you asshole! I'm going to have an early midlife crisis!"
"You should get a motorbike and grow a beard," she manages to say between great, chest-heaving laughs. "Oh wait, you are the beard!"
Dev tries to keep a straight face, but it crumbles quickly into laughter. "You're such a dick," he mutters.
Clara looks as if she's about to launch into another painfully obvious pun, but instead she just grins. "I'm glad you're laughing. That's...healing, or something, right?"
"I suppose?" he says. "It's better than everyone else's suggestions."
"Oh?" She raises her eyebrows. "Enlighten me."
"Alice wants to snipe Rebecca," he begins listing. "John wants me to 'swim in an abyss of anonymous genitals'."
"What would that even look like?" she grimaces, screwing her eyes shut.
Dev frowns. "Are you imagining it?"
"I wish I wasn't," she says, her shoulders rocking with a new tide of laughter.
Dev cries out with disgust, but soon their laughter drowns out the sound of raindrops rattling the window. It's discordant and unmelodious, and he's still hurting, but for now everything feels as painless as it's able. It feels good.