Archive of Our Own

(the first time)

It’s not like Brad is the first person in the world to fall in love with Claire Saffitz.

The internet loves Claire and their coworkers love Claire and even his mom, who had met Claire only one time in 2014 on a walkthrough of the kitchen, loves her enough to ask him about “the pastry chef” on almost every phone call. Claire is an easy person to love.        

So, maybe it shouldn’t surprise him, then, when her announcement that she’s leaving the Test Kitchen to pursue freelance work sparks a searing, red-hot feeling that builds and then bursts in his chest. Everyone else adores Claire, so they must feel this too, or a piece of it at least; he knows because when he heads toward the elevator at the end of the day, Molly catches his eye from her place at the door and says: “It kinda sucks, right?”

Molly has always had the guts to speak the truth, even when it is a truth no one else wants to say. Brad doesn’t agree with her out loud, but he must know, somewhere in the back of his mind, that Claire leaving does kind of suck, because he spends the next week – her last week – refusing to look directly at her. And he goes home every night and tells himself that it’s not fair for him to be sad or mad or whatever, because Claire’s entitled to do whatever’s best for Claire, but when he returns to the test kitchen each day and forces himself to smile through his guest appearances on Gourmet Makes: Twizzlers, the insurmountable feeling of loss that had settled into his chest when the burning was gone prevents him from meeting her gaze.

He tries and fails to pull it together for her goodbye party, which starts in the office and continues at a bar down the street after 5 o’clock hits. Maybe it’s something about the t-shirts they’re all wearing with her nickname (his nickname for her) or the fact that Claire had changed into a very pretty white and black dress with cutouts at the sides exposing soft-looking skin, but by the time they enter the bar, he finds himself feeling drained. He ends up sitting at the bar for most of the evening, slightly separated from the rest of his coworkers (his legs are always too long for booths, anyway), and nursing a beer instead of spending his time talking to the one person he so badly wants to.

Vinny steps up to the bar and flags down the bartender but doesn’t order his drink until after a very pointed look at Brad, which the latter chooses to ignore.

“Look, why don’t you just tell her?” Vinny had asked two days ago, as they transitioned between shows. The question was delivered in a hushed voice that was, thankfully, quiet enough for Brad to pretend he hadn’t heard. What was he supposed to say back, anyway? He and Claire have always had a thing in the kitchen – chemistry, he guesses, and that was all well and good but still, casual flirting, even the kind obvious enough to warrant “work wife/work husband” labels from their coworkers and video viewers, doesn’t negate the fact that she is a gazillion miles out of his league. And he normally doesn't mind shooting for the moon, but he’d spent years around her, and she had never done anything to suggest that she wanted anything more than what they had. So, he may have hated every boyfriend Claire had ever brought to the annual Conde Nast holiday parties, but he wasn’t about to risk messing up whatever good thing they had going for some stupid little crush.

The only problem is that whatever Brad felt before didn’t feel like just a crush anymore; not now that she was leaving, and he has to know that he is going to walk into the kitchen next Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and every day after and not see her.

They could still be friends. There was no reason to think that they wouldn’t still be friends. Except, well, Claire was already pretty bad at returning calls. And people always said they would keep in touch, but how often did that happen, really?

It’s pointless to even consider the idea of telling her, but Brad realizes that he’s doing it again. He can imagine it: pulling Claire away from the group, tugging her to him in the back hallway, and gathering that pretty black and white material in one hand while the other tilts her head up to him. He wants it so badly, wants her—

He’s just tired. Brad had trouble sleeping all week. It’s easy to chalk this brief fantasy up to exhaustion. Deciding that he’s partied out, he stands and settles his bill, then nods a goodbye to the test kitchen crew and to Claire, who sits tucked in the middle of the booth, and then heads out the front door without so much as a verbal: “See you around.”

It’s much too cold, much too casual, when considering everything they are. So, he probably shouldn’t be surprised when he doesn’t even make it to the end of the block before he hears his name shouted from behind him in an all too familiar voice.

“Jesus, Brad,” is the first thing Claire says after he turns around. It is so hard to look at her. He had spent five full days avoiding it and now she is almost too much, but it’s suddenly impossible to look anywhere else. He meets her eyes – it’s too dim to tell now, but he knows they’re brown, flecked with green. “Do you always have to walk so fast?”

“Sorry,” he says. The word feels unusually hard on his tongue; he swallows, tucks his hands into his pockets to disguise a fidget. “Didn’t know you were heading out.”

“I was waiting for someone else to leave first,” she says. She steps toward him to avoid being mowed over by pedestrians. New York City is not a great place for sidewalk conversations. Still, he’s surprised when she steps in even closer and loops her arms around his left. “I didn’t want to seem rude, but I have an early morning tomorrow.”

“Oh,” he says. As Claire tugs him down the sidewalk, toward the train, her fingers press into his bicep. “Okay.”

The rest of the walk is free of conversation. The scent of her perfume, orange and vanilla, clouds his thoughts, and Brad finds himself suddenly racing to remember every little detail: the way her shoulder presses into his, the way his name had sounded on her lips, the sheepish grin on her face as she caught up to him. It’s too much. He had drunk all of one beer over the course of the night, but right now, he feels absolutely wasted.

They reach the train station too soon. He wonders, briefly, if there is a way he could get away with walking her all the way home. He’s still trying to figure it out when she speaks up.

“Brad?”

Her voice is soft, needy, and completely unfair. He takes a half-step back to look at her and realizes, with a start, that there are tears in her eyes.

He had seen her cry just once before, between takes of one of the very first episodes of Gourmet Makes. He’d stepped out into the hallway off of the kitchen and found Claire standing against the wall, arms crossed tightly, frustration painted across her face, cheeks damp. Words had never been his strong suit, so, after a few seconds of stammering, he’d hugged her. Tightly. For as long as it had taken for her to hug him back.

He wants to hug her now. But, instead, his lips part to say, well, something, but she speaks first.

“Aren’t—” Claire starts, but her voice cracks. She knits her eyebrows together in a fierce, familiar look of determination before running her tongue over her bottom lip and trying again. “Brad, you’ve been avoiding me all week. Aren’t you going to miss me?”

Too much, Brad wants to say, scream, as he looks into those eyes that had burned themselves into his brain. Eyes that are now filling with tears, wavering with frustration and hurt and something else, something new. And then a new thought hits him.

She feels it too. He had just misunderstood. And in turn, she had mistaken his poor reaction for apathy, but that wasn’t what he felt, not even close.

She has to feel it too, or something close at least, because now she is standing in front of him looking at him with those eyes and she is too much and the feeling inside his chest is growing again into something that’s too much and so really, he couldn’t have stopped himself if he tried as he leans down in the next moment and finally, finally kisses Claire.

She kisses him back.

(one year later)

Grocery stores are always cold. Always, even in the middle of August, when it’s still 80 degrees outside at two AM. Claire hates that.

She stands in the eggs aisle, hands tucked deep into her pockets to shield them from the chill. She’s been standing in the same spot for the past 10 minutes, at least. Her eyes are trained ahead on the multicolored cartons in front of her, but her mind feels outside of herself. Instead of being at the 24-hour market with her body, her thoughts are somewhere closer to her apartment and the wreck of a kitchen she’d left behind after she had failed at what must have been her 30^th attempt at a cinnamon bun recipe good enough to go in her cookbook. This means that despite a week full of days that started at 7 in the morning and ended somewhere around three AM, she is now officially two days behind schedule. That kills her.

It had been Delany who had suggested she take a break. Delany, who was the pinnacle of youth and always, always awake, hadn’t even taken a full minute to respond when she had texted him “you up?” 30 minutes prior.

He had called her and she answered. Normally, she hated talking on the phone, but she’d learned that complaining just wasn’t as therapeutic over text.

"So, Claire, did you know that ‘you up?’ texts generally have a negative connotation?” he’d led, voice teasing.

After listening to her whine for a few minutes, Delany had given her relatively solid advice.

“Maybe take a break. Fry up a couple of eggs; have a beer. Add in some good music. Recipe for a late-night breakthrough.”

“Don’t say ‘recipe,’ Alex,” Claire had groaned, earning a laugh.

After she hung up and looked around her kitchen, which looked sort of like it had been the victim of a small tornado, she had decided to try Delany’s suggestion. But upon opening her fridge and nudging aside the mounds of resting dough, she had discovered that she was —seemingly impossibly — out of eggs. And beer. Hence the trip to the grocery store.

So, now, she is standing in front of the eggs and her nose is cold and her eyes are tired and her mind is still at her apartment with her dirty dishes and multiple failures and the deadline she had missed. The voice in her head that is always whispering that she’s not good enough is steadily growing louder and this, more than anything, is making the very simple task of shopping for dairy seem monumental.

She screws her eyes shut and tries and fails to shove down that always-growing frustrated feeling in the center of her chest.

She might have stood there forever, had it not been for Brad.

Brad is having a pretty inarguably shitty night.

His trip to the grocery store is little more than a thinly veiled last-ditch attempt to make the night less of a waste of time. He’s out of milk at home; he would pick up a carton and then head back to New Jersey and try very hard to go to sleep and pretend that the day had never happened.

It takes a conscious effort to empty his head, and so by the time he reaches the milk fridge at the back of the store, his mind is humming with self-induced white noise. Then he makes the mistake of looking to his left. And there stands none other than Claire Half-Sour Saffitz, herself, the only person in the world who consistently made him feel like he was one wrong move away from imploding on the spot, be it out of happiness or some other ambiguous mixed feeling he could never quite pin down.

It isn’t a big deal. He wants it to be true, tries to convince himself it’s true, even as he feels his eyes freeze on her and notices his heart slamming into his ribcage. In fact, it feels like all the moving parts in his body stop working the way they’re supposed to.

Plenty of people run into their coworkers when they don’t want to, he tells himself. It’s like, a thing. And it was. But Claire wasn’t just a coworker. And it wasn’t like he didn’t want to see her, even, he always wanted to see her. It was just that he hadn’t seen her outside of the test kitchen in a long time. The last time he saw her outside of work—

No. He stops himself, and it’s as abrupt and manual as the puff of air he forces out of his lungs. He wasn’t going to go there now, not tonight, today, whatever it was. Instead, he commands his body to relax, coaxes his right arm to reach up and open the door of the refrigerator and it almost, almost works, except his eyes are still on her. Claire hasn’t moved at all since he first noticed her. She stares straight ahead at the eggs, hands tucked into her sweatpants, bottom lip caught between her teeth. Her hair is up in the messiest of buns, the milky column of her neck exposed. Why does she always have to look so—

She hasn’t seen Brad, yet. She doesn’t have to see him. He can grab the milk and go. He will.

His fingers close around a half-gallon of whole milk and haul it out of the fridge.

Claire coughs.

And the milk – Brad’s friggin’ Hail Mary milk — slips from his grasp and bursts at his feet.

The bang of the milk container hitting the ground is enough to startle Claire into looking around. And, to her great surprise, she sees no one other than:

“Brad?” she asks, before she has time to decide whether or not she wants to draw attention to herself. Her eyes drift to the ground, where a puddle of milk is slowly spreading across the floor, then back up to him, whose ears turn red at a rapid rate. A grocery store worker appears, looking mildly disgusted, and Brad tries to apologize in a frazzled way that she can’t help but find endearing, his words running together.

“Ah geez—I’m so sorry—Can I…?—Oh boy, I’m such a klutz—”

Then, after backing up, he finally looks at her.

“Hey-a, Claire,” he says. It’s so casual and unfitting that she blinks once in surprise, tilting her head.

“What are you doing here?”

“You know…milk,” he says, and motions toward the ground. She expects more, but when he doesn’t offer any further explanation, she raises her eyebrows incredulously. She notices that even though Brad’s looking in her direction, he won’t meet her eye. It was weird. Why was it weird? It was never weird with Brad.

“Brad. You don’t live over here,” she encourages. “Or anywhere near here. And it’s late. Like really late.”

She swears his cheeks flush a shade darker, but before she can think too much about it, the worker that had appeared to clean the spilled milk clears his throat impatiently. Brad smiles sheepishly and scratches his head.

“Maybe we should talk outside,” he says. She nods. When he steps away, she notices that she’s smiling. Suddenly, failed cinnamon buns feel a million miles away.

After Claire finally grabs the eggs and a six-pack of beer, and checks out, she steps outside to find Brad on the sidewalk, looking at his phone. The warm summer air feels wonderful on her skin and by the time she reaches him, every ounce of the hopelessness she’d felt a few minutes ago had melted off of her and sunk into the sidewalk.

“Okay, spill,” she says to announce her presence. Brad looks at her – well toward her, at least – and shrugs noncommittedly.

“Whaddaya mean, Claire?”

“Brad!”

He fidgets, adjusts his baseball cap. She looks at him, taking in his appearance for the first time. His clothing is rumpled, his cap slightly off-center. In fact, it looks like he must have gotten dressed in a hurry – his shirt is on inside out. If he was anyone else, he’d look silly, but Brad, with his tan skin that remained the same shade of bronze in every season and his 6’4” frame and all of his infinite charisma, could pull off just about anything.

“I—” Brad starts, his gaze dropping to the sidewalk. “I was just in the neighborhood—at a friend’s, you know how it goes, Claire.”

What? “What?”

“I was in the neighborhood,” he says, to a pigeon strutting by. “And I’m out of milk at home, so I wanted to grab some before I headed back, but that was a bust.”

There’s a beat.

“Bust,” he repeats. He looks up and grins. And just like that, everything feels almost okay. Not weird. “Get it?”

“Yeah, I got it, Brad,” she says. She feels her smile return.

“So, what about you?” he asks. “It’s not past your bedtime, Half-Sour?”

“I’m recipe testing,” Claire says, and unlike Brad’s answer, this response is all-encompassing. He knows how recipe testing is, knows all about the cookbook, knows she can’t sleep until she gets things right because he knows her.

So why won’t he look at her?

He nods slightly, then frowns.

 “You walk here, Claire?”

“Yeah, it’s just a few blocks,” she answers. He knows this, too. They had come to this market before, together. And it had kind of been a long time ago, but not really.

Had he already forgotten?

No, no, no. She was not going to go there, not going to make things weird, or weirder than they already were. She had gotten this far, hadn’t she? And it was fine, mostly fine.

“It’s late,” he says. His voice is firmer than she expects; it’s as if he’s made up his mind about something. “There are a lot of crazies out there. And you never even took up my offer for personal defense lessons—”

“Oh my god, Brad, I’ve lived in New York for a long time,” she insists, but he shakes his head and then before she can protest, takes her groceries from her.

“Lemme walk you home, Claire. For my sake.”

She wishes she felt like putting up a fight. It would be a lot easier to pretend like she didn’t want him to walk her home, to try and ignore how she’d been talking to Brad for all of ten minutes and it had led to her feeling better than she had in weeks. She wishes she didn’t care so much that he still hadn’t met her eye. She wishes that he didn’t sound so polite. She wishes that she didn’t want so badly to grab his hand and force him to look at her, see her, really see her the way he used to—

She said she wouldn’t. So, she doesn’t.

“Fine.”

(the first time, continued)

Claire has a tattoo.

Tonight is a night of strange and new things. Brad is in her bedroom for the first time and her bra and dress are strewn carelessly on the carpeted floor and he is in her bed, under the covers with her. His face is only an inch away from hers, his fingertips ghosting across the soft skin underneath her bare right breast, where Claire has a tattoo.

“What does it say?” he asks, eyes flickering down as his fingers skim once more over the dark, jumbled script, indecipherable in the dim evening light filtering in through the curtains. Underneath his hands, her skin begins to tinge pink. After a moment, he realizes she’s blushing, and his chest swells with some pronounced, inexpressible feeling so much warmer than the emptiness he’d felt before.

“The tattoo? Le pain,” she whispers, her voice hoarse. This was the most talking they’d done with each other all night, all week, maybe. He can’t, for the life of him, remember why he’d thought avoiding talking to her, looking at her, would work.

“It’s bread, in French,” Claire finishes. He knows this of course, but his brain isn’t working right now.

“Bread?” he repeats. Her blush deepens. She sits up a little in the bed and tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear. She’s so goddamn pretty. She’s always been so, so pretty and he had noticed a long time ago but never really let himself dwell on the thought or look at her for too long. It was different, now, though. He could look at her for as long as he wanted.

“I got it as a dare. In culinary school,” she clarifies, now. She continues to watch him, slowly raises her free hand to stroke the scruff on his cheek. Her voice is even softer when she next speaks, her lips brushing his jaw, her free hand twisting the hem of his “Half-Sour” t-shirt. “Don’t make fun of me, Brad.”

How could he possibly? How could anyone ever do anything other love Claire? He shuts his eyes for a moment, sees her standing on the sidewalk, tears threatening to drip down her face and acknowledges that the urge that had swept over him then had never left.

He opens his eyes; fixes them on her face. “Aren’t you going to miss me?” she’d asked. He hadn’t answered her question, he realizes. Not out loud, anyway. He wants to answer it now. He wants to lean down and kiss her and whisper everything he should have said a million years sooner, but all of a sudden, it’s like he’s frozen in place and all he can do is stare at her and feel the rise and fall of her ribcage under his open palm and try and fail and try and fail again to ignore the creeping feeling of loss sneaking up on him once more. There are so many things he wants to say, a hundred stories he wants to tell, a thousand half-formed thoughts he wants to give voice to, but he knows that none of it matters anymore. Today was Claire’s last day in the Test Kitchen, and it was like the entire universe had shifted two inches to the right and everything was left out of place, and the only thing that was the same was the fact that he was shit with words.

“Claire?” he says, after what feels like hours.

“Yeah, Brad?”

"I’m gonna miss you. I’m gonna miss you a ton.”

Her skin flushes a shade deeper; her blush reaches down to her navel, now. It’s barely perceptible as the room continues its gradual slip into darkness. Brad, finding himself finally able to move, sinks down and presses his lips to her stomach in an open-mouthed kiss. She shivers beneath him; another whisper reaches his ears.

“I know, Brad.”

Her fingers slip into his hair. His baseball cap had been tossed aside as soon as they stepped into the apartment. Neither of them had voiced their inevitable destination when they got onto the train, but there was a sort of silent agreement reached from the moment his lips had first touched hers on the sidewalk. Or maybe that agreement had been made a long time ago, and it had just taken everything falling out of place for them to notice. Does that make sense? he wonders to himself. It probably doesn’t. He still feels drunk.

On its own volition, his free hand reaches up for Claire. She grasps it in her own before letting out a soft sigh as his mouth travels upward over her sternum and finds the sensitive underside of her breast, inches away from her newly discovered tattoo. Her voice wraps around him; he’d be happy to lie down in it forever.

“I’m going to miss you too.”

The first time was supposed to be the only time. Claire was quitting and it felt like the world was falling apart even though everything was supposed to be coming together. Brad had spent the week avoiding her gaze and all she wanted really, was to talk to him, be with him. Brad, who she had spent years pining after, had nearly convinced her that he was indifferent to her presence in the kitchen. And so when he had kissed her, she had wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back. And she spends the night with him in her bed, his hands on her body, his name on her lips, but she does not call him the next day or week or month. She doesn’t know why.

Maybe, she thinks, on one of the frequent intervals where he slips into her mind even though she tells herself not to think about him, maybe she could call him and suggest that they hang out. This thought is quickly brushed aside. She and Brad had never hung out outside of work before, not alone. It didn’t make sense, but it felt like their entire relationship, all the fun and teasing and pining included, was defined by Bon Appétit and their roles as coworkers. For so long, the two of them just had been a quiet daydream in the back corner of her mind, one she liked to play with in the spaces in between sleep and waking, but always only just that. Brad was her friend and had almost always been her boss and it just didn’t seem to make sense to risk everything they had over such a small, tender feeling of curiousness.

It’s more than that though. She realizes this after the first time, when the scene from that night replays in her mind for weeks, and again, later, when something good happens over the weekend and her first thought is to tell him on Monday morning. It is so much more than curiosity; it’s something burning and longing and hungry and desperate, and it is so, so scary. Brad texts her more than once and she reads the messages over and over again but can never bring herself to respond. Claire has never been good with change.

So, it’s just easier not to call.

But then she comes back to the Test Kitchen. And she doesn’t call to warn Brad, and that isn’t fair. She knows that as soon as she walks into the otherwise empty kitchen and sees him standing there at what used to be their shared workstation and sees the surprise, confusion, flit across his face. She crosses the floor and stops right in front of him; when she speaks, her voice is shakier than she wishes it was.

“Hey, Brad.”

“Hey, Claire.”

It’s not enough; it’s not nearly enough. But she doesn’t have an explanation, not the kind that Brad, who is sensitive and kind and loving and absolutely everything deserves. The truth, perhaps, might suffice, but she can admit that she has never been particularly brave. So, when the silence mounts, and she notices his lips parting to speak again, the words tumble from her mouth on their own accord:

“Hey, we’re okay, right?”

It’s not fair for her to ask that of him. To ask him to forget, to pretend. None of it was fair. She knows this, and he knows this; she sees it on his face. But then it’s gone and he is smiling that familiar half-smile and adjusting the goobalini he’d swapped with his summertime caps and for the time being, everything feels normal again, even if it isn’t, really.

“’Course we’re okay, Half-Sour.”

God, when had she become such a dick?

The first time was supposed to be the only time. They probably could have gone back to normal, eventually, if it had been. But of course, it wasn’t.

(a year later, continued)

Once they reach Claire’s apartment, she turns her back to Brad and works to unlock the door.

“Well here ya go, Claire,” he says, bouncing awkwardly on the balls of his feet. “At your doorstep, safe and sound.”

“Right,” she says, looking back at him and grinning. A jolt runs through him and it’s almost painful. The front door swings open and she steps inside. He steps into the doorway but hangs back as she turns on the lights.

“What are you doing?” she asks when she turns back toward him. Her eyebrows lower. “Come in.”

His mouth opens, then closes, and opens again.

“It’s late, Claire.”

It’s a lame excuse. But it’s true, at least, and so it isn’t really fair for her to look at him like that. He’d been trying to avoid those eyes for the entire night and so when he catches them for just a second, his gaze travels down to the carpet instead.

“Brad,” she says. His name is only one syllable, but Claire has a habit of stretching it into two.  This is also entirely unfair. He watches as her feet move forward and stop in front of him. Her toes are painted blue. “Can you just—I mean—can’t you look at me, anymore?”

So of course, he has to. He raises her eyes to her, meets those big fuckin’ doe eyes and goes ahead and says goodbye to any lingering resolve.

“Do you want a drink?” she asks, after they stand there for a few seconds, looking at each other.

“Sure.”

He steps inside after and looks around for an excuse to stop staring at her. Everything was pretty much the same as he remembered it being. Everything except for the kitchen, at least, which was – to be put bluntly – a wreck. He sets the grocery bag down on what appears to be the only clear spot of counter space.

“Everything all right in here, Claire?” This is good, more casual. It serves to ease the tension. She rolls her eyes, but her cheeks take on a rosy tinge.

“Shut up,” she says, tossing her phone and keys aside and beginning to dump dirty dishes in the sink. “I’m recipe testing, I told you.”

It’s easier to look at Claire once her attention is off of him. Brad's eyes follow her around the small kitchen as he leans against the fridge, trying to stay out of her way. His gaze eventually falls on her shirt, then follows the column of tour dates printed down the center of her back. His eyebrows lower on their own accord.

“I’ve been making cinnamon buns,” she is saying. “Or trying to anyway. They can’t just be BA’s best morning buns, because those aren’t really cinnamon buns, and anyway that recipe obviously belongs to them, not me. But I have to put a recipe for some kind of bun in the cookbook because it was on the original list I gave my publisher and it somehow slipped between the cracks and now it’s one of the last things I need to do, but I’m behind schedule and so I can’t sleep until I finish this and then I swear — I swear to god, Brad — I am never, ever eating anything that even remotely resembles a cinnamon bun again, not even a Cinnabon, hand to god…what?”

She’s whirled around to face him and now her eyes are on his again and damn, why are they always so wide? Why, why, does she always look so— 

“Is that my shirt?” Brad blurts before he has the presence of mind to stop himself. She looks confused for just a moment, and then she looks down at her shirt (his shirt), which is big enough to almost reach her knees and tellingly portrays the logo of one of Brad’s favorite bands.

“I—” she tries, but her cheeks are quickly transitioning from rosy to red. Her voice is much smaller than it had been a minute ago. “It was in the drawer and I haven’t had time to—y’know—I haven’t seen much of you—so I just threw it on, y’know Brad?”

The speech pattern is so like his, he realizes, and he has to force himself to tamp down the blooming fondness in his chest. He crosses his arms in an attempt to ground himself and opens his mouth to ask something, he’s not sure what yet, but—

Claire’s phone rings. As she goes to grab it, a look of relief floods her face. He almost wants to tell her to leave it, but he bites his tongue.

"Hello?” she answers, turning away from him and nudging him aside to put the eggs and beer in the fridge. “I’m sorry, Delany. I didn’t…I was in the store!”

Her voice, initially frazzled, melts into something soft and teasing. Brad wants, very badly, to ignore the jump in his pulse.

Fuckin’ Delany.

(sometime after the first time)

Delany is a good dancer.

Brad had never really noticed before (why would he?) but it’s impossible to ignore now, watching Delany dance with Claire in the middle of Andy’s living room, cleared of furniture for the occasion. They’re really dancing together, not just next to each other like most of their coworkers; Claire’s hand is on Alex’s shoulder and Alex is looking at her like, well, like how Alex looks at everyone and Brad knows this but watching them, together, lit up by the warm lighting and moving to the loud, quick-paced music echoing throughout the loft still makes him feel…

Weird. Weird is the best word. It’s the only word, really, that he’ll allow himself to think.

He doesn’t feel like punching Delany in the teeth. He doesn’t.

Delany is a good dancer. A really good dancer. Claire is the type of person who insists she isn’t a good dancer but turns out to be pretty impressive after her second drink. Brad, unfortunately, is the type of person who says he’s a bad dancer and really is. Nowhere near good enough to successfully cut in, but then, why would he? Brad and Claire were not a thing. They didn’t work together too much these days – new job titles meant different schedules, and he was lucky to even be in town on the same days she was in the kitchen – but when they did, it was okay. They were as close to being back to normal as they could have been. That was good; it wasn’t like he had expected things to change.

Expecting and wanting were two different things.

Brad pulls his eyes away from Delany and Claire – who are dancing so closely together – and heads to the kitchen for another beer, resolutely ignoring the tightness in his throat.

He doesn’t see Claire again until two hours (and two and a half beers) later, when he stands in the hall, his back pressed against the wall as he waits for the bathroom. She turns the corner and comes into his line of sight and when she sees Brad, her face breaks into a grin that is entirely unfair.

“Brad!” she says, and her tone of voice matches the cheer in her expression. The music is quieter in the hallway, but she still has to step in closer to be heard. As she moves to stand in front of him, she reaches out and squeezes his arm. She has to stop doing that. “I was looking for you.”

She was looking for him. The words shouldn’t move him in the way that they do. He drops his eyes from her face and focuses his gaze instead on the gold bracelet on her left wrist.

“Molly told me she saw you come in, but I couldn’t find you,” she says now. “I was surprised you came. Did you fly back today?”

“This morning,” he says. To tell the truth, he hadn’t expected himself to come to the party. The Test Kitchen members were always throwing informal get-togethers and it wouldn’t have been a big deal for him to pass on attending this one, but then he had made the mistake of playing Hunzi’s private Instagram story and had seen a picture of Claire, smiling widely, sandwiched between Matt and Kevin, and before he knew it, he was pulling on his shoes and leaving Jersey. This was, perhaps, a bit pathetic, but now that he’s standing so close to her, watching her bat her impossibly long eyelashes, he can’t see really that he had any other choice.

“I missed you this week,” Claire says, and he almost wishes she didn’t. She has the tendency to make him feel like he’s special, like they are special, when she looks at him the way she is; when she says soft, kind things like she is. He wants—

“Yeah?” is all he gets out at first, looking back at her. Her mouth twitches and he clears his throat before making an effort to sound like less of an idiot. “Missed you too, Claire.”

Claire tilts her head and smiles more widely. It’s hard to tell in the low lighting, but it seems like her cheeks may tinge pink. The possibility of this encourages him.

“I feel like I haven’t seen a lot of you lately,” Brad says. “You know, ever since you got back—”

The door to the bathroom opens and Tyre from production slips out. Claire and Brad both smile at him as he makes his way down the hallway. When Brad looks back at Claire, she’s looking at him so intensely that he loses his train of thought. His mouth opens and closes before she shoots him a sheepish look.

"If you’re trying to find a not-rude way to excuse yourself to go to the bathroom, don’t worry about it,” she says, smiling gently and tapping his forearm once more. “But find me afterward, okay?”

He nods, trying to ignore the growing feeling of frustration humming in his ears.

“Okay.”

When Brad steps back into the living room a few minutes later, he scans the room and quickly finds Claire sitting on Andy’s couch, which has been pushed up against a window. Her body is angled in toward Delany, who sits on her left. On his other side is Molly, with Christina perched on the couch arm. Brad does not look forward to trying to wiggle into a free space and wonders if he should just find Claire later when she meets his eye across the room and waves for him to come over.

“Brad,” she says warmly when he’s within hearing distance. She grabs his wrist and pulls him down to the couch, though there’s not nearly enough space for his broad, 6’4” frame. He ends up kind of squashing her, which causes her to squeak. He mutters a rushed, embarrassed apology before he notices that Claire’s laughing. She shifts so that he has more space and ends up half-sitting on his lap.

“Okay?” she asks quickly, and he jerks his head in a nod. She resumes her conversation with Alex, Molly, and Christina and maybe Brad should try and pay attention so that he can find a way to join, but it’s suddenly very difficult to focus on anything other than Claire.

He had just missed her, he tries to tell himself, even as his heart rate increases. She’d been one of his best friends in the kitchen for years; of course, not seeing her as much as he would like to was tough. That was all.

The sparks he feels when her fingertips trace over his open palm do not necessarily fit in with this conclusion, so he ignores them. And he ignores the way his eyes briefly flicker to her lips when she says his name.

“Brad,” she repeats, as his mind returns to his body and he notices everyone looking at him. “Are you going to tell us about Italy or what?”

He sits on the couch with Claire and his other coworkers for a while. He describes the olive oil making process in such a detailed fashion that he thinks he notices Delany’s eyes glaze over at a certain point. He isn’t, however, in a position where he can see Claire's face, though her back remains pressed against him and her hand continues to brush over his absently every now and then, each time sending a jolt through his body. It catches him off guard, then, when she lets out an extended yawn.

“S-sorry,” she gets out, arms stretching towards the ceiling. She turns to look at Brad and offers an apologetic smile that doesn’t necessarily hide the tiredness in her eyes. “It’s getting late.”

And it was indeed, he sees when he checks his watch and finds that midnight has come and gone.

“Poor Claire,” Molly says affably. “Can never hang with the big dogs.”

“That’s not fair—” Claire tries, but another yawn cuts off the end of her sentence and Brad finds his fingers closing around her forearm on their own accord and squeezing gently.

“Alright Half-Sour,” he says, gently pushing her into a standing position. “Time to head home. I’ll give you a ride.”

She must be very tired because it’s like her to argue, to insist that she can walk home on her own, to point out that Brad lives in Jersey and that it’s so out of his way to go to her place first, but she doesn’t say any of that now. She just looks at him for a moment, then crosses her arms and nods.

“Okay,” she says, after stifling yet another yawn. “Thanks, Brad.”

He grins and stands. He barely even notices the crease that forms between Delany’s eyebrows.

After grabbing their coats and saying a few quick goodbyes, Brad and Claire walk down the block to where his car is parked. It seems like she falls asleep as soon as she climbs into her seat – by the time he pulls away from the curb, her head is pressed against the window, eyes closed, pink mouth hanging slightly open. She can be so—

The trip from Andy’s to Claire’s is not necessarily far, but the Friday night traffics slows them down a bit. By the time Brad finds parking near her apartment, the dash clock shows that it is now past 1 am. The nap in the car, however, seems to have served her well, and she doesn’t yawn once on their way to her building.

After the doorman lets them into the apartment building, they take the elevator up to Claire’s floor. It’s quiet until they get off and approach her door, and he breaks the silence.

“Alrighty, Claire, here you are, safe and sound.”

“Right,” she says, smiling. She opens her purse to fetch her keys, but her hands pause on the zipper. After a second, she drops them and turns away from the door to face him, a question on her face.

“Brad—?”

“Yeah, Claire?” Brad hadn’t really had much of an opportunity to look at her all night. But now, in the bright light of the hallway, he finds that it’s all he wants to do. His eyes drop, momentarily, from her face and land on her dress. It’s pretty – made of dark blue fabric accented with gold thread. He wonders if it would be okay to compliment her.

“You said something earlier…” she says, her voice hesitant. His eyes find hers. Her eyebrows are knit together in that determined look she sometimes gets. “About missing me?”

The tips of his ears must turn red. They always do when he feels like he’s under pressure. He looks away, adjusts his goobalini, and takes a moment to search for a response that won’t make him sound like an idiot but comes up short.

  “I—” he begins, finding it much more difficult to fess up to his feelings in a hallway so brightly lit. It’s easier to tell the truth in the dark. He wonders why that is.

She interrupts by reaching out and grabbing one of his hands. Her hands are a little cold – they usually are – but he jumps for another reason. 

Claire stands on her tiptoes. She has to, to reach him. Her free hand slips around his neck, guiding Brad closer to her. He lets himself be guided, too shocked to resist. And she kisses him.

Later, Claire laughs when Brad admits how he’d felt about seeing her and Delany dance.

“Alex? Please,” she says. Her back is pressed into Brad's chest, his arm draped across her waist. “First of all, gross. Second of all, it’s not like I could even think about being with someone else, after what you did to me.”

He can almost hear her holding her breath after this. He understands, though. Small truths had a way of slipping out when the sun was down. And it is true, what she’s insinuating. The thing between them was like nothing he had ever felt before with anyone else. It wasn’t just the sex itself; it was the way he would catch Claire’s eye and find himself grinning, the way her fingertips made his nerves light up, the way she would let out a soft breath that was both a laugh and a gasp in his ear. He wouldn’t want anyone else.

He had never dared to think that she might feel the same.

“What did I do to you, exactly?” he asks, unable to help himself. She turns in his arms, looking furious with herself. “Indulge me.”

“Nothing. Shut up,” Claire says. But she tucks her head into the crook of his neck and scoots in closer. “Go to sleep.”

Brad wasn’t the first person to fall in love with Claire and he wouldn’t be the last. But she had chosen him to be here with her, now. That had to count for something.

Right?

(a year later, continued)

“Yes, I’ll play it,” Claire says into the phone. “Yes. Yes, I promise. And thank you for the advice. I’ll tell you how it goes. Monday. I promise. Okay. Night.”

She shuts the fridge door and Brad looks up in time to see her set the phone down. She offers him a half-smile that fails to meet her eyes.

“Delany was the one who sent me to the store,” she explains, turning back to the pile of dishes in the sink and turning on the water. “He said eggs and beer were good for inciting breakthroughs or something. And music. He wanted to make sure I got the link to his playlist. Apparently, that’s like, a hobby of his.”

She’s not facing him, but he can see that the back of her neck is still flushed.

“Yeah, you know what else is good for inciting breakthroughs?” Brad asks, allowing the subject to be changed. He moves to lean against the kitchen counter closest to her, close enough to coax her into looking at him. “Sleep, Claire.”

She makes a soft hmph noise and shakes her head before cutting the faucet off. He hesitates for a moment and watches her hands.

“Delany call you a lot?” he eventually asks, shooting for casual. Her returning blush tells him he’d missed by a mile.

“Be nice,” she chides, in her soft and familiar way. “I texted him first. He’s the only person I know who’s usually awake this late.”

“Uh-huh,” he says. Claire reaches for the dish soap, but pulls her hands back almost immediately, resting them on the counter instead as she turns to him, looking perplexed.

 “You’re never up this late,” she says, matter-of-factly. “Are you going to tell me what you were doing on the Upper West Side at two AM? What you were really doing, I mean, ‘cause you know your shirt’s on inside out?” She reaches up and fingers the shirt tag at the base of his neck, a soft grin playing on her lips. He can feel the heat rising to his cheeks.

“I—” Brad begins. He almost lies. He doesn’t want to do anything to stop Claire from looking at him like she is, and he knows that the truth will do just that. But then he makes eye contact with her and finds an honest answer being pulled out of him.

"I had a date.”

It hadn’t gone well, of course. But he doesn’t have a chance to explain. The words spill from his lips and immediately solidify in the space between them. Claire’s hand falls from its place at the nape of his neck and falls awkwardly at her side as she turns away from him, back toward the sink. He wants her to look at him again, to suggest that it’s all okay.

She doesn’t. It isn’t.

“A date,” she repeats, after a beat. “That ended at two in the morning?” He can hear her putting together the pieces and he fights to correct her before she can reach what seems to be the most likely conclusion.

“Claire, it wasn’t—”

“Doesn’t matter,” Claire says, almost in the same breath. She does look at him now, but not in the same way she had been; her wide brown eyes have closed off, now lack the warmth from earlier. She smiles a tight-lipped smile. “Sorry for pushing. I know…it isn’t…”

She bites her bottom lip. Brad has never wanted to explain anything more in his life. He feels a sudden urge to share everything, the whole shitty night, but he doesn’t know where to start.

He doesn’t know how to tell Claire that he’d gone on two dates with a girl named Summer who he’d met on the ferry, and ended up at the end of the second laying in her bed with her sitting on his chest with her tits out and felt, all of a sudden, so strongly like he was in the wrong place that he’d moved away so quickly that Summer had just about fallen off of the bed.

And how can he tell Claire that the whole walk to the market, his phone had been buzzing as Summer sent texts calling him a jerk and a dick and a waste of time and he’d thought that maybe she was right because hadn’t he known, right after the first ten minutes of the first date, that everything felt wrong?

How does he tell Claire that he’d walked in the grocery store and saw her standing there looking like she always looked and thought, immediately, that the universe was trying to punish him because he finally understood, now, that he was no closer to being over her than he was on the first or second or third time they’d decided to end things?

How does he tell her?

“It isn’t my place,” she finally says, and she smiles a little wider like she’s trying to assure him that it really is okay. It’s too late. “We weren’t even…I mean, it’s okay, Brad.”

“Claire—”

“It’s okay,” she says, firmer this time. She picks up the dish soap, adds some to the warm water in the sink. Then: “I’m sorry for forcing you to stay. I know it’s weird.”

There’s a beat.

“You can go if you want.”

Another beat.

“It is weird,” Brad says. He makes a conscious effort to try and keep his voice low, gentle, but maybe that’s a lost cause. “And it’s hard, Claire. It’s fucking hard.” It is so hard to be with her, but not be with her. But she had gotten over it, over them; why couldn’t he?

Her hands pause.

Brad hates long spaces in between words. They make him feel like pulling his hair out. But he waits for Claire, stares at the frayed sleeve of her shirt (his shirt) and holds his tongue.

“I know,” she whispers back.

“But I’m tryin’.” And maybe that’s the best way he can put it. Without saying all of the other stuff, that’s the best way Brad can think to get her to understand that even though he still feels what he’d always felt with her, he is trying to ignore it, for her sake and his. He is trying to accept that things cannot be the way he wants them to be because he knows that she does not want what he wants. For her, he is trying.

He raises his eyes to her face again and watches her purse her lips before she nods slightly.

“I know.”

It feels as if they reach an understanding. There’s a long moment where neither of them says anything. And his skin starts to itch a little, but he waits for her, afraid of breaking the still they’d slipped into. Eventually, she reaches for the dishtowel and speaks.

“You were right, about it being late, though,” Claire says. “Honestly, if you really wanted to go—”

“I don’t wanna go,” he says. He hesitates for a second, then plucks the dishrag from Claire’s hands before it can touch the water. All night he’d been trying to keep his distance, but now all he wants is to get her to understand, to show her the things he couldn’t find the courage to say, and maybe, just a little, he wants to prove to himself that he can do it; he can be her friend and not let everything else get in the way. “Let me do the dishes.”

“What?” she asks, and the tone of unbelieving exasperation in her voice is an old friend. It’s encouraging, it feeds the feeling he had tried to smother earlier. “No, Brad, you don’t have to—”

“I know. I wanna though,” he says and presses his side against hers to coax her into stepping aside. “Budge over, Half-Sour.”

“Brad.”

“It’s late, Claire,” he says, pushing his sleeves up. “And you’ve probably been going full-speed on a quarter-tank and a couple of eggs and a playlist ain’t gonna make up for that. Take a break.”

“Brad, I can’t—”

“You can take a bath,” Brad says, now ignoring her and plowing through his argument without pause. “One of the ones you like, with the lavender. And I’ll clean up the kitchen and make a real meal, okay, much better than just eggs. Then we can work on the buns. Together, okay? And you’ll get that recipe out and maybe you can work on your feelings toward Cinnabon. Okay?”

Claire is silent. He refuses to turn around, to give her even an inch, but it doesn’t matter; he can imagine her face. He knows every inch, every slope.

“Okay, Claire?”

“Fine.”

Claire doesn’t realize how tired she is until she sinks into the bath and the warm water and scent of lavender bath oil begin to leech the exhaustion from her skin. Fucking Brad, he knew exactly what he was doing.

Brad, Brad, Brad.

Her brain is pushing her to pull out memories she’d put away months ago. And she can’t—she can’t, but Brad is in her kitchen, washing her dishes, and had promised to cook her dinner and help with her recipe and after everything she’d done, after everything they’d been through, he is still so good. And now, she is suddenly so, so tired, and all of her thoughts are seeping out and pooling together without her permission; before she knows it, her eyes have fallen shut and she’s relaxed for the first time in weeks and her mind is on Brad, Brad, Brad.

(sometime after the first time)

The Friday night before the end is just like all the other Fridays they’d spent together. They’re in bed; Claire has just gotten on top. And she sinks down onto Brad and just like always, it feels like everything comes crashing down and falling into place. She inhales sharply and meets his eyes to find him staring at her with such a fixed, intense gaze that she almost forgets how to breathe.

“Claire?” he says quietly. She loves the way her name sounds on his lips anytime, but especially now, especially during times like this. She smiles and dips her head down to nip the base of his ear. God, he feels so good.

“Mm?” she responds when she feels his fingers curling into the small of her back. She raises her head just enough to look at him again, to drink him in.

“I think I love you.”

She freezes, briefly. And right on cue, the voice in the back of her brain sounds red alert, whispers for her to move away, to disagree. But tonight, something is different.

Tonight, the voice isn’t loud enough.

The feeling of Brad’s skin pressed against hers is much louder than anything else. And so, as she looks at him, and stares into focused blue eyes and pupils blown wide with lust being mistaken for love, she can’t bring herself to argue. So, instead of reacting like, well, herself, she just smiles. And lets out a soft hum of laughter. His face folds in confusion.

“Yeah, okay,” she whispers back, tilting her head and dropping her gaze to his chest, suddenly sure that she’ll melt if she looks into those eyes for a single second longer. “Tell me if you still feel the same way after we get out of bed.”

Brad might want to say more, but she doesn’t give him much of a chance. She sinks back further onto him, then drops down to press a kiss to his neck and all that comes from his lips is a quiet groan that she wants to replay over and over and over again.

He can’t mean it. Claire knows that. He can’t. I think, he had said, like even he couldn’t be sure.

But what if he did? She wonders later that night when they’re wrapped in each other’s arms and drifting off. What if, against all odds, he really did mean what he said – what if he loved her?

Good, she thinks immediately, almost surprising herself. But she’s too tired for all of the ifs and ands and buts, too close to sleep to continue the ruse that she and Brad were something less than what they were. The voice in the back of her mind that always has something to say has already fallen asleep, and without it, she feels blissfully, if only momentarily, free. If he does, then good.

She loves him too.

The day after Friday is Saturday. And Claire loves Saturdays. Weeknights were, unofficially, for sex. They served as the best evidence for her internal argument that the thing between her and Brad was based purely on attraction and a need for physical closeness. Never preplanned, their Monday through Thursday night hookups began with a text (come over?), or an inexplicable, tense look shared in the kitchen, or a spark of energy shared between them as they rode the elevator down together. Weeknights were rushed and intense and breathtaking and Brad never, ever stayed. There were times when she wanted to ask him to, admittedly, but she never did. She always forced herself to wait for the weekend, when there was no reason for him to climb out of bed and she could grip onto him and pretend he was hers and not feel guilty about it because well, that’s just how weekends were.

But on Saturday morning, when she wakes up, he is not next to her in bed. And it’s no secret that she isn’t much of a morning person, so it’s not unusual for her to wake up on a weekend morning and find him already in the kitchen or living room, but it is unusual for her to search the apartment and find no trace of him, not even a note or text, like she does today.

It shouldn’t be a big deal. It definitely shouldn’t hurt her feelings or anything. But after she pokes her head into the empty bathroom for the third time just to make sure, Claire recognizes the tightness in her throat as a sure sign of a wave of unjustifiable emotionality. Brad and Claire are not together, not really, but Saturdays are the time when it feels most like they are. And now Brad is not here, even though she had thought they’d reached an unspoken agreement that weekends were for domestic fantasy. Weekends were for grocery shopping trips and unrushed afternoon sex and Buffy binges and everything she desired to share with him in her wildest, most ambitious and unrealistic dreams. And maybe she hadn’t realized it before, but Claire had depended on those days, used them as an outlet for a week full of unexpressed please, stay’s and an opportunity to look into a pretend world where she was, braver, more carefree, and somehow, miraculously, good enough to be with Brad.

She supposes, perhaps, that this is the same world where he says she loves her, and it makes sense for him to mean it.

She wishes it hadn’t taken him not being there to notice the importance of Saturdays. Maybe then she could have prepared herself to subdue the terrible, unjustifiable feeling that she had been robbed of something which belonged to her. Saturdays were for her. On Saturdays, they were for her.

It’s awful enough to make Claire let out an audible sound of disgust as she stands in the center of the living room, tossing her notification-free phone onto the couch. And just as she does, the door opens, and in walks Brad, laundry basket in hand, appearing blissfully unaware of the mental strain his absence had caused her.

“Morning, Sleeping Beauty,” he says, as he enters the apartment and she stands in the middle of the floor, gawking. “You been up long? I’m guessing no; you hate waking up early on weekends. I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I took the laundry down.”

The laundry.  

He stops in front of her and shifts the basket to his hip before wrapping his free arm around her and pulling her in to kiss her forehead. Her insides are bubbling, and it doesn’t make sense, but a slow-rising feeling of anger is beginning to replace the frustration from before, even as he sits on the couch, basket of now-clean laundry at his side.

“You okay, Claire?” he asks, apparently having gauged the look on her face.

“Yeah,” she lies, crossing her arms against her chest and trying and failing to adjust her attitude. “I just didn’t know where you were. You didn’t text.”

Gross. It sounds so needy she almost wants to puke.

“I thought I’d be back before you got up,” is Brad's explanation. “I’m sorry.” As he reaches into the basket and pulls out a pair of socks, his voice transitions back into a chatty, casual tone. “Hey, you wanna grab breakfast after this? Or I could cook, or, ooo, we could try boba—”

“What are you doing?” she hears herself ask; her eyes locked on the half-folded socks in his hand.

“I…” Brad starts, sounding confused. “I’m folding the laundry, what do you mean?”

“Since when do you do my laundry?”

“Since I got bored just hanging around the apartment, Claire,” he says, his voice careful. “Sorry, are you mad, or something?”

“No!” she says, though her tone of voice betrays her. She realizes this and tries to self-correct as he watches her. She doesn’t want to argue, not really, she doesn’t think, but she can’t right the ship, either. It doesn’t make sense for her to be mad, but she feels angry, anyway. “I’m just saying, you don’t have to do that.”

“Well, some of it’s my stuff—”

“Brad,” Claire says, her temper rising for no good reason at all. “That’s not what we do. That’s not what you need to do, I mean…what are you…what are we doing?”

They make eye contact. And it becomes clear, then, to the both of them, what the argument is really about. She sees Brad piece it together first, then recognizes herself waiting for the answer to her question with bated breath.

“I guess we’re doing whatever you want to do, Claire,” he says quietly. This answer is justifiable, but not true, not to her. She wants more than this. No matter how hard she tries to stop herself, it seems like she always wants more of Brad and more from Brad. She wants to wake up in the morning and have it make sense to expect him to be there. She wants him to say that he loves her, without the “I think,” and more than that, even, she wants to be able to believe him. And none of that is fair, really, because she knows that he brings everything to the table and she brings nothing substantial, but she wants it anyway.

When she doesn’t answer, Brad asks another question.

“Is this about last night?”

It is. Of course, it is.

“No, I mean…” Claire struggles, grasping for a way out of the conversation. “I know you didn’t mean it and it’s no big deal, but—”

“Claire—” he interjects, more forcefully than usual. He stands up, but she doesn’t stop. Some force inside of her is determined to self-destruct, to run them into the ground, to end it now. She doesn’t know why; she never knows why.

“You don’t need to do laundry for me. Not if this is just some casual thing, just filler until your next girlfriend or my next boyfriend. And that’s all this is, right?”

That hurts him. Claire sees it hurt him. And for one, wild moment, she’s glad. But then she’s regretful, and she’s looking at Brad who is standing in front of her still holding a pair of her half-folded socks and looking completely astounded and just a little crushed.

“Do you mean that?” he asks. His voice is too soft, and he is being too kind. She didn’t deserve a way out, but here he was, offering her one anyway. She won’t be able to get the lie to pass her lips.

So instead, she nods. And the moment is burning and aching. She crosses her arms across her chest and tells herself that she does not want to cry. She loves him. And she’d made a mistake in acknowledging it, even if it was only a half-lucid thought, even if the words had never been spoken out loud. They changed things for her, made her feel abandoned even though he had only stepped out for a moment. And it was idiotic and stupid because he couldn’t have meant what he said, but she had definitely meant what she thought.

“Did I do something wrong?” is his last grasp at a real explanation.

Never, she thinks. Brad had never done anything wrong and he never would, not in her eyes. There might have been a million ways that they could have ended things, but one thing was for sure, She would be the root of the problem in every situation. It was just a matter of when.

“No,” she says, looking away from him. “I just can’t keep doing this. I don’t want to keep doing this. Okay?”

Claire doesn’t leave room for him to argue. She knows that. But still, after Brad leaves, she kicks over the laundry basket, so that carefully sorted light-colored clothes go all over the apartment.

It wasn’t a breakup, she tries to tell herself when she steps into the shower that evening and finds hot, bitter tears sliding down her cheeks. It couldn’t be a breakup, because they had never really been together. But it sure as hell feels like one.

(a year later, continued)

When Claire finally steps out of the bathtub, she has a headache. Only it’s a different kind of headache; one that’s pressing to escape from her ears and creeping down her throat and creating a heavy, gaping feeling in the center of her chest. In fact, it’s not so much a headache as it is an unbearable, full-bodyache that overcomes her as she remembers how Brad had looked, standing there in her living room on their last Saturday, and how she had felt after he left.

She needs to get over it, she tries to convince herself, as she steps into her bedroom. Brad had gotten over it; that much had been made clear.

Someone else had had their hands on him.

It might be easier if she could blame what she was feeling on simple, shallow jealousy. Jealousy was universal; a step on the road to eventual recovery. But this didn’t feel like just jealousy, it felt like sadness and frustration and anger with herself and with him and worst of all, maybe, it all felt fresh, like he had been in her bed just last night, with his voice that was never quiet except for when they were together like that, whispering so softly in her ear. It had been months, but it felt like her fingertips had just been pressed into his warm skin, like she had just been full of the hope that maybe, maybe he loved her in the same way she loved him, in a way that was warm and so all-consuming that it was nearly painful.

She can’t have him. She knows that. She isn’t good enough for him; she had proven that over, and over, and over again.

But it had been so fun to pretend.

Claire really doesn’t mean to put on his clothes; she never does. Brad's things are tucked away into a bottom drawer; carefully folded, mismatched pieces that she told herself she fully intended to return when she got the chance. But somehow, whenever she’s feeling particularly stressed, she finds herself pulling on his clothes and feeling instantly comforted. So, maybe this is how she finds herself taking out one of his left-behind plaid shirts, a large dark button-down that stops mid-thigh when she puts it on. Her hands shake as she buttons it up, then pause on the third closure.

Claire, in her darkest and most anxious moments, has the tendency to make self-sabotaging decisions. And on tonight, she is not only anxious but also angry and sleep-deprived and frustrated and Brad is in her kitchen. Brad, who she has maybe been in love with for months at the very least, is so close but technically just out of her reach. And she knows if she listens to the urge deep inside, she’s going to end up hurting herself all over again, but she still wants him so, so badly, and when searching for a good-enough reason why she shouldn’t, instead realizes that she just doesn’t care anymore.

(not tonight, at least)

It always happens this way. One of them always slips. The last time had been different, had hurt more, had seemed final. But here she was again.

By the time Claire steps out of the bedroom, her head is pounding, and her thoughts are bleeding into each other. She manages to notice that her kitchen is much cleaner than she had left it before all of her attention focuses back on Brad, who is standing with his back to her and has just turned off the stove. Something smells fantastic – it must be the covered pot he’s moving to the side.

Brad, Brad, Brad.

She clears her throat to alert him to her presence. Brad turns and flicks his eyes quickly over her chosen attire, then meets her eye and grins.

“Lookin’ good, Saffitz,” he says, with a small snort of laughter. “Y’know, you always pulled off my stuff better than I could anyway.”

He couldn’t tell then, probably due to the size of the plaid shirt, that she had decided not to put anything on underneath.

Claire steps up next to him, then hops onto the counter to sit facing him, careful to keep her legs closed, hands locked together in her lap. Her heart is pounding; her face feels warm, but it hardly matters because she is with him, because she knows how close she is to having Brad, even it’s just for one more night.

“So, um,” she says, her voice slightly hoarse. “How was your date earlier?”

He glances at her skeptically. Then he slowly folds the dishtowel he’s holding and sets it down before turning to look her in the eye.

“Pretty terrible, honestly,” he says, and butterflies erupt in her stomach. He offers her a half-smile. She doesn’t deserve it. Claire doesn’t deserve anything from Brad, who is always sweet, kind, understanding, perfect.

But she wants him so badly.

“Oh,” she says. “Good.”

His eyebrows furrow in confusion, but that’s all she notices before she reaches one hand up to grab the collar of his inside-out shirt and pulls him in to press her lips against his.

There’s a chance that he won’t kiss her back. Claire has thought about this chance every single time she’s ever kissed Brad and tonight is no different. There are one, two, three seconds where her lips are pressed firmly against his and his shirt collar remains twisted in her hand, where he doesn’t move or even breathe, and Claire thinks that this is it, that this is the time where he decides that they have gone on long enough. But then, in the fourth second, just as she starts to pull back, one of his strong hands comes up and grips her around the waist to pull her back to him, while the other raises to her cheek to lift her head up and back so that he can kiss her properly. She finds herself flooded with relief and arousal and naturally, something else that she wishes she was strong enough to ignore.

(it’s love. it’s always love)

Brad is always convinced he’ll be able to manage getting over Claire until he kisses her again.

It’s intense from the moment he kisses her back, catching her bottom lip between his. Her skin is warm from the bath and smells of lavender; those legs wrap around his waist. Her hands are in his hair now, she pulls him closer, and closer after every kiss until he’s standing between her legs, her back arched so that her body presses into his. It takes a few moments of hot, desperate kissing for him to notice, after scrunching the material of the plaid material of her top in his right hand, that Claire isn’t wearing anything underneath. He breaks away for just a moment to look at her then, running his eyes down her, pausing on the hitched-up hem of her shirt before he focuses his gaze on her face, and her wet, open mouth. It is so difficult to stand there for even a second and not be touching her.

“Son of a—” Brad mutters, running a hand through his own hair quickly. Her eyes – those fucking eyes – are on him, her pupils are blown wide. Her chest rises and falls visibly as she watches him, catching her breath. There is maybe a tiny part of him that whispers to stop; that knows he’s getting caught up in the same circular trap he always does – where he gets a taste of her that never ends up being enough. Maybe he should listen to it this time, he thinks. It would save him a world of heartbreak.

“Brad,” she whines, all soft and needy. She tilts her head to the side just slightly, her hands rising to the top button of her shirt. And just like that, whatever’s left of his resolve breaks and he steps back in to knock her hands away gently before starting on her buttons.

“I got it, Claire,” he whispers, his tongue fumbling as he leans in to kiss her again; it’s deep, long, filthy almost. He’s trying to be gentle, slow, he really is, but he’s only on the second button and his jeans are already starting to feel uncomfortably restricting. “I got it. But, fuck, I’m human, y’know? I’m just a regular guy, you can’t just come in, looking…looking so…”

“Fuckable?” Claire whispers in a barely audible voice, eyelids lowered. And God, there is that side of her, the one he might have never known existed had they not ended up together. Two can play at that game. He meets her gaze briefly before giving up and yanking her top open so that it opens fully, revealing all of her to him. He could swear she stifles a gasp, and right after, that familiar blush starts to creep down her chest. And he knows that he had just promised himself to try harder to let go of everything he wanted from her, but how could he, when Claire looked like she did, and always knew just what to say to make him give in?

“Yeah,” he manages to whisper back, lowering his head to capture one of her hard, pink nipples in his mouth. She gasps out loud then, the arch in her back deepens.

“Brad, please,” she whispers when he pulls away. One of her hands slips into one of his, guides it to her thighs, where a gentle touch leads them to fall open. His head is reeling; it seems like it always is when she's around. “Please.”

Like he could ever tell her, “No.”

Brad doesn’t often sleep in. So maybe that explains why, when he finds himself just waking up the next day at what Claire’s alarm clock says is one in the afternoon, it feels partly like he’s still asleep, even after he stands up and pulls on his pants from last night, before making his way into the kitchen. Maybe it also explains why he feels like he’s about to fall over when Claire turns around from her place at the stove and smiles at him.

“Hey,” she says. It’s so casual, so easy. She looks relaxed; much more relaxed than she had when he had run into her at the market. She’s wearing running shorts and a sports bra, her hair is up in a ponytail – she must have gone for a run before he’d woken up. Maybe that explains her demeanor. Or maybe it’s the twelve perfect-looking cinnamon knots cooling on the counter.

“I think I figured it out,” she says, wiping the stove down with a cloth and nodding toward the knots. “They’re not buns, but they’re good. Better, I think. Here, I want you to try.” It’s almost like nothing had changed between them, he thinks. Like time had spun backward and they were back to a year ago, with no divisions caused by unrequited love or arguments over laundry. And that would be okay, maybe, if it didn’t feel like his heart was in his throat every time he looked at her, or if he was less certain of the fact that he’d never be able to pretend like he wasn’t head-over-heels in love with her again (even though he had tried very hard, if very briefly, to convince himself otherwise). Things have changed between them, that much is clear. They can’t just go back to how things were before. She has to know that.

“Claire—" Brad tries, but she’s already picking up a cinnamon knot and whirling around toward him. She stands in front of him, holds the knot to his lips, and raises her eyebrows expectantly. So, he takes a bite, and it’s perfect, of course – buttery and flaky and just sweet enough with notes of citrus and vanilla. It’s very…Claire.

“It’s great,” he manages after he swallows his bite. “Honestly, Claire, it’s perfect. Love the orange zest on the top, the vanilla bean. Ship it.”

The grin that breaks out on her face nearly breaks his heart. She turns briefly to set the rest of the knot down, looking as pleased as he had ever seen her.

“Thanks,” she says, before looking back at Brad. She leans against the counter, then shyly reaches a hand out for him. He doesn’t hesitate before taking it, moving closer to her. “I think you were right – sleep helped.”

“Yeah, I bet,” he says, looking into her bright face. Claire hasn’t said the words, but everything about her demeanor is familiar, reminds him of the first time she’d walked back into the test kitchen after leaving. She’s asking without asking, “We’re okay, right?” And he would give anything to make her happy, to keep that smile on her face, but he doesn’t know if he has it left in him. “Claire—”

“And you helped too,” she is saying. Her cheeks tinge pink, her eyes flick down briefly. “Thanks for…staying.”

“Of course,” Brad finds himself saying. And she looks back up at him and then squeezes his hand, which remains in hers, before leaning up on her tiptoes and pressing her lips to his in an impossibly gentle kiss. It’s so soft, so kind. "We’re okay, right?”

He forces himself to pull back, though he lets his forehead rest against hers.

“We have to talk,” he says. “Can we talk?”

Claire looks up at him, and of course, the smile that he loves so much drops. She nods; drops his hand, and steps back. In a moment, her face has closed off.

“Okay,” she says, crossing her arms across her chest tightly. “Sure.” He doesn’t give himself a chance to chicken out.

“What we did before? I don’t want to do that again, Claire. I can’t.”

Claire purses her lips briefly, and then slowly nods.

“Okay,” she says, looking down. There’s a pause – one long enough to make him uncomfortable. She takes another step back and nods to herself, then again, even softer: “Okay.”

He exhales. He’s never been more nervous in his life, and he knows, he knows that maybe it’s pointless, but he has to try.

“I want to be with you, Claire,” Brad says. It shouldn’t be so hard to admit out loud. It seemed to him like all of his actions suggest that this is the conclusion he wants. But when she looks back at him, she seems surprised, maybe doubtful. This initial surprise on her face makes absolutely no sense to him, but then he blinks, and it’s gone, and she is looking thoughtful and worried and closed-off again. She’s shaking her head even before she speaks.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

It shouldn’t hurt. It wasn’t like it was surprising to hear her say it, even.

It wasn’t supposed to hurt like this. It had never hurt like this before. He had broken up with girlfriends before; some of them he loved and some of them he didn’t, but it had never, ever hurt like this and it’s so silly because Claire had never even been his, to begin with.

“Okay,” he answers, stepping backward, back toward the bedroom. He has to be anywhere but here; he can’t just keep looking at her; it’s not enough, it’s never enough. “Okay. But I can't do this."

Brad is leaving. And yeah, it makes sense, considering the fact that Claire’s done just about all she can to push him away, but that doesn’t mean she wants him to leave. She had just let him leave before; she couldn’t do that again. So, she’s not exactly sure what she needs to say to get him to stay, but suddenly she feels that she has to at least try.

“Wait, Brad,” she says as he steps out of the room. She follows him as he walks back into her bedroom and grabs his shirt from its place on her floor, then pulls it on aggressively. “Don’t leave; let me explain—”

He sits on the end of her bed and pulls on his socks. “Brad?” she tries again, sounding even more desperate than she had at first. His face folds a little, but he still doesn’t answer; still doesn’t look at her. Why do they always end up here? “Come on, Brad…” He’s got his shoes on now, his baseball cap is clutched in his hand. He stands and starts to move toward the door; she steps in front of him and presses a hand to his chest.

“Alright, Claire,” he says, looking over her head. His voice is dismissive. He usually talks to her so tenderly, so kindly, he’s never sounded like this.

“Brad, please,” Claire says, her voice cracking. In spite of herself, panic is blooming in the center of her chest. She knows that sometimes the things she worries about don’t make sense. She knows that somewhere deep down, but the more she spirals, the harder it is to listen to the voice of reason inside her and the easier it is to let the anxiety swell and sweep over and drown her. In the end, she almost always ends up causing what she’s afraid of; it’s always been that way.

She spreads her fingers out and presses them into his chest more firmly. Look at me, look at me.

Brad exhales and steps backward, out of her reach. His expression is frustrated, almost angry. Everything is wrong. Everything is always wrong; she had known she was going to get hurt and set herself up anyway.

“You see, the thing is, Claire,” he starts, rubbing the side of his face wearily. “I have feelings, too.”

Claire frowns. She knows that. “I know that,” she says, still sounding upset. When he doesn’t respond, she repeats herself, this time with more feeling. “Brad, I know that.”

He finally looks at her, now, and his eyes are hurt. They’re red and flooded not with anger, but with something more like sadness and God, she wants to hold on tight to him and never let go. Whatever is wrong, she wants to fix it; she will if he gives her the chance.

“What’s—?” she tries, but he speaks up again.

“Do you though?” Brad says. “Because the last time around, I told you I loved you.”

There’s not much of a pause here, but she needs one. The words hang in the air, a validation of that moment. They’d never talked about it before.

“And you ended things the next day,” he continues, “and then, you acted like nothing had ever happened between us.”

“I’m sorry,” Claire breathes. And she is, she doesn’t know why she hadn’t ever said so before. She had been sorry the moment after they argued the first time, and every day after, when they had to pass each other at work and pretend like things were normal between them when they both knew they weren’t. “I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t mean to pretend like I…like we weren’t…” Her voice catches, and she’s so sick of sounding like she’s on the verge of tears all the time, but there’s so much to say and it feels like there’s no time left.

“We weren’t nothing,” she says. “We weren’t nothing, but we weren’t what I wanted to be either, Brad. You didn’t say…well you didn’t say ‘I love you,’ you said, ‘I think I love you,’ like maybe, like maybe, you might—”

“That’s the same thing, Claire,” Brad is saying, but she pushes, anyway.

“—or you might not!” She is standing in front of him, looking straight at him and, for once, being completely, terrifyingly honest. “It’s not the same thing! Not to me! We were in the middle of having sex and I’m not an idiot, Brad, I know people say things they don’t mean sometimes and so if it was just, like, a thought that popped into your head, like something that would be nice to say, just to make me feel good—”

“Claire!” Brad says, and his voice has never sounded so adamant. “I’m telling you now. I meant to say that I loved you. And if I flubbed it, it’s probably because you make me so goddamn nervous, but I wouldn’t have said something I didn’t mean. And the next day you told me that I couldn’t have meant it. Like it was so impossible for me to be in love with you.”

There it is again. There is hurt in his voice again, and Claire had never thought that she could make him sound like that. It doesn’t add up with the picture she’d created; with the way that she expected he felt about her. There was no indifference, no casualness. It doesn’t make sense.

“Do you know how that felt?” he finishes. And her heart is pounding; there’s a lump in her throat that just won’t budge.

“I’m sorry,” she manages. “But how could you mean that? I mean honestly, how could you? When you’re you and I’m me?”

“What does that mean?” he says. He’s looking right at her now, his eyes are boring into her. “Claire? What’s that supposed to mean?”

She doesn’t want to cry, she doesn’t. She tries to swallow back the lump in her throat; why does it hurt so much to be honest?

“I know what I’m like,” she whispers. “I know I’m difficult, and whiny, and terrible sometimes, and it’s not like I’m not trying to be better, but still. Maybe that would be okay if there was someone else that I wanted to be with, but you’re you and you’re perfect. And I knew that if you thought about it, really thought about it, you’d realize that it doesn’t make sense, for you to say that you love me, and mean it. It just doesn’t.”

Now she’s the one not looking at him. She’s staring at the ground so hard it feels like she’s trying to burn a hole in it. She’s wishes it would—no, she wishes she would burst into flames and not have to ever, ever think about Brad or look at him again. This is the most mortifying experience of her life. There’s so much silence, and what feels like so many quiet minutes.

The entire world is in love with Claire Saffitz. Brad had never thought to wonder if Claire knew that, or not.

“Claire,” Brad says eventually, and his voice is unexpectedly gentle. “I can’t convince you of anything you’ve decided not to believe. But I didn’t know that that was what the problem was. If I had..."

He makes a noise that she can’t quite decipher, like a short, determined puff of air. She’s shaking; she can feel herself shaking. Look up.

“Claire, I love you,” he says. And wasn't that all she had ever dreamed of? An ‘I love you’ without the ‘think.’ “And I mean, I figured you knew that, because everyone loves you; it’s impossible not to. But if you just needed to hear me say it the right way, Claire, I love you. I’m in love with you, I’ve known that since forever, and I'll prove it a million times over if you let me...”

Claire looks up. She forces herself to look up, she owes it to him. And she had maybe never seen him look as nervous as he does right now. She tries to remember the freedom she had felt on that first night he’d said it; when she’d had a chance to drink it in without overanalyzing. If he loves her, then good—

Overcoming the obstacles she sets up for herself is always the hardest part. It had been like that at Harvard, before big presentations, it was like that when she was making cinnamon buns and getting stuck on butter ratios, and it is the same now, as Brad stands in front of her, baring his soul, and she has to fight to ignore every fearful whisper in her mind.

This is the hardest part, but she can do it; she will. 

All she needs to do is be honest with him. No more, no less.

“But, Claire, do you…I mean, is there any chance that you…?” Brad says, and his eyes keep flitting away from her face, so he doesn’t notice when Claire starts to nod, even though he hasn’t finished his question yet.

“Yeah,” she whispers, in her bravest moment to date. “Of course I love you, Brad.”

And she wants to tell him that she has loved him for such a long time, even before he’d ever kissed her that first time. She wants to tell him that she is sorry; that he had already proved that he felt the way he did, just by always being there, only she had been too wrapped up in her own feelings to notice. But all she can do, right now, is stand there shaking and look at Brad. He watches her carefully; his eyebrows lower a fraction more.

“Are you any closer to believing that I’m tellin’ the truth? About how I feel?”

“Maybe a little more, now,” she says, suddenly and maybe undeservingly, blissfully optimistic. “I mean, you haven’t stormed out of here, yet, and that seems like it would be the most logical thing to do. Unless…”

“Unless I love you.” Brad finishes for her. “Unless I’m in love with you. Which I am.”

He’s smiling. How is he smiling?

“Come here, Claire,” he says, even though he’s already walking toward her. She only has to take a half step forward before his arms are tight around her, finally, finally.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers into the top of her head. She has to pull back to look at him.

“Sorry?” she says. She’s the one who owes him a million apologies. “What for?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “But it just seems like…well this whole time…you were thinking…and I was thinkin’…”

“Yeah,” Claire answers, understanding. “We should really think less, huh?”

He grins. Claire loves when he grins. But then he starts looking at her, in the way that he always does, with so much focus, with those pupils blown wide. With love, not lust.

“Stop,” she whispers, though she doesn’t completely mean it. Her cheeks are warm warm warm. She is warm. He is warm against her. “You can’t look at me like that.”

“Why not?” he whispers back. “Why can’t I look at you? Now that everything’s out in the open; now that you know…” he strokes her cheek, “That I love you—"

He barely gets the words out before Claire is leaning up and pressing her lips against his.

It’s not like Claire is the first person in the world to fall in love with Brad Leone.