Work Text:
Clarke freezes, bouquet in hand, veil down. She breathes in through her nose, out through her mouth. He stands at the top of the aisle with a lopsided grin. But next to him, Bellamy’s smile is tight, his brown eyes full of concern. He looks straight at her, and her chest tightens.
She sees it now, looks back on all the half-truths and darting glances and telling silences she’s noticed from her friends in the past six months. Every one of them, even her mother, knew long ago what she’s just coming to realize.
And that is—if she walks down this aisle, there’s no going back. Her life will follow a trajectory she’s never wanted. She might be happy most days, but she’ll never shake the feeling that there’s something more waiting for her.
She doesn’t want to be tied down. She wants wings.
The ceremony’s fifteen seconds away from starting when Clarke blurts, “I can’t do this.”
The nervous chatter from the bridal party ceases. Clarke’s heart is going into overdrive, but Bellamy’s gaze all the way down the aisle grounds her.
“Oh, thank God,” Octavia breathes, dropping her bouquet.
Raven shoves her in the shoulder and hisses her name.
“What? This was never going to last, and we all knew it,” Octavia says. She turns to Clarke. “Took you long enough, princess.”
The truth is in Raven’s eyes. Clarke’s not even mad that they never came right out and said it. She’s brought this upon herself. She’s never been there—not in that spot girls who are going to marry the love of their lives always are—and it’s her damn fault for never stopping this speeding train until the very last moment. They were just along for the ride.
“Clarke,” her mom says, touching her elbow. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I need to talk to him. Right now.” Clarke looks to Octavia. “Please.”
Octavia strides confidently down the aisle and sends him to Clarke before staying beside her brother.
Clarke lets him lead her to a corner, one hand gripped firmly around hers. It doesn’t take that many words, actually. Far fewer than she expected. In the two minutes since she made this decision (except it’s been a lot longer than that, hasn’t it?, she asks herself), she expected rage and shouting. She expected an uproar. She expected a fight.
But he’s quiet, almost resigned, his brow furrowed slightly. “What’s the matter?” he asks.
The words come out in a rush. “I don’t want to move to California. I don’t want to leave my friends. I don’t want business dinners and networking over cocktails. I want days spent in museums and nights spent stargazing. I want paint on my skin and saltwater in my hair and mountain air in my lungs. I don’t want to lose myself.”
I’m afraid I already have, is what she means to say.
“Clarke, we can talk about this,” he says, squeezing her fingers.
“But we can’t because it’s never a conversation. We try, and we try, and maybe marriage will fix this, but maybe it won’t. We don’t know. We can’t.”
They’re jumped into this—too fast, too soon. They did it because it was expected. That’s what couples do after dating for a few years, but she’s not the kind of girl who does what’s expected. A cage, no matter how large or gilded, is still a cage.
“Do you need more time?” he asks.
She wants the world, wants to leap to the moon and swallow the stars, wants to fly so close to the sun that her wings burn up. And when her bones break upon the hard earth, at least she’d die with life in veins.
No, time’s not what she needs. Unfortunately, he isn’t, either.
“I love you,” she says. “I do.”
Sometimes that’s not enough.
His face falls. “Don’t.”
“I’m sorry.” Her words and body are trembling now. How terrible it is to break another person’s heart in order to heal your own.
“Okay.”
“Okay?
He untangles his hand from hers. “What else is there for me to do besides let you go?”
Then she’s racing out of the venue, picking up this stupidly poufy princess skirt, sneakers slapping against the sidewalk, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Lexa cruises her motorcycle to a stop at a red light, her brother’s and sister’s admonitions ringing through her head. As much as she hates to admit it, they’re probably right. It’s been too long since she’s had anything resembling a life. Saturday brunches with her siblings don’t count. Three years of canceled outings, lonely weekends, inescapable memories, and this irreparable pain in her heart. She just can’t bring herself to do anything about it, though. It would feel too much like moving on, too much like forgetting.
A spark of white catches her eye. A woman runs down the sidewalk in a princess wedding gown, complete with beading on the corset and lace and tulle and other things Lexa recognizes only from that one night she got drunk and watched five straight hours of Say Yes to the Dress.
The woman’s bright yellow sneakers flash from beneath her lifted skirts. The sight draws a rare chuckle from Lexa’s lips, and she realizes with a pang she doesn’t recognize the sound.
The woman stops at the corner to lean on a pole and catch her breath. She glances behind her, maybe hoping someone’s following her. Her groom? Her family? Her friends? No one comes. Lexa wonders if that disappoints the woman.
Then the woman looks up, and Lexa can’t breathe.
She’s always hated clichés (but Costia loved them, and sometimes that was enough, she reminds herself). She hates them, but time really does stop, screeching to a halt as she balances on a precipice. She should be smart, back away from the edge, get back to safety.
But if she jumps, she might fly. Isn’t the chance of flight better than the certainty of solid ground beneath her soles? Isn’t that what it means to risk loving and being loved?
A thousand truths race through her mind, but the biggest and loudest and grandest is this—her heart is beating for the first time in three years.
Something—some instinct or cosmic direction (she believed in signs from the universe, her heart whispers)—makes her remove her helmet. She locks gazes with the runaway bride. Pulse pounding, she holds it out.
It takes a moment—the kind of moment that lasts both a breath and a lifetime—but the woman runs over, takes the helmet from Lexa’s outstretched hands, pushes it over her updo, and sinks onto the seat behind Lexa.
“Where to?” Lexa asks.
The woman hesitates, hands hovering over Lexa’s sides, before she wraps her arms tightly around Lexa’s waist and says, “Anywhere but here.”
Out of all the things Clarke expected to do on her wedding day, riding on a motorcycle behind a stranger to an unknown destination wasn’t one of them. Still, it feels good—really good. On the back of this bike, racing down the highway, wind whipping around her, she feels freer than she has in months, years maybe.
The woman she sits behind has curly brown hair done up in a handful of braids. She wears a leather jacket, jeans, and boots. Her waist is slim. Clarke’s arms fit easily around it. But there’s a latent strength in the woman’s body, like her every muscle is coiled in anticipation. Or defense, perhaps. She’s close enough to smell, and she smells like grapefruit.
They’ve been driving for at least an hour, maybe two, without so much as a word from the other woman. From the road signs whizzing by, they’re heading west. She decides not to worry about it and focuses instead on the passing fall hues.
Just when Clarke’s about to tap on the woman’s shoulder and ask for a pit stop, the woman takes an off-ramp into a small town. They cruise down Main Street for a few miles before turning onto a road that winds out of town and twists up and around a mountain. They pull into a gravel driveway littered with fallen leaves and flanked by pine trees. The driveway curves around, and then a wooden house comes into view. It’s more of a lodge—long and three stories tall. Does her mysterious stranger work here? Live here?
The woman slows to a stop near the front porch and cuts the engine. She pauses to let Clarke slide off the bike. Clarke removes the helmet and sucks in a deep lungful of fresh air. The sky is so blue, the trees so green. Her family’s vacations were always to beaches, to cities, never to the mountains. It’s so quiet up here that even the crunching gravel beneath Clarke’s sneakers seems loud.
“Wow,” Clarke breathes.
The woman swings herself off the motorcycle. She takes the helmet from Clarke and uses it to gesture at the house. “My family’s vacation home. Come on.” She leads the way up the porch steps and into the house.
The inside is just as gorgeous as Clarke imagined—lots of wood paneling, open space, plush furniture, a giant stone fireplace in the middle of the living room. Despite its vastness, it feels homey and welcoming. This—this could be a place to spend a real wedding day. Something small, just immediate family and friends, intimate. Or a honeymoon. Curl up in the mountains, spend the days lounging around the fireplace and the night wrapped around each other.
That’s not her life now, though. She’s made her choice. She walked away from that future.
And now she’s anchorless, floating in a sea of uncertainty.
“There’s no one here right now,” the woman explains, walking into the kitchen, which has stainless steel appliances and marble countertops. “I thought you might want some peace and quiet.”
“Thanks,” Clarke says with a light chuckle. That’s exactly the opposite of what she’s probably missing back in the city. She’s suddenly glad she left her phone in the purse and she left her purse back at the venue. She can’t imagine how many messages she’ll return to.
Whenever that is.
The woman leans against a counter. They regard each other for a moment. The stranger is pretty, with killer cheekbones and sad eyes that remind Clarke of the forest. She doesn’t look like the kind of person to pick up a random hitchhiker, especially not one clearly running away from her wedding.
“I’m Lexa, by the way,” says the woman, sticking out her hand.
Clarke shakes it. “Clarke.”
Lexa’s gaze slips down to Clarke’s sneakers and up again. Far from being lascivious, it seems to remind her of Clarke’s unusual situation. “Fancy changing into something more comfortable?”
“Oh, that would be awesome,” Clarke says. She locks her fingers together, hesitating before asking, “Actually, do you mind if I take a shower, too?”
“Believe it or not, I do have modern plumbing here.” Lexa cracks a smile. “This way.”
Clarke follows her upstairs, down the hallway, and into a spacious, neat bedroom. It’s spare, with a plain black duvet on the bed and a dozen books lined up on the bottom of the end table. The hardwood floor is just as gorgeous as in the rest of the house.
Lexa indicates a door. “That’s the bathroom. There are extra towels in the cupboard inside. The hot water knob—you’ve kind of got to push it in a little before turning it. It’s tricky.”
“Okay.”
“Closet, dresser,” Lexa says, indicating each. “You can dig through them, find something that fits.”
“Thanks.”
Lexa acknowledges the gratitude with a tiny quirk of her lips. “You must be hungry. I could order in. There are a few pizza places in town, an Indian restaurant, a couple diners. Grounders has fantastic cheeseburgers. Have a preference?”
Clarke swallows thickly. What are they doing? What is she doing? Lexa’s already given her a refuge, already been much kinder than she needed to be to a stranger. Clarke can’t ask for anything beyond what she’s already asked for. “Honestly, you’ve been amazing, and you don’t even know me.”
Lexa shrugs. “I’m hungry, too.” When Clarke doesn’t respond right away, she adds, “It’s just lunch, Clarke.”
Clarke likes the way her name sounds on Lexa’s tongue. She smiles. “Okay, then. Whatever you’re craving, I guess.”
“Cheeseburgers it is,” Lexa says. She walks away.
“Hey, Lexa.”
Lexa stops in the doorway and turns around. “Yeah?”
“Thank you. I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t shown up.”
Lexa nods and disappears into the hallway. Without her presence, the room shrinks and the quiet seems stifling rather than peaceful. Being upset makes Clarke ornery, as well. She wants to be alone, but once she is, she craves human connection.
Sighing, she steps into the bathroom, which has more white porcelain than it knows what to do with. In addition to a shower with glass and stone walls and what looks to be a digital control system, there’s also a hot tub. Classy. She can get used to this.
Not that she will. After a shower and some lunch, she’ll be out of here.
She grips the sink edge and leans toward the mirror. All told, she doesn’t look that bad. Her updo’s ruined from the helmet, but her makeup looks fine. That’s a look for a bride, though, not a groom-jilter. She finds some makeup remover in the cabinet and scrubs and scrubs and scrubs until all traces are gone. Then she sets to work on her hair. There are at least fifty bobby pins keeping her golden locks up, so by the time she’s done, they’re scattered over the counter and her arms are aching.
Now for the gown.
Except her bridesmaids aren’t here to help and she can’t reach the damn zipper. She shuffles out into the hallway. “Uh, Lexa?” she calls.
Lexa appears at the bottom of the stairs. She’s exchanged her leather jacket for an oversized navy sweater that hangs to her thighs. “Yeah?”
“I can’t unzip my dress on my own.”
“Oh. Oh, right.” Lexa climbs the stairs with deliberate steps and stops two from the top. She makes a little ‘turn’ motion with her index finger.
Clarke obliges, trying to focus on anything but the puff of Lexa’s breath over her shoulders, the ghost of her fingers over her back. Her heart races. But that’s just because she hadn’t expected to be touched—by anyone, especially not so soon after running away from her engagement.
Lexa’s progress with the zipper is excruciatingly slow. Clarke’s nerve endings feel a thousand times more sensitive than normal. She nearly jumps out of her skin in her effort to keep herself from shouting, Hurry up!
Finally, Lexa says, “There. All good.”
Clarke turns around, holding her dress up at the chest. Her cheeks are on fire. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
Lexa holds Clarke’s gaze. Something passes between them, something soft and fine and rare. At any other time, on any other day, Clarke would pursue that, explore it. Not today, though.
“Food should be here when you’re through,” Lexa says.
“Okay. Thanks.”
Lexa descends the staircase with the grace of a duchess, and Clarke has to tear her eyes from the sway of her hips. She retreats into the bathroom, shuts the door tight behind her. She rests her forehead against the cool glass of the shower.
“Get ahold of yourself, Griffin.”
There is absolutely no going back now. She’s got to figure out a way forward, and ‘forward’ doesn’t include an extended stay at the mountain lodge of a stranger.
Lexa curls up in the corner of the couch, notebook in her lap and a mug of mulled cider in her hand, and stares out the window into the fall day. The mid-October leaves are in their prime, vibrant oranges and yellows and reds that surround the still lake. Heat from the fireplace suffuses the living room, wraps its arms around her.
What the hell is she doing? What are they doing? This was an impulse, a whim, and ‘impulsive’ is a word that couldn’t be found in Old Lexa’s dictionary. But New Lexa lets sorrowful brides ride on the back of her motorcycle. New Lexa lets them into her family home, a home she hasn’t actually been to in three years, a home that houses endless reminders of Costia.
And yet, even with the dull ache in her heart that she’s accepted she’ll never be rid of, she realizes how familiar it all seems, this house that allowed her to hide away and be her true self. She used to be comfortable here. She’d expected that to have changed, but it hasn’t. Everything here—the couch, the staircase, her untouched bedroom—everything welcomes her back as if the entire house was eagerly awaiting her return.
When Clarke comes down, she’s dressed in jeans and a red plaid shirt, white tank top peeking from between the open buttons at the top. She’s barefoot. Her blonde hair is damp and lies in waves over her shoulders. She stops at the bottom of the stairs. Lexa chokes on her cider.
“Hi,” Clarke says shyly.
Lexa coughs it out and sets her mug on the coffee table. “Hi. How are you feeling?”
“Refreshed. Clean. Weird.”
Clarke’s gaze slips to the floor, and Lexa realizes that last word was maybe not supposed to come out. Still, she’d be more worried if Clarke didn’t feel weird.
“Hungry, too, I hope,” says Lexa.
Clarke smiles. “Starved.”
Lexa bounces off the couch. “Then one town-famous Grounders cheeseburger coming right up.”
“Should I follow you?”
“No, we can eat in here. Tables are overrated.” She retrieves the tray she set out while Clarke was upstairs—a plate for each of them with a burger and fries plus two sodas and two milkshakes. Back in the living room, she sets it on the table and retakes her place on the couch. “I wasn’t sure if you liked chocolate or vanilla,” she says, referring to the milkshakes.
“I’m more of a chocolate girl,” Clarke says.
“Good because I’m more of a vanilla girl.”
Clarke sits down in the corner of the adjacent couch, turned toward the armrest so they’re facing each other. Lexa recognizes the move. Stay close to people for reassurance, but keep your barriers up. It’s what she’s done for the past three years.
Clarke takes a plate and settles it on the armrest. “You waited for me to eat?”
Lexa sips her milkshake. “My father always used to tell me, ‘Never let guests eat alone.’”
“Really?”
“No, but it sounded good.”
Clarke chuckles. There’s weariness behind the sound, hidden by genuine amusement. “You’re trying to make me feel better.”
“Is it working?”
Clarke’s eyes are blue like a cloudless sky. Lexa’s never seen eyes that blue. It’s like Clarke belongs to nature itself, born of the sky and the stars and the seeds.
“Yeah,” Clarke says. “It is.”
“Good,” Lexa says, pleased. People heal in different ways, but perhaps Clarke needs what Lexa needed three years ago—not someone to fix things, but someone to simply be present in her grief.
Clarke starts in on her burger. “Oh, my God. This is amazing.”
Lexa lets one corner of her mouth drift upward. “I’ll tell Gustus you approve.”
They eat in comfortable silence for a little while. When Clarke’s finished her burger, she asks, “So, this is your family’s home?”
“We came up here a lot when we were kids, but now it’s just me, my sister, and my brother. They entertain here a lot.”
“You don’t?”
“I actually haven’t been here in a long time. And I’m not very good company.”
Clarke offers a smile and gestures, with a fry in her hand, toward the window. “I don’t think you need to be great company when you’ve got a lake in your backyard.”
“Yeah, that is pretty nice. We can go out later if you want to.”
Clarke drops her head to sip her milkshake. “Will there be a later? I just mean, I don’t want to overstay my welcome.”
“Clarke, I don’t know exactly what your story is, and I don’t need to, but you’re welcome here as long as you like.”
Clarke looks up. “Why did you pick me up?”
Lexa could tell her. She could say all the reasons that are thrumming along her tongue right now. She could say: When I saw you, for the first time in years, I didn’t feel inadequate or separated from the world around me. You made me want to be courageous, like she made me.
Or maybe: I felt like I was standing on a precipice. It was one of those moments when you know your life is going to change forever, and no matter what decision you make, you can’t look back. You can’t go back.
Better still: I loved you in a moment.
Except that’s terrifying. For both of them. ‘Love’ isn’t a word Old Lexa would have thrown around lightly, but New Lexa can’t deny the connection between them.
Lexa settles for the truth, but hopefully a less startling one. “I recognized that look on your face.”
“What look?”
“Lost. Sad. Like you can’t imagine ever being happy again. It was the same one I wore for months after my fiancée died.”
“Oh, Lexa,” Clarke breathes, reaching out a hand to touch Lexa’s arm. “Can I ask what happened?”
Lexa tucks some stray hair behind her ear. She’s barely talked about it with anyone, only Anya and Lincoln. Even with them, she prefers silence over their well-meaning questions. “It was a boating accident.”
Clarke nods, seeming to understand. That’s why Lexa hasn’t come here in years. That’s why she radiates sadness, grief, and guilt.
“What was she like?” Clarke asks.
Lexa stands and picks up a photograph from the mantle. In it, their backs are to the camera, and they’re looking out at the lake, holding hands. Costia’s head rests on Lexa’s shoulder. She swipes her thumb over the glass, grateful that her siblings come here enough to clean. A picture like this shouldn’t be left in dust to be forgotten. She puts it down and picks up one where they’re both in winter gear, both smiling at the camera, both rosy-cheeked from cold and laughter.
She sits again and hands it to Clarke. “Her name was Costia.”
Clarke’s gaze is heavy as she looks at the photo.
“She was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Lexa says, a smile tugging at her lips from the memories despite how cliché the line is. She’s a writer. She should know better. But Costia had loved it. She’d loved when Lexa, between soft kisses, whispered how her heart skipped a beat when she saw Costia, how merely being in the same room as Costia felt like floating. “With her, I felt happy, free, not trapped in my own head all the time. We lived in the moment, and that was beautiful.”
Clarke lets out a tiny gasp, as if coming to a realization. What that realization is, though, Lexa can’t guess.
“She was intelligent, compassionate, thoughtful,” Lexa continues. Now that she’s started, she’s reluctant to stop. After so much time keeping it locked up, releasing it lightens the ache in her chest. “She could talk about quantum physics in the same breath as Real Housewives. She was one of those people who brightened every room they stepped in. I used to think that people only invited me places so she would come. She kept me guessing; she kept me laughing.”
Clarke sets the frame on the table and slides a hand over Lexa’s. “She sounds wonderful. I’m so sorry you lost her.”
The warm touch grounds Lexa. She looks up into startlingly blue eyes. “Have you ever been with someone who loved you just the way you were but who made you want to be much, much better?”
“No, can’t say I’ve had the pleasure,” Clarke says. “Everyone in my life seems to want something from me, and I . . . I just needed a break. I needed space to think and . . . figure out how to be myself.”
Lexa nods. She understands. For her, Costia was that anchor that kept her from drifting away from her shore. It’s a balance, growing while still remaining true to yourself, but Lexa’s coming to realize that everyone is intertwined. Hard to tell where one being ends and the next begins. Hard to meet someone—someone lasting or someone ephemeral—and not be changed, like pure chemical transformations. There’s beauty in that connection, in that certainty that you will never be the same.
“Hey, do you mind if I use your phone?” Clarke asks. “I just want to let my friends know I’m all right.”
“Of course. I’m sorry I didn’t think of it earlier.” She fishes her cellphone from her pocket and hands it over.
“Please. You’ve been nothing but gracious.” Clarke taps out a message, tongue poking out from between her lips, and hands it back.
“That’s it? You don’t want to call anyone?”
“I texted my two best friends. If I call, I’ll have to explain things, and I’m not really in the mood for that. Not just yet.” Clarke leans on the armrest, chin on her forearms.
“Sure. So, what are you in the mood for?”
Clarke lifts a brow.
“Hobbies? Interests? Or shall I just entertain you with my vast collection of classic horror films?” Lexa asks.
“It is October.”
“Maybe tonight,” Lexa says, trying not to think about how much she wants Clarke to stay. She leans forward and says in a passable Bela-Lugosi-Dracula accent, “They are movies of the night, meant for the comforting embrace of darkness.”
Laughing, Clarke flips over and stretches out on the couch. She hugs a pillow to her chest.
Lexa’s phone buzzes on the cushion next to her. Far from the one message she expects, the buzzing continues until she’s gotten at least twenty separate messages from two different numbers she doesn’t recognize.
Clarke, what the hell?!
Where the hell are you? Tell us, and we’ll come to get you.
Look, we know you need space, but we can give that to you here. We’ll buy you beer and chocolate and take you to the art store.
We’ll buy you the whole fucking store then leave you alone for an entire week while you paint out your feelings.
Or Raven and I will cuddle you in her tiny twin bed and stroke your hair and remind you how loved you are.
Despite the cellular inconvenience, Lexa is touched by their affection for Clarke. “I think your friends are concerned for you.”
Clarke throws an arm over her eyes. “Oh, shit. I should’ve realized they wouldn’t let it lie.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m used to getting inundations of text messages.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“My siblings have a difficult time minding their own business. Would you like to respond?”
Clarke removes the arm and bites her lip. “No. I told them already I’d talk to them when I was ready.”
“Okay.”
The living room goes quiet again, but it’s comfortable. Clarke feels like an old friend, an old soul that Lexa’s soul has known for all of eternity. That’s the kind of silly, sappy notion that Costia loved.
Lexa picks up her notebook again. Her pens taps lightly against the paper—lightly in case Clarke wants to fall asleep. Instead of the story she should be working on, she can’t stop thinking about Clarke’s friend’s messages. They care so much for her. One in particular sticks out in her mind.
. . . while you paint out your feelings.
That’s something Lexa can latch onto. That’s something she can help with. She rises from the couch. “Come with me.”
“Where?” Clarke asks, but she follows Lexa up the stairs and down the second-floor hallway.
After another shorter set of steps, they emerge into the attic loft. It’s Lincoln’s special room, as important to him as Lexa’s study is to her, but she thinks he won’t mind sharing for the day. There’s a couch off to one side, a desk in a corner, and a cabinet of art supplies in the opposite one, but the rest of the space is large and open with natural light streaming in through the windows that take up one wall. Lincoln’s specialty is sketching, but there are a number of canvases lined up against one wall.
“Wow,” Clarke says. She’s hanging back by the top of the stairs. She turns a surprised, delighted gaze on Lexa. “How did you know?”
Her smile brings a comforting blush to Lexa’s cheeks. “One of your friends mentioned that you like to paint. This is my brother’s studio, but he won’t mind.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.” Lexa sweeps an arm out and immediately regrets the decision. She used to make a fool of herself with Costia, too, but Costia had adored her dorkiness. Lexa straightens and shoves her hands in the pockets of her jeans. “I just thought . . . something familiar. You know?”
Without warning, Clarke barrels into her, arms around Lexa’s neck, squeezing tight. Lexa laughs in surprise and winds her arms around Clarke’s waist. Then the body in her arms starts to shake.
“Hey,” Lexa murmurs, one hand rubbing Clarke’s back soothingly. “Are you all right?”
Clarke pulls away. She dabs at her eyes. “Yeah, I’m . . . Just . . . Thank you.”
“Maybe you should thank Lincoln. I’m just glad you and he share an interest.”
Clarke chuckles. “Maybe I’ll get to meet him and thank him in person one day.”
She says it so casually, but the words clamp a vise around Lexa’s chest. She can’t lie to herself about how much she wants that. She’s standing on the edge of a cliff and wants nothing more than to dive in. She has to remind herself to take it slowly—start from the shore and wade in—especially since Clarke left her fiancé this afternoon and she needs time and there’s no guarantee she’s even interested and maybe just being friends would be enough. Lexa can be okay with that.
“Well, hey,” Lexa says. “I’ll leave you alone for a while, then. Okay?”
“Should I change? I don’t want to get paint on your clothes,” Clarke says.
Lexa waves a hand. “Don’t worry about it. They’re just clothes.”
Clarke smiles. “You’re sure?”
“Clarke,” Lexa says, laughing. She shoos Clarke toward the canvases. “Just go be brilliant or something.”
It’s dark by the time Clarke looks up from her canvas. Well, not quite her canvas. The canvas she took from Lexa’s brother. Lincoln is his name. If the sketches on the desk are anything to go by, he’s extremely talented. She wasn’t joking about wanting to meet him one day.
The thought stops her. Here she is, six hours out from leaving her fiancé at the altar, and already she wants to meet Lexa’s family. That’s senseless, right? Completely irrational.
And yet Lexa asks her for nothing. Lexa gives and gives with no expectation of taking. As much as Clarke adores her friends and her mom, she doesn’t need their intensity right now. In their haste to help, they have a tendency to suffocate. She thinks she just needs someone willing to listen, willing to bring her to a place of comfort and familiarity, willing to leave her in peace while still being available for companionship.
Letting out a long breath, she pushes all that aside. None of that matters now. What matters is the canvas in front of her, filled with color. She’s long since ditched the plaid shirt, and the white tank top is splattered with paint. Her skin probably is, too. She likes it best that way, when her efforts become so physical that they’re quite literally on display.
This is what she’s meant to do. She comes alive when she’s in front of a canvas. She brushes a strand of hair out of her face, takes a few steps back, and surveys her work. It’s not perfect. There are spots she could fix up, but coming out of her art flow has made her realize that she misses Lexa’s presence. So she wipes her hands, puts on the plaid button-up again, and heads downstairs.
The house is silent, so much so that if the lights weren’t on, Clarke would have thought Lexa had abandoned her and gone back to the city. But in the empty kitchen, she finds a note on the table.
Writing by the lake. Feel free to join if you’d like. There are mugs and tea/coffee in the cabinet to the right of the fridge, books in the library, and a folding chair on the back porch. Oh, and boots by the steps. Take whatever you like from the kitchen or anywhere else. You’re a welcome guest here.
- Lexa
It’s signed in neat handwriting, which makes Clarke smile. There’s no one else in the house. Who exactly did Lexa think Clarke would assume the note was from?
Clarke wanders back to the staircase and sits down to put on the boots. She finds the library down the hallway. Like everything in this house, it’s spacious and simple in its décor. All four walls are covered in bookshelves, packed to the brim. The collection seems to be divided into fiction and nonfiction, and Lexa’s novels sit on a separate shelf, covers facing outward. Clarke picks up Long Into an Abyss and thumbs through it. She’d read it a year or so ago, after Wells’s death, and had not so much enjoyed it as needed it. She replaces it on the shelf to exchange it for Lexa’s latest book, Bodyguard of Lies.
Back in the kitchen, she makes a giant mug of tea before heading outside. Along with the chair is a thick blanket, so she slings that over her shoulder and grabs the folding chair. The backyard is a wide expanse of lush grass. If it weren’t evening in October, Clarke would shuck her borrowed boots to feel the blades through her toes.
But across the lawn, Lexa sits in a chair in front of the lake, her presence a beacon that draws Clarke forward. She sets her chair up beside Lexa’s, close enough that the arms touch. Lexa reaches out for her mug and book while Clarke wraps the blanket around herself and sits down.
She takes the mug and book back with a smile. “Thanks.”
“How was painting?” Lexa asks.
“Rejuvenating.” The air is cool out here, refreshingly so. Clarke sips her tea, enjoying the chilly night in the embrace of the warm blanket. She holds up the book. “I hope you don’t mind I raided your library.”
“Not at all. I said you could, Clarke.”
“I know.” After a beat, Clarke adds, “I’ve never met anyone who has an actual library in their house.”
“Thank my parents. They started it. Anya, Lincoln, and I just continue it.” Lexa holds up her notebook. “Besides, I’m a writer. You can’t get your writers membership card if you don’t have a proper library.”
Clarke chuckles then takes another sip of tea. The water ripples gently in the moonlight. This is something she’d like to paint. Not tonight. Next time. Because she’s sure of it now. There will be a next time. How lucky she’s been to have thrown away a future only to find a new, more fitting one in the same day.
And it doesn’t need to be now. She knows she needs time to heal and find herself. But the fact that it’s there, waiting for her, calms her. She has no more questions of the future. She can breathe easily now.
“I was supposed to get married today,” Clarke says. “You figured that out already.” She swallows down a laugh. “I felt like the walls were getting closer each day. I woke up this morning realizing that if I kept on this course, one day, I wouldn’t be able to breathe. I just hate that I waited so long to make the decision. I never wanted to hurt anyone.”
“I don’t think anyone can accuse you of that,” Lexa says. “I’ve known you for a few hours, and I can tell you’d find it easier to hurt yourself than the people you love.”
Clarke’s heart stutters. Everything she felt that first moment she locked eyes with Lexa from the street to the motorcycle is confirmed in this second. Lexa knows Clarke, and Clarke knows Lexa. She’s not one to believe in fate or destiny or serendipity, but she has to wonder whether their meeting has been woven into the fabric of the world since the beginning of time. Nothing else makes sense.
“It’s not harmful to think of yourself above others, Clarke,” says Lexa. “We have to take care of ourselves or else we’ll languish in pain for years and forget what living feels like. The most we can do is our best, and that’s all anyone can ask of us.”
Moonlight washes over Lexa’s skin, making her cheekbones pop in the shadows. She really is lovely, an artist’s dream. Clarke could draw her every minute of every day and never tire of looking at her. An owl hoots in the distance, and the singing of crickets fills their ears.
Clarke shifts in the fabric chair. “I love him, you know. In a way. Not in the way, though. When the moment came, the one where you’re standing at the end of the aisle and you’re looking down it to the person you’ll spend your life with, I didn’t feel how I was supposed to feel. I didn’t feel excited or ecstatic or even nervous. I just felt like the universe was screaming at me, telling me this wasn’t where I was supposed to be.”
“Then you made the right decision.”
“But what do I do now?”
Lexa tugs at her blanket. “You keep going. You make amends where you need to, and you forgive yourself, and you thank yourself, and you keep going.” She brushes a thumb over Clarke’s cheek. “You have paint on your face.”
Clarke laughs. They sit in front of the lake, watching the moon, listening to the night, in simple silence, and Clarke lets herself breathe.
More than that.
With Lexa, she has wings.
It’s nearing midnight when their second classic horror film ends. The popcorn bowl is empty. Clarke is sprawled on the couch with her head on Lexa’s thigh. Lexa doesn’t mind. She even braided Clarke’s hair during the second movie. Everything about this feels normal.
Now they’ve come to the end, though.
Just when she realizes she can’t selfishly ask Clarke to stay, Clarke says, “I don’t want to go home. Not yet.”
I don’t want you to go home, either, is the first thing in her head. Instead, she says, “Then stay.”
“Can I?”
Lexa’s lips twitch. “You keep asking me if it’s okay to do the things I already said it was okay to do.”
Clarke covers her eyes with a hand. “I know. I guess I’m just used to always asking permission, walking on tiptoes.”
“You don’t have to do that here.”
“I know.”
Lexa looks down at her. She brushes blonde hair from her forehead. “Time for bed, then?”
Clarke nods against Lexa’s thigh. They get up and stretch the kinks out of their bones, and it’s Clarke who leads the way upstairs. When they reach the second floor, she takes Lexa’s hand and leads her up to the loft. Lexa flips on the light.
There, in the center of the room, sits a finished canvas on an easel. Clarke’s covered it with color. It’s Lexa, sitting on the couch downstairs in front of the fireplace, a notebook in her lap and a pen in her hand. Her hair is curly and free. Her black glasses are perched on her nose. Her expression is content, happy almost. There’s hardly a trace of the sorrow that’s plagued her for three years.
“I don’t know. I just . . . I wanted to show it to you,” Clarke says. She shuffles on her feet. “I know you’re not the kind of person who wants a self-portrait hanging in their living room, but maybe you’ll accept it as a gift. For letting me stay here.”
“No one’s ever painted me before,” Lexa breathes. She squeezes Clarke’s hand. “Thank you.”
Her reward is a dazzling smile.
The plan was for Clarke to take the guestroom, but plans have a way of unraveling. Lexa sits up in bed, reading a graphic novel, the only light in the room the lamp on the end table when Clarke knocks on the door frame.
Lexa looks up, a smile immediately pulling at her lips. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Clarke says. She takes a tentative step into the bedroom. She’s dressed in her paint-splattered white tank and boy shorts.
“Everything okay?”
“I can’t sleep.”
“Oh.”
Clarke twists her hands together. “Would it be okay if I slept here? I don’t want to sleep alone tonight.”
Lexa throws the covers off the empty side of the bed. “Hop in.”
Grinning, Clarke clambers into bed. The weight of another body on her mattress is a forgotten one for Lexa—forgotten, but not unwelcome, especially in its innocence.
Lexa sets her novel on the table, pulls the lamp chain, and settles in. Clarke lies on her side, hands pillowed beneath her. Lexa matches her.
“Is this okay?” Clarke asks.
Lexa makes a little noise of assent. Clarke doesn’t close her eyes, so Lexa doesn’t, either.
“If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?” Clarke whispers.
Lexa probably can go anywhere if she wants to. Just pack up her notebook and laptop, ride to the airport, pick a destination. That just hasn’t seemed appealing since Costia, though. “Mm, somewhere I could see the stars.”
Clarke chuckles, burying her face in the pillow. “You can see the stars here.”
“I know,” Lexa says with a smile. The stars will always challenge her to fly. That’s why she likes them so much. “What about you?”
“I don’t care where I go as long as I enjoy the company.”
“Diplomatic, I see. Does that come from having two best friends?”
“Maybe,” Clarke says. “Okay, definitely.”
“Will you tell me about them?”
“Really? Okay, well, there’s Raven, who’s a rocket scientist and a mechanic. She’s super smart and fun and isn’t afraid of telling me when I’ve screwed up. She’s also fiercely loyal, and I love her to death. Then there’s Octavia. We call her O. She’s a firecracker and a badass. Loves to party, but also loves movie nights in and playing board games and making us watch ESPN. I love her to death, too.”
“They sound great.” At least Clarke has Raven and Octavia to go home to.
“They are.”
The conversation is drifting too close to reality for either of their liking, so Lexa asks, “If you could pick a superpower, what would it be?”
“You ask the hard ones, don’t you?”
“One should be discerning of one’s houseguests.”
“Something else your father taught you?”
“My mother, actually.”
Clarke laughs. “Healing. I think I’d pick healing.”
“I can see that. I think I’d pick . . . the ability to absorb information very quickly.”
“Super learning? Of course you’d pick that.”
“It’s good to know about a lot of things,” Lexa says. “The more I know, the more I can . . . help.”
Clarke searches her gaze for a moment. “You already help people, Lexa.”
“I do?”
“You know, I read Long Into an Abyss. My friend Bellamy gave it to me after our friend Wells died. It helped me through a lot. I bet it helped a lot of other people, too.”
“Thanks,” Lexa says. She’s gotten a decent number of letters and emails from fans expressing similar sentiments, but it means much more face-to-face.
“Okay, favorite food,” Clarke asks.
“Easy. Pancakes. You?”
“Gummy bears.”
Lexa can’t stop her laugh. “Gummy bears are your favorite food?”
“Yeah, you got a problem with it?”
“Not at all. Let’s see . . . Favorite memory.”
“My parents used to take me to Nationals games,” Clarke says wistfully. “All the time. At least once a week every summer. We’d get hot dogs in the third inning and ice cream cones in the seventh. I know that’s not just one memory, but that was my favorite time with my parents.” She sighs. “My mom and I haven’t been to a game since my dad died.”
Lexa rests a hand on Clarke’s arm, runs her thumb back and forth. “You must miss him.”
“Yeah. I do.” She puts a hand on top of Lexa’s. “What’s yours?”
“Oh, uh . . .” Lexa clears her throat. “Right after our parents died, Anya took me and Lincoln to the Smithsonian. We stayed there all day. I remember when we got home, we were so exhausted that we just curled up on Anya’s bed and fell asleep.”
She takes a deep, shuddery breath. Clarke squeezes her hand. Lexa barely lets anyone outside of her siblings touch her, but Clarke’s familiar touch calms her.
“After the funeral,” Lexa continues, “after having to talk to people who barely knew us, after having to keep myself from breaking down in front of all those people, just getting to be with my brother and sister was . . . calming. It was nice. It was exactly what we needed.”
Clarke hums. “Looks like we’re both a little bit broken.”
It seems to Lexa that hearts vibrate on a frequency unique to themselves, and if one happen to find another that resonates in sync, it’s lucky. Very lucky. “Yeah,” she breathes.
“Then I guess it’s good one of my favorite kinds of art is the mosaic,” says Clarke, her eyelids getting heavy. “Can’t make one of those without breaking some precious things.”
It takes a unique grace to see loveliness in brokenness, and it seems to Lexa that her heart recognizes Clarke’s.
That feeling of missing Costia, of loving her, will never go away. But it doesn’t follow that another love—different, separate, beautiful in its own way—can never exist alongside it.
A while later, after Lexa’s eyes have drifted shut, Clarke says, “You’re the best kind of company, Lexa.”
Lexa’s eyes pop open. Now Clarke’s are fully closed. “What?”
“You said earlier you weren’t very good company. I’m respectfully disagreeing.”
The words are sleepy, almost not there at all, but Clarke is here, and somehow, that’s all that matters.
Clarke wakes with her arm curled firmly around Lexa’s waist and her nose buried in Lexa’s neck. The first thing she registers is the sweet smell of grapefruit. The second thing she registers is, as comfortable and comforting as this position is, it’s not really an appropriate one. She’s not about to repay Lexa’s kindness by putting the moves on her as soon as she opens her eyes.
So after one last inhalation of indulgence, she carefully lifts her arm and scoots out of bed. After using the guest bathroom and brushing her teeth, she slips downstairs. Despite not knowing where most things are, she makes her way around the kitchen easily. She belongs here. At one point, that would’ve scared her, but now she’s only scared of letting it go.
She can’t stay, though. She can’t stay in the home of a stranger who doesn’t even feel like a stranger when she’s got a life to sort out, relationships to repair. They’ve got to do this right.
She’s finished the bacon and is nearly done with the batch of pancakes when Lexa appears.
“Mm,” Lexa says, sniffing the air. “Smells delicious.”
Clarke plasters a smile on her face, picks up a plate, and turns around. “I seem to remember pancakes being someone’s favorite.”
Lexa pads into the kitchen in bare feet, wearing tiny shorts and an oversized baseball tee. She pours two mugs of coffee and slides one over to Clarke. Perching on the countertop, she says, “You seem to remember correctly. It’s a bold choice, though.”
Chuckling, Clarke flips a flapjack. “And why’s that, exactly?”
“If you make bad pancakes, we can’t be friends anymore. It’s just the way this works.”
“Oh, is it, now?” Clarke cuts a piece of a cooked pancake with a fork, spears it, and offers it to Lexa.
Lexa eats it straight from the fork. “Mm,” she says as she chews. “Passable.”
“Passable?” Clarke asks, laughing. She gives Lexa a gentle push on the shoulder. “Asshole. These are delicious.”
They take breakfast out to the back porch, where they eat under the autumn sun in sight of red and golden trees. They talk of nothing and everything until the last pancake is gone, the last strip of bacon is devoured, the last of the orange juice is drunk.
Finally, when they can avoid it no longer, Clarke says, “I should go back today.”
Lexa examines her empty plate. “I know.”
“I can’t hide away forever. As much as I want to.”
“I know.” Lexa looks up. “So, I’ll go get dressed, then. Meet you in the living room when you’re ready.”
“Oh. Okay.” Clarke sits there as Lexa takes their plates and disappears through the sliding glass doors. She hadn’t expected to go so soon. She’d thought they could stretch this out for a few more hours.
Apparently not.
Clarke takes a quick shower and dresses in the same outfit she had on yesterday with an additional University of Polis sweatshirt to ward against the chill. Lexa’s been so generous that Clarke’s sure she won’t mind. As for her wedding gown . . .
She slings it over her shoulder and heads down the staircase, where Lexa’s waiting in her leather jacket.
“All ready?” Lexa asks.
“Actually, there’s just one more thing I’d like to do.”
A few minutes later, when they’ve made it down to the lake, Lexa watches with crossed arms and an amused expression as Clarke heaves the poufy white dress into the still waters. It’s a little anticlimactic, considering it just lies there on the surface. There are no waves to carry it symbolically away from her.
“You know I’m going to have to fish that out later, right?” Lexa won’t look at her, just stands on the edge of the dock squinting out into the morning sun with a hint of a smile.
“Oh.” Clarke stuffs her hands in her sweatshirt pockets. “No. I didn’t realize that. Sorry.”
“Don’t be. You needed that, I think.”
“I did.”
“Okay, then. Shall we?”
Clarke nods. Soon enough, too soon, they’re back in the driveway. Lexa hands her a helmet.
Lexa straddles the motorcycle. She grasps the helmet between her legs but hesitates, tapping her fingers on it. “Clarke.”
“Yeah?”
“Why’d you get on the back of my bike yesterday?”
What’s she supposed to say? Lexa had said that she recognized the sadness on Clarke’s face, but that hadn’t been Clarke’s reasoning. The French call it avoir un coup de foudre.
To have a strike of lightning.
To fall in love at first sight.
How is she supposed to say that to a woman she met yesterday, the day she left her fiancé?
“I don’t know, really,” is what rolls off her tongue.
Lexa deflates. “Right place at the right time, I guess,” she murmurs.
The whole two-hour ride back to the city, Clarke wonders what would have happened if she’d have told the truth.
Lexa pulls the motorcycle to a smooth stop near the curb. Clarke lives in a townhouse with Raven and Octavia. It’s not too far from where Lexa lives, actually. She hopes that that’ll matter once Clarke goes inside. She hopes Clarke doesn’t just forget about her.
She takes off her helmet and runs a hand through her messy hair, trying not to care about the lost warmth when Clarke slides off the bike and gives back her helmet. To stave off the melancholy that tries to slip through the cracks in her heart, she takes Bodyguard of Lies from her saddlebag and holds it out.
“You didn’t finish it,” she says. Clarke doesn’t take it right away, so she adds, “I’ve got a dozen copies, but if you’re worried about it, you can give it back to me next time you visit.”
A smile breaks out on Clarke’s face. “Sure.”
Despite the weight she feels, Lexa mirrors the smile.
“So,” Clarke says. “I guess this is it.”
“Guess so.”
“Thank you. For everything.”
Lexa pretends the words are enough, and if Clarke’s kiss on Lexa’s cheek is a little too close to her lips for propriety, neither of them mentions it.
Clarke pulls away, clutching the book tightly. She looks exquisitely ordinary in jeans and a sweatshirt over the plaid shirt, her golden hair hanging in delicate waves. She’s a mosaic, a work of art made from broken pieces.
“You should go,” Lexa manages to say. “Your friends are probably worried about you.”
“Right. Goodbye, Lexa.”
“Goodbye, Clarke.”
Clarke shuffles from foot to foot before turning and striding up the handful of stone steps. Lexa wills her heart not to crack any further. This doesn’t have to be a permanent goodbye. She only hopes Clarke wants to see where this could go, too.
“Lexa?”
Lexa looks up.
Clarke stands on the top step. “The universe was screaming at me, telling me to pay attention, telling me that was where I was supposed to be in that moment. With you,” Clarke says, smiling softly. “That’s why I got on your bike yesterday.”
Then her front door’s opening and two girls Lexa assumes to be Raven and Octavia are spilling out and crushing her in a hug. They’re followed by a few boyish-looking men their age and an older woman and man. Clarke’s parents, maybe? Whoever they are, they all love Clarke. They’re all happy to have her home and safe.
This is no place for Lexa. She dons her helmet, starts the engine, and drives away without looking over her shoulder.
Later that night, when her friends and family have calmed down and left her alone for one minute (not that she minds their concern; she’s grateful for it, really), Clarke sits on her bed and opens Bodyguard of Lies to find a little raccoon bookmark and a note on the cover page in Lexa’s elegant cursive.
Clarke,
For the past few years, I feel like I’ve simply been surviving. Meeting you has reminded me that life should be about more than just surviving, that we deserve more than that. I hope I’ve reminded you of that, too.
I’m normally better at this, but please know that I’ll wait.
I’ll wait for you. If you want me to.
- <3 - Lexa
xxx-xxx-xxxx
Clarke presses a hand over her racing heart. Yes. Yes, she wants Lexa to wait for her. A thousand times yes. They’re on the same page, and she laughs out loud at the realization.
Despite her eagerness, her nerves take over and it takes twenty minutes to draft the text message.
Lexa? This is Clarke. I’m not ready to be with anyone, not yet, but I’m also not ready to let go of whatever this is, whatever it could be. Do you want to have dinner with me tomorrow night? As friends. For now.
Clarke leans back on her pillows as she waits for the reply, which comes within seconds.
This feels like flying.
Seven months later, they go on their first official date—an afternoon baseball game followed by a night at the planetarium.