“Don’t answer it.”

The phone in Claire’s hand vibrates again, the screen lighting up. She reads the caller ID.  Swallows once.

Devon grips her chin in his hand, tries to angle her head up so that she can meet his eyes, but she resists him.  “Don’t answer it, Claire,” he says, and every time he says her name, she feels more sure of it, feels a little more in love with him, feels so much like herself that the unease of her skin is so much less.  “We’re almost out,” he says.  “We’ve only got finals, and then we’ll be gone.  You don’t have to answer it.  You can just put it down.  Don’t do it.”

Claire presses her lips together.  Her eyes haven’t left the name etched in black on the lime green screen. She shrugs, rolling her shoulders with ease, and steps back, pulling her chin out of Devon’s grip.  “It’s Eve,” she says in a pained tone of voice as she answers the call.

“He left me.”

Eve doesn’t even say hello, doesn’t wait for Claire to say hello, just outs with it as soon as Claire picks up. Her voice, her throat, is tight; even tighter than Claire can hear, probably, given the immense static crackling through the phone.  Cell phones are supposed to be the future, but right now they still feel like absolute ass. A landline would be better; Devon doesn’t want Eve to have their number.

“Wait.”  Claire strides out of the living room; more often than not, she and Devon share a bedroom, but she has one of her own for moments just like this, for moments when she is less in love with him than he wants, than what their current plan calls for. If they are meant to be married, she should be in love with him all of the time, even if he’s given her permission to divorce him later, if she finds someone she truly loves.

There’s only one person Claire has ever truly loved.

She ignores Devon’s gaze as she goes into her room and shuts the door behind her, sliding the bolt into place.  “What’s wrong, Eve?  Who left you?”

“Ted,” Eve says, and Claire has never heard that name before.  “Ted left me, he left me, and I shouldn’t be calling you, I shouldn’t, I know this isn’t fair to you, but I’m pregnant and he left me, and I didn’t know who else to call, no one was picking up, and you are my best friend, Christopher, or you…or you were, and—”

“I’m here, Eve.”  Claire speaks into the crackling static as smoothly and gently as she can. On the other side of the phone, Eve is crying.  Her lips press together again.  “Where are you?”

“In our—”

The static is so loud that Claire thinks it cut out what Eve said, but it isn’t that at all, it’s that Eve paused, corrected herself, “In my apartment.”  She hiccups through her tears.

“What’s the address, Eve?”

“Huh?”

~

Claire leaves her room with an overnight bag slung over one shoulder, surprised that she’d been able to keep her head on straight long enough to get one put together. She’s probably missing something. Her clothes probably don’t match. She’d just shoved things into the bag without really thinking about it, too angry – rage pulsing through her chest – to focus on that.  In fact, she’s seeing so much red that she doesn’t even see Devon as she passes him on the way to their apartment door.

Devon grabs her wrist, holds her in place, stops her.  “Where are you going?”

“Eve needs me.”

“Claire.” Devon tightens his grip, even though she doesn’t struggle against him.  “She’s your ex.  She broke your heart.  Don’t do this.  Don’t ruin your life—”

“I’m not ruining my life, Dev.”  Claire still doesn’t pull her wrist out of his grip, doesn’t even try, but she doesn’t look at him either.  “And she didn’t break my heart.  I broke hers.”

“You have a chance, Claire.  An actual chance.  Do you know how rare that is—”

Claire chuckles lightly to herself.  “You’re acting like I won’t come back, Dev.  It’s not like that—”

“Isn’t it?”  Devon loosens his grip, fingers tracing circles on Claire’s wrist.  “Next week is finals week.  Senior year.  You should stay here, Claire.  Studying. You shouldn’t be traveling halfway across the state—”

“It’s only thirty minutes—”

“—because your ex-girlfriend called you,” Devon finishes, not even pretending to pay attention to Claire’s excuses.  “Does she even know?” he asks, and Claire’s heart crumbles.  “Does she even know who you are?”

Claire doesn’t say anything.  She doesn’t have to.  There isn’t anything to say.

Devon drops his hand.

“Do you want the ring back?” Claire asks, twisting it easy around her finger, a new habit that she hadn’t thought she would ever need to break.

“No,” Devon says, rough voice soft.  “Keep it.  To remember what you could have been.”

Claire swallows again.  Harder this time.  There’s a lump in her throat that she hadn’t expected.  “It’s Eve,” she says, finally, turning back to him, blue eyes bright and wide.  “What do you want me to do?”

Devon sighs and gives a little shake of his head.  He has never looked smaller in his entire life than he does in this exact moment, shoving his hands into his pockets and hanging his head.  “Does it really matter, Claire?”

~

Claire barely knocks on Eve’s apartment door before it swings open and Eve falls onto her, curling her head on Claire’s flat chest.  “I can’t believe you came,” she moans into Claire’s skin.

Immediately, Claire wraps her arms protectively around Eve and holds her close to her.  She presses a kiss to the top of her head and murmurs, “Of course, I came, Eve.”  She threads her fingers through Eve’s hair, stroking it gently.  It’s only a few seconds, and already she can feel Eve’s tears through her thin shirt. “It’ll be okay—”

“He left me,” Eve repeats, balling her hands into fists, clutching at Claire’s shirt.  “He left me.”

Claire doesn’t know who this Ted is, but she knows she wants to punch him in the face.  “Do you want me to fight him?” she growls.  “I’ll make him wish he never—”

“No.”  Eve sniffles once, twice, and the word comes out as a long moan. She steps back, head lowered, refusing to look up, avoiding Claire’s gaze.  “Come in, it’s….”  Her voice trails off, and she rubs her arm with her other hand.  “I don’t want to make a scene.”

You are allowed to make a scene, Claire thinks angrily but doesn’t say. It would come out wrong, it would sound like she was mad at Eve, and she isn’t, she isn’t mad at Eve, nothing could be further from the truth, and she doesn’t want to make things worse by making it sound as though she is.  So, instead, she takes Eve’s hand in her own, interlaces their fingers the way she had so many times before she’d broken up with her, and gives her a gentle squeeze.  A reminder.  I’m here.

Eve squeezes her hand back weakly and then tugs her into the apartment.

~

It’s—

It’s—

Claire can’t help it; seeing the state of Eve’s apartment, her free hand clenches into the tightest fist she’s ever had, so tight that she can feel her sharp nails digging into the flesh of her palms, the sticky sweet drip of blood staining the skin beneath them.  Her nails are so much longer now than they’d ever been when she was dating Eve; she’s let them grow out a bit so that she can paint them, an act that has been soothing for years only she’s never felt confident enough to leave the decoration on. Right now, they look like a sunset. She hopes that Eve doesn’t notice.

It’s a hope that she can’t realize right now, though, staring at the hollow emptiness of everything.  A couple of the cabinets in the kitchen stand open, their few contents shuffled and almost thrown about, knocked over, crumpled.  Two spices have tumbled to the floor, their tops open – just from the smell, it must be cinnamon and sage.

As Eve pulls her further into the apartment, Claire sees the spaces where a life – lives – once were: an empty spot in the living room where a recliner must have been, another where the TV stood (there’s dust around where its base once was, around the rectangular spot where a VHS player must have been), missing slots in the rows of VHS tapes where movies have suddenly gone missing.  All of the pictures hung along the walls, however, are still there; it seems like this Ted hadn’t really cared about making the place seem more livable.

Asshole.

Eve leads Claire into her bedroom, which is…worse, almost.  There are clothes thrown everywhere, dresser drawers half-open, pillows missing, a blanket that seems to have been on one half of the bed, shoes scattered here and there – Claire stumbles over one, and she notices that one of the open drawers is full of Eve’s underwear. White hot rage boils within her.  “Tell me,” she growls, “that you didn’t let him take—“

“Half of them were already his,” Eve murmurs, voice tight, choked.  “He liked to collect them.  Said he liked the way they smelled.”  She still can’t meet Claire’s eyes.  “Said they helped him when I wasn’t here.”

“Eve—”

“I thought it was normal—”

“I never—”

“No, you never, and you left me, too.”

Eve doesn’t sling the words as an accusation, doesn’t say them angrily, barely whispers the admittance, but still, it stops Claire from saying anything else.  She steps barefoot, careful, across to the bed and curls up into the smallest ball Claire has ever seen, pulling her sheets and comforter around her and holding their edges close together in front of her.  She sniffles again, eyes red but dry.

When Claire follows her to the bed, she looks up, finally meeting Claire’s eyes; hers are bloodshot, swollen, a drop of the most beautiful blue she has ever seen in a deep sea of blood.  Claire slips onto the bed next to her and wraps an arm around her shoulders.  “Come here.”

Without saying anything, Eve curls into Claire.  She rests her head on her chest, hesitates, and then curls closer until she’s nearly in Claire’s lap.  But Claire doesn’t mind.  Instead, she only holds her closer and begins to stroke her hair again.  “It’ll be okay,” she murmurs soothingly.  “You don’t have to worry about that asshole any—”

“He wasn’t an asshole, Christopher—”

“Quit defending him, Eve; he left you—”

Eve sniffles again, and the sound cuts Claire off.  She’s not hear to accuse Eve of anything.  She’s here to make her feel better.  Apparently talking shit about the boy who literally left her is not helping.  She can’t imagine why.

“I’m here,” Claire murmurs instead.  “I’m here, and I will be here for as long as you need me.”  She strokes her fingers gentle along the curve of Eve’s spine, the way that she knows she likes, and then scratches gently along her back.  “I’m not going anywhere.”

Eve nods.  Closes her eyes.  Lets out a little sigh as she slowly, slowly relaxes.  It isn’t that she isn’t crying; it’s that she’s cried so much already that she doesn’t have any tears left.  “Thank you,” she murmurs, voice soft.  “I don’t….” She swallows again.  “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Claire continues to stroke her fingers along Eve’s back until she feels Eve’s breath slowing into that peaceful churn indicating rest.  Her chest lifts slow against Claire’s, and Claire just keeps an eye on her, unable to comprehend how anyone could hurt her like this, could think that it was even remotely acceptable to just leave Eve because she’d gotten pregnant.