Sunday, July 10

FLORENCE

This apartment isn’t exactly…” Rae paused.

“Clean?” Clara finished for her.

They were standing at the bottom of the stairs, the bags of food they’d just bought heaped on the dining room table. Last night, they’d made pasta for dinner, and the unwashed pots and plates still littered the kitchen counters. A layer of dust covered everything.

Clara clapped her hands together. “I’ll get the vacuum.”

“We have a vacuum?” Rae asked.

“We must!” Clara opened the door to the closet behind the stairs. “Grown-ups always own vacuums.”

Rae went into the kitchen and filled the sink with soap and water. The air in the room was stale, so she climbed onto the counter and opened a small window high above the cupboards. It framed a square of dark blue sky, a single stone tower etched across it.

Rae stopped to stare at it, listening to the hum of the evening as it poured inside. She thought this would make a cool picture—the kind her mom would like—so she went to find her camera. Its strap settled around her neck, its familiar weight resting against her chest. She climbed the counter again and snapped a picture of cracked white paint on the wooden window frame, of an old tower with wispy clouds curling above it. Rae liked that it was an image of Florence only she could see. A tiny corner of the city that, right now, belonged only to her.

She scrubbed the dishes, the warm suds covering her hands and arms. She’d never given it much thought before, but she wondered if this was what it would feel like having an apartment of her own someday. A studio, probably, with her mom’s paintings on the walls and a sofa bed and high windows that overlooked a city. Maybe in Melbourne. Or maybe somewhere else. Any of the hundreds of places she could picture herself living. She would open the windows while doing the dishes. She would hang her laundry out on a small balcony and fold up her sofa bed to have friends over at night. They would drink and talk and hang out till the early hours of the morning. Actually, it was kind of nice to think about. It made adulthood seem almost okay.

A bell chimed outside, bringing Rae back to the present.

She dried her hands on the bottom of her T-shirt and went into the living room. Everything had been transformed. The main lights were off and candles, glimmering in candleholders, rested on every surface. A green brocade tablecloth had been placed over the dining table, with wineglasses and bowls of chips and plates of cheese and crackers arranged across it. It was all set out so neatly, like Clara had obsessed over getting it just right.

“Come look at this.” Clara sat on the floor by the couch. She’d unpinned her hair so it fell in waves, and she wore a dress Rae remembered her making last summer—cherry-printed fabric and straps that tied as bows. She was pulling old cassette tapes out of a bunch of shoeboxes and placing them in separate piles. “I found these in the closet with the vacuum,” she said. “Aren’t they great?”

“They’re cool.” Rae sat down, too, although she wasn’t really thinking about tapes. She was thinking about the way Clara bent forward to read the names of songs to herself. She was thinking about her deep red lipstick and the bows on her shoulders and how carefully she was organizing each pile. Rae wondered what it would be like if they weren’t eighteen. If they were five or six years older, and their lives were a little more stable, a little more still. Maybe they would be moving in somewhere together, sorting through boxes of their own stuff and making lists of supplies they needed to buy. A colander, a duster, a chest of drawers—things Rae had never realized until now she would eventually need to own.

“We’ll let Gabe decide what to play first,” Clara said. “He’ll love that.”

“What can we listen to them on, though?” Rae picked up a pile of the cassettes and was surprised by how clunky they were. “These are approximately a hundred years old.”

“Hold on.” Clara disappeared behind the couch and emerged again with an ancient boom box in her arms. “Voilà!”

“Whoa,” Rae said. “That thing looks prehistoric as fuck. There’s no way in hell it works.”

“Only one way to find out.” Clara plugged it in and pressed a few buttons. The tape clicked over and big-band music began to play—the kind that had to be from the 1930s or something. A woman sang in French, and Rae thought she recognized the song as one she and Lucy had heard during a trip to France. Or maybe Gabe had played it for Aubrey once and then Aubrey had played it for Rae. Whatever it was, Rae loved it. It was exactly what she felt like listening to right now.

Clara came back over. “See? Doesn’t this feel like a party?”

“For sure.” Rae pulled the camera off her neck. “Want to see some of the pictures I’ve taken?” They scrolled through images of the apartment and Prague and Amsterdam. There was the one of Clara standing on the Charles Bridge, Rae’s reflection in her sunglasses. There was the one of the two of them in the hostel in Amsterdam, Clara’s hair like red smoke, Rae twisting away from the camera. Both of them looking disheveled and sleep-deprived and happy.

“You have to send me these.” Clara leaned closer to the screen.

“Yup,” Rae said, but she didn’t want to scroll back any further. It was too overwhelming to think of how much had happened in such a short span of time. That picture in Amsterdam had been taken less than a week ago, but Clara hadn’t known how Rae felt about her then. And when she’d told Rae that she wished the five of them were going to college together, Rae had been sure she didn’t want the same thing. She’d been determined to move far away, determined to start over.

But now that was the last thing she wanted.

She wanted this. She wanted rooms that felt like her own and a desk where she could sit every day and draw alongside someone. Her wide-open future—all the unknown places she’d imagined herself exploring—now seemed small in comparison. So much smaller than making breakfast with Clara every morning and sleeping under the same sheets with her every night.

“Cupcakes.” She abruptly switched her camera off. “You still want to make them, right?”

Clara must have been a little thrown, but she didn’t show it. She pulled her hair to the nape of her neck. “I’ll get everything out.”

They walked into the kitchen, where Clara took mixing bowls and vanilla extract and flour from the cupboards. Rae hoped Clara knew how to bake, because she definitely didn’t. She and Lucy loved buying intricate cakes from famous London bakeries, but they couldn’t even throw together a brownie mix without ruining it. And they both majorly sucked at cooking. When Rae went to college, she’d probably live off bowls of cold cereal and toasted bagels.

“Is something wrong?” Clara asked tentatively. “You seem a little distant.”

Rae shook her head. “I was just thinking about bagels.”

Clara closed a cupboard door. “I thought maybe it had something to do with our conversation earlier? About you and Aubrey? Do you know what you’ll say when you see her tonight?”

“Honestly,” Rae said, “I don’t really care.”

“But how can you not care?” Clara dropped a bag of flour on the counter, making Rae jump. Clara seemed upset now.

“I don’t know.” Rae picked up a corkscrew from the counter and flipped it nervously in her hands. “She just hasn’t been on my mind.”

“So you don’t care that you’re about to leave her?” Clara said. “Or that you’re going to Australia and never coming back?”

“I’ll come back. Someday. I mean, probably.”

“But what if she’s not there when you do? What if her parents have moved to the States and she has no reason to visit England ever again? Doesn’t that bother you? Are you already so completely detached from her?”

A few drops of water fell from the faucet into the still-full sink. Rae kept twisting the corkscrew. “Clara,” she said, “are you definitely talking about me and Aubrey right now?”

Clara’s face reddened. “Yes.”

“You’re talking about me leaving. And what happens to my relationship—with Aubrey?”

Clara backed up against the fridge. “It’s taken you two days to forget about your best friend,” she said. Rae could hear the sadness in her voice. “How long will it take you to forget about me?”

Rae’s stomach plunged.

She turned and put the corkscrew back in a drawer. What was she supposed to do now? Forgetting Clara had always been the point. It had been one of the perks of going to school so far away—that her memory of Clara would finally fade, that she could finally figure out a way to move on. But that idea seemed so ridiculous now—moving on seemed beyond impossible.

“We should bake,” Rae said, “or the cupcakes won’t be done in time.” She ripped open a bag of sugar so forcefully that she knocked it over. Sugar drenched the counter and overflowed to the floor. Rae watched it stream toward the fridge and beneath the oven, obscuring the faint pattern of green vines on the tiles. She stood frozen as the bag finally emptied and fluttered to the ground.

And then she started to sob.

Her chest heaved. Hot tears splashed down her cheeks. Clara’s arms wrapped around her shoulders, and Rae smelled her orange-raspberry scent. “Rae,” she said. “It’s okay. I don’t want stupid cupcakes that badly.”

“It’s not—” Rae stammered. “It’s not the cu-cupcakes. And it’s not Aubrey. It’s—I don’t want to go to Melbourne!” She continued to cry. More than she’d ever cried about anything else. Maybe more than she’d ever cried period.

In the other room, the tape was still playing. Candles were lit and the food was set out, ready for the party. Rae slid to the floor, and Clara went with her. They were both sitting in a pile of sugar.

“Of course you want to go,” Clara said. “You want adventure. You want change.”

“But Australia?” Rae said. “What the fuck was I thinking? New York would be adventure and change. California would be adventure and change. I mean, it’s college! The whole freaking thing is adventure and change!”

Clara rubbed circles on Rae’s back. “So try Melbourne for a year. If you hate it, you can always transfer.”

“But if I try it, that means I have to go. I don’t want to leave and have to find myself or whatever. I don’t want any of that. I want—I want to stay with you.”

Clara pulled back to look at her. Rae clamped her mouth shut. That was definitely the dumbest thing she could have said. “I’m sorry.” She shrugged away, the granules of sugar itching against her legs. The motor in the refrigerator hissed and hummed. “That was weird. I know you have to go to LA. You should go to LA. Visit your sister at Stanford, do your art-school thing. And when you meet some talented sculptor guy—or talented sculptor girl—I promise you, I’ll be happy for—”

“Rae.” Clara placed one hand on the ground and the other on Rae’s knee. Her gaze was intent. “You are aware that I’m already in love with you, right?”

Rae leaned against the cabinet beneath the sink. The blue oven clock blinked across from them. Clara’s hand was still pressed to the sugar on the ground, her lips parted, like she wanted to keep talking. But Rae decided to talk first.

“Clara,” she said, “I hope it’s pretty obvious that I’m in love with you, too.”

The time on the clock changed just as they kissed.

It was still one of the first kisses they’d had, but for some reason, it didn’t feel new anymore.

Because this was Clara.

Clara, who’d slept over at Rae’s house countless times, bowls of popcorn on the floor, mugs half filled with tea and open DVD cases on the coffee table. Clara, who’d skipped class with her sophomore year because it was snowing outside and they wanted to walk to a coffee shop for hot chocolate. Clara, who’d knitted a scarf for her eighteenth birthday and waited by her locker first thing in the morning to give it to her. Clara, who she loved. Clara, who loved her back.

They lay down. Clara kissed Rae’s neck and each one of her shoulders. Rae closed her eyes and felt their kisses grow deeper. Their legs laced together. The sugar was everywhere beneath them, like snow, like the sand on the beach in Paris. Rae stretched one hand across the tiles and imagined that the vines were real. They grew all over the room, twining around pipes, creeping toward the ceiling. And Clara and Rae were lost in the middle of it all, safe for a little while longer.

The front door opened.

Clara rolled off Rae, and Rae sat up, desperately brushing sugar from her dress and bracing herself for all the questions Aubrey and Gabe would definitely have. But when she stood up, her first sentence got lodged in her throat. She didn’t say anything at all. Because it wasn’t Aubrey and Gabe standing in the entranceway.

It was Jonah.