CITY OF ASHES

“I thought this was what you wanted,” she said. “I thought you said that—”

He looked up at her through his dark lashes. “That I loved you? I do love you. But that’s not the whole story.”

“Is this because of Maia?” Her teeth had started to chatter, only partly from the cold. “Because you like her?”

Simon hesitated. “No. I mean, yes, I like her, but not the way you mean. It’s just that when I’m around her—I know what it’s like to have someone like me that way. And it’s not like it is with you.”

“But you don’t love her—”

“Maybe I could someday.”

“Maybe I could love you someday.”

“If you ever do,” he said, “come and let me know. You know where to find me.”

Her teeth were chattering harder. “I can’t lose you, Simon. I can’t.”

“You never will. I’m not leaving you. But I’d rather have what we have, which is real and true and important, than have you pretend anything else. When I’m with you, I want to know I’m with the real you, the real Clary.”

She leaned her head against his, closing her eyes. He still felt like Simon, despite everything; still smelled like him, like his laundry soap. “Maybe I don’t know who that is.”

“But I do.”

Luke’s brand-new pickup was idling by the curb when Clary left Simon’s house, fastening the gate shut behind her.

“You dropped me off. You didn’t have to pick me up too,” she said, swinging herself up into the cab beside him. Trust Luke to replace his old, destroyed truck with a new one that was exactly like it.

“Forgive me my paternal panic,” said Luke, handing her a waxed paper cup of coffee. She took a sip—no milk and lots of sugar, the way she liked it. “I tend to get a little nervous when you’re not in my immediate line of sight these days.”

“Oh, yeah?” Clary held the coffee tightly to keep it from spilling as they bumped down the potholed road. “How long do you think that’s going to go on for?”

Luke looked considering. “Not long. Five, maybe six years.”

“Luke!”

“I plan to let you start dating when you’re thirty, if that helps.”

“Actually, that doesn’t sound so bad. I may not be ready until I’m thirty.”

Luke looked at her sideways. “You and Simon…?”

She waved the hand that wasn’t holding the coffee cup. “Don’t ask.”

“I see.” He probably did. “Did you want me to drop you at home?”

“You’re going to the hospital, right?” She could tell from the nervous tension underlying his jokes. “I’ll go with you.”

They were on the bridge now, and Clary looked out over the river, nursing her coffee thoughtfully. She never got tired of this view, the narrow river of water between the canyon walls of Manhattan and Brooklyn. It glittered in the sun like aluminum foil. She wondered why she’d never tried to draw it. She remembered asking her mother once why she’d never used her as a model, never drawn her own daughter. “To draw something is to try to capture it forever,” Jocelyn had said, sitting on the floor with a paintbrush dripping cadmium blue onto her jeans. “If you really love something, you never try to keep it the way it is forever. You have to let it be free to change.”

But I hate change. She took a deep breath. “Luke,” she said. “Valentine said something to me when I was on the ship, something about—”

“Nothing good ever starts with the words ‘Valentine said,’” muttered Luke.

“Maybe not. But it was about you and my mom. He said you were in love with her.”

Silence. They were stopped in traffic on the bridge. She could hear the sound of the Q train rumbling past. “Do you think that’s true?” Luke said at last.

“Well.” Clary could sense the tension in the air and tried to choose her words carefully. “I don’t know. I mean, he said it before and I just dismissed it as paranoia and hatred. But this time I started thinking, and well—it is sort of weird that you’ve always been around, you’ve been like a dad to me, we practically lived on the farm in the summer, and yet neither you nor my mom ever dated anyone else. So I thought maybe…”

“You thought maybe what?”

“That maybe you’ve been together all this time and you just didn’t want to tell me. Maybe you thought I was too young to get it. Maybe you were afraid it would start me asking questions about my dad. But I’m not too young to get it anymore. You can tell me. I guess that’s what I’m saying. You can tell me anything.”

“Maybe not anything.” There was another silence as the truck inched forward in the crawling traffic. Luke squinted into the sun, his fingers tapping on the wheel. Finally, he said, “You’re right. I am in love with your mother.”

“That’s great,” Clary said, trying to sound supportive despite how gross the idea happened to be of people her mom’s and Luke’s age being in love.