Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between

“Don’t I get one?” Scotty asks, pointing to the ice bag, and Stella glares at him as she drops into the seat beside Clare.

“I’m taking care of your collateral damage first.”

“I’m so sorry,” Scotty says to Clare for the millionth time, still shaking his head. “So, so, so sorry. We would have never—”

“Here,” Stella says, ignoring him as she gently pries Clare’s hand away from her face, replacing it with the ice pack, which stings at first, then—as she lets it settle there—starts to feel wonderfully cool, slowing the pulse that has sprung up somewhere behind her sore eye. “How does it feel?”

“Fine,” Clare says, distracted. She turns to look at Aidan, who is slumped against the doorway, his hands in his pockets. He looks utterly miserable, and not just because of the cut below his right eye, which is raw and red. “What the hell were you guys thinking?” she says to him, then glances back at Scotty, who’s wearing a slightly vacant expression.

“I don’t know,” he says, bringing two fingers to his lip and coming away with blood. He looks around for Andy, who seems to have drifted off, then reaches behind him for a napkin, dabbing gingerly at the cut. “It was stupid.…”

“You think?” Stella asks, raising an eyebrow.

Aidan steps around so that Clare can finally see him with her one good eye. “You know that I’d never…” he says, his voice desperate and strained. He scrubs at his face with his hands, and she can see that one of his knuckles is split open. There’s blood smudged across his fingers. “I’m sorry. I’m just… I feel terrible.” He brings a hand to his chest, looking pained. “I hate the thought that something we did—”

“You did,” Scotty says from across the table, still mopping at his lip with a napkin. “Something you did.”

“You started it,” Aidan says weakly.

“No way, dude,” Scotty says, shaking his head. “I was just joking around about your sister. Which, by the way, you’ve got to lighten up about. But you were the one who threw the first punch.”

Aidan flexes his jaw, but says nothing.

“And it wasn’t me who clocked you,” Scotty continues, his eyes moving to Clare. “I’m pretty sure it was Aidan’s elbow.”

“That’s not the point,” Clare says, feeling Aidan’s gaze on her. She lowers the ice, but when she catches Stella’s grimace at the sight of her eye, she shifts it back onto her cheek. “You guys are idiots for fighting at all.”

“It is the point,” Scotty says, sitting forward. “Because everyone’s always blaming me for everything, and I’m always the screwup around here. But it wasn’t me this time. It was your hothead boyfriend.”

Nobody says anything, and Clare looks over at Aidan, a move that requires her to turn her whole head. His left eye is nearly swollen shut now, but the rest of his face is completely ashen, and his mouth has fallen half-open.

He looks like someone has punched him all over again.

They stare at each other, weighing something invisible to the rest of the world, and then, finally, Clare tips her chin down.

“I’m not her boyfriend anymore,” Aidan says quietly, still watching Clare, and after a pause, she nods in agreement.

“He’s not my boyfriend anymore,” she echoes, but something about the way they’re saying it doesn’t make it sound quite real.

She sets the dripping bag of ice on the table, scattering a few of the cards, and forces herself to look at Stella, who is staring at her, wide-eyed and genuinely astonished.

“Wow,” she says, blinking a few times. “I’m gobsmacked.”

Clare can’t help smiling, though it makes her eye begin to throb again. “See? And you didn’t think you’d get to use it today.”

“There’s no other word for it.”

“You guys broke up?” Scotty says, looking from Aidan to Clare, then falling back into his chair. “I didn’t think you’d actually ever do it.”