THEN AGAIN • TC ✔️

4. Fast and Furious in Equal Measures

The thing is, before Timmy arrived, Clem was ready to be in a relationship. She'd had it all figured out; she was going to find someone, and they'd fall in love with her and she'd start feeling like an adult. But then Timmy showed up when she'd put an ad online for a vacancy--

(And he was so lovely. He was the third person to come and view the apartment, because the first person had decided that it wasn't close enough to the train station, the second that the view from their bedroom window was too bland. But then Timmy had come in with his big smile and his jacket that looked like it was doing nothing to keep out the cold, and he hadn't mentioned needing to be close to the train station. Hadn't mentioned the view from his window – still hasn't, after five months, and it's a brick wall so realistically there's only so much that Clem can do about that – and he'd said it looked perfect.

He hadn't, actually. He'd said it was perfect.)

--and he was so good that he moved in the next week. So like, Clem's not blaming Timmy for anything, but he's seriously skewed the way she thinks about things now. Because half of the attraction of falling in love with someone was living with them, was sharing her space with someone. Not knowing whose t-shirts were whose and squabbling over the correct way to stack the dishwasher and hugs whenever she wanted them, but she has that already with Timmy. She's never lonely anymore because he's always there. There in the washing up that he insists will get done when he comes home that evening, but Clem will always end up doing. There in the fact that they're more like a couple than cohabitants, because they do each other's laundry and argue over the socks that Timmy always leaves on the floor. Argue over those stupid apples that pile up in the fruit bowl and never get eaten.

And he makes Clem wonder if she's really looking for love or if she's really just looking for someone like Timmy.

But she perseveres, going on dates with people she knows won't be perfect, persisting even though, inevitably, they will have some fault to them. She keeps going on dates because she's certain that at least one of them will amount to something, yet so far none of them have. Bar Nick, who is gorgeous and also kind of alarmingly smart.

(And Clem's smart, but she doesn't get numbers or technical stuff. That's more Timmy's thing, except he knows that not everyone finds it interesting and manages to evaluate whether certain topics are really worth talking about. Nick just rattles on, using big words that only half make sense to Clem. At least Timmy stops to explain himself.)

She takes a sip of her wine and stands up, the chair squeaking on the tiles that she cleaned the other day (and Timmy spilt tomato sauce on almost immediately. She'd grumbled at him but he'd rectified the situation with a paper towel, apologising profusely. And he'd given her a bowl of pasta and garlic bread, after which she had no grounds to complain because really, who the hell made tomato pasta taste that good).

Clem goes to put the crumble in the oven, and Nick talks to her about how she made it. It's nice. It's good. She can do conversation like this, because it's easy and genuinely kind of interesting, and it doesn't make her feel like a total fool for not knowing what an accretion bond is.

She's about to sit back down when she decides that she'd really rather not.

"Do you want to just sit on the sofa and find a film or something?" she asks, and Nick seems to hesitate for a moment before nodding.

"Okay," he smiles, and they go sit down. He browses through just about every streaming service Clem owns, and she sees a few things that she's actually been meaning to watch, but she doesn't know how to bring this up with Nick so she says nothing. Just sits there with her feet tucked underneath her, her shoulder pressed up against him as he browses. He makes a noise. Chucks on some action film which Clem's seen before and knows to be incredibly boring, but she doesn't protest and lets him put his arm around her shoulder.

It's quite nice, actually.

Because whatever is going on on-screen doesn't matter, now that she's tucked into his side. Clem hopes he doesn't look down at her so he can't work out that her eyes are closed, and she nuzzles into his broad chest. Hopes that her lipstick doesn't smudge his shirt.

They spend forty minutes watching the movie, forty minutes of absolute boredom on Clem's part, and she finds herself wanting to initiate something. To grab his face and pull it down to her own, and his beard might be scratchy but they'll figure something out. It could feel quite nice on her thighs.

She's admiring just how bulky his chest really is when the timer goes off on the oven, and Clem jolts up. "That'll be the crumble," she says (and really Clem? What else would it be?)

She stands. Brushes the skirt of her dress down from where it has rucked up her thighs, and goes to make custard to serve with it. Nick doesn't press pause on the film, which irritates her more than it should considering she wasn't even watching it. (Only what if she had been? Timmy always pauses the shows they're watching, even sits next to her on the sofa and re-watches episodes for Clem's benefit so they can be on the same one, while he grades papers and works on presentations. And when did Clem start to compare everything Nick does to Timmy?)

But she makes the custard sauce and serves up the crumble, piping hot, into bowls that Timmy brought with him when he moved in. One of them has a chip in it but all the others are in the dishwasher, so Clem gives herself that one and gives Nick the bowl that's still intact. She ladles custard over both bowls of crumble, and sticks a spoon in the side. Carries them over to the sofa, tells Nick that it's hot, and sits there watching the screen blankly, warming her hands on her dessert. She doesn't bother curling back into his side until there are twenty minutes of the movie to go and their bowls are sitting empty on the coffee table.

It's then that the front door rattles open.