Chapter 18: Callback
The vanilla-scented candle on Clara’s nightstand flickered, casting long, dancing shadows across the art-cluttered walls of her bedroom. She was sprawled across the four-poster bed, trying to lose herself in a book, when her phone vibrated on the duvet. David’s name glowed on the screen.
She hesitated, her thumb hovering. The conversation from the diner felt like a stain she couldn’t wash out.
“Hey,” she answered, her voice carefully neutral.
“Clara. Hi.” David’s tone was businesslike, the one he used when optimizing a workflow or debugging code. “I’ve been thinking about our conversation. The non-exclusive arrangement you proposed.”
Clara’s stomach tightened. “Yeah?”
“Just to clarify the parameters,” he said, and she could almost see him adjusting his glasses. “If we were to pursue this, the understanding would be that I am also free to see other people. Romantically. Sexually. Is that correct?”
The clinical phrasing was so David. It stripped the idea of any lingering intimacy, turning it into a set of rules. “I… suppose that’s what it means,” Clara said, the words feeling flimsy in her mouth.
“Right. Good.” She heard the smile in his voice, a pleased little uptick. “I have to admit, when you first brought it up, I was skeptical. But if we’re both operating with the same set of permissions, it could be a very efficient way to meet our respective... needs without the traditional constraints.”
"That's... a lot of big words, but, yeah, I guess so." replied Clara, with an increasing degree of uncertainty about the arrangement she proposed.
“So, just to be perfectly clear,” David continued, his voice gaining a confident, almost eager edge. “The arrangement would mean I could, for example, have sex with you, and also with whomever else I might be seeing.”
The bluntness of it winded her. She hadn’t thought that far, hadn’t painted the mental picture of David moving from her bed to someone else’s with such pragmatic ease. A hot flush of hypocrisy crawled up her neck. She was the one who had brought it up. She was the one seeing Jade, who had so easily accepted their ‘casual’ status. How could she possibly object?
“Yeah,” she forced out, the word tasting like ash. “That would be the idea. Hypocritical otherwise, right?”
“Exactly. I’m glad we’re on the same page.” There was a rustling sound on his end, the clink of a glass.
Clara closed her eyes, pressing her forehead into the soft down of her pillow. She felt unmoored, adrift in a sea of her own making. The cozy warmth of her room suddenly felt suffocating.
“Well, I should let you go,” David said, his voice slightly muffled now, as if he was turning away from the phone. “We’ll talk soon.”
“Sure. Bye, David.”
But that’s when she heard it. Faint, but unmistakable. A light, feminine laugh. Then a voice, slightly blurred by distance, but crystal clear in its familiarity.
“Is everything all sorted with your logistics?”
It was Crystal. She stared at the flickering candle flame, the room tilting around her. Crystal hadn’t wasted any time at all.
A bitter laugh escaped her throat, echoing in the quiet room. She was the architect of this. She had handed him the blueprint. She thought she was proposing a bridge back to something, but she’d just given him a hall pass.
Pushing herself off the bed, she walked to the window and stared out at the city lights, a sprawling grid of other people’s lives. The comfortable chaos of her apartment, usually a sanctuary, now felt like a cage. The lingering scent of vanilla from the candle was suddenly cloying, sickly sweet.
She thought of Jade’s calm, accepting face in the diner. I assumed this was casual anyway. The words had felt like a rejection then. Now, they felt like a premonition. This was the world of ‘casual.’