Page 51 of Breaking from Frame
“A few,” Jackie says tiredly. “It was hard to tell. Everything was spinning.”
“How did you get tangled in something like that?” Claire says, before it hits her. When she imagines someone like Theo at a bar, with his biting wit, running into the kind of men Pete works with…if he tossed an insult at the wrong person, someone big and drunk and a little rowdy…
“Was this about Theo?” Claire asks haltingly. “Were the men…was it because he’s…”
Claire trails off. They haven’t yet discussed what Theo said that day at the pool, and Jackie’s face now reminds Claire of how it looked then—her lips are pressed tightly together. Her eyes are open now, and she’s staring straight ahead. She barely flinches when Claire presses the ice to her face again.
“And if it was?” Jackie says.
Claire pauses. The question feels like more than the sum of its parts, and she considers her words carefully as she lowers the shrinking ice cube.
“Then…I hope Theo got some good punches in.”
Jackie’s face softens. Her eyes shift to meet Claire’s, and it’s as if a wall drops between them. Jackie looks so tired, suddenly. Vulnerable and exhausted. A droplet of water is sliding down her temple, and Claire swipes at it with her finger without thinking.
“I really don’t like the idea of someone hurting you,” Claire says. Her voice won’t seem to rise above a whisper.
Jackie gives a weak smile. “I don’t think anyone has ever cared this much about it before.”
The cloth has fallen out of Claire’s hand, and the ice is melting into the couch cushion. Usually that would make her antsy, but Claire has bigger concerns.
“I care,” Claire says. She traces her finger along the cool, damp skin just at the edge of Jackie’s bruised eye. “I know it’s strange, but I keep wishing I had been there.”
Jackie’s brow furrows. “They just would have hit you, too.”
“Maybe with me there they wouldn’t have,” Claire says. It feels like a stupid thing to say the moment it leaves her mouth—what could she possibly have done against three grown men? Attacked them with her vacuum cleaner? But it also feels true. If she’d been there, she would have tried to protect Jackie, no matter how silly it looked. “I’ve never hit anyone, but I’m sure I could learn.”
“See?” Jackie says. Her voice is low, her breath dancing across Claire’s face. Her pupils are large and dark, just barely distinguishable from the mahogany color of her eyes. It makes them seem so endlessly deep that Claire could tip forward and fall down them like Alice down the rabbit hole. “I knew there was a lion in here.”
She taps her forefinger against Claire’s chest just over her collarbone, just like the day they smoked together. And Jackie’s hand doesn’t move away. It lingers, the very tip of her finger pressed against Claire’s skin. It feels like there’s somethingmoving underneath it, some thrilling feeling coursing through Claire to gather right under the spot Jackie is touching. Something about this moment feels fragile, and Claire finds herself holding her breath to keep from breaking it.
Suddenly, Jackie jerks away. It comes with a hiss of pain.
Claire retracts her own hand from Jackie’s face so quickly that it sends a jolt up her arm, her heart jumping. “Shoot. I’m sorry—did I press on your bruise?”
“Do you want to learn how to drive?” Jackie says, standing up abruptly. She snatches up the damp towel from the couch, heading towards the kitchen in a rush. The softness is gone from her voice.
Claire is left on the couch, nursing her conversational whiplash. This kind of thing has been happening with Jackie more frequently lately, the moments of closeness and sudden pivots, and she’s not sure why. “What?”
“My eye hurts, and I need a distraction,” Jackie shouts from the kitchen. Claire can hear the sink running. “Have you ever taken lessons?”
“In high school,” Claire says. The spot on her chest that Jackie was touching is still tingling, and she rubs it absently. “You don’t want me to learn in your Mustang, do you?”
“Where else?”
“What if I wreck it? It’s too expensive, Jackie, I couldn’t.” Claire stands up on wobbly legs, meaning to follow Jackie’s voice, but Jackie reappears quickly. Her face is damp and shiny, like she’s splashed it with water.
“I don’t care if you crash it. I only bought it to piss off my mother.”
“That’s one expensive rebellion,” Claire says. “Are you sure?”
Jackie breezes past her, grabbing her keys from the table next to the door. “Come on. We’ll find an empty parking lot.”
Claire has completely forgotten the strangeness of earlier by the time she’s behind the wheel of Jackie’s car in an empty Denny’s parking lot, learning how to shift it into gear. The vague memory of her school lessons comes back quicker than she expected—after only a few false starts she’s cruising slowly around the lot, pressing down on the gas a little more with each lap under Jackie’s encouragement. It’s all less complicated than Claire thought it would be, and the sense of freedom she’s felt in the passenger seat is amplified, even if she’s not really doing much besides learning to park.
Even at their slow pace, the wind ruffles Claire’s hair. The sun warms her face. Jackie is smiling so much that her lip has cracked open again. For a moment, as she rounds a corner perfectly and Jackie claps in delight, Claire conjures an impossible fantasy. Cruising down the highway with Jackie, fully in control of her life, with the wind roaring in their ears. Headed off on some grand adventure.
After such a wonderful afternoon, Claire’s kitchen feels stifling when she comes back home.
