Strange Glimpses

It was back to business. She could focus on little things, like retrieving coasters and setting glasses on them, doling portions out onto plates, mopping up sweet and sour sauce with the napkins that came with the takeout. She could almost forget that the person sitting next to her was Fred Weasley, and that he had gained entrance into her home by crawling through her window, and that he had insulted and pushed her buttons, and was only here out of obligation. She could imagine it was Ben sitting here, waiting to for some bad movie to start...

But he had to ruin it by talking.

"You don't know any better," Claire said, speaking quickly, as though catching her opportunity before it fell. She reached forward and picked up her wine glass, tilting her head to look at him. "Could say you don't know any thing." Her eyebrows flicked upwards, her tongue clicking to punctuate the end of her sentence. She washed the insult down with the red wine, before setting the glass back down on the coaster.

She picked up her plate and pulled it onto her lap, grabbing her fork and a few napkins, preparing to eat. She felt Fred turned towards her, but she kept herself focused on her food, spinning some of the chicken chow mein onto her fork, before plopping it into her mouth. The food was pretty good - and Claire had gotten to know Chinese takeout pretty well, living on her own. "Mm." She dropped her fork and reached into the bag, finding the chopsticks she had forgotten to look for. She began unwrapping them from their little package.

Fred spoke again and she glanced towards him, certain that he was about to chastise her for the beer choice. For whatever reason, she found herself a bit pleased to find that he approved of the house beer, even though she had never exactly sought out the approval of her Unspeakable colleague. But before she could really accept it, he had attempted to revoke it.

Her eyes narrowed on him and her chopsticks plucked up a piece of sweet and sour chicken, taking a bite. "For your information," she began, but while she was swallowing, he pressed on. She didn't like him talking about Elsie, for some reason, as though Elsie was the one part of her life that she did not want to have criticize. But, she did not have to worry about that - because he had found something else to scrutinize.

She raised her eyebrow. "For your information, Elsie and I have been drinking that brand since Durmstrang." She sipped her wine, trying to figure out how to respond to the whole, love-life issue. She figured a non-lie would work best. "And yes - our apartment has its fair share of invited guest." She have him a pointed look.

“Could say you don’t know any thing.”

Fred snorted around his mouthful of steaming wonton, then followed it up with a mumbled, ‘You’d be surprised.” Which was something he’d bet the Wheezes on, actually. You didn’t need to have a sharp eye to tell that Claire Bishop probably prided herself on self-knowledge or some other similar wacked up term, had ‘made peace’ with the way she was since the time of Yoda, and probably meandered around the hallways of the Ministry under the poor delusion that she was the most uninteresting thing since Binns’ History of Magic classes. Which, admittedly, was not entirely or even partly untrue (at least for the vast majority, Fred had no issues admitting that she was probably the most fascinating thing he’d encountered since the mystery of how the erstwhile James Potter used to balance the weight of his head on his neck). However, Bishop probably was unaware of the fact that her intense blandness, at least in the face of anyone who wasn’t Fred Weasley, actually led people to be more interested in whether she was actually one of those androids who plugged herself in to charge every night, the kinds that were so popular in Muggle movies these days.

Of course, a distant part of his head noted, as Claire squinted at the chopsticks she was unwrapping, sweaty, wiry frames of the glasses slipping lower on the bridge of her nose; the idiots were free to think whatever they wished. They didn’t deserve to see her like this.

Fred blinked, and shoved the next wonton whole into his mouth. The burst of boiling liquid that released the second his teeth sunk into the soft white covering, half scalding his tastebuds, was highly welcome.

But anyway, back to the point at hand. The fact was that Fred Weasley and probably every single Departmental head, and sub-head, and officer, and worker, and measly clerk, and janitor who cleaned the toilets, knew everything that was up in the air about Claire Bishop’s torrid love life, simply because the woman herself was the exact opposite of torrid and Ministry gossip hags simply pounced on the opportunity to speculate about the woman who apparently had no life outside of the cubicle. So yes, he’d heard of Robin Ivanov, heard also about how the Law had compelled him to marry Bishop’s sister, and how they were evidently still married long after the Law was done and dusted and put out to dry in the garbage bins. The reactions to the gossip were varied: many had smirked gleefully, envious douches that they were, many had clicked their tongues in pity: Fred had been merely amused, because it was frankly still a bit of a stretch to imagine the woman possessed anything remotely soft enough in that dry, paperwork and manila folder-filled thing she called a heart, to be involved in such a tender, soap operatic mess.

Even if he had seen her shut up in the house, drinking wine all by herself on a Friday night.

It would have been easy then, almost obvious, to drop Ivanov’s name in a lazy jibe, needle Bishop’s slumbering temper into blazing ire on a past highschool flame, especially if he did believe that there was no way something as trivial as romance, or a broken heart, could impede Claire Bishop. Claire continued talking about something related to Durmstrang. Fred swallowed the wonton and stayed quiet.

Well. For two seconds anyway.

“You invited me for dinner, if blackmail constitutes invitations. You failed to specify where.” His right hand snatched up a napkin, dabbing the oil off of his fingernails. A light, quicksilver smile followed on the heels of the action. “I’m beginning to think you’re a horrible misfit for Law Enforcement, Miss Bishop, if you’ve failed to grasp and abuse the concept of technicalities.”
And that right there, was exactly what they were all about. Taunts about each others’ professional competences. Fred couldn’t help but relax his shoulders into the back of the couch following the words, the paradox of lazy sharpness perfectly in place. The past few minutes of thoughts that most decidedly hadn’t fit into this mould had left him a little on edge.

He’d compensate, though. He always did. And this current avenue of love-lives certainly deserved further exploitation. So a languid sigh breathed out, Fred rolling his neck against the couch head-rest, confident ease in every shift. “You say ‘fair share’…..and yet I can’t help but think that I’m the only one of the guests in the recent past that have actually come for you, dear colleague of mine.” A quirk of the eyebrow, a tilt of the face, re-established eye contact. “Has the maximum action you’ve got in the past months been the rattle of the headboards of your best friend’s bed, filtering in through the thin walls?”

Yep. He still had it.

She wasn't sure how to handle his surprised comment, and it was pissing her off. Never had she met someone so deserving a verbal flogging, and she did try. He did seem to activate a creative part of her brain that allowed her to be able to dole out heavy-handed sarcasm and lilted insults like no other person. She could maintain a sense of self discipline with the idiots who typically invoked a mental wrath, but it was because she realized they were incidentally obnoxious. They had no idea what they were doing, how much they deserved to be righted, etcetera. They spoke freely and loosely, dispelling thoughts that had better be saved for the mind, thoughts that Claire wanted to speak out against but could not because she knew they didn't mean it.

That wasn't the case with Mr Fred Weasley. For a fast-talking, obnoxious, arsehole, he was very careful with what he said. He knew his chemistry, and he knew that with every word he selected, there would be a reaction. And while he inspired a part of her that wanted to let her silver tongue run free and wild, she had to work ever harder at that self control bit. If she let herself respond just as she pleased, she would find herself setting off one of his little traps. And she did not want to see the look on his face if he found game in his traps.

She could claim that, of course she would be surprised by him, he was the sort of guy who climbed through windows. And then his ego would be so nurtured that she would have a huge bill from her landlord when his head crashed through the ceiling. She could tell him that she knew him well enough to take out the element of surprise, and then he would get all eyebrow-lift-y and say in that obnoxious I-know-something-you-don't voice 'Really, Bishop? Fancy you have a special relationship with me?' And if she tried to downplay it, he would have to prove his point, by mentioning that if she truly thought him not a surprising fellow, then she should have expected him to show up at her window, and wasn't it really all her fault though.

It made her want to scream. Though she never would. Claire Bishop did not scream. Avery, maybe. Elsie, oh hell yes. But never Claire.

So it was better to just leave the comment alone, if she couldn't find an alternative response. She plopped another bite of chow mein into her mouth. Yes. That was why she wasn't responding. Food.

That was another unsettling part. Fred just so happened to show up with Chinese takeout? It was so very different from the sort of cuisine that anyone would expect Claire Bishop to enjoy - which could be why he brought it. But, how many nights had she stopped by Lee's on her way home, picking up more food than was necessary for an apartment of two females. With wine and food in hand, she had found comfort. So, even if no one would believe it, anyone who truly understood Claire Bishop would know that takeout was the very food to bring her. And as much as she did not want to think Fred could really surprise her that well, there was a bit of her that feared he had brought it for the latter reason.

No. Fred only thought he understood her. And unless he was spying on her, he wouldn't know that. And she wasn't nearly important enough for that.

Mental high five.

"A friendly wager is hardly blackmail," she responded. "You agreed. And I assure you, I would have followed your instruction to the tee... had you won."

That was kind of nice to say. She had won, hadn't she? She had tried her best to not show any remarkable pride over the incident, as it had been very difficult. Honestly, they had been so evenly matched that she had feared there would be no clear winner. Winning had felt like such a fluke, that she had wanted to win one step further and treat the situation with a grace and a maturity that she knew Fred would not have managed. So she hadn't brought it up. But it did feel nice to remind her of that little fact.

"I'm not a lawyer," she reminded, her words a bit sharp, as though wanting to clear up the confusion before he let the opinion settle. "Not my job. But I can do some enforcement here, if you'd like."

She regretted that instantly. That was what happened when she spoke too quickly. Now he was going to make some sort of dominatrix joke. Great. That wasn't what she meaaaaant.

He continued on, that lazily confident voice pounding in her ears as he wound up for a spectacular swing at her. She could sense it. She didn't have to know the particulars or the wording or sentiment, but she could feel it coming, regardless.

And it landed.

Her eyes raised and met his, something the two of them like to kid themselves that they did often, but really, their eye contact only came before a victory. Otherwise, it was lazily resting otherwise, giving the other as little attention as possible, or it looked about as though looking for the next weapon. Looking at each other, no, that might mean treating each other with some level of kindness or respect. And neither of them wanted to risk that.

"The bet was for you to be nice," she said, her words short and pointed. "I said to be honest. Don't break a wager, Fred."

“And I assure you, I would have followed your instruction to the tee... had you won."

Oh goodie. She’d practically handed that out to him on a platter.

Fred wiped the corner of his lips, soaking up the residual oil with the used napkin. Set the chopsticks down. Turned to face her properly-properly. He had been waiting for this conversation for nigh on months. This had to be absolutely perfect.

“You know what. Let me lay out a couple of facts for you.”

Then he picked up the chopsticks again, because he always did execute style brilliantly when he had something to casually fiddle with. The wooden sticks nipped at the napkin he’d just used, laid out against the table, carving a perfect line down one end and separating a strip of paper out from the whole. “One. My specialisation in Unspeakable training was Weapons and Warding. I still consider it to be the field I’m finest at, beating out flying and duelling and hunting down criminals and being an overall dashing scourge for the female race- all things that I’m frankly pretty brilliant at.” A second line drawn, a second strip cut and separated. “Two. A sword is a weapon. Even if it is a wooden one.” The third strip caught a bit, sticking to the whole. Required the slightest of finicky handling to separate it. “Three. I have a gym at my penthouse in LA, which I call a gym only by the thinnest of definitions. I practice with the rapier, the two Glocks, the enchanted staff, and whatever else I’m in the mood of that particular session, thrice a week. Give me a katana, and I’d probably figure out how to work it within thirty minutes.”

Strip number four. “Now, the stakes. Four, if I ‘won’, we’d have to call off our much-hated wedding, which I managed to achieve by departing for LA anyway.” Five was already cut. Fred picked up the shredded rectangles with the ends of his chopstick and wound them slowly, languorously around his index finger, savouring in every word. “Five. If you ‘won’, I’d get to see the glorious Claire Bishop with her hair loose, thrown off her edge, for dinner.” If the phrasing of that sentence was a little frisky, a little too much ‘Claire Bishop for dinner’……then well. He had promised to be honest, hadn’t he?

“Since I consider you to be a moderately intelligent woman, Miss Bishop…..lets run through all these facts again…..and repeat after me.” Fred cocked his head to the side, grin in place, voice the immaculate parody of a kindergarten teacher revising a well-taught lesson. “What did we learn from this?”

Brisk ripping motions, and the tattered bits of paper drifted down from his finger, a perfectly useable piece torn and pathetic and scattered aimlessly at his whim. “Had you won, she says,” Fred sighed at the chopstick, shaking his head in disappointment. “Like I’m not sitting here, having the time of my life glorying in the spoils of victory.”

Then a flash of eye contact again, necessary to seal the point and hit it home, sharp and triumphant. “I take my wins whenever and however I can, Miss Bishop. I do get the feeling though, that you like beating the opposition more when they haven’t…..oh I don’t know.” A flash of canines. “Let you win.”

Fred leaned back, task complete, pure, cat-like satisfaction thrumming in his veins. Hell, if he was to be honest, Claire could probably take him on in a duel of wands, maybe serve as a worthy match at work, in the field. But he had the teensiest, tiniest feeling that she wasn’t quite up to words, to sheer manipulation, quite the same as he was. Even if he hadn’t let her win……….these words, the doubt, would be enough to sour her victory.

Fred settled into the couch, breathing in the scent of triumph and chowmein. Life, was good.

And then, because he just had completely ruined her day, the poor little girl, he didn’t even crack an eye open from the lazy afterglow of victory and a stomach full of Chinese takeout to comment on the innuendo, on how he’d have to positively bleach his ears oh my dear heart and goodness Miss Bishop, how could you, the implications, tut tut, but contented himself with a languid, “There there, don’t go about spilling all your fantasies to me now.”

Which actually was a pretty accurate statement, if he thought about it. Fred had no delusions on how exactly and passionately Claire Bishop wanted to show him his place. Minus all the pleasure, and triple the pain. She’d probably get into the entire scene just to beat the crap out of him.

Some part of his head, which sounded oddly like his mother, reminded Fred that he probably shouldn’t be so gleeful at the idea of a girl fantasising about beating the crap out of him.

Suffice to say…….Fred was in a pretty good place right now. But the problem with him (or rather the fantastic thing about him, it all depended on perspective really), was that he was rarely ever content. Scratch that, Fred Weasley rolled his eyes at the concept of contentment. He wanted more. He always wanted more.

So till now…..he’d been able to make Claire Bishop really, vein-poundingly angry, irritated, amused against her will, caught off-guard, just a little vulnerable, speechless, close to spluttering…..

“Don’t break a wager, Fred.”

”Fred.”

…..could he make her blush?

“Technically, questions don’t count as dishonest, since they can’t really be true or false…….but if you insist.” Fred leaned forward, almost imperceptibly, but the eye contact was enough to pierce her personal bubble in a way his physical presence never would. “I know that the maximum action you’ve got in the past months has been the rattle of the headboards of your best friend’s bed, filtering in through the thin walls.” A pause, a beat, a silent exhale. The intensity ratcheted up too fast, too hard, for anything to be louder. “And I don’t understand it one single bit, because the men of the nation’s tastes have clearly deteriorated, and I certainly never,” Whisper soft, but warm enough to catch fire, “would have been so short-sighted, or fail to recompense...”

Fred smiled. “Claire.”

For one brief, fleeting, never-to-last moment, Claire had actually enjoyed herself in the conversation with Fred Weasley. She so rarely got the opportunity to feel successful in their interactions, and the few times she had taken the upper hand had given her a sense of empowerment that people needed. She had one-upped him, had been given the reason to smirk and lean back, and had waived the opportunity. Not only was she as awesome as him, by his standards, but she had been the bigger person in the whole deal. How could he take that away from her?

She had stopped playing the chess game. She had been too busy celebrating a check she had mistaken for a checkmate, and that had been her demise.

And that is what it felt like. Demise. Because it didn't take her long to figure out what he we was getting at. Sure, in the beginning, she thought maybe he was just reaching for straws, trying to tease her to see if she took the bait. Because, there was no way that Fred would have been able to resist taunting her about being better than her at something... Unless it meant delivering a more fatal blow later...

No. Was he doing that?

As a little kid, Claire's only real problem was that she seemed to be an alien in her own family. Her parents had split and she rarely saw either of them, let alone her sister, and when she did spend time with Avery, the older girl was busy trying to tell Claire that their parents' divorce was the worst thing that had ever happened. But her parents had smiled and told her they loved her and everything was okay, so little Claire wandered out into the world thinking everything was fine as it was and that the world was good to her.

She was ten when she actually heard her parents finally fight. Her father wanted Avery for longer, as he barely got a chance to see the older girl. Her mother refused, they bickered, and her father went off on 'that b!tch'. Claire, having always been quietly confrontation, approached her father then and there, demanding an explanation to what her parent's relationship now was.

"Look, your mother is f*cking crazy. Damn it, I hate that woman."

Everything Avery had tried to explain to her about their divorce had come back, and she suddenly felt like the silliest girl to have ever lived. Of course divorce was more than just something that had to happen so mummy and daddy could focus on their little girls more. But what daughter wouldn't have wanted that fantasy to the truth that love could turn to indifference which could turn to hate?

What woman wouldn't have preferred beating her rival to miserably losing because she had never been close to keeping up?

Claire Bishop was still a ten year old girl pretending that a family could stay happy after it was torn apart.

But her father had not blown that up out of malice, wanting to see his little girl in pain. It had only took him a few moments to realize he had gone too far, and repentance and guilt had followed quickly. The damage done, it had not been lost on him that his little girl was less of a child from that point on, and he had always felt bad for it. Because, when it came down to it, normal people did not want to hurt the people they cared about.

That was the thing though. It wasn't like Fred cared. So why had she let little Claire act like fantasies were possible again?

He was enjoying it too. That was why he was spelling it out the way he was, building up to big phrase that would make her feel so insignificant and small that she would have no choice but to accept that this was not a bluff, not a taunt. A bluff wouldn't sting so badly. A taunt was something that wouldn't fill her heart full of anger, distress, and boiling embarrassment.

It was the one thing he hadn't managed to make her feel yet, and here it was. Utter embarrassment. So far, she had rolled with the punches, afraid of giving into that sentiment. But here she was. Cheeks beginning to sting, mouth dry, stomach sinking lower and lower.

He let her win.

She was such an idiot.

She breathed slowly, taking in a long deep breath before letting it back out, her breathing somehow shallow despite its depth. She blinked. Her nostrils were flared, her cheeks had betrayed her and turned pink, and she rolled her lips inwardly to keep words from escaping. But her eyes just blinked. There was nothing there, because there was nothing to feel. Fred Weasley was an asshole, so why had she expected anything else?

He was close to her, speaking in a warm tone that probably would have done something to her if he hadn't just ripped her apart. She blinked again, shifted her back, and leaned forward, her eyes locked with his. And she said something no one had ever heard Claire Bishop say.

"F*ck. You."

She pushed herself off of the couch and tossed her plate of food down onto the coffee table, striding across the room to her door. She was not going to hear him out. If he had no desire to consider her feelings or thoughts, she had no reason to hear him out, and she was not going to stop until the bastard was out of her apartment.

She reached the door and yanked it open, turning to look back at Fred. "Get the F*CK out of my apartment!"

There was a ringing silence after Claire Bishop's first outburst in seven years. And then, someone cleared their throat.

Claire spun around to see the smiling face of Elsie Norton, blinking exaggeratedly at her less than warm welcome home.

"Honey," she said sweetly, "you didn't tell me we would be having guests for dinner."

Fred Weasley wasn’t a man that lived by limits.

Men, usually, could be defined, their characters laid plain and bare, by their limits, by the things that they would not do. If a man wouldn’t drink, wouldn’t smoke, wouldn’t dream of looking at another girl while his own stood right in front of him, it was no great exercise of logic to deduce his character. Intentions counted for so very little; it was actions that defined a man, or in some cases- the lack of them.

Fred, to a large part, was a man that could be defined by his lack of limits. Maybe not such dark words like avarice or greed, but there was definitely something grabbing about him, something that stretched out its hands to take and take. Maybe you could even look at it in a nicer way, interpret it as Fred’s ability to give to those that he cared for, unfailingly generous when he put his mind to it, that he assumed that everybody else could do the same. That they could give and not find themselves hollowed out by the process. More than Fred’s own lack of limits, it was his failure to recognise other’s limitations that that made up a rather large part of his naturally curious, probing self.

Which was why, as Claire Bishop remained silent for a long time following his declamations, he couldn’t recognise the feeling creeping over him. The gnawing feeling of having crossed a limit he'd never noticed. The triumph that had overcast and shadowed everything else in his mind was tottering, slowly but steadily in its place, tainted by a crawling unease that couldn’t exactly pick out what was wrong. He was good at reading people, he was, but for the longest time he couldn’t figure out the meaning behind the ugly red blotching Claire’s cheeks, the downturned eyes, the twisted, thinned mouth. When it finally struck him where he’d seen these signs, these expressions before……it was like the celestial system had switched on him, a little- the sun revolving round the moon, the orbits all out of wack- because he had seen these expressions before, during face-offs on the Pitch and in the corridors in Hogwarts, during training and every time else: that tightened jaw, eyes that wouldn’t look up, flaming necks, something absolutely miserable about the eyes. Fred Weasley knew, because this was the part he’d gloried in so many times before in the past- the fight was always fun, but the best bit was the verbal smackdown, the part where he was sailing on smugness and his opponents were humiliated, cowed, angry, helpless……beaten.

It was a horrid look on Claire Bishop. And Fred Weasley hated her for it.

He could feel the spikes in his veins, the blunt curves of his nails digging into his palms as the knuckles flexed, opening and closing his fists repeatedly. The chopsticks were set down, the takeout suddenly a bad smell in the air. His teeth were pressing against each other, and Claire was yelling at him to leave, banter long wiped from the air, composure abandoned for shaking hands and spittle and hatred that had nothing to temper it, hatred that had no amusement, no underlying respect. And then he could hold it back no longer, annoyance and irritation flooded his system like an undeniable wave because there was something sticky and clogging and undecipherable like guilt adulterating it, which made no sense because he didn’t mean…why was she even….they always teased, always insulted, always tried to shove each other down…wasn’t this something they did…and god she was a wuss, she was such a goddamn forsaken wuss, of course her fragile ego couldn’t take it.

A slither of movement and he was on his feet, not a single inch of that sinuous grace compromised, though there was much more striding than the lean, casual saunter he usually preferred. He paused at the doorway, her presence a thick, viscous form next to the door screaming at him, even in her silence, to go away. Looking at her face was a courtesy he refused to give her (or himself), and when his lips parted, there was a desperate fight between his words competing to get out, which again was insensible because he knew exactly what he had to say, dammit.

He snapped his mouth closed, opened it again, and the right words came out, thank f*ck. Quiet, sharp……but the right ones. “S’pose it was my mistake to expect a little more grace out of you…….but it seems like Claire Bishop loses the same way everyone else does.” His eyes darted up, to the side, to fix on hers to impart that last, biting touch. Nothing in the world could have made him admit that it was hard. “Badly.”

Then he swept out, and the charm was perhaps a little sloppily laden, the vowels a little too hard, but damn if anyone could get him to admit that too. Nevertheless, with a little incline of the head. “Miss Norton. Since it seems that I’ve been denied dessert, could I offer you a coffee outside to introduce myself and make up for the awful shouting in the precincts of your lovely home?”

She hated him. She hated him. She hated him.

How had he done that? How had he taken a quiet evening, one of the only things that felt comfortable in her exhausting life, and he had turned it to shit. Like some sort of malicious Midas, Fred Weasley loved to swagger into her nice, tidy life and touch anything he could get his hands on, regardless of whether or not he knew its form or function, and then saunter out, leaving her to clean up the mess. It was the unapologetic way he did everything, the complete confidence that he could do whatever he pleased and the consequences didn't really matter because his only job was to be interesting.

Interesting was not better than cruel. It couldn't be. Not when it felt like this.

And f*ck him for making her feel like this. She had worked so hard at making herself impenetrable to something as weak as a verbal attack. Words were nothing, they were all fleeting metaphors and suppositions that really meant nothing. A word was not concrete. It only accrued meaning when both parties agreed upon the meaning - that was the basis of language. So why was she allowing Fred Weasley's words to have meaning? Why had she ever allowed that?

She wanted to understand and prepare and fight back... but she could feel her mind stepping into the defensive zone. He needed to get out of her apartment so she could power down and forget she had ever lost control. Restart. She had to restart. She would wake up in the morning, go through her routine, and face the day as though she had retained control and power over herself and her emotions. Everything could be fine if she just believed it was so.

But as long as he was in her apartment, she couldn't hold on to that flimsy lie.

He spoke again and she set her teeth to demand, once again, that he step out, but he was already doing so. Elsie, making a decision on the fly, stepped after him to bid him good bye. The brunette had only seen Claire emotional a handful of times. After graduation, the two times she had uprooted. But those had been times of sadness, of loss, of relief, of regret. This was different. Elsie had been attracting unwanted attention for the both of them for as long as she could remember, but this was the first time Claire had ever been truly embarrassed.

Who was this man and how had he done it?

As soon as the door clicked shut, and the words were out of his mouth, though, it did not matter how interesting, good-looking, or strange this man was. Elsie Norton had messed up time and time again, and she and Claire were far from perfect friends (though they were the damn closest she knew). But Elsie never, ever let anyone forget just how important Claire Bishop's feeling were to her.

"No coffee, thank you," she said, her honey-sweet voice not yet revealing the danger beneath. "But let me tell you something. I don't know what happened, or what's going on between you and my Claire." Mine. "But since you're talking about losing, I want you to know that, after whatever that was..." Her eyes flashed dangerously, and it would have been amazing to see her, anyone who knew her as reckless, goofy Elsie. Because who knew such a silly girl could look so serious.

Her hand found the doorknob and she quirked her lips, shaking her head. "It wasn't Claire that lost." And she slipped back inside her apartment, locking the door firmly behind her.