Claire blinked.
“I have been trying to reach you for two weeks,” Bea reprimanded, swinging her legs off the lounge. “Two. Weeks.Are you alive? Have you joined a cult? Do you need rescuing?”
Claire rubbed her eyes. “Sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“It’s been weird.”
She folded her arms. The attempt at anger lasted about three seconds. “The breakup?”
Claire’s mouth twisted sideways. “Yeah.”
Bea stood and began pacing. “You dropped two emotional nuclear bombs on me and then disappeared after the wedding.”
Claire winced. “I know.”
Bea pulled at the ends of her hair. “Start talking.”
“What should I start with?”
“Marco.”
Claire’s lips folded inward. Then she buried her face in her hands. “I didn’t sleep with him.”
Bea stared at the screen like someone had just slapped her with a wet fish. “You didn’t…sleep with Marco? In over a year?”
Claire nodded without uncovering her face.
“Oh.” Her brain scrambled to rearrange everything she’d assumed about Claire and Marco. “That’s…I mean…it’stotallyfine, if you didn’t want to.”
“You can say it.” She lowered her hand finally. “It wasn’t normal.”
“In some circles it’s normal,” Bea maintained, dropping back onto the lounge. “Like for our Christian Korean friends.”
“Mmm. Because I’m so religious.” Claire’s tone was sardonic.
“Okay fine probably not because of that,” Bea acknowledged. “You didn’t love him?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
Bea hesitated. “Or was it…Claire Bear, was it about your parents?”
She took a long, shaky breath. Her voice was small. “I think so.”
Claire’s parents had had her late, after three sons and two careers that already filled their lives. She’d once shared that she’d been conceived even though her umma was on the Pill. Shewas loved. Technically. Just never quite the center of anyone’s plans.
And that had left her with a fear she’d never shaken: how easily a moment of intimacy could become a life no one meant to create.
“I…get anxious,” Claire whispered. “I’d want to, and we’d get close, and then the panic would hit. I’d freeze up and push him away.”
“Claire Bear.”
“It happened so many times he finally got angry and called me…a cock tease,” Claire admitted. “So I started taking anxiety medication to see if it helped.”
“Did it?”
She shook her head. “My body doesn’t tolerate them well. It reduces the anxiety, but the side effects are worse. One time I just…collapsed.”