daffodils

5 months, 25 days before

Every evening when Dev gets back from his night shift, he loosens his tie, drops his bag, leaves his shoes neatly by the door, and makes his way to the kitchen. Rebecca gets home a few hours earlier, so there's always a fresh pot of coffee waiting on the countertop. He prefers tea, of course, but by this point it's become too awkward to say anything.

Then he makes his way to the living room, around the same time as Rebecca gets out of the shower with her hair in a towel. Dev kisses her hello, careful not to spill his coffee, then he settles down beside her on the sofa. This leaves them an hour of before they go to bed. Rebecca spends it reading whichever manuscript her boss has her slaving over this month, and Dev chooses to spend it with his headphones jammed into his ears, passing the hour with Bowie or Jagger or Dylan.

But this time it's different. Because this time, Jagger's beaten him home.

Dev is an hour early since the trainee offered to take his shift. He snatches the moment to spring a romantic gesture on Rebecca, and he races to the supermarket and picks up some daffodils. They're not the most romantic flowers, but she likes yellow, and he feels good clutching them in his hand as he jogs up the steps to their flat.

The first thing he notices when he cracks open the flat's door is Let's Spend the Night Together, blaring on a tinny phone speaker. He freezes. Rebecca can't stand any records released before the late nineties, and he isn't expecting guests tonight.

Dev frowns, pressing his ear to the door tentatively. His hand curls around his bag's handle. He realises that a bag filled with a phone charger and a few papers isn't likely to make a good weapon, but it beats embarrassingly improvised martial arts so he doesn't let go of it.

He glances about awkwardly, looking for somewhere to leave the flowers. He didn't want to make his heroic battle with the intruder look like a confusing romantic gesture, but there's nowhere to leave them. He settles for keeping them reluctantly. If the intruder asks, he'll just roll off a one-liner like, "I wasn't expecting company!"

Dev does not know what to do in the event of a burglary (and possible kidnap?). He doesn't know how to fight, so that rules out combat. His tall, lanky frame makes him look less intimidating and more goofy, so a good old-fashioned confrontation is out of the question. He decides that surprise is the best (and only) weapon in his arsenal.

He bursts through the door and screams, "FREEZE, INTRUDER!"

A girl screams, and a bowl of summer berry granola shatters over the hardwood floor.

"Shit," states Clara.

Dev drops the daffodils.

Clara, standing in the middle of Dev's living room, looks different. Her hair is longer, she's lost her tan, and she's wearing Dev's shirt like a jacket over some shorts and a very green bra.

And he doesn't know where to begin. It's been four years. It's been four years of silence and absence and nonexistence and now she's in his flat, in his shirt, eating his granola. It's almost to weird to comprehend.

"Is this...is this like some kind of weird dream?" he asks, batting the door shut distractedly. He doesn't take his eyes off her. "Because I mean, it's weird that I'd dream about ten solid hours working at a pharmacy, but I'm also not willing to accept that this is real life."

Her mouth is hanging open slightly. "Dev?" she manages. "You...I mean..." She stops. "You know Rachel?"

"I...what?" It seems like a weird thing to focus on in this situation. "You mean Rebecca? Yeah. I know her." Then he says, "Clara, it's been four years."

Clara stares at him, then she pulls the shirt (his shirt) tight around herself. "Dev," she says slowly. "I know it's been a while – I'm so sorry."

"You're sorry?" he repeats. "It's been four years, Clara. A lot has changed, you know. John Chang is engaged."

"I...don't know who that is," she admits. "But Dev, I had a reason, it just wasn't a very good one."

He nods. "Okay. Great. Thanks for that heartfelt explanation, Clara."

"Dev," she repeats, this time frantically. She wants to move closer, but she's trapped in a puddle of milk and shattered ceramics. "It was all so sudden and weird and I made a mistake and I shouldn't have written that– " She stops. Then she glances down and fastens her shirt with a hasty little, "Shit."

Dev bares his palms and shakes his head. "Clara. Clara, please. Don't do this now when you're randomly in my flat, unannounced, standing in the corpse of my cereal bowl."

"In all fairness," she says slowly, "I didn't know you were Rebecca's roommate."

Dev can hear the shower running. He frowns. "I'm...not her roommate. I mean, I do live with her, but it's not really a roommate situation." Then he listens to the shower, and he looks at the time, then he looks at Clara standing there with her messy hair and his shirt and he says, "Rebecca's cheating on me, isn't she?"

Clara is silent. Her face melts into a look of pity, which Dev can't stand.

It's too hard at this point. Just a few minutes ago he was mildly irritated about missing the bus, and now his girlfriend's cheating on him. His heterosexual girlfriend. Of almost three years now, actually.

"Clara, could you please tell me what's going on?" he asks, glancing at the bathroom door. The last thing he wants is to see Rebecca.

"I don't know," she says, stumbling over her words. "I only met her tonight, it was just a...it wasn't even anything. I was just in Leeds to see my cousin James, but he flaked out on me and Rachel – Rebecca – was there and it just..." She shrugged. "But that's all I know. I thought she was single."

Dev nods. He takes a deep breath and purses his lips. He's an hour early. That's enough time to have someone round, take a quick shower, make some coffee, and then sit down on the sofa with a book until your boyfriend gets home.

But he's met her family. Multiple times actually. He has all sorts of long-standing in-jokes with her parents, and he watches the cricket with her sister, and her dad calls him 'son'. And she's cheating on him.

Dev looks at Clara and he shakes his head, so wildly disbelieving about everything that's happening right now. "Why are you eating my granola?"

"I just slept with your girlfriend and you're mad about granola?"

"Well, yeah!" he insists. "It's...impolite. You can't just sleep with someone's girlfriend and then eat their granola without at least having a conversation about it with all concerned parties!"

Clara shakes her head. "How was I supposed to know she was your girlfriend?" Her voice is getting louder. "This was just a fling – a Tuesday fling, even – and I wouldn't have slept with her if I knew she was seeing someone! I didn't know she had a boyfriend!"

"You didn't know she had a boyfriend?" Dev shouts, matching her volume. "You just thought that her office shirts were a men's medium?

"I didn't check the sizing guide!"

"That is clearly men's business casual! It has a space for cufflinks!" he yells.

"Well if you spent less time classifying shirts by event-appropriateness and more time at home, maybe your girlfriend will stop sleeping around!"

"I didn't classify it, that's just what it is! If I call granola 'granola' that doesn't mean I'm classifying my breakfast foods!"

"Why are you making this about cereals?" Clara yells, her voice rocketing in pitch with her confusion.

"Granolas aren't even proper cereals! A cereal refers to a true grass cultivated for the edible components of its grain! You mean breakfast cereals, referring to roasted grains!"

"Why are you going so pedantic?" she shouts.

"Why are you sleeping with my girlfriend?"

There is silence.

The two of them are slightly out of breath from shouting, and they don't notice when the sound of the shower stops.

The bathroom door clicks open. Dev and Clara's heads snap round to see Rebecca step out from the bathroom, comfortably clothed but with a towel wrapped around her hair. Her eyes widen.

"Oh my god, Dev," she begins. Her mouth opens as if to reel off some hackneyed excuse, but she stops herself. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't, Rebecca," he says, and then he pauses. It's a long pause, but it's got nothing on three years, so he feels it's justified. "I thought – " He stops. "In a million years I would never have guessed."

She shakes her head slowly, too overwhelmed to formulate any sort of response.

"I liked you," he says, forcing the past tense. He likes her. Loves, even.

"I love you," Rebecca claims. "I just don't love...men."

"I'm a man," Dev points out. He was under the impression that they were quite clear on this.

She grimaces. "I know you're a man, Dev. And that's why I can't love you the way you love me."

"What, monogamously?" he says dryly.

"Dev," she entreats. "My family's so...old-fashioned."

"So you dated me as a beard?" He nods. "Okay. Well that makes it all fine. I thought you were just cheating on me because you fell out of love with me, but since you never liked me in the first place, that makes it all better. Thanks, Rebecca. You're such a perfect fake-girlfriend."

"I like you!" insists Rebecca the imposter. "But I mean...I like building forts with you, and having fencing matches with kebab sticks, and watching The L Word together! It's just that these last few months I've noticed I've liked the...other stuff a bit less. A lot less."

It's hard not to be offended at that.

"How much less?" demands Dev, because honestly it's difficult not to.

She makes a so-so gesture with her hand and hums noncommittally. "It's okay."

"Okay?" he deadpans.

"I mean it's quite hard to pretend you're a girl," she admits. "Very, actually. Almost impossible."

Dev shakes his head, incredulous. "Which girl?"

"I don't know!" Rebecca declares. She hazards a wild guess, pulling a name from the air. "Freida Pinto?"

Dev pauses. "Why does she have to be Indian?"

"Well I didn't really...think about it?" she admits.

"So now you're a racist?"

He knows how ridiculous he's being, but given the circumstances he thinks it's at least a little bit justified. Also, Freida Pinto?

"Great," Dev continues, nodding to himself with pursed lips. "So I've been dating a cheating racist. And you've justified it by the fact that you enjoy kebab stick duels and marathons of The L Word. Fantastic."

Clara stares at Dev. "You two watch The L Word together?" She looks completely incredulous. "And you legitimately didn't suspect that she might be a lesbian?"

"I thought we watched it for the plot!" argues Dev, who has actually become quite invested in the characters.

"No-one watches it for the plot! Not even lesbians watch it for the plot!"

Rebecca waves her silent. "Dev, why are there daffodils and granola everywhere?"

"It's modern art," Dev says, his voice weary with sarcasm. "It's a piece entitled Love is a Lie and Everything is Terrible."

"Dev, please be serious," Rebecca demands.

"I'm as serious as our entire sham relationship," he tells her.

"I liked you at first! I just didn't realise that it was in a deep but ultimately platonic way. Then you'd met my family and you were there, and..." She trails off. "It just became convenient."

Dev is about to reply, but before he can, Clara turns to Rebecca and demands, "Did you just imply that you manipulated Dev into thinking you loved him back because it was 'convenient'?"

"My family are bigots!" she counters. "They're homophobes! And they like Dev. It's better than them thinking I was some lesbian mistress of the night, destined to fester in hell as Satan's piñata!"

"That's oddly specific," Dev admits.

"Well I had about a year's worth of stress-nightmares to perfect it."

Dev is about to reply, but he stops himself. As much as he hates this, he can see why she did it. He doesn't forgive her yet, but as much as he tries, he can't force himself to hate her exactly, though he wishes he could.

"Look," Rebecca says quietly. "I'm sorry if this wasn't the way you saw things going between us –"

"Closeted homosexuality and deceit?" Dev pulls a face. "Literally how would that be an outcome I would feasibly have predicted?"

"Dev, you're my best friend," Rebecca says. "Please don't go."

Clara looks from Rebecca to Dev and back again. "Wait, you want him to stay with you? After you just admitted he was your beard?"

Rebecca shakes her head, her lips pressed together tightly. "Dev –"

"No," Clara says loudly. "You can't just do that. You can't just mess someone about for years and not feel terrible about it."

"I do feel terrible –"

"If you did, you wouldn't ask anything more of him."

Dev doesn't even understand what's happening any more. An hour ago he had been in what he thought was a perfect, monogamous relationship with a woman he was truly and unequivocally in love with. Now Clara is back and everything is different and he doesn't understand anything any more.

"Rebecca," he says. "Don't follow me."

With that, he turns out and walks out of the flat. He's fairly sure he's stepped on a few daffodils, but it feels strangely therapeutic – metaphorical, even – so he doesn't mind.

It's at this point that he realises he doesn't have anywhere to go. If he were a smoker, he would sit on the fire escape and light up a quick fag aesthetically, but Dev isn't keen on spoiling his lungs. He needs those to breathe.

He supposes he could go and sit on the fire escape anyway, but he wouldn't really have anything to do there. They are on the fifth floor so standing on a fire escape without busying yourself gives off the wrong impression. He is feeling dramatic, but not that dramatic.

It's by this time that Clara has appeared next to him. Dev doesn't even know what to say. She looks so apologetic – so dwindling – that he can't bring himself to keep shouting at her. Instead, he sits down on the staircase and looks up at her.

"I'm sorry," she says. It's not even worth articulating; it's all over her face.

Dev shakes his head. "Don't be sorry about Rebecca. Be a little bit sorry about butting into our argument though, that wasn't cool."

Clara winces. A wave of regret washes over her, bringing with it some fatigue, and she leans heavily against the banister. "Yeah, that wasn't cool. I guess," she says, gesticulating with her hands exactly as vigorously as she used to do back when they were eighteen, "I thought I owed you that?" She looks down at him. "I owe you something."

"Four years," says Dev. He's too tired to sugar-coat it.

"I had a reason. You never mentioned the..." she trails off, and swallows her words. Pursing her lips, she squints from the sheer awkwardness of the situation.

"Are you in Leeds, now?" Dev asks. He's feeling far too drained for small talk, but he wants to know this at least.

Clara gives a small nod. "Yeah," she says in a pitch that's far too high. Then she brings it down and repeats, "Yeah. I think so. I was here to see my cousin, but I saw a few job ads that I'm interested in."

"It's still weird."

"It is weird," she affirms. "Out of all the girls with boyfriends I could've hooked up with in all of Leeds..."

"Is this a Casablanca reference?" asks Dev, smiling despite himself.

A little chuckle escapes Clara. "Out of all the closeted lesbians, in all the towns, in all the world," she rattles in her best Humphrey Bogart impression (which is terrible).

"Stop," groans Dev, who was trying his best to remain dramatic and stony-faced. "I'm still mad."

Clara nods, sobering up. "So you should be," she says quietly.

But he agrees. It is a strange coincidence.

Sometimes it feels as though things are too weird for chance. It was chance when they first met, and then when they saw one another in the café in Edgecastle, and again now. That's three. Dev doesn't have a lot of knowledge about probability or statistics, but he knows what everyone seems to know about the number three. It's an awareness learned not from academia but from fairy tales, that stems to an often-believed notion we take as truth: three is often magic.

Then Clara adds, "You still owe me a CD."