"Liam." Clara’s whisper was sharp and urgent, her forehead still against the mirror, her hands pressing flat against the wall. "We have to go. Stop. We have to go right now."

He came inside her.

His hands gripped her hips and held her against him as everything released, his jaw tight, a low controlled sound leaving him through his nose.

She felt it and her whole body shuddered once and she pressed her lips together and stayed completely silent through it for the first time in the last fifteen minutes.

He held her there for a moment.

Then he pulled back slowly.

She straightened up from the mirror and turned around and looked at him with a very specific expression that existed somewhere between thoroughly satisfied and genuinely panicked and she was trying to figure out which one to lead with.

Outside the curtain: "They’re over there."

The shop assistant’s voice, pointed and certain.

Clara’s eyes went wide.

They both moved fast.

He fixed himself while she straightened the swimsuit, her hands working quickly, smoothing the fabric back into place, her blonde hair getting pushed back from her face. He pulled the curtain open slightly and looked out.

A security guard. Male, broad, dark uniform, standing at the entrance to the fitting room corridor with the shop assistant beside him pointing in their direction with the energy of someone who had been waiting for this moment.

Liam checked that no one was looking. She grabbed his hand before he could move.

"Don’t worry," he whispered, squeezing her fingers. "It’s going to be fine."

Then he left.

The guard crossed to the curtain and stopped in front of it.

"Ma’am." His voice was flat and firm. "Please come out with your boyfriend right now. Before this gets any more embarrassing than it needs to be."

Clara looked at Liam.

Liam looked at Clara.

She cleared her throat. "One minute. I’m just changing back. And I’m the only one in here."

"That’s not what I was told," the guard said. "Both of you. Out. Now. Before I handle this myself."

"There’s absolutely no need for that," Clara said. Her voice had found a composure that Liam privately found impressive given the circumstances. "I’ll be right out."

She grabbed the clothes she had come in with from the small bench, dressed quickly, smoothed her hair one more time and took one breath.

Then she stepped out through the curtain.

The guard looked at her. Then immediately looked past her into the fitting room, his head going through the gap in the curtain. He scanned the small space. Mirror. Bench. Empty.

He pulled his head back out.

"Where’s your boyfriend?" he said.

"Hey."

The voice came from behind the guard.

Both the guard and the shop assistant turned around.

Liam was standing behind them, hands in his pockets, looking between Clara and the swimsuit she was holding with the expression of a man who had been waiting somewhere else entirely and had just arrived to find a situation he didn’t fully understand.

"Oh good, you finally picked that one," he said to Clara, the relief in his voice completely convincing. "I’ve been waiting out there for ages. Have you paid yet?"

He stepped forward, closing the distance between them, moving naturally to stand beside Clara like he was slotting back into a space that had always been his.

The shop assistant stared at him.

The guard stared at him.

Then the guard looked at the fitting room. Then at Liam. Then at the fitting room again.

"What’s going on?" Liam said, looking between them with genuine confusion on his face.

Clara kept her eyes forward. "This gentleman was apparently trying to enter the ladies fitting room."

Liam turned and looked at the guard slowly.

"Were you trying to sneak a peek at my girlfriend?"

The word landed.

Clara’s cheeks went immediately and thoroughly red and she looked at the middle distance.

"No—" The guard took a step back. "No no no. I received a complaint that there was— that someone was in there— that there was activity—"

"Were you able to see anything?" Liam said.

The guard opened his mouth. Closed it. "No. I wasn’t able to—"

"So there was nothing," Liam said his voice firm and final.

The guard looked at the fitting room one more time like it might offer him something useful. It didn’t.

He looked back at Liam and Clara standing side by side looking at him and made the calculation that whatever he thought had been happening, he had no evidence of it and was now standing in the ladies fitting room corridor having accused two customers of something he couldn’t prove.

"I apologize for the misunderstanding," he said. "Please enjoy your time."

He turned and walked away with the particular dignity of someone retreating from a position they should never have taken.

The shop assistant stood there for another second.

Then she looked at Clara.

"I’m so sorry," she said. "I genuinely thought—"

"It’s fine," Clara said warmly. "Really. No harm done." She held up the swimsuit on. "I’ll take this one."

The assistant looked at it. "Shall I wrap it for you?"

"No no." Clara reached into her bag and dropped the swimsuit in directly. "I’ll just put it in here. Thank you."

They paid at the register. Clara paid for everything without discussing it, her card out before Liam could reach for anything, the transaction done in thirty seconds. She collected the bags and they walked out of the store and back into the main flow of the mall.

They walked in silence for exactly four seconds.

Then Clara started laughing.

Not the quiet kind. The actual kind, her hand coming up to her mouth, her eyes creasing, her whole frame shaking with it as they walked.

Liam looked at her.

"My girlfriend," she said between the laughing, looking at him.

"It worked didn’t it."

"It absolutely worked." She shook her head, still laughing, her blonde hair swinging. "You are something else."

"I know," he said.

She bumped her shoulder against his arm and kept walking.

They moved through the store until they reached an ice cream place that was two floors down, a small counter near the center of the ground level with about eight flavors on display and a queue that moved quickly.

Clara got vanilla.

Liam got something darker, closer to chocolate but not quite.

They walked while they ate, moving through the afternoon mall crowd side by side, no particular destination. .

She was describing something about the green initiative meeting while eating her cone and gesturing at the same time, somehow not spilling any of it, and he was watching her talk more than he was listening to the words.

She reached over without breaking her sentence and went for his cone.

He pulled it back.

She reached again.

He let her get it this time, watching her take a bite from his with the complete confidence of someone who had decided it was hers anyway, and then she handed it back and kept talking like nothing had happened.

He looked at his cone.

Then at her.

Then he reached over and pressed the flat of his cone against the side of her face.

She stopped walking.

She turned and looked at him with ice cream on her cheek, her eyes wide, her sentence completely abandoned.

He looked back at her with an expression of total innocence.

She took her cone and pressed it against his nose.

He reeled back. She burst out laughing again, the real kind, loud enough that two people nearby looked over, and he stood there with ice cream on his face trying not to smile and failing entirely.

They found napkins at a nearby table and cleaned up, sitting across from each other, still laughing intermittently, the bags from the store beside them on the bench.

As they kept on walking and laughing at random things, a man in an apron holding standard drawing tools stopped them in their tracks with a big smile.

"Hello!" he said.

Clara smiled back and said hello.

The man introduced himself, quickly offering a warm compliment, and asked if she wouldn’t mind letting him draw a quick picture of her.

Clara looked at Liam, smiled, and turned back to the man. "Yes, I’d love that."

---

The painter was set up near the escalators on the upper level, an easel and a small folding stool, a sign propped against the wall that said portraits in handwritten letters.

He saw Clara before they had fully passed and called out.

"Excuse me. Miss with the blonde hair."

Clara stopped.

The painter was maybe fifty, a round face and paint-stained hands, his eyes already assessing her with the focused attention of someone looking at good material. "Would you sit for a portrait? I don’t usually ask but you have a very good face."

Clara looked at Liam.

Liam shrugged. "I’ll wait."

She sat.

The painter worked quickly, his hand moving across the paper with a confidence that made it clear he had done this ten thousand times. Liam stood to the side and watched, his hands in his pockets, occasionally looking at other people passing and then back at Clara sitting on the small stool with her back straight and her blonde hair catching the light.

Twenty minutes later the painter turned the easel around.

It was good.

Better than good.

He had captured something specific about her face, the quality of her eyes, the way her hair fell, the slight smile she had maintained through the whole thing.

Clara looked at it. Then at the painter. "That’s really good," she said, meaning it.

The painter rolled it carefully and handed it to her. "For you."

She paid him and took it and turned to Liam and held it out.

He looked at it. "This is yours."

"I have a mirror," she said. "And a phone. I don’t need a painting of myself."

"You can’t just not take it," he said.

"I just did," she said.

He looked at the rolled paper in his hands. Then at her. Then he had an idea.

"Come on," he said.

He found the photo booth near the cinema entrance on the same level, a small curtained box with a screen showing the pricing and the options. He fed the coins in and pulled the curtain closed behind them, both of them suddenly in a very small space, the screen in front of them counting down.

Three.

Clara looked at the screen.

Two.

She looked at Liam.

One.

Flash.

They got four shots. The first one they were both looking at the screen with slightly startled expressions. The second one Clara was laughing at something Liam had said in the gap between flashes. The third one she had turned toward him and was looking at his face instead of the camera. The fourth one he had turned toward her at the same moment.

The strip came out of the slot at the bottom.

They both looked at it.

"That one," Clara said, pointing at the third photo.

"That one," Liam said, pointing at the fourth.

They looked at each other.

She took the strip.

---

They came out of the mall into the late afternoon, the sky lower and warmer than when they had gone in, the light doing the specific thing it did in the hours before evening.

Clara’s car was in the parking structure two levels up and they found it without much trouble, loaded the bags into the back seat, and got in.

The drive back to his place took twenty minutes.

They talked for most of it, easy and unhurried, the conversation moving through several topics without any of them being planned or forced.

She drove with one hand on the wheel and one elbow on the window ledge, comfortable, her blonde hair loose around her shoulders.

She pulled up in front of his building, but before she could put the car in park, Liam’s eyes caught something familiar.

Sitting directly in front of the entrance was the Phantom.

It was black and immaculate, the engine off, sitting there the way it always sat, like it had always been there and had no plans to leave. Elena’s car.

Liam stared at it through the windshield.

"Oh no," he said.

Clara slowed the car to a stop, her hand pausing on the gear shift as she followed his gaze to the luxury vehicle blocking the front. She turned to look at him, sensing the sudden shift in his energy.