I yelled at the two of them, and Clementine burst into tears, all wronged innocence.
Watching her cry looked like it broke Alex's heart clean in two.
He shoved me hard, sent me stumbling into the standing water, and then turned it all around on me.
"Enough! There's no need to be this aggressive, Fiona. There are people everywhere, and Clem just got chewed out by the inspection team. And now you're coming after her too?"
"She didn't do anything wrong. If you want to blame someone, blame me. I'm the one who put your necklace on her. Why are you making her life hard?"
I laughed, cold and half out of my mind, and flung water at them.
"Then get the necklace back. The necklace is all I care about!"
After the blowup with Alex, I went home and cleaned up the wreckage alone. Every pane of glass had been ripped out; my place had taken a beating too.
Mom didn't leave me much when she died, but this home held more of our memories than anywhere else, and now even those had been scattered by the wind.
I cried while I scrubbed the place clean, forcing myself to pull it together.
Three days later, Alex finally brought the necklace back to me.
But when the thing was returned to its owner, I couldn't recognize it anymore.
"This isn't my necklace."
"How is it not? This is your necklace. I went and got it back from the inspection team on purpose. It's just that... they dropped it and it cracked."
Cracked.
The protective-charm pendant had lost its jade luster too.
It used to hang at my mother's throat, worn to a deep shine by her skin, and now it looked like nothing but an ordinary stone.
"Alex, do you have a heart at all? You knew this was what my mother left me, so why did you give it to Clementine? Now it's broken. It can't be put back the way it was."
Alex looked guilty then, dropping his head to watch me cry.
He knew he was in the wrong on this, and he'd meant to apologize. That was when Clementine's call came through.
"Alex, emergency, I need you! My stomach hurts, my period just started, and I can't find pads anywhere. Can you bring me a few packs?"
Alex went into a panic, shoved the necklace into my hands, his mind already flying to Clementine.
"Okay, Fiona, stop crying. Once the flood goes down, I'll take you to buy a new one exactly like it."
He tore off, busy delivering pads to another woman.
That night a video from Clementine popped up on my feed. She'd added a few photos, and a handwritten sticky note.
I knew that handwriting at a glance. It was Alex's, because back when he was chasing me, he wrote me plenty of love letters.
This time he'd written it for someone else.
"Take good care of yourself, my little crybaby who only pretends to be strong!"
Half teasing, half flirting. It had Clementine floating on air.
The photos showed all the different brands of pads he'd bought her, plus overnight underwear, brown-sugar water, and even heat patches on hand.
I have no idea where he dug it all up, a big bag of it, all handed over to Clementine.
Moved by it all, Clementine had even set it to a love song to pour out her feelings.
"Turns out the days when you don't have to fake being strong are this wonderful. So happy!"
I stared at the screen without a word, took a screenshot, and tapped like, helping the two of them collect their proof of love.
Later the flood receded and the typhoon was gone.
Bit by bit the whole city climbed back from ruin to normal.
I cleared the clutter out of my home, and swept the relationship out along with it, and had a sturdy, storm-proof security screen installed over the windows.
Alex and I fell into an unspoken standoff at the same time, neither one reaching out, both of us leaving the other to stew, a cold war that dragged on for over a month.
I knew he was wearing me down, waiting for me to be the one to come to him.
In our four years together, he loved using the cold-war tactic to settle things.
And I'm the impatient type. A cold war is the one thing I can't stand, so every time I was the one who ate the loss in silence.
But this time was different.
I kept holding out. By the third month, Alex was the one who cracked first and texted me on his own.
"You busy?"
