The Seven Year Slip

As she wakes up, Clementine thinks that the previous day must have been a dream before realizing with horror that it wasn’t. Iwan is gone most of the day, and Clementine has to stop herself from snooping through his things. Clementine tries in vain to force the apartment back into the present. She goes through Analea’s old books and sees the travel guides that she had drawn in years before. Though she had given it up in recent months, this practice of drawing in travel guides introduced Clementine to her love of watercolors. She finds her old travel watercolor set and the New York travel guide she had brought from the office. Clementine takes these into the bathtub, the only place Analea had allowed her to paint. She begins to paint inside the book and starts to feel human for the first time since Analea’s death, realizing that dinner with Iwan the previous night also helped her to feel happier.

When Iwan returns that night, Clementine feels brave and flirts with him, inadvertently causing him to burn his finger on the stove. At one point, she thinks he might be leaning in to kiss her, but he pulls away. Clementine sees several lemons on the counter, and he explains that tonight he will be making dessert rather than dinner.