stars in your eyes

quattuor

For the next two days, Claire stayed holed up in her room, tucked between her blankets, letting only her mother into her room – not that Jasper or her father would even want to try to come in. Jasper was probably overjoyed because Harry broke up with her. And knowing her father, he was probably satisfied because it meant that she wouldn't be having anymore sex.

Claire's tears only subsided for sleep that first night. Saturday morning, she was barren – completely dried up. A pain wrapped around the inside of her skull from the hours of crying the night before and she just lay there paralyzed in her bed, staring up at the ceiling wondering why it had come to this. It couldn't be real. Maybe she just dreamt it. But her puffy eyes, clogged sinuses, and the ache in her head and chest told her differently. All proof that Harry did in fact break her heart last night, whether he meant to or not.

How could this be happening? They loved each other. Love was supposed to conquer all. Suddenly claire found herself cursing all those stupid, sappy love movies that always ended in happiness. That almost never happened in real life. Romeo's and Prince Charming's didn't exist. It was all just a fabrication of Hollywood to make the hollowness of reality a little less painful. But in fact it just made it more painful, because in real life nobody got their happy ending. And if in some freak occurrence that one does get their happy ending, there was always someone out there willing to ruin it. In Claire's happy ending, she had Jasper making the happy part of the ending non-existent.

How could they let Jasper dictate whether or not they should be together? Claire felt a sense of anger crash over her in waves. She wanted to scream at the top of her lungs. She wanted to punch and kick and claw at anything and everything. And she let imaginary images of her clawing at jasper' face calm her down. When she realized that plotting her brother's death probably wasn't the best plan, she buried her head in the pillow and tried like hell to get herself back to sleep.

Esther woke her up to eat a little while later. She hadn't eaten all day. She refused to leave her room, so her mother brought her a bowl of soup.

"You need to eat, claire. Don't do this to yourself," she said, looking at her sympathetically.

"Do this to myself? I did not do this to myself. Jasper did this to me,"Claire shot at her.

"jasper and Harry," she said quietly.

"Jasper did this, mom. Harry only broke up with me because of jasper. He told me he still wanted to be with me but couldn't because of Jasper,"Claire corrected her angrily.

"Jasper feels really bad," Esther told her.

"I don't care how jasper feels. He should feel bad. He ruined everything,"Claire spat out.

"claire..." Her mother sighed, her eyes looking pained that her children were fighting.

"No. Do not defend him. He knows what he's doing is wrong,"Claire growled as she shook her head.

"Keeping it from him was kind of wrong too. Harry was his friend first," Esther countered, defending Jasper anyway.

"How was it wrong? Why can't Harry and I have a private life?" Claire yelped as the anger boiled up inside of her.

"There's a difference between having a private life and lying to everyone that is in your life," Esther reminded her, making Claire even angrier.

"Just... just leave me alone if all you're going to do is make me feel worse! The bottom line is I had Harry and now I don't – and it's all Jasper's fault,"Claire snapped, narrowing her eyes at her mother.

"I understand that your anger is making it hard to see reason right now, but if you continue to take that tone with me..." Esther said as calmly as ever, but in that warning tone that all mother's seemed to have.