The Timeline

47.

January 27th, 2017:

Turns out, Harry had no time to talk to Claire.

Although he hadn't disappeared, locking himself in his silence, like he had done after the two of them had kissed for the first time, he was still acting extremely weird and distant with Claire.

The two of them had exchanged more texts in the 13 days that had followed the day in which he had shown up at her door, but those texts had felt incredibly forced and weird, that whenever Claire read through them again - not that she did it more than once a day! - she would cringe and wish she could rewrite everything from scratch.

She thought she sounded so... needy.

Even a simple 'Hi, how are you?' would look misplaced and would be magnified under her ever watchful judgy eyes towards herself. Whenever she typed something, she felt like there was another text bubble, right under the one she was sending, with big capital letters screaming "SO WHEN ARE WE GOING TO TALK!"

She had even gone as far as asking it in real words, typing them with shaky fingers, uneven breaths and sweat building up at her hairline and the back of her neck, the anxiety of facing something that gave her stomach pains threatening to eat her alive. Nonetheless, she had typed the question and sent it - more than once, let's say three times - and had felt very brave for it.

She had thought that, since Harry's voice held the same urgency her brain coddled, he would meet her request with enthusiasm. That he would've jumped up at the opportunity. That he would've answered her with a date and a place - or, at least, a request to meet. And discuss.

He hadn't.

The first time Claire had asked him if he wanted to talk to her, he had answered her with a really dry text, in which he informed her that he was really busy filming something for the upcoming album, and he couldn't get away from it. She had apologized, had wished him luck on whatever it was that he was filming, and had retreated to her room. Then she had reread her text, over and over again, wondering if she had written something she shouldn't have written, if she had managed to piss him off, somehow. She couldn't find anything wrong with her words, however. Maybe she sounded a bit needy but... there was a certain urgency in their situation. Harry had implied as much, before he had stormed out of her house. She had decided that he was really busy, and that he didn't want to dismiss the whole thing, so he would wait for a time when he was more free and calm, so the two of them could talk.

So, Claire had waited a few days, and then had asked him a second time, changing the words a bit from the first text. And Harry had told her that he had impending schedule issues that would conflict with his free time, more and more, and that he couldn't get away from those. First album rollout and all that, Claire would understand. And she did understand, except that the whole thing had stung her a bit. Because it had felt, to her, like he didn't want to talk at all. But he had said... Claire had sighed, wrote back that it was okay, she wouldn't disturb him while he was working. He had thanked her.

The third time had been the worst of them all, however, and it had happened only a couple days prior. Claire had seen - because Harry hadn't told her, like he used to - that Harry had gone to Los Angeles. So she had texted him, asking him if he'd be a bit more free when he came back from the US. She hadn't asked him to talk, but her intent was clear (or so she thought). He had to understand. And he had. In fact, he had written back:

H : "Claire."

H : "Can I contact you when I'm a bit less swarmed with stuff?"

H : "I want to talk, obviously. I just need to be calm to do so."