The Timeline

60.

November 18th, 2017:

Just as Claire had wanted, Harry had now disappeared from her life.

Or, well, at least from her conscious life.

Or, well, at least she was doing better when it came to ignoring him in her day to day, conscious life.

He kept calling her. He kept messaging her, begging for her to please pick up, please talk it out with him, please give him a chance, please listen to him because he had never meant for things to get that bad, please just pick up the damn phone because he did not agree with her thoughts and feelings about them having outgrown each other.

He kept showing up in her mind, as she was only able to ignore the physical manifestations of him, either changing the channel when he appeared on the telly, or scroll down when he appeared on her phone, or change the radio when they passed on of his songs. She couldn't very well toss him out of her mind, lest she wanted to crack open her skull and hurl her brain across the room, so it would stop bothering her.

And, worst of it all, he kept appearing in her dreams. She dreamt about him almost every night - even as she slept in the arms of the guy she was actively seeing and sleeping with - and the things that happened in those dreams were either straight up non-sense (in some dreams Harry would ride on rollercoasters while singing a traditional German song and nursing a pet bird in his hands) or straight up embarrassing (in some dreams Harry would walk up to Claire and just start kissing her, forcing her to wake up with heated cheeks and a need to quench the wetness between her legs, either on her own or with Toby).

Obviously, she hated it.

It was a bitch of a situation.

Still, the silver lining was that she was very good at ignoring his physical manifestations, so that must amount to something, mustn't it?

There hadn't been a single day, since that fateful night, right after Theodore's birthday, in which Claire hadn't regretted, if only a bit, her decision of cutting Harry once and for all from her life.

There were moments, usually when she was at her weakest, either in the morning when she would wake up and find some missed texts from him, or in the early afternoon, at 2PM when she was alone and Theodore was having his nap, and her friends were all busy with their lives, or in the really late nights, when she found herself wishing she could share some things with him, tell him about how being on stage was addictive, and he had always been right about it.

She never caved, though.

She had made a decision, and she was determined to keep faith to it.

And it hadn't been an easy decision, at that.

When she had told him, back when the news of him and Camille dating had started spreading, that she just wanted some time to recover, that she'd be back, she had meant it.

She truly wanted to take her time to work out all that sadness, reject it from her system, fill herself with something (and someone) else. Learn how to be okay again. Then, rekindle her friendship with Harry, with the knowledge that it could never be something more.

Each day, however, she had grown a bit more unsure of that initial plan.

The sight of Harry and Camille, of all those articles about them, the tweets - either calling them a stunt or proclaiming their undying love for Camille - made her so irrationally angry or sad (depending on the day) she had needed to mute and block the woman's name everywhere. Nothing against her, but no thank you.

And, after a week of not having to see them everywhere and seeing people writing fanfictions about them, had done wonders for her.

She had started feeling better. Less like she was being crushed at every moment, by the knowledge that she would've never been Camille, and more like she could survive, because the farther those images were from her, the better she'd feel.