The Timeline [h.s.]

68.

June 19th, 2018:

Claire had chosen to go to New York.

On the way to the airport - David was driving her, it was around 8:00AM and her flight would be at 10AM - she kept on sending glances to Theodore, quietly contemplating the world passing them by through the car windows, biting her thumb and the corner of her lips.

One thought kept twiddling and turning inside of her brain, hitting the corners of her skull with dull thuds: was she doing the right thing, or was she doing a huge mistake?

When she had made her decision - which, retrospectively, hadn't actually been a choice, since she had wanted to do tha all along - she had called Donna, crying, and it had taken many pleas from the woman to make Claire calm down.

She felt like she was in the wrong, like she was betraying everyone, like she was being selfish for doing something she wanted to do. To Donna, she had told about the ultimatum Toby had given her, either him or Harry, and Donna hadn't liked that one bit. Claire had understood it from the sharp intake of breath from the other side of the call.

Donna was right, Claire had decided and understood all on her own: Toby was kind of turning their relationship into something highly transactional, by deducting his love for Claire based on how she behaved and how much he accepted it or not. But, and this would've been very hard to get out of her head, she was also in the wrong, for she had led him on.

And, Claire had decided, she couldn't go on like this. They couldn't go on like this. It wasn't fair on Toby, it had never been fair on him, because he deserved someone who loved him for real. But it also wasn't fair on Claire, for in the long run, if she kept on needing to please him to make him act nice towards her, she would end up being some sort of mirror of herself, vacuous of any type of personality of her own, sacrificed to become what Toby wanted and liked. She would become a shell, a simple arm trophy for Toby to parade around in public and then berate privately, in case she did anything he wouldn't approve of.

And, ultimately, the thought of Theodore growing up to see her act a certain way around someone she was in a relationship with, someone who would say out loud that he loved her... The sole image of that made her cringe on the inside so strongly she knew she had to stop it. She couldn't give Theodore a bad image or understanding of what love was supposed to be.

There was, however, one small problem, in all of that.

She hadn't told Toby she'd be going to New York.

He didn't know. Nor had he tried to reach out to her after their date turned disaster when he had screamed at her and had demanded she choose between him and Harry.

And, consequently, Jacopo didn't know either, because both her and David were sure that, had he known about the trip, he'd be running to Toby to tell him about it.

Claire was leaving without her boyfriend and one of her best friends knowing. Was she in the wrong? Probably. She should've said, if anything, even just so people knew where she'd be, if things went wrong or something happened to her or - God forbid - to Theodore.

But she also knew that, had she said it to Toby, they would be fighting everyday, and he would've found a way to ruin the entire trip for her, taint the days ahead and forbid her from truly enjoying her second trip to New York and her reunion with Harry after more than two months apart.

Toby would be finding out soon enough, and Claire was ready to answer to his retaliation as best as she could. That meant that, as far as she'd be in New York, she wouldn't answer his texts nor calls. That'd be a problem for when she came back.

And yet, sitting in the passenger seat, the airport a mere few miles away, Claire's stomach was knotting with enough anxiety to make her feel like she had nausea. She felt guilty, a part of her longed to call Toby and inform him and apologize a thousand times while simultaneously explaining to him that he had nothing to worry about because her and Harry were friends.