The Timeline [h.s.]

81.

March 25th, 2019:

Claire hadn't given an answer to Harry.

Yet.

She didn't even know what she wanted to say to him.

Or, to be a bit more precise, she hadn't yet decided what she wanted to say to him. What her decision should've been.

Should've been an easy decision, after all his words to her had been simple and quite forward. He wanted her, plain and simple. Had always wanted her, and now he had grown tired of keeping it to himself.

Did she want him back?

The answer could be reduced to a simple one word, between the two: Yes or No.

Simple, right?

Well, it turns out, it was anything but!

Claire's overthinking abilities and her talent to blow a lot of things out of proportion and find the negative side even in situations that did not have a negative side, per their nature, had turned that into the most pained and dragged decision there could be.

On the one hand, Claire knew that she wanted to say YES! to him, in all capitals, screaming it even, because there was a part of her that pulsated in sync with his words and his blood and the things he wanted, because she wanted him too, had been wanting him for a long time, by that moment. She wanted to be close to him, finally give an out to all the things she felt for him, the things she had been feeling for him; as she had understood that night, kneeling in her kitchen, her forehead pressed to his, sifting through all of her memories to scrutinize them under a different light, it had always been a tad bit more than just friendship.

Perhaps it had always been like that, between them, they had always had that 0.02% of unexplored between them that she had hypothesized once, after their rendezvous inside of Kate Moss' bathroom (which, as he had admitted himself, Harry remembered perfectly, what a fucking asshole!). And she had only been too afraid to admit it to herself, denying it over and over again, because it would mean challenging everything she had always believed to be true. Facing herself, and the lies she was telling.

And she wanted to explore it, that 0.02% they shared. She really did.

But on the other hand, she was far too afraid to do it.

For starters, as Harry himself had said, right before asking her to give him an answer, she didn't trust him anymore. He had shuttered her trust in him by upping and leaving after sleeping with her, and she had spent weeks wondering if he had only been using her to get a quick fuck. As he had stressed a lot, he hadn't, because what he felt for her was more than that - if he meant all the things he had said to her during his drunk phone calls (and as he had said, he did mean them, and remembered them all).

And she believed him. Deep down in her heart, she believed him, either because she needed to believe him, or because she had recognized the kernel of truth in his words.

Still, even if she gave him another chance, who was to reassure her and tell her that he would've never pulled another stunt like that? Who could assure her, through and through, that even if things got a bit complicated, or if he started having second thoughts about them, that he wouldn't up and leave her in the middle of the night, and she'd have to wake up all alone in her bed, left to pick up the pieces of the mess he had made? Again.

And, even if there wasn't that problem about her trusting him and him not fucking up... There still was the other big ass elephant in the room - the room being her mind - about Claire being unable to truly let herself live any type of romantic relationship with anyone, without knowing that they'd be walking away from her, one day.