The Winter Project

33. Cleo

The shame and guilt of what she had done to Isabel should have kept her up all night, but Cleo had slept right through until morning after the eight hour drive from the day before. She was riddled with the unsettling sensation of knowing that she had done wrong to her friend and yet her primary focus was still getting to Milan and being with Nic. She assumed that Isabel would forgive her soon; it wasn't in Isabel's nature to hold a grudge for too long and all she had to do was ride out the uncomfortable part where Isabel would ignore her and act upset. Once Cleo would be able to explain how she was doing this to help her, the fight would end and they would go back to having fun again. Cleo felt deep down that Isabel was being slightly dramatic. Her parents had died over two decades ago; Milan probably didn't even look the same as it did back then and an irrational fear of an entire city couldn't last forever. She comforted herself by reaffirming this to herself. Isabel was just being dramatic. She was probably doing it for attention as her personality wasn't big enough to garner attention by itself.

She reluctantly got out of bed, still fully dressed from the day before, threw her backpack over her shoulder and headed outside to the car park. There were only three vehicles in the car park the night before, and now there were only two. It took Cleo only a few seconds to realise that the van was gone. In a state of emergency, she practically ran down to the front door of Isabel's room to find the door ajar. Her first thought was that Isabel had been kidnapped and the van stolen. Maybe she would even find Isabel's dead body in the hotel room and the thief had taken off with the van. Her complete denial that her friend would ever leave her kept her guessing for nearly half an hour until she found some of her own belongings piled into the corner of the motel room. Isabel had removed everything that Cleo owned from the van and dumped it there as if it meant nothing to her. The pile of her belongings was a symbol that Isabel was not in danger but that she had abandoned Cleo.

For the first time in years, Cleo felt genuinely frightened. She was alone in a motel car park with only the small amount of things left that she owned in the world, completely abandoned by her closest friend. She had no idea where Isabel was, and when she thought about it hard enough she didn't even know where the motel was located. The long drive from the day before had all merged into one long road and she had forgotten which cities she had passed and which had yet to come. Frantically, she pulled her phone from her pocket and dialled Nic's number.

"Good morning, my beautiful princess."

She felt comforted by the sound of his voice, as if she had known him forever and his voice was the only constant, the only familiar thing in her now unfamiliar world. She explained what had happened the night before, and as always Nic remained calm in the face of Cleo's frenzy. He told her to sit tight and wait for him; he would come and collect her as soon as he had finished work that afternoon. Slightly irritated that he wasn't willing to come and drop everything immediately, Cleo couldn't help but be short with him but agreed to wait. She walked to the edge of the car park and into the diner that sat adjacent to the motel in order to drink coffee and wait for the worst day of her adventure to end, and the first day of her adventure with Nic to begin.

As she waited, she tried not to think about Isabel, but the thoughts kept coming back to her. She decided to bury her guilt deep down and focus only on the fact that her so-called friend had taken off with the van that Cleo had paid for, on the adventure that Cleo had planned and all because Cleo was being a supportive friend. Her guilt turned into a rage so aggressive that she had to stop convincing herself that Isabel was in the wrong because she was afraid of how angry she could get. By the end of her mental conversation with herself, Cleo could not understand what she had done to deserve such shocking treatment from somebody who she had thought of like a sister.

In order to distract herself from her ever-changing emotions, she browsed through old messages between herself and Nic, and focused only on the relationship that was in front of her. Soon she would be with Nic and nothing else would matter. Isabel would only have judged her anyway, and Cleo didn't need to be judged. Isabel had been judging her this entire time with her subtle looks every time Cleo bought a drink or made a passing comment about her troubled thoughts. Isabel loved to avoid the topic of mental health when she so clearly had enough issues for the both of them, and yet chose to struggle through life without seeking any medical help or formal diagnosis. Cleo had been able to jump over that hurdle years ago, and it irritated her now that someone could be so regressive with their mental health when she had been so progressive with hers. Cleo didn't need her. Her Do Not Leave Me list was now simply a mental piece of paper with Nic's name on it, for who were her other friends? Where were they now? How many of her 'top five' friends had messaged her since she had left the country, quit her job and not said a word on social media?

None of them cared. That had been the story of her life from her childhood to her adolescent to this very moment that she sat alone in a diner somewhere in northern Italy in her mid-twenties. She had spent her entire life fending for herself and it had made her into a strong and independent woman. She thought about Isabel's weak and passive characteristics and she felt embarrassed for her.

The only person who cared about Cleo was Nic. She could see it now, clearer than ever. Her whole life had been leading her to the only person who would ever care about her, and everybody else was just a stepping stone who she had been tricked into believing cared about her, allowing her to find the only one who did.