Chapter 33: Let's break up
Clara paced the lavish living room of her shared apartment with Harris. Her voice was shrill, filled with anger and frustration. She was talking about Viola, as usual. The news of Viola’s father's health scare, and then the astonishing whispers about Viola performing surgery, had driven Clara into a new frenzy of jealousy.
"Can you believe her, Harris?" Clara shrieked, waving her hands wildly. "Always the perfect one! Now she's playing doctor! And getting all the attention! She just wants to steal everything, doesn't she?" Her words were a relentless stream of bitter resentment, fueled by envy.
Harris sat on the plush sofa, a half-empty glass of amber liquid in his hand. He watched Clara, but his eyes were distant, unfocused. He had heard this rant countless times. Days blurred into weeks, weeks into months, and Clara’s obsession with Viola only grew, consuming her, consuming their life together.
He was tired of Clara's insensitive and scheming personality. Every word she spoke was laced with a venom directed at Viola, a bitterness that seemed to poison everything around her. He remembered a time when he found her passion exciting, her ambition alluring. Now, he just found it exhausting. He saw only the ugliness behind her pretty face, the endless resentment that twisted her features.
As he watched her rant on about Viola, her face contorted with anger, a sudden, sharp wave of repulsion washed over him. He felt sick to his stomach. This wasn't just Clara being upset; this was a deep, ugly darkness. It was a constant, draining negativity that he could no longer stand.
A mocking smile escaped his lips. It was aimed at himself, not at Clara. He wondered when his taste in girls became so bad. How had he ended up here? With her? When he had once been with someone so different, so infinitely better?
Just then, Viola's face flashed in his mind. Not the angry, cold Viola he often saw now, but the Viola from years ago. The quiet strength, the sharp wit, the fierce integrity that had first drawn him to her. The way her eyes would light up when she talked about a complex problem, the gentle curve of her smile when she was truly happy. She was never loud, never scheming.
He smiled bitterly. They had already divorced. They were done. He had thrown away that precious thing, traded it for a fleeting passion that had curdled into this bitter resentment. He never had the chance anymore. The thought was a painful stab in his heart. Regret, heavy and suffocating, settled over him.
Clara, too engrossed in her own rant, didn't notice the subtle shift in Harris's expression at first. She just saw him in a daze, his eyes unfocused. She misinterpreted his silence, thinking he wasn't listening, or worse, that he was thinking about Viola. This only made her even more fierce.
"Are you even listening to me, Harris?!" she shrieked, stamping her foot. "You're always like this! Distracted! You're probably thinking about her, aren't you? After everything I've done for you, after everything we've planned—"
Her voice cut through his daze like a knife. The rising anger in her tone, the self-pity, the desperate need for his validation, all hit him at once. This was his life now, a constant cycle of her jealousy and his guilt. The thought of continuing this, of enduring another day, another hour of her toxic presence, was suddenly unbearable.
It was enough. This was the final push. Her furious, self-absorbed words only prompted Harris to make up his mind. The decision, though sudden, felt profoundly right, a clarity he hadn't experienced in years. The murky waters of his regret and self-loathing suddenly parted, revealing a single, undeniable truth. He couldn't do this anymore.
He took a deep breath, the bitter taste of alcohol still in his mouth. He looked at Clara, really looked at her, seeing her not as his lover, but as a stranger consumed by ugliness.
"Clara," he said, his voice quiet, but firm, cutting through her rant like ice. "Let's break up."
The words hung in the air, shattering the tense atmosphere. Clara froze, her mouth still open, her eyes wide with shock. The color drained from her face. She looked at him, utterly bewildered, as if she hadn't heard him correctly.
"What did you say?" she whispered, her voice barely audible.
Harris met her gaze, his own eyes clear, devoid of the usual guilt or drunkenness. "I said, let's break up." He felt a strange lightness, a sense of burden lifted from his shoulders. It wasn't relief, not yet, but a painful kind of freedom. "It's over, Clara."
Clara stared at him, unable to speak. The silence that followed his words was deafening. Her furious rant had been abruptly, brutally silenced by five simple words. Her world, built on scheming and manipulation, seemed to crumble around her. She had always believed she had him. She had always believed he would help her destroy Viola.
But now, he was gone. He had just walked away.