Claire was the Cold Prep.

The Ice Chips episode will be the when he talks to her again because she is the last chip of getting stuck in the freezer he has left over to deal with. They are always connected to cold and fridges. He reconnected with her in the freezer aisle at the grocery store.

They made out in the garde manger which is the cold prep station in kitchens.

And of course they broke up by the walk in fridge.

Claire was a Cold Reading for Carmy. A rehearsal. A practice girlfriend before the real thing. Molly and Jeremy did not even do a chemistry read before they were on set running lines together, and that was not due to poor planning. It was very intentional just like Claire's entire character. Her lack of development, he costuming, their interactions, are all tied up with being a cold prep. Their entire relationship was written as practice for Carmy wanting to be with Syd, which is why he mirrors everything about Sydney into that relationship.

Fak is going to tell Claire that Carmy told him he’s still in love with her to try and get them to fix things. She will probably try to reconcile and tell Carmy that Fak told her he does love her, but I think Carmy is going to tell her he never told him that and that he’s not actually in love with her and can't be with her.

*Season 3 Spoiler Skip this paragraph* That is what is going to cause the fight that we heard, because Fak/Claire will accuse Carmy of lying about it and Carmy will insist he didn’t lie about saying he loved her.

Technically Carmy didn’t say he was in love with her. Fak asked Carmy how much he love Claire and he said he loved her a lot. Carmy does love Claire. But he’s not in love with her. 

He loves Claire same way he loves Fak or Tina or even Mikey. He loves her as an old friend and someone in his life he cares about and doesn’t want to hurt her feelings, which why he tried to gently reject her with a fake number but couldn't say no to her face.

He asked Tina how much she loved Mikey and she said a lot. Which is the same thing he told Fak about Claire, because he doesn't love her romantically.

Carmy tried to be in love with her. But he never told her I love you and he was bothered when she said it to him in the voicemail because he realized love and being in love are two very different things.

Claire loves Carmy romantically but he doesn't love her in that way.

In his panic attack he figured out the difference between the two. He loves Mikey and his family and even his mom and Claire. But he’s not in love with them. Sydney was a completely separate type of love and peace for him because he doesn’t just love her, he is in love with her.

Claire was there Christmas after Donna crashed her car. He saw that she saw the mess behind his life. He didn’t want to stay there so he left to New York. She has always been tied to horrible memories for him and it's not her fault, but he can't separate the two.

But honestly, the fact that Claire saw what his life was like that night and the full extent of his family trauma around alcohol makes me even more angry that she took him to that party and the told him that “she knows” about him having to take care of sad drunk people.

She might have said she wants to understand, not fix people. But it seems to me like she thought she could fix Carmy’s shyness and trauma around parties and alcohol by forcing him to be around it, but really she was just bringing up all the past trauma he had and bad memories tied to her.

They both tried to use that relationship for bad reasons, he tried to teach himself how to be a boyfriend and she tried to teach him how to be "normal" because she wanted a boyfriend, but the type of guy she wanted is not who Carmy really is, which is why he was pretending to be Logan at that party and why she loved seeing him act like that, even when it's not him. Carmy wanted to see Syd in Claire, and Claire wanted to see "Logan" in Carmy.