Cade looked at me more closely. “Would ya want to?”
“Date Clay?” I asked in surprise. “I never thought about it, if I’m honest. This place is weird. It’s like it’s suspended in time and space, like nothing we do really counts, and nothing is all that important.”
“I know what ya mean,” he said, frowning. “That’s kinda the problem with Clay, I think.”
“I agree,” I said as Clay came back for another lap. “But I also think he’s a big boy and maybe just having someone who breaks the cycle he’s stuck in is enough.”
“I hope so,” Cade said, looking troubled but not saying much else.
“Worrying never helps anyone,” I told him, patting his elbow. “Excuse me.”
“Sure,” he said, eyeing me curiously as I walked off and met up with Clay on the track.
He looked surprised when I looped my arm through his and began pulling him with me. “What are you doing?”
“C’mon,” I said brightly as I led him toward the exit.
“That’s not what I asked,” he said in annoyance.
“I’m choosing to ignore it just like I’m choosing to ignore your attitude,” I told him, feeling him stiffen.
“Don’t fuck me with today,” he grumbled.
“Believe it or not, I’m not trying to fuck with you,” I said with a snort. “I’m trying my hand at being nice because I know you’re having a bad day, and I don’t want to add to it.”
“Cade said something to you,” Clay accused softly, and it was unusual to hear such irritation while talking about Cade.
“You are aware that you’re not nearly as subtle as you thought, right?” I asked him gently as we arrived at the upper room I’d been looking for. “I mean, you don’t wear every thought on your face like Cade does, but you’re not subtle.”
“Alright, fine, I can’t control my face, happy?” he said, bordering on a snarl.
I stared out the large windows that dominated two of the four walls in the room, overlooking the mountain range. It was clearly meant to be a lounge of some sort, and while I didn’t know if it was supposed to be a ‘reflection’ room or whatever they called it here, it certainly invited it. The sun was beginning to set, and it was at the point where the deepest part of the valley was in shadows, but enough sunlight still turned the trees below into a burning assembly as the dying light set the yellow and red trees ablaze.
I looked at him and smiled gently. “Honestly? I don’t think I’ve been happy for a long time.”
The anger on his face flickered and died. “What? But I thought?—”
“What? That I enjoyed my job, or at least the money, so much I couldn’t have been unhappy?” I asked softly.
“Well, no,” he said, frustration returning to his voice. “I just...didn’t realize.”
“If it makes you feel better, I didn’t know for a long time, and I’m the one who has to live in my own head,” I said with a little laugh. “But at some point, I realized I wasn’t happy, and I couldn’t remember the last time I was truly happy. All the things about my life that I’d accepted, or taken as...how life in general works, no longer felt that way. Suddenly, I realized I’d spent years making money by selling myself. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about sex; that part of selling myself was fine...with a few exceptions. But otherwise? It was the realization that I had spent years making a life out of pretending to be anyonebutme. And I no longer understood who I was, and that for all I had gained, I didn’t know if what I had received in return was enough to compensate for what I had given up. Then again, doyouthink there’s a high enough price to hand over your sense of identity?”
Clay’s brow furrowed as he stared intensely out the windows, his shoulders taut, and his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his shorts as he scowled at the breathtaking sight of the mountains. “I-I don’t know. I guess some people would say it would be worth it, being paid to be someone else, not yourself.”
“Is that what you want?” I asked him. “To not be yourself?”
He glanced at me, the tension in his shoulders tightening, but he just snorted and spoke softly. “Sometimes. I’m sure a lot of people think that. I know, I’m not special.”
“Everyone is special,” I told him.
“If everyone is special, then no one is special.”
“Or everyone is special in their own way. Maybe not special like you’re going to...save a country, become president, a big movie star, solve world hunger, or be a talented surgeon,” I said, watching as the shadows in the valley crept their way up to startswallowing the golden forest. “But no one gets to go through life without touching someone, without being important to someone. We touch lives in ways we’ll never fully understand. Do you think Cade would want someone other than you as a friend? Or do you think he’d miss his friend?”
“He’d find another.”
“Who wouldn’t be you.”
