Isaac #3
“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 anyone but me.
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, do you think 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 start swallowing 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.”
“I guess.”
“And I know we’re only starting, but for what it’s worth, the Clay I’ve been slowly coming to know is someone I want to keep getting to know.”
“And what if you don’t?”
“What?”
“Want to keep getting to know me? What if you get to know more about me and eventually you realize you want nothing to do with me?”
I cast a sidelong glance at him. “Did you rape or murder someone?”
“What?” he asked, taking a step back, arms wrapping around his middle.
That was...a reaction. “I was obviously kidding. My point was that unless you’re an outright terrible person, a vile sort, I don’t think you have to worry about me.
And even if there is something about you that doesn’t fit with me, that doesn’t change what I said.
And for the record, you could just as easily find out something about me that makes you want nothing to do with me. ”
“I doubt that,” he snorted. “I know you’re here, but you seem to be doing alright. I can’t picture you doing something or being some way that’s going to make me avoid you.”
“What if I was stealing from my clients for years?”
“I mean, they’re rich enough to afford it from the sounds of it.”
“Murdered a couple of them?”
“You don't seem the type to do it for no reason.”
“Murdered someone for being annoying?”
“There’s a few people who probably deserve it.”
I laughed. “Fine, then I’m actually the head of a violent crime family, and the crimes I’ve committed are beyond measure.”
“Can I be your kept boy?” he asked, and he finally cracked a smile when I snorted. “Sorry, couldn’t resist. You were trying so hard to make your point, I couldn’t help but ruin it.”
I shook my head. “At least I finally got some of your humor out in the open. I thought you were going to glare at mountains for the rest of the night.”
Clay sighed, crossing his arms and rocking back onto his heels with a troubled expression. “I...sometimes I get these moods. It doesn’t matter if I want to, they just...happen.”
“I’m not trying to push more than you want to be pushed,” I began carefully. “But you make it sound like you might want it to happen sometimes.”
“Sometimes, yeah.”
“Would it bother you if I asked why?”
His features scrunched up, and he looked at the floor.
“I just...it’s funny, you want to connect with yourself again, you want to know who you are because you’ve been living in your skin but not under that skin.
But me? Sometimes all I want is to be anyone other than me, and other times I know I can’t, but because of.
..well, sometimes I think all I should be is miserable. ”
Ahh, so it was guilt that motivated him. It was, as he had said, funny, because I had never considered guilt or shame as a motivating emotion for him, and yet it made sense. Whatever it was that made him feel so guilty was big enough that he refused to let it go. And yet at the same time—
“And yet you try not to be miserable all the time, and you try to be someone you’re not,” I said, looking at him and watching his features. They didn’t change, save for a tightening in his jaw as he took a deep breath.
“Kinda,” he admitted after a minute, the syllables sounding like they were being painfully pulled from his lips rather than falling naturally.
“I mean, it’s not like I’ve had to work hard at it.
If you want something bad enough, you’ll find a way, right?
I mean, except for not being me. I can’t not be me, at least when I’m alone, I mean, other than one option. ”
“And yet you haven’t taken that option,” I noted.
“Not recently,” he said and closed his eyes as if shocked, but accepting it was too late, bracing for what was to come.
“That’s always an option, I suppose,” I said, pretending not to notice his surprise, or the way his tension relaxed a few notches.
“I mean, it would certainly take care of your problems, or at least, it would stop them...maybe. Who knows, maybe people are right, and something is waiting for us after death. Maybe it’s just peace, or we get thrown into the cycle all over again as another person. ”
“That’s scarier than Hell…or nothing,” he muttered.
I chuckled, nodding. “I used to think nothing was terrifying. Then I realized it was just...nothing. You were dead, you were gone, so there was nothing to fear. After all, you wouldn’t know, you’d just be.
..gone. Nothing left, no conscious part of you to realize everything was gone or that you were adrift or lost. Just you being gone completely.
There’s a strange comfort to that. But I admit, I kind of like the idea that there’s more.
That this life isn’t the only one we get, or at the very least, we get the chance to experience the peace so many talk about, as a reward for the bullshit that comes from living. ”
“Yeah, well, if there’s a God or Gods, I got a few questions for them,” Clay said, wrinkling his nose. “I don’t think so, though. I think it’s nothing. It’s all nothing.”
It sounded bleak, but I wasn’t going to correct a man who was clearly suffering from depression.
“Then that means being dead would fix it, wouldn’t it?
You wouldn’t have to be you anymore, you wouldn’t have to carry whatever weight you’re carrying, and you’d be gone, just..
.gone. All your problems are gone, you along with them. So why not?”
I could see the way his head snapped toward me, but I kept looking out the window as he croaked out, “What?”