“You don’t know anything about us, Clay. I gave her free rein for everything else.Anything else. But not my family.” I blew up. “Shecrossed the line.”
“So what? She crossed it foryou,” he said.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“It’s literally the only thing that matters. Your parents will handle the company.Your girlwill apparently represent your best interest during this deal since you refuse to even touch it. Literally the only thing you have to do is pull your head far enough out your ass to see that everyone involved is here for you,” he said. “Why are you making this so hard?”
“Why do you care so much?”
He growled. “Because I’m your friend and I’m tired of watchingyou sabotage your life because you’re so fucking scared of actually being happy while your sister is gone.”
Time stopped. Air dissipated from my lungs and the room suddenly felt smaller. Clay’s eyes found mine, and even he seemed shocked to have said what he did.
We stared at each other for a while. A long while. I can’t tell if I still wanted to fight him or if I wanted to leave so I could curl up in a corner and sulk, but that hit went straight to the gut and I was suddenly struggling to find the wind he knocked out of me.
Clay sighed, and I resisted the urge to wince as he opened his mouth to speak again. “Look, I know you have a lot going on. I know your plate is full, and this is all way more complicated than I’m making it out to seem. I’m sorry for that, I don’t have answers for everything—hardly anything, really.” He started. “But I do at least want to make one thing clear for you.”
The level of eye contact he gave me made me squirm. I wrinkled my nose and scratched at my collar to alleviate the weirdness, but my stomach curled with anticipation anyway.
“You’re important too, you know? Yes, your sister left and yes that shit sucks, but you are someone too, and you are someone without her. Someone apart from her and what happened to her,” he said.
Shifting on my feet, I looked away. “That’s not?—
“No, listen.Just because Mar was unhappy with her life, doesn’t mean that you are required to be unhappy with yours in some fucked up solidarity or something!” he grumbled. “It’s amiable that you consider her in every decision you make, but it’s something else entirely when you use it as an excuse to consider her over yourself. You can’t use it as an excuse to be scared forever man. I’m not stupid, I see the way you look around family, I see the way you look around Fernandez. Stop throwing things you clearly want away because you’re afraid of them.”
My eyes knit together and I glared at this asshole, hard. “Why would I be afraid of that?”
He shrugged, unbothered by the animosity. “Because you’ve lost something that you loved once, so you’re pushing at the tiniest inconveniences and hoping things will unravel so you don’t have to go through it again. You did it before with your parents, with your friends, and now look at you with Fernandez. You’repushing.”
I pressed my lips together. I hated that he was right. And if I was pushing, she was pulling. Scraping with her fingers clenched and her nails digging.
Suddenly sobered, I looked at him. Still irritated but, once again, put into my place by another person who apparently cared about me more than I realized. “If I’m such an idiot, why are you so invested?”
He gave me a flat look. “I told you, we used to be good friends.Reallygood friends. And then you disappeared. I wanted to be there for you then but you were gone. And when I was going through my own shit with my own sister, I didn’t even have your fucking number. I don’t want that to happen again.”
My laugh was basically just a musical wince as I recalled the last twenty minutes. “I don’t think I could’ve handled Tough-Love-Clay back then. I think you would have broken me.”
He grinned. “Sorry. But you are literally the most insufferable motherfucker I’ve ever fucking cared about. You’re worse than the prick who married my sister.”
I eyed him. “This isn’t, like, when you admit you’re in love with me or something, right?”
He gave me a deadpan look. “At least somebody would be telling somebody that they love them.”
“Dude.”
“No dumbass,” he sneered. “This is the part where you promise to do better. Not for me or even Fernandez. For yourself. And your mom too, man.”
I nodded slowly, contemplating.
“Is it weird if I hug you after I was going to kick your ass?” I asked.
Another grin spread across his face as he spread his arms out wide.
“Only if you make it weird,” he said before he wrangled me into a back slapping, shoulder shaking hug. I laughed at his silliness especially after handing me my ass emotionally not a whole minute before. But the sigh I let out was full of relief.
Clay excused himself, apparently having some mess to clean up upstairs, but not before giving me one last leveling glare. “And don’t kid yourself, Montez. I’dstillbeat the shit out of you if we fought.”
I guess we remembered it differently.
