Page 210 of The Compass Series

AIDEN

Hailee: What do you not get about I can’t be seen with you in public?

Aiden: I can wear a Halloween mask.

Hailee: Only if you show up as the clown from IT. Otherwise, I’ll drive myself to the meeting location. I’ll see you in a little bit.

C olor her shocked when I showed up at her apartment at 4:40pm wearing an IT clown mask.

When Hailee opened her door, she burst out laughing. “Are you kidding me? Why are you like this?”

“I just wanted to be able to pick you up for our non-more-date.”

“I was joking about the mask.”

“Well, subtext and sarcasm are very hard to read via text messages. So…” I bowed and held my hand out toward her. “Shall we?”

She smacked my hand away and chuckled. “Let’s get a move on before people think I’m screwing a random clown.”

“You look remarkable tonight, Hails.”

She narrowed her eyes. “It’s oddly creepy hearing a clown tell me I look good.”

“Want to hear a clown joke?”

“I might regret this, but yes.”

“Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Boo.”

“Boo who?”

“Bootiful you.”

She rolled her eyes so hard, and that fact alone made me laugh. She pushed past me and said, “Were you always this cheesy, or is this a new Hollywood development?”

“You might as well call me gouda ’cuz I’m gonna be so gouda for you.”

She gave me a blank stare. “It’s almost painful how much I hate you right now.”

“By hate, do you mean love?”

Her eyes studied me for a moment. Her lips slightly parted, but no words came at first. Then she slugged me in the arm. “Come on, loser. I’m hungry.”

I walked her to my car and opened the door for her.

She slipped in, buckled up, and I closed the door before heading around to the driver’s side.

I climbed in, and we took off. After we were driving for a while, I was given permission to take off the IT mask.

My hair was ruined and sweaty, and I probably looked like an idiot, yet it was worth it when I saw Hailee looking over at me with a goofy grin.

“Do you know that you’re ridiculous?” she asked.

“One hundred percent.”

We drove a little farther and pulled up to an open field. The sun was setting overhead and looking out toward the field was a picnic spread I’d set up for the two of us.

“You made us a picnic?” she asked, somewhat surprised.

“I figured we could eat and talk and then lay down and count the stars.”

“Damn you, Aiden.” She shook her head. “You’re good.”

I hopped out of the car and hurried over to open her door for her. I then went to my trunk and grabbed a picnic basket, chilled champagne, and a few more blankets because I remembered Hailee always got cold.

We sat down and made ourselves comfortable as we began to catch up on the past five years. She told me about some of her worst days and about some of her best. I hated that I wasn’t there for both sets of stories. Then she asked about me. About my career. About my major success.

She told me she was proud of me, and that just about did me in. Still, a part of me over the past five years felt empty.

“Your past five years have seemed much easier and more enjoyable than my past five years,” she joked as she tossed a grape into her mouth.

“It’s not always easy, you know. Life,” I told her as I filled up another glass of champagne for her.

She huffed. “Yeah. It must be hard being famous and handsome, and having the world woo over you.”

I snickered at her sarcasm. “I’m serious. I get in my head a lot. Almost always. To the point when I don’t even know how to be myself anymore.”

“What do you do when you lose track of yourself?”

“That’s easy. I pick up a new script and become someone else.

It’s not only for when I’m working either.

It’s every day. I act as if I’m someone else.

Someone people would want to be around, someone people would want to know because—the real me—is a lot sadder than some people would care to be around.

People like happy people. People feel uncomfortable around the sad ones. ”

Hailee frowned. “Aiden?”

“Yes?”

“That’s really sad.”

“Life can be sad sometimes.”

“But most people wouldn’t know it if they were around you, huh?”

I laughed. “I guess not.”

“Are you acting right now? With me?”

“No. All shields are down right now.”

She looked down at the glass of champagne in her hands and bit her bottom lip. I was fascinated by every small movement Hailee made. The way her teeth tugged on her bottom lip made me consider tugging on it, too.

“Tell me something hard for you right now,” she said, snuggling up in the blankets.

“Well”—I scratched the bridge of my nose—“the other day, my mom gave me a letter from my biological mother.”

Her eyes all but popped out of their sockets. “Wait, what? Oh, my goodness. Are you okay? What did it say?”

“I have no clue. I haven’t opened it yet.”

“Why not? I know how long you’ve wanted to know more about her.”

“Exactly. So once I open that letter, it’s as if everything becomes real, and I’m not exactly sure if that’s a good or bad thing.”

“Does it scare you? Knowing that she’s reached out?”

“Um, it doesn’t scare me, but it makes me question the timing.

It’s no secret that I’ve been successful.

So for her to come around now as opposed to when my career hadn’t taken off just rubs me the wrong way.

Then again, who knows? I won’t really know what she has to say until I read the damn letter.

And I’m not ready to read said letter yet. ”

“If you ever need someone in your corner when you open that up, I can be there for you.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Because we’re friends again?”

She snickered. “Is it important for me to say that?”

“No, but I think it’s important for me to hear that.”

She placed her glass of champagne down and looked up at the star-drunk sky. “You never stopped being my best friend, Aiden. I like to think we just had a bad cellular connection over the past five years.”

“I told you years ago to switch to Sprint,” I joked.

“You know me.” She wrapped her arms around her knees. “I’m a terrible listener. What about you and your dad? Have you two talked since you found out what happened all those years ago?”

My jaw tightened at the mention of it. “No.”

“Aiden, I know you probably want to stay mad at him for what he did, but I do know that he did it from a place of love.”

“Or a place of selfishness and greed. Guess it depends on how you look at it.” She went to say something else, but I stopped her. “Conversation shift?”

She took note. I wasn’t ready to talk about Dad and what he’d done. “Okay, shift it.”

“How have the past five years been for you?” I asked her. “How are you?”

“Okay. I’m okay.” She looked up with a soft smile. “I’m good, actually.”

“Tell me. Tell me what I missed.”

She laughed a little. “Five years’ worth of stuff? That’s a lot of information.”

“I want to know it all. Tell me your story.”

She went to college to become a therapist. She was taking a year off before going for her master’s degree. A part of me was sad I didn’t get to experience the college lifestyle with her. It was another missed opportunity due to my career, but I was glad she seemed to do well in school.

“What’s your main focus?” I asked.

“I want to be a child psychologist. High school, as you know, was tough for me toward the end. I never want kids to feel as if they don’t belong.

I want to help them understand their emotions and help aid them through the dark days.

When my parents put me into therapy, it changed my life.

Now, I want to pay it forward so kids know they can still have some of the best days of their lives.

It’s odd to think that, in a way, what happened to me all those years ago put me on my right path. ”

“Life has a way of putting you right where you’re supposed to be.”

“Yeah, I think so. Outside of school, though, I’m still the boring girl who reads too much, lift weights for fun, and works at the inn. My life is pretty simple.”

“I would kill for a simpler life. And you’re happy?”

Her full lips smiled. “I am. I have waves of ups and downs, like everyone, but I am over all happy.”

“Good. You deserve it.”

“Thank you. Still, even though I’m happy, sometimes I get lonely,” she confessed.

“A lot of times, I’m fine. I go day by day without feeling that way.

But then some nights or early mornings, I feel lonelier than ever.

I don’t have many friends. That’s not a complaint.

It’s just a fact. No one talks loneliness or how lonely people are forced to lie to themselves sometimes and say they are fine being alone.

I think we are met to be around others. Maybe not all the time, but sometimes.

And when I’m not, it gets hard. I just do the same things over and over.

Wake up alone, go to work alone, come home alone, go to bed alone.

I sometimes wish I had someone to do nothing with. ”

“Why don’t you date?”

“Because no one else could ever be you.”

I wanted to hug her, but I didn’t know where we were on that front. I wanted to soak up her loneliness and place it inside me. A transfer of hard emotions of sorts.

“I know what that’s like…being lonely. Sometimes, I think my life is defined by my loneliness. I’m surrounded by people all the time, but I swear I’ve never felt so alone being out in Los Angeles. So let me join you,” I told her.

She raised an eyebrow, confused by my comment. Honestly, I wasn’t certain I understood it completely, either.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean, let me join you.” I leaned in toward her and placed my hands on her kneecaps. “We can be lonely together.”

Her eyes fell to my hands on her legs. Was the touch too much? Did she like it? Did she want it? Did I cross a line? I stared at my hand’s placement but didn’t move them. The heat radiating from her smooth brown skin was sending shock waves of light into me.

A few tears fell against my hands. That made me look up once more to those eyes of hers. Tears streamed down Hailee’s cheeks, and she was quick to try to wipe them away. She shifted her legs, making me remove my hands.

“Hails, if this is too much, we can?—”

“No.” She cut in, shaking her head. “It’s just… There’s no one in this world I’d rather be lonely with.”

We talked for a while longer before lying down to count the stars.

One… two… three…

“Forty-five.” Hailee pointed.

“You already counted that one,” I exclaimed.

She tilted her head toward me and scrunched up her nose. “I definitely didn’t count that one.”

“But you did.”

“Didn’t.”

“Did!”

“Is this the hill you want to die on, Walters? After five years of bad cell phone service?” she questioned.

I chuckled and rolled my eyes, looking back up at the night sky. “Forty-five.”