i accidentally met dream

twelve

It's been a week since I've seen Clay, my work schedule has been taking up all my time. I called in "sick" those few days that he took me to the beach so I had to make it up. I learned how to bake some cakes, with the bakery owners decorating them since I was still quite bad. It wasn't a terrible week, but it wasn't a great week. I got upset when I was free, Clay was not, and when Clay was free, I was unfortunately busy. We tried texting or calling, but we would always be in the middle of something.

So of course, I had to work hard so I was able to have some days off, and indeed, I got 3 full days off. The owners are nice, so they didn't mind at all with my vacation request, but they said when I come back, I had to learn to decorate. Since they are getting older, they're having to spend time away from doing what they love and more time trying to, well, stay alive and stay healthy. One day, I'm going to be the only one taking care of their bakery, unless their granddaughter takes over the bakery when they graduate college.

I sat down on my couch, exhausted. Today was the hardest last day of work before my 3 day break. Well, it wasn't that hard. Just exhausting. The amount of rude people I had to deal with today- My phone started ringing.

"Hello??" I answered, tiredly.

"(Y/n)? Am I interrupting something?" Clay's voice somehow made me less tired.

"No. I just got off work. What's up?" I asked, forcing myself to get up off of the couch and change into more comfy clothes.

"I was wondering if you wanted to come over? I know it's been hard getting a hold of you all week and I wanted to take a risk now to see if you were busy, but of course if you're busy now you-"

"I'll be there in 10 minutes. And yes, I remember how to get there." I yawned for a sec and then paused, waiting for him to answer back or at least say something.

"Great then! See you soon.." He mumbled something after that, but I couldn't quite hear him through the quality of his phone.

"Yeah. Later." I hung up, tossing my phone on my bed and changing into something else. Comfortable, yet just not sweatpants. Don't want to embarrass myself. I mean, it's not that bad wearing sweats and I'm sure Clay wouldn't mind, but I feel out of place at his house to show up in just sweats. I shouldn't care what he thinks though. But I do. For some reason, I care so much about what Clay thinks about what I wear when I see him.

I stop going through my clothes and settle on a different shirt, one that's not as large, but one that's still comfy. I'm leaving the sweats on. I keep overthinking about the littlest stuff. They're just pants. They are just pants (Y/n).

+++

My drive over there was a lot shorter than I thought, though the last time I was commuting to his house, I was overthinking about meeting his family. I ended up having to ask him for the address, eventually. It was kind of me thinking about how I actually didn't pay attention to the turns and I didn't want to get too lost. It wasn't that far away from where I lived either, maybe 20 minutes away, 30 with traffic. The area was nice, somewhere I would never be able to afford, though. I drove past a family playing with a dog and it made me think back to my family, in the past anyways. Them now? Don't know what they're up to. Still haven't talked to them in months. The last time I actually thought about my family was when I bumped into Clay at the park a little over two weeks ago.

I can't believe it's been a little over two weeks since I actually talked and started hanging out with Clay. It's pretty cool, meaning that I haven't kept a lot of IRL friendships alive. Most of them are online now. The ones IRL, moved on to other things whether that be people or work or school. The online friends that I have are much better anyways. Marc and I haven't been keeping touch either, not like we need to, but we were work friends and nothing more. We never hung out outside of work unless each other's cars were in the shop.

Locking my car, I walked up the sidewalk to his door, taking a second to get the courage to knock. I knocked. "One sec!"I heard, muffled from the other side of the doorway. "Patches, no-" Then a crash. I waited patiently, watching the sky turn from cloudy sunny, to dark clouds real fast. Probably going to rain soon. A few minutes later, Clay opened the door. He lets out a few breaths. Sounded like he just ran a marathon. "Sorry. Patches knocked some stuff over because I gave her a bath earlier. She wasn't happy about that." He chuckled awkwardly. "Uh- Oh! Come in. Sorry."

"You're good, I was just admiring the rain clouds." I walked in and he shut the door. Patches was calmly over on his couch, cleaning herself. Softly smiling to myself, I spoke up and turned back towards Clay. "How have you been?"

"Good! Just busy with stuff. Talking to friends a lot to keep my sanity." He walks over to the kitchen, grabbing a big bowl of, what I'm assuming, popcorn. We both walked to the couch in front of the TV and he turned the TV on to a movie.

"What are your friends like? Well, the ones you've been talking to I mean." I ask, trying not to make it suspicious sounding since I already know he's talking about Sapnap, George, BadBoyHalo, and the various other youtubers and twitch streamers that he talks with.

"They're nice and funny. Pretty cool too. There's a few that are my really close friends. I mean, there are others that are pretty chill too, I just wouldn't consider them my close friends." He says, snacking away at his popcorn and turning his attention to the movie that was playing. He offered me some popcorn and I silently thanked him for it.

Not once has he commented about what I was wearing. I don't know why I was overthinking the outfit so much, it hasn't even been brought up or commented on. But that's good. I prefer to not talk about it.