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Chapter 3: The Mud and the Clouds

Back in my tiny apartment, the lingering effects of the alcohol left me feeling dizzy and profoundly hollow. I collapsed onto my lumpy mattress, wanting to sleep for a decade.

Suddenly, my phone vibrated on the nightstand. It was a message from Nathaniel.

“Get some rest tonight. Tomorrow is Saturday. Let’s go for a run by the harbor. The place you’ve always loved.”

Nathaniel’s concern was always so perfectly timed, so incredibly unexpected. He remembered the little things, like my favorite running trails or a cake I had casually mentioned months ago. He would magically appear outside my company gate right when I was most exhausted, bringing a small gift that would move me to tears.

But his attitude was as ambiguous and uncatchable as the wind. He never said he loved me, nor did he ever explicitly say he didn’t. I couldn’t grasp him. I just followed him aimlessly, filled with perpetual anxiety.

I was so incredibly tired.

I didn’t reply to his message. I turned off the screen and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

The next morning, I woke up to find four missed calls from Nathaniel. I checked his WhatsApp. His background image had been changed back to the picture of the golden retriever puppy.

I felt nothing but exhaustion.

After that night, we didn’t see each other for a long time. Nathaniel suddenly became “busy” with corporate mergers. I no longer initiated conversations. The frequency of our chats decreased significantly, shifting from daily updates to sterile, weekly check-ins.

It reached a point where I had to check Victoria’s Instagram just to find out what the man I loved was doing.

Those weeks were completely silent for me, but loud for him. Nathaniel had taken her to the Arctic Circle to watch the Northern Lights. He took her sailing off the coast of Spain. They strolled on the beaches of Jeju Island, watching the sunset.

The latest post on Victoria’s feed was pinned to the top of her page. On a rocky, beautiful beach, Victoria was leaning back against Nathaniel’s chest, throwing up a cheerful peace sign. Nathaniel had his arms wrapped securely around her waist, his chin resting tenderly on her shoulder.

The world around me fell completely silent. It turned out, I too could be silent for a long time.

Nathaniel had never officially confirmed their relationship to me, but those photos screamed the truth from the rooftops. I gently touched my cheek, surprised to find it was already soaked with cold tears.

It’s okay, I told myself, wiping my face. Hormones will fade. The chemicals of love will gradually diminish. I will eventually come to my senses and survive this.

The next time I saw Nathaniel was exactly a month later.

One stormy, chaotic Tuesday afternoon, I stood outside my corporate office gate clutching a thick stack of legal documents, desperately trying to hail a taxi in the torrential rain. I needed to take the contracts to an aggressive client who was hosting a private dinner at a cigar lounge across town. The documents themselves weren’t urgent, but my boss had insisted I deliver them personally. A wealthy boys-club dinner party always required a “beautiful woman” to show up and entertain them to keep the account active.

I hated it. It made my skin crawl. But for the massive commission check I needed for my father’s medical bills, I had to comply.

The rain was heavy, the roads were flooded, and every cab was taken.

Then, the familiar, sleek silhouette of a Porsche Panamera cut through the rain, stopping right in front of me, splashing water onto my cheap heels.

The tinted window rolled down smoothly. Revealing not only Nathaniel’s dark eyes, but also the girl sitting comfortably in the passenger seat. The beautiful porcelain princess from the photos.

“Sister Audrey! Would you like to get in? I’ll ask Nate to wait for you,” the girl called out sweetly.

She tilted her head, a slight, condescending smile playing on her perfectly painted lips, hinting at a deep inside joke.

Sister Audrey.

We were apparently so close that she gave me a familiar nickname. She knew exactly who I was. To win her favor and prove his transparency, Nathaniel had obviously used my pathetic, one-sided feelings for him as casual, amusing conversation over dinner.

The rain poured down, soaking my hair. I stood on the concrete steps, my eyes meeting Nathaniel’s through the rain.

After a heavy, agonizing silence, he gently gripped the leather steering wheel, deliberately avoiding my gaze. “Get in the car, Audrey. Where do you need to go? I’ll take you.”

Just then, my phone rang with an urgent, screaming text from my boss asking where the hell I was.

Seeing that I hadn’t reacted, Nathaniel’s eyes fell on the stack of documents I was clutching to my chest. He honked the horn impatiently. It was important work, and I was going to catch pneumonia.

I looked at my phone screen, swallowed my pride, and opened the rear door, sliding into the back seat.

After a month of not seeing him, the interior of Nathaniel’s car had changed entirely. The puppy-shaped throw pillow I used to keep in the back seat was gone. It had been replaced by a mountain of high-end designer shopping bags. The expensive cashmere scarf I had meticulously saved up for three months to buy him for his birthday was now pressed to the floorboard, crumpled and mixed in with the pile of trash.

“Please excuse the mess, Audrey,” the girl in the front seat turned around, giving me a bright, flawlessly confident smile. “I have quite a lot of things. It’s all Nate’s fault for insisting on buying out the boutiques today.”

She giggled, touching his arm. “Oh, right, my name is Victoria. Nate mentions you sometimes. He says he has a very… close friend.” She emphasized the word ‘friend’ as if intentionally mocking me.

Over the years, I had navigated corporate sharks and witnessed more than enough instances of the ultra-rich looking down on the working class. I wasn’t overly agitated. I just felt incredibly tired.

“Hello, Victoria,” I offered a slight, perfectly polite smile.

“Audrey, I heard Nate say you work in corporate sales, right?” Victoria paused, her eyes glinting with malice. “I heard that to be a top seller in your industry, you basically have to use your body to get the older clients to sign. Drinking with them, entertaining them. It must be so exhausting to debase yourself. And yet, Nate tells me you’re a team leader this year. You must be really good at it.”

Victoria’s tone was wrapped in honey, but every single word carried a razor-sharp thorn.

It was ridiculous. I had never been a match for her. Not because of my looks or my intellect, but because Nathaniel had never allowed me to be a match for her. In his mind, I was a charity case, while she was a peer.

I glanced at Nathaniel in the rearview mirror. His aristocratic face was so calm it was almost expressionless. He was completely, coldly silent. He didn’t defend me.

I took a deep breath and sat up straight. “Miss Victoria, your reasoning is quite fascinating. It’s like seeing a Michelin-star chef holding a kitchen knife and immediately assuming it’s a murder weapon. In your narrow perception, success apparently only has one sleazy path.”

Victoria was visibly startled, her manicured eyes wide. She opened her mouth to snap back, but Nathaniel interrupted with a sharp shout.

“Victoria, that’s enough.”

He glanced at my reflection through the mirror. I didn’t look back at him. I just turned my face to the rain-streaked window.

“We’ve arrived,” I said flatly. “Pull over.”

Nathaniel’s eyelids twitched slightly as he looked out the window, seeing the dazzling, garish neon sign of the Golden Apex Club—a notorious, high-end gentlemen’s lounge.

He let out a cold, disgusted laugh. “Audrey, look at this place. Victoria has been sheltered her whole life. You stand before her representing this? Is this really where you need to be?”

Realizing I wasn’t joking about going inside, Nathaniel’s expression froze. He suddenly slammed on the brakes, pulling hard against the curb.

Without waiting for him to unlock the doors, I manually pulled the handle, grabbed my documents, and rushed straight out into the freezing downpour.

Nathaniel cursed, hurriedly throwing the car in park. He grabbed an umbrella and leaped out of the car, completely ignoring Victoria’s indignant shouts from the passenger seat.

“Get out of the way! Audrey, what the hell are you doing?!”

The rain poured down like a waterfall. He caught up to me on the sidewalk, grabbing my wrist forcefully. His face was icy cold, flushed with anger.

I laughed. It was a bitter, helpless, hollow laugh. I shook the soaking wet documents in my hand. “Nathaniel, don’t you see? I am at work.”

Nathaniel seemed utterly disgusted that I was attending a men’s club gathering. In his eyes, a dark cloud rolled in.

“What serious, legitimate client would sign a contract in a sleazy place like that?!” he yelled over the rain. “What kind of place is that? You’re better than this, Audrey!”

“Entertaining clients and fighting for signatures is part of my job!” I yelled back, the rain mixing with my tears. “Or is it that in your and Victoria’s elite eyes, my hustle to survive is inherently dirty?”

I had always felt Nathaniel’s subtle contempt for my work. Or rather, his utter lack of comprehension regarding the brutal struggle for survival of the lower class. He was like a high, pristine moon in the sky. And the moon never has to wade through the mud, so naturally, he wouldn’t understand how heavy a single dollar bill is, or how the lack of it can crush an ordinary family into dust.

“I didn’t mean it that way, Audrey,” Nathaniel said, his grip loosening slightly.

“Yes, you did!” I cried out. “Nathaniel, you live in the clouds! You see the mud as dirty. Yes, it’s dirty! But for people like me, hanging precariously on the absolute edge of a precipice, trying to keep a paralyzed father alive, every single dirty strand of rope is something we have to cling to!”

Nathaniel’s expression stiffened completely. His dark eyes revealed a profound bewilderment and shock I had never seen before. He had never actually seen my reality; he had only ever seen the polished, smiling version of me I presented to him.

On the second floor of the club, the heavy mahogany window swung open. The sleazy client who had been waiting for me poked his head out, looking down at me in the rain with a sarcastic, impatient smirk.

The sky was gray, heavy, and suffocating, but I still had to rush around for my livelihood.

“Audrey, don’t torment yourself. Don’t plunge into the abyss for a commission,” Nathaniel’s voice trembled slightly. His hands reached for me.

He didn’t know that what he called the abyss was actually the ledge I had struggled for four agonizing years to climb up to. I had endured so much humiliation, sexism, and patience to get to where I was. People who live in the clouds always think that falling requires courage. But they don’t understand that for those of us born in the mud, even having the luxury to look up at the sky is a privilege.

Nathaniel tightened his grip on my shoulder. “If you step into that club today, we won’t even have a chance to be friends anymore.”

Friends?

“Who needs to be friends with you?” I whispered, looking at him with absolute, dead finality.

I resolutely, violently pushed his hand away.

“Then we aren’t friends anymore.”

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