I watched him closely, not sure if his gaze was a challenge or a surrender.
“Well, maybe I needed that, too,” I said. “To get out of the city.”
He clicked his tongue. “A break from your billions, huh?”
“Not quite billions, yet,” I said.
“Fine. Millions,” he said. “So you got tired of your penthouse loft and your assistants and your social-climber friends.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. He couldn’t know how badly that would sting.
About a month ago, I’d walked in on my best friend Jack, bare-assed, his cock deep inside my girlfriend. Sure, we’d been on the rocks, and sure, I was going to need to break up with her anyway. But it was another blow in a long list of them. I had been friends with Jack since my early days on Wall Street, and we’d come up together, interning and delivering coffee to execs before we’d made our own way.
I took a slow sip of my martini, enjoying the bitter burn of the vodka.
“I needed a break from New York,” I said simply.
Sam was open and honest about everything, all of the time, but the closest thing to emotion I knew how to express was sarcasm.
“A break from New York,” he repeated, looking at me like he knew damn well I was full of shit.
“Don’t you have a thirst-trap picture of your abs you can go take?” I said.
He rolled his eyes. “Please just don’t make this trip all about you. Okay?”
“I’m sure you’ll take center spotlight like you always do, Sam. Don’t worry your pretty head about that.”
He quickly gave me a middle finger and I raised my martini glass to him in a disingenuous toast.
He strutted off, helping other customers and disappearing back into the world he belonged in so well.
The truth was, I’d needed much more than a “break” from New York.
A funny thing had happened in the last two years.
I’d turned twenty-eight. Then twenty-nine. Then thirty. I had more money than I could fathom. I had so much money I didn’t even know how much I had, and the numbers only got higher with every passing day.
The goal had always been to get more. But now that I’d gotten there, I felt a growing emptiness inside me that I couldn’t just throw more money at to fix.
I began sleeping past all my alarms, when in the past I’d bolted out of bed at 4:45a.m. I’d be in bed with a beautiful swimsuit model—or three—and I’d be limp, unable to even muster a half-chub. Looking at the numbers in my bank accounts made me feel nothing. In fact, they had started to make me feel sick. What was I doing, sitting around with all of this money, blowing it on everything and nothing?
I donated to charities—mostly for ovarian cancer research, to honor my mom. But it always felt like a drop in the bucket. I wanted to do more, but I had no direction.
I was professionally numb, even though I was still working 80-hour weeks all the time. Wall street started to feel more like a claustrophobic obligation than anything else. A role I was playing, even if I played it well.
And then my dad had called. For the first time in months, I'd answered, instead of shooting him a short text. When he asked if I wanted to come on the RV road trip with him and Cathy, I could already hear the defeat in his voice before he’d even finished.
He knew I wouldn't go.
Everybody knew everything about me, it seemed, before I even had a chance to speak. I was that fucking predictable.
So I decided not to be predictable. I told my dad I’d come along.
And for the first time in God knows how long, I had felt something. Some spark. Some emotion, maybe a mix of fear and excitement and what-the-fuck-did-I-just-agree-to. But the thought of ditching New York City for the first time in years also felt like finally being free.
Of course, the moment I'd gotten here to podunk Amberfield, the doubts started flooding in. Dirt, cows, and fields. Nothing to do. I’d resorted to opening up Instagram, something I hadn't done in a long time.
And that’s how I’d ended up here, staring at Sam as he pranced around gracefully at work.
I could understand why Sam would want nothing to do with me. Even though we’d been forced into the same house as teenagers, we certainly weren’t family. But being in his presence tonight made me feel more alive than I had in months. Maybe years.
“Don’t you have, like, three companies back in New York you need to be running?” Sam asked.
He was leaning against the bar in front of me, his biceps in glorious display as he wiped the wood.
“I don’t run the company,” I said. “I’m a junior exec.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”