Someone Like You

“What about you? Any brothers or sisters?” he asked.

“Two sisters, one brother.”

“Do they live close by?”

Teddy shook her head. “We’re pretty spread out, but we all make it home for most holidays.”

“Where’s home?”

“Maryland. Bentonburgh, Maryland. It’s near Hagerstown, not that you’ve heard of either of those places.”

“Actually, I have,” he said.

Teddy looked at him for further explanation.

“A while ago I met a woman studying hotel management. She worked in Breezewood, the Town of Motels, for three years.”

Teddy wasn’t surprised he knew a woman there. She supposed he knew women in lots of places. That fact also surprisingly left her slightly cold. Deciding to move away from discussions about herself and her family, Teddy asked about him, “How did you get into investing?” He smiled at that. She recognized that type of smile. She’d seen it a hundred times on the faces of mothers or grandmothers of the brides. They were usually remembering their own weddings and knew how in love the bride was. The smile took them back in time. Adam had that look.

“My parents let me try it.”

“How?”

“I had a teacher in high school who told us about the stock market. It intrigued me. It was one of the few classes I had where I sat up and listened to what he had to say.” He spread his arms and hunched his shoulders. “I was fascinated by the possibility of turning a little money into a lot of it. I told my parents I wanted to try investing. They said it was too risky. That I would lose anything I had.”

“And you proved them wrong,” she stated.

“Very wrong, but it was a turning point.”

“How?” Teddy took a sip of wine.

She gave him her full attention, just as he must have done to that high school teacher all those years ago.

“I wasn’t the best kid. But in high school, who was?” He paused and gave her a long stare. “I was sixteen and rebellious. I guess I was at that age where a turn one way or the other could make me a man or send me to jail. My parents talked over the idea and agreed to let me have a thousand dollars to play with.”

“Play with?” Teddy’s brows rose. Her parents weren’t poor, but she couldn’t imagine them giving her that much money when she was in high school.

“Money was the first thing that really interested me. They would try anything that would hold my attention and keep me out of trouble,” he explained. “The money was enough that I would be careful with it. So I read all the reports, learned the language, took small steps. Within a year, I’d turned the thousand into five thousand.”

“You’re kidding.” Teddy stared at him. She knew that kind of return was unheard of.

He shook his head.

“That’s a phenomenal return on investment,” she said.

“It was. I made good choices and I learned that I was good with money. After that I took every class I could on investing and wealth management. After college I took a job on Wall Street, got my feet wet and struck out on my own.”

He smiled, proud of himself. Teddy liked that he put his mind to something and stuck with it. “So if you’re ever looking to invest…” He left the sentence hanging.

“You’re not going to give me a sales pitch?”

“Why? Are you a hard sell?”

“Extremely hard,” Teddy said.

“I’m good at what I do,” Adam challenged.

“I see,” Teddy said flatly. “So you like handling other people’s money?”

“As much as you like the weddings you plan, I like building wealth.”

Teddy thought about the wealth they had built, she and Diana. Both had come from humble backgrounds. Diana had been a scholarship student at Princeton, and Teddy, too, had had scholarships and had worked partially through Stanford. Both understood the need for capital and they learned management of money as a necessity to their business.

Teddy wasn’t wealthy, but she was comfortable. Her designs were selling for thousands of dollars and she had a growing portfolio. It wasn’t managed by Adam’s company.

“What is the name of your investment firm?” Teddy asked.