“Maybe it’s stupid,” I say softly. “But what’s the point of money and working hard? I mean, it’s more comfortable, but what’s going to be left of me after all this is gone?”
I feel her shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t think about it that often, I guess.”
“You’re young. You don’t need to. Me though, I guess I hit my midlife crisis early. I want to preserve something for a long time, make sure it survives me, do some good.”
“So you bought this land?”
“Right. I’m going to turn it into a public park or something like that. Make sure they give my name to it. That way, when I’m gone, it’ll still be here. No strip mall, no bullshit housing. Just the land.”
We walk in silence for a bit. We follow a thin path through the trees. Ahead, there’s a small stream running away from the house, heading down to the main Schuylkill River a few miles away. The dogs run around, barking at animals, playing with each other, and I feel happy. I can’t help myself. I smile a little bit, breathe in the air, watch the dogs, and walk along beside Aria.
I don’t feel content very often. In the city, I spend all my time working, building toward something, amassing more and more money. I don’t get to slow down and enjoy myself at all very often, but out here, I feel like I’m finally free. I feel like I’m released from all that.
“You know, this isn’t what I expected,” Aria finally says, breaking the silence.
“What do you mean?”
She shrugs and leans up against a tree. She grabs a rock and skips it into the stream. “You don’t seem like the kind of man that’s worried about his legacy.”
I laugh softly. “Maybe not.”
“And you don’t seem like the type to want to leave a preserved forest behind.” She shakes her head a little bit. “Honestly, Brady. Who are you?”
I grin at her and step closer. “Since when is anyone so simple and easy to understand?” I ask her. “Come on, your whole job is working with people and trying to understand their complexities.”
“I guess I didn’t think you had any.” She gives me a teasing smirk.
“Oh, really?”
“Sure. You seem like you only want one thing.”
I step closer to her, pinning her back against the tree. “Yeah? What’s that?”
“You know what,” she whispers, still smiling.
“No, I don’t. Go ahead and say it.”
She shakes her head slightly. “No way.”
“Say it.” I reach up and grab her hair slightly, tipping her head back. “I want to hear your dirty little mouth say what you’re thinking.”
She takes a sharp breath. “All you want is sex,” she says.
“All I want is to fuck you,” I correct. “I don’t need just any pussy. I need your delicious, tight, pink little cunt.”
She bites her lip. “Same thing.”
“Not at all.” I lean closer and kiss her, slow and deep, hair tight in my fist.
But before I can go further, one of the dogs starts barking. The other joins in a second later and we’re forced to break apart. Davey and Lady are standing a few feet away, barking at the two of us.
“Oh, cut it out,” I grumble at them, letting Aria go. “They hate it when people get too close.”
“Dogs are weird,” she says, laughing.
We start walking away. She throws a stick for Lady, which means she’s stuck playing fetch basically for the rest of her life. She’s good with the dogs, at ease with them, and they seem to like her. That’s always an important test. If she didn’t like the dogs, or if the dogs didn’t like her… well, we’d have some problems.
We walk through my property and I spend the time asking her questions about her life. She tells me more details of how she got started with her job, about her family, about school, about how she wants to become a lawyer.
“Family law,” she specifies.
“Yeah? Why?”
“I want to help women that can’t help themselves,” she says. “You know, do some cheap work.”
“Funny. Most people become lawyers to make money.”
“I make money doing what I do now,” she points out. “I could just keep doing this.”
“Good point.”
“No, I want to do more. I’m helping the clients I have, at least I think I am, but I want to do more. I want to do bigger.”
“You want a legacy.”
She smiles a little at me. “I guess so.”
“Seems like we have that in common. Except instead of becoming a lawyer and helping people, I just bought a bunch of trees.”
She laughs and throws the stick again. Lady goes bounding off after it.
“Aren’t you happy with your job?” she asks me.
“It’s fine,” I admit. “I mean, it’s challenging, and it can be fun. But this wasn’t exactly what I always dreamed of.”
“You’re rich and you own your own successful business. Isn’t that pretty good?”