After surviving the flying knives lunch date, Grace and I met up every single day.
The first time, I unexpectedly turned up at her house. Her face was a picture when she came out and saw my sparkly new BMW hybrid.
“A new car?” She stepped off the porch and approached the vehicle. “Whoa. Look at that; a new SUV!” Perhaps she expected a used truck or some old beater like the car the twins shared. But what’s the point in having the money in the bank? I needed a decent car to get me to my destination and back without breaking down and leaving me stranded.
“Was it a treat from your parents?” She pointed scornfully at the vehicle as if she were judging me harshly.
She may have thought I’d had everything too easy, but she had no idea. My parents were fairly well off, but they’d worked hard for every penny. They were very much self-made, and Brandon and I had inherited their can-do, hard-work ethics.
“I paid for it out of my own money. Cash I earned from working over the last few years.” I didn’t need to tell her the purchase barely made a dent in my bank balance. For the summer months I’d set myself the task of find out the best way to invest my money, as at the moment my current account showed an obscenely long figure.
Her eyes widened. I sensed her approval. “I didn’t know you had a job. What do you do?”
“Oh, it’s Internet-based tech work. So I can fit it in at any hours along with schoolwork and a social life,” I said modestly.
“That’s really handy.” She appeared curious. “It must pay well for you to afford a brand-new car like that.” Her brow furrowed. “It’s not something illegal on the dark web, is it?”
“No! C’mon, you know me better than that.”
“Yeah, I suppose I do.”
“Well, the work does pay well, but I put in a lot of hours. People may not realize when I was at home I was working not just chilling.”
“Oh, I am impressed. I thought you sometimes looked sleepy in class. Did you pull all-nighters?”
I chuckled. “Actually, on top of schoolwork, I’ve been doing the equivalent of a full-time job, maybe forty hours a week, for the past two years.”
Her expression showed her surprise. “Oh, my life. I had no idea.”
“The work just snowballed, and before I knew it, if I didn’t put the hours in, I’d be letting people down. It’s just lucky that I’m one of those night owls who doesn’t need much sleep.”
“Sounds like the company took advantage of your loyalty.”
I smiled. “Yeah, you could say that. But that’s why you hadn’t seen me so much out of school when people were socializing, hanging out, and doing their volunteer work. I was working.”
“And now it paid off. You have a vehicle that’s, well, big.”
“I called around to see if I could get a Tesla—any model at all, but there were none available locally to pick up and drive away. There’s a waiting list for those cars. This is my make do for now car.”
The way she laughed suggested she didn’t take my comments seriously, but I didn’t correct her. If she found me entertaining and not a show-off, I could live with that.
We went for a drive, nowhere in particular. And while I drove, she pressed all the buttons in an attempt to figure out the high-tech GPS and entertainment system. It impressed her and me.
I just drove with nowhere in mind.
We looked at the scenery and chatted.
And before we knew it, two hours had gone by, so we figured out how to get her back home again. We got back to her place and agreed we were both famished.
We ordered takeout food, which we ate in front of a movie. Her mom was out, and we had the place to ourselves. Grace chose a horror film about psycho hitchhikers and told me to observe carefully the lesson which would make me to stay safe on the road.
“Would the lesson be not to pick up hitchhikers? Or to always carry a big heavy shovel in case I need to hit a psychopath with it and then dig a hole to bury his body?”
“You work out your own morale to the story.”
“I don’t know why driving made me so hungry,” I said and then noticed she’d barely made a dent in hers. “What’s the matter? Don’t you like the food?”
“Oh, it’s not that. I was starved when I took the first two mouthfuls, but now I’m not feeling it.”
“Is it the movie putting you off?” I suggested.
She giggled. “Yeah, that must be it.”
“You said it. I don’t mind if you want to change it.”
“No. It’s fine. I’m enjoying the movie, just I’m not as hungry as I thought I was. I ate a big breakfast,” she added.