Beauty and the Billionaire

Now, sitting in the middle of the lake facing each other, only us and the guy running the boat rental shop in the park from what I can tell, I’m having trouble finding the right thing to say.

“Is this your first time boating?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Ash says and we resume our silence.

She told me she’d never been on a boat when we made the plans to come here, but I don’t know where else to go from here.

“I would have thought you’d have all sorts of yachting experience,” I tell her.

She smiles a little. She says, “My parents were more the private jet types.”

“Tell me about them,” I say. “It must be pretty unique growing up with them as your parents.”

“I don’t know if it’s unique,” she says. “It doesn’t feel that way to me. It’s what I’ve always known. There were a lot of things I found weren’t universal as I started growing up, though.”

“Yeah?” I ask. “Like what?”

Our first few hours completely alone in almost a week and we’re sitting here talking about her parents. This kind of talk is good for setting the groundwork for a relationship, but it’s not the kind of thing that’s going to bring back that chemistry that brought us together in the first place.

“Well,” she says, leaning back a little, holding onto the underside of her seat for support, “I remember being freaked out when I got to school and realized not everyone’s parents had a different luxury car for every day of the week. When I went home that night, I asked my parents if they could give some of their cars to the other kids’ parents. You can imagine how that went over.”

“When I was a kid, we almost never had a car,” I tell her. “When we did, we never had it very long before mom wrapped it around a light post.”

This isn’t the way to go and I know it. We should be talking about what we have in common, not the massive differences in our upbringings.

“How’s Chris doing?” she asks. “Do you think he’s going to clean up his act?”

“I don’t know,” I tell her. “If it’s all right with you, I’d rather not talk about Chris right now.”

“Oh,” she says, nodding. “All right.”

It shouldn’t be this hard.

“It’s a beautiful view, isn’t it?” I ask, looking around.

“Yeah,” Ash says. “It’s really pretty out here.”

“It’s funny how this place has been sitting here all of both our lives and we’re both just seeing it for the first time,” I observe.

“Hey, Mason!” Ash says and I look back at her. She’s leaning over the side of the boat, looking into the water. “Come here and check this out. What kind of fish are these?”

I lean a little so I can see where she’s looking, but I can’t see any fish. It’s hard not to smile. I think I know what she has in mind.

“I can’t tell,” I answer. “What do they look like?”

“They’re pretty small,” she says, “but they’ve got all these bright colors. Like that one has a big green splotch on one side. Come over here and look at this.”

Yeah, it’s a trap.

Regardless, I slowly stand and step over to Ash, trying to keep the boat as steady as possible as I do.

“Careful,” she says. “We wouldn’t want you to fall in.”

“Where are they?” I ask as I get close enough.

“Right there,” she says, pointing. “They’re small, though. You have to get kind of close otherwise the tint of the water makes it so you can’t see them.”

Do I have my cellphone in my pocket? I give my pants a quick feel. Nope. Keys and money are either in the car or in the locker the boat rental guy let us stash our remaining valuables in, too.