grandchildren. I think they want it more than they want me to
actually be happy. They keep pushing sons of family friends
on me. It’s terrible. They don’t care if we’re compatible at all.”
“That would be really awkward. I can’t say I’ve ever
had the pleasure.”
“You’re lucky,” Steph says. She makes an effort to
laugh softly at herself, and takes a sip of water. “The thing is,
the real thing, the problem I guess, is that my parents are rich.
They have a lot of money. They have a company that sells
tires. They’re still very involved with it, even though they’re
just about ready to retire. They should have a long time ago,
but I guess they held out hope that I’d get involved in it
eventually. I have an older brother. He’s running one of the
departments now. I always wanted to be a teacher. Ever since I
was a kid, I knew that’s what I wanted to do. It’s not that I
don’t like tires. I love tires. I love that my car tires are always
awesome and that I’ve never had an accident because they’re
reliable. Anyway. I’ve dated a few guys who I had hopes for.
Everything was going good and then they found out that I
come from all this money and all of the sudden it wasn’t
authentic anymore. I could tell they were just trying in the
hopes there’d be a big payout if they stuck it out long enough.”
I set my pen down slowly on the notepad. “Wow.
That’s pretty crazy.”
“Yeah. I didn’t even bring them around to my parents’
house. They live in a really nice place in a gated community.
It’s obvious that they have money, but those guys, they just
looked my name up on the internet. They found out way
before I was ready to tell them. It took me a while to realize it
the first time, but after that I was constantly suspicious, and I