Page 35 of Wish Lists and Road Trips

“Work.” I turned the cart around and kicked it, sending it rolling back to her. She caught it with her feet, then climbed into the basket, sitting cross-legged.

“You’re always on that thing,” she said, gesturing to my phone.

“Yeah, well, I’m not playing Candy Crush.”

“What exactly do you do?”

What didn’t I do? I set my phone aside and sat up. “When my dad finds a property he likes, a foreclosure or maybe some land he thinks we could develop, he sends it to me and I make sure it’s a good investment. I research it, run the numbers on what we need to make for a profit. If we need financing, I secure it. If it’s a bid project, I write up the scope of work. Then there’s the inventory we keep to rent out. I basically manage the whole portfolio.”

Her eyebrows shot to her hairline. “When do you sleep?”

For the last couple months, rarely. But that wasn’t because of my job. My dad had always leaned hard on me to the detriment of anything else in my life. He had to when we were younger, on account of Alex being sick. I knew I was lucky to be healthy and I couldn’t complain. Still, as an adult, I looked back sometimes and wondered if it was too much. It was more important to shelter Alex from the tough shit, though. We had to keep his stress down.

“It’s a lot,” I told Brit, “but it’s my family’s legacy. I like the work for the most part. I like finding value in things that other people overlook. It’s the responsibility of it all that’s stressful. Between contractors and tenants. You know, there’s a lot of money at stake.”

“So like all the stress of buying my house but times a thousand and every day.”

“Yeah. Sort of.”

“Do you ever get to pick the properties you invest in? I think that would be fun.”

I pressed my finger to my phone, spinning it on the plastic chair. A few weeks ago, I’d gone to my dad with a commercial project I wanted to invest in. Something Tom and I had found. The two of us had done all of the research, but it was still sitting on my dad’s desk weeks later even though the clock was always ticking in this business.

“If I see something I like, I bring it to my dad. We don’t always agree, and he has the final say.”

She chewed her lip, studying me. I shifted uncomfortably, hoping she couldn’t see that sore spot the way she saw everything else.

A buzzer echoed off of the linoleum and metal but Brit didn’t move. “That sound means your wash is done.”

“Oh!” She pushed off of the table and sent herself sailing toward the machine, not quite making it. She gave me a pitiful look and I got up and pushed her the rest of the way.

She moved her dress from the washer to the dryer, making it much harder than it needed to be by not getting out of the cart, but she seemed to be amusing herself.

“Seems kind of expensive for hot air,” she said, feeding quarters into the machine.

“Says the girl with the trust fund.” She stuck her tongue out at me and I hit the start button since she couldn’t reach it from the cart. “You’ve never had to pay for laundry before?” I asked. “Did you live in a dorm?”

“I lived there but I didn’t usually stay on campus on the weekends.”

“Bet you missed a lot of fun.”

“Not really. Did you go to a lot of parties in college?”

“Enough.” Truth was, I wasn’t one to talk about missing out on fun. I did the party thing, the drinking, the football games, but I didn’t enjoy any of it like I should have. In the back of my head, I was always worried that something would happen to Alex or my mom while I was gone. I couldn’t shake the feeling that every good time I had was like the montage scenes in movies, right before it all goes bad.

Brit leaned back in the cart, letting her legs hang over the side, and I took a longer look than I should have. “Why didn’t you want to stay on campus?”

“My dad knew someone in the admissions department so my freshman year, he made sure I was assigned to room with the daughter of one of his business associates. It would have been nice to make that decision for myself, but that’s life with my father.”

It was interesting, I thought, the way she seemed to be begging the world to give her more responsibility when I’d spent my whole life wishing I had less.

She tugged at my boxers, sticking her fingers in the waistband and rolling them once. “Anyway, I guess you could say we weren’t a good fit. Or I wasn’t.”

“That’s kind of hard to believe,” I said.

“What is?”

I pushed the cart with my foot, making it spin, and she giggled. “Someone not liking you.”

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