Page 69 of Plus Size Player

“Therewereten questions.”

“No.” I shook my head and starting walking again. “There were nine.”

He ran his hand over his beard. “There were ten.”

“No!” The look on his face gave me pause. “Are you joking with me?”

He frowned. “I’m afraid not.”

“When I argued with that guy, you had my back the whole time!” I argued.

“And I’m going to always have your back in public.” He grabbed my hand and brought it to his lips as we made our way toward the Ferris wheel. “And I’ll call you on your shit in private.”

I bit my lip. “Okay.”

A woman walked by, loudly talking on her cell phone about her skyrocketing rent while corralling her three kids.

“That’s one of the reasons why I can’t wait for my house to be done,” he declared.

“Yeah, rent is wild. I don’t understand how they are justifying the hikes. My rent went up almost three hundred dollars, and they’ve done nothing different.”

“It’s been cheaper for me to live in a hotel since my lease was up in July than it would’ve been for me to do a month-to-month lease until my house is ready at the end of the month.”

“You’ve been traveling so much anyway so it wouldn’t havemade sense to pay rent and pay for a hotel if you have the option to let go of one.”

He nodded. “Yeah. I don’t mind spending money. But I need it to make sense and that doesn’t make sense to me.”

We launched into a conversation about financial literacy and capitalism.

“—and don’t get me started on credit scores,” I complained, rolling my eyes. “That’s the most made-up shit.”

“Hell yeah,” he agreed. “You can pay the minimum balance or the full balance, and it does the same thing to your score. Paying off a loan hurts your credit score, but getting more credit cards can build it.” He shook his head. “The score is contingent upon borrowing money, but you need a score to borrow money. And you need a borrowing history to get a score.”

He spoke with such elegant passion, I found myself staring up at him. Realizing he was done speaking, I quickly nodded in agreement. “It’s wild.”

“And they don’t teach enough about that when we’re young. The whole thing is a setup.”

A preteen kid tripped his mother up, and our conversation immediately deviated to the shenanigans in front of us. Once she got up and it was clear that she wasn’t hurt, I tried not to laugh. But I shifted my gaze to Russ and the moment our eyes met, we both cracked up. I had tears in my eyes when he said she looked like she was on ice. We joked our way to our last ride.

“Look at the sky,” I marveled, standing in line for the Ferris wheel. The sky was the prettiest shade of powder blue. The streaks of sunlight burst from behind huge fluffy clouds. “It’s beautiful.”

“Yeah, it is,” Russ responded quietly.

I glanced at him and found him staring at me. I grinned. “You’re not looking.”

“Oh, I’m looking.”

I giggled, bumping him with my hip. “I meant at the sky!”

“Can you blame me?”

My stomach fluttered. Cocking my head to the side, I gave him a look. “Are you trying to seduce me?”

He leaned down, putting his lips against the shell of my ear. “Always.”

I nodded, placing my hands against his chest. “Well, it’s working.”

Moving his head so our foreheads touched, he stared into my eyes. “Oh, really?”

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