Page 59 of Fun at Parties
He looks down. “It feels like that would be going backward.”
My throat tightens, and I nod far too many times. I didn’t brace myself for that answer. I think I expected amaybe,and now I feel a wash of guilt as I realize a secret part of me was holding on to a shred of a hypothetical silver lining at the thought that at least if he fails, we’ll be living in the same place again.We will never have the right timing,I remind myself. “You got what you needed out of California.”
“Yeah. And now it’s time to go home. Until everything happened with Dad, I thought Seapoint was the greatest place to live in the world. I want to see if that feels true again. I miss it.”
I nod, even though the idea of feeling that connected to a particular place is foreign to me. “There are other camps.”
“There are. None that I would risk everything to own at this point, but I could get a job in management. Or do something similar at, like, a gym.” He studies his knuckles. “Maybe I’ll go back to school or something. I don’t know.”
He says it too casually, the thing about school. He’sembarrassed.That after rejecting his dad’s expectations and growing up to be self-sufficient without a degree, he might want the thing he said he didn’t need.
“You want that?”
“I want the camp. But if that doesn’t happen, maybe. I used to like school. I like learning, although I’m a little skeptical about the usefulness of what you learn in a classroom.”
“I get that,” I say. “I don’t regret going to college, even though it wasn’t necessary for what I’m doing now.”
“And you might not have gotten into cycling if you did something else.”
“Right. I just wish I’d been smarter about it financially. But you’re in a totally different place than I was at eighteen, so I’m sure you’d go about it more responsibly than I did.”
He winces and rolls his shoulders, then pulls off his flannel, balls it up, and sticks it behind his head. “Ah, much better.”
“Shouldn’t we go soon?”
“Not yet.” But instead of staying where he is, he reaches into the backseat. After rustling around, he comes backwith another flannel from his bag, which he folds into a rectangle, adjusting it until it’s sufficiently pillow-shaped. He hands it to me.
“Thanks,” I say. When we lie back down, we face each other.
“You were talking about student loans?”
My dignity shrivels inside me, curling up like a pill bug. “Sort of. I should’ve gone somewhere cheaper, or somewhere I could’ve gotten a scholarship. But I didn’t think about it. My parents said student loans were good debt.” I bite my lip. “But I got into the bad kind of debt too.”
“What do you mean?”
I mean five figures on credit cards I shouldn’t have had, for things I absolutely did not need, but there’s no way I’m saying the number out loud. “I was a complete idiot with my finances for way too long. I only knew one way to handle money, and it wasn’t good. Like, when I was younger, I’d buy a new outfit for a presentation as a confidence boost.”
“That doesn’t sound unreasonable,” he says.
“But I never bought the outfit at TJ Maxx. I shopped at all these expensive places where I had no business buying anything. God, I had so many pairs of those stupid fucking Tory Burch flats. If I went out with a bunch of people, sometimes I bought pizza for everyone afterward. I went on spring break in college when I should’ve stayed back and worked. I thought it was an investment. That spending money would help me make friends. That acting like I had money would somehow lead to having money.”
“Well,” he says. “You didn’t have a good model for financial responsibility.”
My laugh is bitter. “Yeah. I won’t even get into the loan my parents took out in my name, which we’re still repaying. But shouldn’t I have figured it out myself? I knew why we moved from a McMansion to a little old rental house. I watched them tow the purple car out of the school parking lot.”
“You can’t unlearn a lifetime of something overnight.”
“It took me way too long to unlearn it. Things didn’t get better until I moved in with Michelle and she saw how bad I was with money, even though I was making more than I ever had in my life. She taught me how to be responsible. But the damage was done, and now I answer to Wells Fargo.”
A question is forming on his lips, and a wave of terror hits me at the prospect that he may be about to offer help.
“I’m good now,” I rush to clarify. “It’s not paid off, but it will be. I don’t know how I would do it without CycleLove. I have equity. And an emergency fund, and a 401(k), and one of those health savings accounts that you can use to get Band-Aids and Motrin.”
“I’m glad.” He tilts his head. At this angle, the glow of the lantern strung up next to the car beside ours catches his eyes, turning them silver. “You know, other jobs pay salaries and bonuses and have benefits too.”
Talking about money is embarrassing, but I don’t think he understands. If he did, he wouldn’t challenge me on this. “No job that I could get. Not on this level. Nate, if things continue the way they’re going for a few moreyears—especially if I get an apparel deal or something—I’ll be set. I won’t be able to retire to my beachfront mansion in Seapoint to sip cucumber water on the balcony while people-watching and listening to Carly Rae Jepsen’sEmotion—”
“That’s an extremely specific description of something you aren’t planning to do—”
