Page 79 of The Tryst

Even when she squeezes back. Even when it feels so right to share pieces of myself with her.

But it’s not right, and we’re going to leave Connecticut very, very soon.

25

LITTLE RICH GIRL

Layla

After Nick parks the car in my nearby garage, he walks me to my home on Seventy-Third. We stop by the stoop of the brownstone next door. He looks up at my building with obvious admiration in his eyes.

It is, by all measure, a gorgeous building. One that most twenty-three-year-olds wouldn’t live in on their own.

And, really, I don’t.

After what he told me in the diner, I might as well slap a sandwich board on my chest—I’m a little rich girl.

It’s borderline embarrassing that I don’t pay for my beautiful, sunlit, sixth-floor one-bedroom by myself. I don’t pay for itat all.In Miami, I held back pieces of myself. I’ve still clutched tight the stories I don’t want to share.

But he opened the drawer to his past tonight, offering the unvarnished truth. And the more he gives of himself, the more I want to give him the real me.

All of me.

The desire to open up is almost rabid, like I have to exorcize words, and stories, and truths. This impulse is so new. I certainly didn’t look for this kind of connection with a person. I didn’t expect it. I even tried to avoid it.

And yet every time I’m with Nick, all I want is to get closer to him. I can’t physically. We have to stand a few feet apart, and I hate the distance. It’s the opposite of what I want as I succumb to this animal instinct clawing at me to share with him.

Even if we can’t be a thing, I want him to know the me without makeup. “I have a trust fund. My mother is disgustingly rich. My father was very successful. I’ve never struggled like that,” I say, the truth tasting saccharine-sweet for the first time. “I’m sorry.”

His eyes are soft, caring. “Don’t say that. Don’t apologize.”

“But I feel bad. I’m everything you don’t like.”

“Stop,” he says sternly as he wraps a hand around the railing behind him, like he needs it to hold him back from touching me. “You are everything I like.”

I don’t deserve that kindness. I didn’t earn it. “You must think of me as the poor little rich girl,” I say, as I wave a hand at the beautiful brick building I didn’t earn, the residence most New Yorkers would trade an organ for. This building is straight out of a silver-screen romance. “I didn’t even have to use my trust fund money for this. My father owned several apartments in this building. He was a defense attorney. The best in the city. The apartments were a real estate investment he made after a particularly good year at his law firm,” I say in another confession that feels almost shameful. Like,look how one percent of one percent I am.“Well, my mom owns the apartments now. Everything ofhiswent to her. Including what was left of his law firm, Mayweather and McBride.”

There. I’ve inched closer to that awful truth too. I’ve breathedhisname out loud to Nick.

His eyes fill with sorrow. “You don’t have to justify yourself to me. And you absolutely don’t have to justify your family to me.”

“But I feel like I do,” I say, and my voice is pitchy and it’s irritating me. It must irritate him. “I don’t want you to see me that way,” I say, desperation twisting up inside me like a coiled snake. I point at all thesethings.“I have this car, and this free home, and a house in the Hamptons, and even though I pay my own way with my app and my videos, I don’t really because I don’t pay rent. And you must think I sound like all the people who looked down on you when you worked at the country club.”

“I don’t think that,” he says, insistent. “How could I?”

“How could you not?” I ask, backing up against the railing on the first step, because I just can’t tempt myself with closeness.

But he lets go of the railing, moves closer to me, sets a gentle hand on my cheek. “I don’t hate money. I don’t hate people who have money. Ionlyhate the way it changes people,” he says, and his warm voice is so kind, I want to wrap myself in it all night long.

All week.

All month.

But that’s pointless.

I don’t even know why I’m trying to prove myself to him. We can’t be together. We can’t be a thing. We are just two people who can’t stand next to each other on the street because we’re too forbidden. But the prospect of him walking away tonight and thinking for even a second that I’d have said those things to him that others did, that I’d have treated him like he wasn’t good enough, rips me apart. “Just because my mom wants certain things for me,” I begin, the words catching in my throat, stirring up emotions I don’t want to fully face—her wants, her wishes, her future dreams. “That doesn’t mean I’m like that,” I add. “I’m not looking for a rich guy. I’m not looking for a name, or a pedigree, or an Ivy diploma. I’m not looking for anyone.”

At least, I wasn’t.

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