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"I'm not dad-voicing you. I'm trying to understand what is up with you lately."
Of course he had picked up on that too.
I'd been off.
I knew that. It was something that couldn't be avoided. I was more scatterbrained, less easy to get in touch with, secretive. All things that had never been qualities I had before.
"Fine!" I said, throwing my hands up in mock frustration. "I was looking into tattoo shops for us. You ruined it!"
Roman's head tilted, his brows drawing together slightly. "Tattoos? For us?" He said it in a way that implied I might as well have suggested we get septum piercings and wear them with huge bull rings every day.
"For our friend anniversary. Twenty-eight years next month," I said, thinking of my birthday. That was the first time we met. We have pictures of us lying side-by-side on the hospital bed the afternoon of my birth, Roman a mere ten weeks older.
To that, Rome's face softened. A sweet smile pulled at his lips. "What did you have planned?"
"Honestly? I hadn't gotten that far." I hadn't gotten that far because I had just come up with the idea. "I was just looking around."
"Else... why after midnight? That shop didn't even look open."
"Paine's, ah, he's very busy. Popular. He couldn't fit me in any other time. I don't know a lot about tattoos so I had a bunch of questions."
"Where was your car?"
Crap. Of course he would ask that. It was a good question. I loved my car. I drove it whenever possible. It was a recent purchase and I was proud of myself for being able to get that kind of financing on that kind of car without a co-signer, without having to involve my father. That being said, it was the kind of car that stood out. It was last year's Porsche 718 Boxster S in Miami Blue paint. It was more than a down payment on most people's houses. It was not the kind of car you drove into the slums when you were trying to not be seen. Or, you know, have it stolen.
And that was exactly what I was going to go with, even if it made slightly less sense to use it when talking about the industrial part of town. It was believable enough.
"I didn't want to bring him into that part of town. You know how I feel about that car. I took a cab. But um... the driver was really creepy. I didn't want to get stuck with him again on the way home..."
"Aw, Else, glad you called then," he said, satisfied as he moved back into his seat, pulling his belt, and putting the car back into drive. "Let's get you home. You have work in the morning too."
So then we were driving, me flicking impatiently through the radio stations while Roman tried to fight for the songs he liked and I largely ignored him.
There were two sets of townhouse developments in Navesink Bank, one was a typical middle-class sprawling development full of families and the occasional single man or woman. They were perfectly nice and I had done a walk-through of three different units before my father got wind and threw a fit. And, see, that sounds pathetic given my age, but then again... you don't know my father. Edward Bay was intimidating, if not downright terrifying, when he was in a good mood. So when he was ticked off, or personally offended like he was when I wanted to get a middle-class townhouse, he was wet-your-pants scary. Why was he personally offended, you ask? My father was a successful businessman. By that I mean he made the kind of money that bordered on obscene and he liked to live like he did. He liked to flash his wealth around. So he was insulted when I refused to dip into my trust fund and drop half a million dollars on a house way too big for one person to live in.
From there, I put up a valiant effort to profess my independence and stick to my guns. But, well, my father made a career of browbeating men and women far greater than me.
So I had a townhouse that cost half a million dollars that had two extra bedrooms I had no need for, a state of the art kitchen I had no skills to cook inside of, and a HOA fee that was the cost of a nice two-bedroom apartment in pretty much any town surrounding Navesink Bank.
I'm not saying it wasn't nice to live in a beautiful townhouse. I wasn't a fan of falling into the 'poor little rich girl' trope. I was lucky; I knew that; I had always known that. That being said, some gifts came with clauses and mine was feeling forever under the thumb of a man who I had spent my entire life trying to free myself from. It meant that he would always feel he had a say in my life decisions, my career decisions, and pretty much anything else I did that he felt might reflect back on him.
