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She doesn't take the bait. "You have to wear linen on the weekends?"
"It breathes," I say.
"And the mortgage on this place? What is it? Fifteen grand." She looks around with those same wide eyes. "Or is this another of your parents' properties?"
"It's mine," I say.
"And the mortgage?"
"Is this how doctors talk?"
"No." She shakes her head and stretches her arms over her head. "Doctors are terrible with money. We never talk about it. We don't understand it."
"Why is that?"
"We spent all our twenties obsessed with pre-med, then med school, then residency. Our relationship to money is massive loans that lead to the goal we've been working toward our entire life. It's like Monopoly money to us. We just… don't get it."
"You seem to get it." It comes out harsher than I mean it.
But she doesn't shrink back from the tone. She stands straighter. She likes the harshness in my voice. "Am I being nosy?"
"Yes." I say it plainly.
She likes that too. She smiles and lets her shoulders fall. "Sorry. That's another doctor thing. No manners."
"Too busy studying to learn?"
She nods. "It's true with sex and love too." She blushes at the word sex, but she doesn't pull it back. She leaves it there, in the air. "I guess lawyers aren't like that."
"Like what?"We don't know sex either. We're too busy in law school. We're too obsessed with rules. Are we all into BDSM, or just those of us who don't know how to let go?
"A gentleman who follows the rules of polite society."
"A gentleman, really?" I ask.
She motions to my linen shirt. "Where's the opposition?"
How about I tie you to my bed, and we see how much of a gentleman I really am?"My parents helped with the down payment, but the mortgage is mine." I can just afford it on my current salary. But that's what everyone said to do. Buy the second home. Stretch a little while interest rates are low. "Do you need to know the exact number?"
"No. I get it. I'm being rude." She mimes zipping her lips.
"I don't mind," I say. It feels like home, actually. Well, like Dad. He's overly blunt. Mom is the one with manners.
And, Dad, well—
He has this need to prove himself. One I inherited. He grew up with nothing, so now he wants everything.
I grew up with everything, so now, I'm desperate to prove I deserve everything, to prove I can get everything on my own.
I am my father's son.
Desperate to stay in control and completely unwilling to let on.
Do I fool people as poorly as he does?
"Well…" Daphne raises a brow. "How much—" She motions toward the pool. "Or were you teasing?"
I'll tease you a hell of a lot better than that. No. No sex. Coffee. "What sort of coffee?" It sounds like the non sequitur it is.
