Chapter 6 Lack Of Connections
Harley
When we’d walked in, I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb. He led me to a small table towards the back of the restaurant. He might have called this a coffee shop, but this was a nice restaurant that just happened to specialize in coffee.
When I’d looked at the menu the waitress had brought, my eyes about jumped out of my skull. It was almost forty bucks for a cup of fucking coffee. What in the hell kind of coffee were they selling here that it cost that much? I was very glad when Cooper took the menu and just asked me what I liked, and we went about it like that.
When she brought the order, I tried very hard not to think about how much this single cup of coffee was. The coffee was incredibly good; I’ll give it that. It was not forty bucks good in my opinion, but Cooper seemed like he could easily afford it. That was so far out of my wheelhouse it was hard for me to even fathom.
“So, what are you studying at school?” He watched me do absolutely everything, and I was getting nervous, so I was glad for the distraction of the question.
“Well, my goal is to become a teacher. I like school, so that seemed like a good direction to go in. Teachers are always in demand, so I should always be able to find a job, and that was extremely important: to go in a direction that would assure I could always find a job.” He nodded his head.
“What about your family, are they close by?” In the scheme of things, I knew this was a very normal question, and not the first time I’d been asked about my family, and just like those other times, I struggled with what exactly to say.
I decided to keep it simple: “No, she’s not close.”
What he didn’t know is that I meant that in many different ways. My grandmother, who had raised me, was most definitely not close to me in any way. If she hadn’t felt like it was monumentally important to keep her image of a good Christian woman, she never would have taken me in when my mom disappeared.
My mom had been a drug addict my whole life as far as I knew, and my grandmother loved to remind me that I came from that worthless daughter she’d kicked out on her no-good ass. Then she had gone and disappeared and shrugged me off on her and never bothered to come back and get me, forcing her to care for a child that wasn’t technically hers.
She had told me for years that the second I was eighteen I would no longer be her problem. She had to keep a roof over my head and all of that up until then, but she’d be damned if she would do so after that. Technically, I’d turned eighteen while still in school, and so I had actually started paying her rent for the last three months of school before I graduated.
That was another reason why I knew getting a scholarship was the only way I would ever be able to go to college and be prepared to get a decent job and support myself.
“What about your best friend? You had said you were e-mailing your best friend the night we met.” I smiled a bit at that one.
“Her name is Rebeka, or Beky. She was my friend all through school. Her mother and father belonged to the same church as my grandmother, so we met when we were really young. I grew up in a small town, so we went to the same school. She is actually attending a college on the East Coast, so pretty much the only way we will be able to keep in touch with each other is by e-mail and phone calls.” I shrugged like it was no big deal, but the truth was it gutted me to lose the only person who had ever cared about me.
“What about your mom?” Again, I gritted my teeth, reminding myself that this was a common question and he wasn’t trying to be insensitive or anything.
“I honestly don’t know. She dropped me off when I was three with my grandmother for the afternoon and never came back.” He shook his head.
“I’m very sorry she did that to you.” I nodded and left it at that.
“As you haven’t mentioned any, I am guessing that there are no siblings or aunts or uncles or anything.” I nodded.
“Yeah, my mom was an only child as well.” he nodded.
“Okay, so what about you? What do you do for a living, and what about your family?” He smiled at me.
“I own a bunch of banks and financial centers all over the world. My father passed away about five years ago. I still have contact and see my mother often. I have a younger sister who is married and now has two children.” I nodded to all of that.
“Wow, so you own banks. I honestly didn’t even realize that was possible. I had always heard of banks, and they were a company bank or whatever. I had never thought about them being owned by individuals.” He nodded.
“Lots of times men like me who work with that much money and things have corporations that are the face of the business, but the truth is we pull all of the strings.” I just nodded at that.
“That honestly sounds extremely terrifying to me. I can’t imagine the amount of pressure you are under every single day to do everything right with that much money your responsibility.”
He nodded at me. “Honestly, I like the thrill of the financial markets, making the decisions, finding the deals, working the deals, and all of that. So, there is a part of me that thrives in all of it and the power of it.” I nodded, and that was just so foreign to me.
“That is so beyond my experience or anything I would ever think of. I can’t imagine someone like you who does stuff like that, with that much money, having anything to do with me.” He just shrugged.
“With that much power and money, I have learned that I can associate with whom I choose. Right now, I want to spend time and get to know you.” I just blinked at him several times.
“Why?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, but I do. So, what do you have planned for the rest of your day?”
I just let out my breath, once again, completely sure that he would lose interest very quickly. “I was going to the library to check it out and look at the job boards.”
“Well, if you are finished, I can take you there now.” I nodded and stood up, ready to get out of here.
