Page 19 of The Himbo and the Lord
“You’re gonna miss out,” Seth teases me, the shit-stirrer.
“You really will,” Kit pipes up, his OCD happiness showing through. “I have the whole night planned. First drinks and then dinner?—”
“Send me the dinner place so I can catch up with you guys there,” I interrupt him, right as the elevator opens on our floor. If I hadn’t then he would’ve gone off on a tangent about how perfectly the night is scheduled.
This time we all got rooms on the same floor, which means we troop down the hallway and each slowly disappear into our rooms, with Kit saying stuff about not being late and what time they have to leave and blah, blah, blah.
I for sure appreciate all the work he’s put into this trip—we probably wouldn’t even have come if it weren’t for him—but right now all I want is a nap.
Deciding not to give anything else a thought, I strip down and get into the perfectly made bed.
When I wake up I’m disoriented, and since everything beyond the glass windows is dark from my position in bed, I at least know I didn’t sleep for the rest of the night.
I check my phone to find a couple of messages from Kit, one with an address and the other telling me they’re going to go to dinner late. I see I still have an hour before that, so I go to the bathroom to shower off the sleep, then take my laptop out.
It’s early Sunday morning in New York right now, so it’s as good a time as any to check out how my portfolio is doing.
Despite how I like to behave—like a himbo, as Ru put it—I do have a brain in my head, and I enjoy using it from time to time.
Iama trust fund baby, actually my face could be next to that expression in any dictionary, but that doesn’t mean I’m not well aware of what my reality is.
My father, the great Nathaniel Waterford, has built a reputation in his industry for having a Midas touch, and since he’s wanted me to become a younger version of him from the moment I was born, he taught me everything he knows before I was done with high school.
All those lessons were more than useful when I received the trust fund my grandparents set up for me.
But it was Seth’s mom, theactuallygreat—at least in my opinion—Shirley Wall, who gave me the tools to start investing on my own.
I spent years at college and then grad school hearing shit in lectures I already knew thanks to her, so partying as hard and as long as possible was the natural way to spend my time.
My father resents that.
Mostly because I haven’t told him about my business, and probably never will.
It seems wasteful to try to explain to him that I don’t want his life, to get my hopes up that he might understand that I don’t want to spend every day putting on suits and going to an office full of assholes.
That life has not only made him happy, but it’s also provided a life of privilege for me. I hate how whiny and ungrateful I sound in my own head when I complain, but it is what it is.
Even if I show him the results, show him how I’ve tripled my trust fund in six years, I doubt he’d see things my way.
So it’s better to just let him keep on believing I’m a useless bum—which were his exact words when I told him about this trip.
There’s no more disappointment to be had from either of us that way.
It’s not like I’m ever going to gain the respect he has for Chelsea, my older sister, so why keep trying?
She did everything he ever asked of her. She even works with him and is being mentored by both him and Shirley. She has a luxury condo on Park Avenue, the picture-perfect, age-appropriate boyfriend who comes from a good family, and most importantly, she doesn’t party.
It’s not like I do drugs or anything.
Okay, I don’t do drugs anymore. I had a yearning to try everything that crossed my path in my sophomore year at Yale, so sue me.
Of course, I haven’t tried every drug out there, and I won’t, but in any case, it’s also not like I get drunk every night.
Dad believes I do, and he would probably accuse me of lying if I told him I only need to work a couple of hours every other day to make all the money I’ll ever need.
Then he would probably throw in my face the fact that I can only do that thanks to him.
Which is true, of course. Again, I’m well aware of that, and of the immense amount of privilege I have just because of the family I was born into.
