“I’ve never been to Vegas,” I say as we leave town behind.
“Did your family travel a lot?” Her voice is tight, the only sign she might be nervous about getting closer to my parents’ house. I guess her meds don’t cover meeting-the-parents anxiety.
“My parents are workaholics. In the winter, they need to be at the resort and, in the summer, they plan for the winter and try to find new things to attract people in the summer.” I don’t tell her the rest. That my baby sister was sick for the first six years of her life. Really sick. Any free time was devoted to hospital visits and physical therapy.
“Really? You never went anywhere as a family?”
I turn down the drive to my parents’ house, under the wrought iron archway with the word Riverton spelled out in twisting metal vines. “It’s hard to travel when you’re a family of nine.” I did at least tell her about the size of my family before we left.
“That makes sense, I guess.”
My parents’ house comes into view and Blue gasps.
I guess to an outsider, it would seem impressive. It looks more like a small hotel than a home, all twenty-thousand square feet of it, plus two exterior cabins, at the base of the mountains. My parents wanted all of us to live here with them for as long as possible, so they built a home with eight master bedrooms, nine offices, a home gym, and a heated outdoor pool.
It probably looks like a dream come true to most people, but it feels claustrophobic to me, filled with expectations I can never live up to.
“Oh, my God,” Blue says. “Your parents are like real rich. Like old money, birthright wealthy people.”
“They’re just people.”
“Uh-huh.” She sounds breathless. “So your parents got this rich from ski resort money? I’ve met people with ski resort money before. They aren’t this level of rich unless they were born with a massive trust fund.”
“They both come from money, but they aren’t snooty. They’re—”
Her laugh verges on hysterical. “Garrick, you grew up with this money. You’re going to have to accept you have no concept of what it truly is to be poor or of how very different your family is from the rest of the world. I can impress just about anybody, but I don’t do well with old money people. I’m warning you now, they are not going to feel better seeing me dating you.”
I park next to Hudson’s Range Rover and twist in my seat to face her. “Breathe, Blue.”
Her eyes are wide, her cheeks are pink, and she looks like she wants to run as badly as I do.
“Take one long breath and let it out slowly.”
She nods and does as I say. Or she tries to. Her long breath is about two seconds. She is not calming down.
“Just keep breathing and listen to me, okay?” Next to me, Barry pants like she’s following my directions. She’s not. She feels the tension in the truck.
Blue nods.
“Close your eyes.”
She does and I notice the sparkles in her eye shadow and how her cheekbones angle upward. She is so damn beautiful. I hate myself for ever being mean to her.
“Good girl. Now, listen to me. You are a hardworking, determined, smart person and no one inside that house has anything you don’t have.”
“I can think of about one million things they have I don’t.”
“Sure. But little green pieces of paper they got just for being born to the right parents at the right time do not make them better than you. You are a fucking badass.”
She whimpers. I have never seen her so scared or so vulnerable. I reach between the seats and grab her hand, giving it a squeeze.
“Say it with me, Blue. You are a fucking badass.”
“I am a fucking badass,” she whispers.
“Louder.”
“I am a fucking badass,” she says in a clear, firm voice. Her breathing is evening out.
