I pull my lips between my teeth. “Between what I invested as starter cost and the numerous transfers I stupidly made, it’s about two-hundred-twenty-thousand-dollars.”
He lets out a low whistle. “With your back up against the wall, you could no longer pay your rent? Is that why you had to move in with roommates?”
I shake my head. “I couldn’t juggle it all, and because I missed so many payments, the bank repossessed my house.”
Kaz leans into the table, his expression dark and ominous. “You lost your house?”
“Yes. Ellen and Qi left me with the burden of the expenses we had already incurred. All the operating costs. The rental of the warehouse…” I blow out a breath. “I sold all my valuablepossessions in an attempt to make the payments, but it wasn’t enough.”
“What about your family? Weren’t they able to help?”
Ah. My dysfunctional, fucked-up, trailer trash family. “No, they weren’t ableto help.”
“Does your family live in New York?”
“Um…” I fidget with my napkin. “Well…” I can’t reveal that secret. The truth is so ugly, he’d have to rename that ice cream flavor because he’ll never want anything to do with me. “They…” More throat clearing. “They’ve relocated…” I shrug. “It wasn’t the best relationship, anyway.”
“I understand not wanting to talk about your parents if you have a strained relationship.”
Thank God he’s not pressing for more.
“What about your friends? Couldn’t you have stayed with one of them?”
I bite the inside of my cheek, as I weigh my words. “I had a lot of business contacts, but I don’t have that many friends. My best friend is married to a Dane and she now lives in Europe. Her husband flies to the US for business, but they spend most of their time across the pond. She was dividing her time between Berlin, Paris, and Copenhagen, but she had to stop traveling. She’s expecting triplets—it’s her third trimester. She’s feeling the weight of those three little peanuts growing in her belly, and her legs are super swollen, making it hard to walk.”
“That’s a lot of babies all at once,” he says. “What about your assistant? In the Hamptons, I overheard you talk about your business.”
I can’t believe that a year later he’d remember that about me. “We had made the decision at the beginning that the three of us—Ellen, Qi, and I—would man the silk flower business. There was no budget for staff. My assistant accepted a job in Arizona and moved there.”
“You don’t have that many people you can rely on?”
“I don’t.”
He twists his empty beer tankard on the table. “You’ve dealt with a lot of distressing and traumatic events in the past year,” he says.
“Broke, Broken Girl, the movie,” I say with a dramatic hand gesture. “That’s my life.” I poke fun at myself because I’m sure that’s how he sees me. “I’m twenty-seven-years-old and I’m a big fat failure. It runs so deep, the only apartment left in that shitty building I live in?—”
“Usedto live in.”
“Okay, the only apartment left in that shitty building I used to live in was 1F. F for failure.”
Kaz furrows his brows like he’s mad at the world and studies me long and hard.
I squirm in my seat under his scrutiny.
“You’ve had a little dirt thrown your way?—”
“Enough dirt to cover all the coffins in every cemetery in New York State.”
“That’s one way of seeing it.”
As if there was another.
Kaz remains silent for a long beat.
“You’ve had a little dirt thrown your way, but not enough to bury you. You’re still standing.” He reaches out and takes both my hands into his.
I borrow his strength as mine.
