Chapter One
Ridge
“I’m not the one you have a beef with. Why are you punishing me?” My brother Joe slid into the booth across from me at my favorite diner.
“And how am I punishing you exactly?” I asked.
“Of all the places in the city to celebrate my birthday, you thought, ‘Hey, why don’t I pick the greasiest hole-in-the-wall?’” My brother was such a snob.
“And where would you have preferred we go, if not my favorite place to eat? Sharing food you love is the best gift of all.” No one would accuse the food of being a culinary delight, but damn if it didn’t hit the spot after a long day running around the city. And their fries? They were the best in the state, and I’d fight anyone who so much as hinted otherwise.
My brother took my rhetorical question as his opening to list off eight restaurants that cost more than most people’s monthly food budget for one meal.
How was I related to such a snob? And really, I was related to entire family of snobs. Maybe they found me in a basket on their doorstep like in the old cartoons.
“Well, the food is amazing and this place is more within my budget than any of those.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’d pay. It is my birthday.” As if that made sense.
“You know I don’t use that money. Can’t we just have a nice meal, the two of us, at my favorite place?”
He grabbed a menu, looking at it as if I had given him a list of foods you’d see in those eating challenges where nothing was remotely palatable, the disgust not even slightly veiled.
“If you’re going to be like that, we can do this another time.” I’d still have my burger, but nothing said he had to.
“Absolutely not. It’s my birthday, Ridge, and we are going to celebrate. In fact, this burger here looks really good.” He pointed to one I knew he would hate.
“Since when do you like jalapeños?”
I waited for him to double down on his love of the spicy option, but he surprised me.
“Sorry. I’ll stop now.” He went back to reading the menu, this time with the actual reading of words. He did end up getting a burger, one with mayonnaise, tomato, and lettuce instead of jalapeños, salsa, and pepper-jack cheese, but a burger nonetheless.
“They asked if you were coming home,” he said the second the server left. No segue, no pretense of a conversation, just straight to the point, which was good. It was better to get it out of the way so we could enjoy our time together. “They” being my father and my grandparents. Our mother had passed when we were in high school, or she’d have been on that list, too.
“They know the answer to that. We’ve had this conversation numerous times.” Far too many to count. “They make it sound like I’m the bad guy.”
And there were some days they almost had me convinced that I was. It wasn’t even that I never went to see them. I did. It wasn’t that I was mean to them. I wasn’t. Their disappointment in me was 100 percent centered around the fact that I didn’t want to live the life they had laid out for me, and that wasn’t going to change.
I set up very clear boundaries. We could talk about our lives, but we couldn’t talk about me finding the perfect spouse, taking a position in the company, having 2.5 children, and being on the Forbes “30 Under 30.” I didn’t want that life. I never had.
My family made their money as real estate moguls, my father’s name one of the most well-known in the city, the state, heck, the country. But that wasn’t a career that felt right to me. And that was fine if that was what they wanted to do, but it wasn’t going to ever be my path.
When I was younger, they knew better than to push too hard. They let me go to school, have my friends, and just be me. Then, the second I turned twenty-one and was given access to my trust fund, they basically told me it came with conditions, and those conditions included everything I didn’t want to be.
Years later, it still upset them that I hadn’t bowed to their expectations, but that wasn’t going to change who I was or what I wanted for their or anyone else’s approval. They were sure I’d come around and ask for access to my accounts. I never had and I didn’t see a path that would lead me to do so. My only hope is that one day they figured that out.
“I know you’re not the bad guy,” Joe said. “How about we drop it? I did what I had to do. Now, we can enjoy our greasy food when it comes.”
Joe was different from most of my family, but he agreed with them on one thing. He hated my lifestyle. Unlike my father and my grandparents, he wasn’t pushing me to work for the family business, but he wanted me to have a more settled career, not running errands, delivering food, pet-sitting—random, odd jobs I found on message boards. He was right that it was nothing more than piled-up side hustles that became my full-time income.
His dream for me was to find what I really wanted to do and go for it. I loved that about him. The problem was, he didn’t understand that, for right now, this was my choice. I didn’t want to sit still. The idea of wearing a necktie to work was suffocating. I was uncoordinated, so anything construction or trade-related was probably a dangerous idea. My cooking skills were zero. So,this was going to have to do for a while, or maybe forever. I really didn’t mind it. But try telling my brother that.
“So, tell me about the kids.” That was the easiest way to get my brother steered in another direction. “I haven’t seen them in over a month, I bet they have gotten tall.”
He whipped out his phone so fast, showing me pictures of his two-year-old twins, who were in thewe don’t walk anywhere, we runstage. They were absolutely adorable. My brother and his wife adored them. And they happened to come with a side bonus of making my dad and our grandparents happy, too.
Everything about my brother was picture perfect in their eyes. He took the corner office, settled down with a person of acceptable status, had most of his 2.5 kids in one go, and he even had a golden retriever.
