It suddenly felt like a game, extracting information from each other without making it too obvious.
“Is he a friend of yours?” she asked.
A moment, then he sighed. “He used to be.”
“Used to be?”
“We were friends in high school.”
Lizzy didn’t even try to mask her shock. “Really?”
“All four years.”
“Wow.”
“Is that surprising?”
“No. I just assumed he emerged from a lab, fully formed and void of all human emotion.”
Tristan chuckled. It was a deep sound, and Lizzy enjoyed how it cleared away some of the clouds that had settled over him. “No. He grew up in the city. Upper West Side. You know, old money.”
“Old money?”
Tristan’s easy smile faltered, and his gaze dropped to his feet. “Yeah.Veryold.”
“What happened?”
He looked up. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you’re clearly not friends anymore,” she said, nodding to the door that led back into the bar.
“Right,” Tristan said, his wry grin returning. “Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s not very original. He has money and I don’t.”
Lizzy blinked. “Are you serious?”
He took a sip of his drink before shrugging.
Lizzy opened her mouth again, ready to argue the opposite, but she couldn’t. She knew all too well how social standing worked for people in the upper echelons of society, how the numbers in your bank account mattered more than your character. It was a lesson imbibed from birth out here.
His gaze shifted to the darkness beyond the porch, as if taking a moment to remember. “My dad was head of maintenance at this private school in the city. Really prestigious. In a normal world I could never afford to go, but thanks to my dad’s job, I attended for free. It was great, don’t get me wrong, but it put a target on my back, too. Will didn’t seem to care, though. We became friends. It was the first time I didn’t feel like I was… less. It was the best four years of my life.” Tristan paused. “Then we graduated, and Will went to Columbia.”
Lizzy blinked. She hadn’t known Will went to Columbia. The information left an odd weight in her belly, another connection to a man she didn’t want any connection with at all.
“What did you do?” she asked.
“I got into a bunch of schools but tuition was just too high, and I couldn’t make it work. If I saved for a few years, really buckled down, maybe I could do it, but that required a job that paid well. I knew Will’s family ran an investment firm in the city, so I reached out. He agreed to help but warned me that it would probably be tough. His dad came through, though. Took me under his wing.Suddenly I had a good job, was making good money at entry level, even without a degree. I learned a lot.”
“And then?”
Tristan let out a long breath. “Will’s parents died. Horrible car accident. It was like my world got turned upside down. Will obviously took over for the estate, and one of the first orders of business was to get me fired.”
Lizzy was struck dumb for a moment. “No.”
Tristan nodded once, his gaze locked with his pint glass as he tipped it back and forth.
“But… why?”
Another shrug. “He never reached out to explain. To be honest, I wasn’t surprised. His dad had always wanted him to join his company, but Will took a different track. So the fact that I was on the path his father had always wanted him to follow…”
