“Don’t listen to him, Rocky.”
My phone buzzes, and I flip it face up on the table. Alistair’s name glares back, tightening my jaw as I read his text:Party at my place tonight. Bring your work. ok if it’s WIP.
I type back:Thx. I’ll think about it.
Pocketing my phone and Rocky, I say, “I should get back.”
“Living the dream,” Jamal replies, slurping the rest of his cappuccino.
“Living the dream,” I echo.
Across the street, Jamal disappears into his studio to crank through Etsy orders. My phone buzzes again as I reach the familiar threshold I’d failed to cross earlier.
Alistair:Think about whoever and whatever you want. When I invite you to a party, you come.
My artistic dreams would be a lot smaller without Alistair’s money. But being told to paint whatever I want is nothing like painting whatever I want.
Still, I type back:I’ll be there.
CHAPTER 2
ASH
“You knowwhat time it is! It’s the first of the month, which means?—”
A goofy siren blares across the orange lacquered table, making me jump even though I knew it was coming. Grinning, my co-host Jenny keeps her finger on the mic’s mute button while we watch her son, masked like a goblin, warble through the garage we’ve repurposed as our recording studio.
It’s a familiar game: self-deception. We turn trash cans, bicycles, and oil-stained concrete into a studio, and I turn my anxiety into passion, performance, and podcast ad dollars.
Jenny hits another button, and our prerecorded voiceover booms, “Net Worth Update.”
She motions for Wyatt to quiet down, and my mic light flicks on.
“The market’s been on a tear. Three new all-time highs in the past month. This is why we say: always be buying. You don’t need to predict the market when you’ve got time on your side.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Jenny taps her nails on the table. “Get to the numbers, Ash.”
“All right, all right.” I wake my laptop and pull up the summary tab of my spreadsheet, where five tabs of meticuloustracking collapse into one clean snapshot. “As of market close today, my net worth is two million, three hundred fifty-seven thousand, four hundred twenty-two dollars and sixteen cents.”
Jenny groans softly. “You lost them at ‘hundred.’” But her expression hovers somewhere between awe and pity, like she can see the number’s doing nothing to settle me.
I sigh. “And yet I still get nervous ordering guac at Chipotle. Childhood money trauma, people. Don’t recommend.”
“You’re doing great. Way ahead of the game.”
“Congratulate compound interest,” I say. “Because if I retire at forty, that’s a long time not to work?—”
“We hope.”
“Exactly. Which makes FIRE even more important,” I say. “I’d rather spend whatever years I get with options than grind it out until sixty-five.”
Jenny twirls a finger in the air, reeling me back in.
“Anyway.” I scroll to the bold green cell where a party cat GIF loops on cue. It feels off-key pretending my financial future isn’t teetering on a cliff. “I’m… 47.15 percent of the way there. Freedom date: eleven years from now, when I turn forty.”
“Over two mil, and still less than half way. I don’t get you Fat FIRE people,” Jenny says, her gaze flicking to the folded letter beside my microphone.
I smooth its creased edges with my thumb, absorbing the lesson with each pass: life’s a bitch. What wrecked Pawpaw wrecked my parents, and it’s the reason I run this hard in the first place. Lately, though, it feels like I’m not outrunning much of anything.
