cold in Georgia or you’d be right.” Trey chuckled.
“You live in a gated community.” I told him something he very well knew.
“Yep.”
“In a brick mansion,” I went on, pointing out the obvious. “It has five bedrooms but there’s only one of you.”
“Wouldn’t call it a mansion.”
Was he nuts? It was huge.
There I was, contemplating buying Mrs. Parker’s condo or wondering if I was financially ready for a bigger investment. But my bigger investment would’ve been a two-bedroom cottage, not in a gated community. Apparently, I was seriously behind in the home-owning game.
I stopped staring at the fireplace only to gawk at the huge windows that ran along the front of the room. Floor-to-ceiling windows that allowed natural light to spill into the room making a huge room look warm and inviting.
And his furniture was to die for. Big oversized suede couches. The perfect shade of thundercloud gray that complemented the soft smoky gray walls. But there were splashes of blue and yellow thrown in to give the room a jolt of color.
Not only did Trey live in a beautiful family home, he was also a master interior decorator. And he’d been to my house. My boring, plain-Jane condo that had no personality. Nothing on the walls, nothing special or inviting about my furniture, no splashes of color, nothing. Just plain.
“Addy?”
“Hm?”
“Look at me, Adalynn.”
I did not look at Trey. Instead, my eyes kept roaming the room, and the more I took in, the more embarrassed I became. Then I was forced to obey his command because I was no longer staring at his super cool, ornate, glass inlaid coffee table, I was staring at Trey’s jeans covering his thighs.
“Baby, what’s wrong?”
What was wrong with me?
I’d never been self-conscious about where I lived. I didn’t live in a hovel, but it certainly wasn’t a mansion. I’d never cared about money or social status. I had friends who had money, friends who had less money, but they were just that—friends.
“Your house is really nice,” I stupidly noted.
“It’s not me,” he said, and my gaze darted to his.
“What’s not you?”
“This place. I don’t intend to keep it.” Before I could tell him I didn’t understand, he went on. “It’s an investment. I got this house for a steal. It came fully furnished. I don’t know it for a fact because I didn’t buy all the shit in this place separately, but I’d guess the furnishings alone shoulda added another hundred-grand to the listing.”
Investment.
That didn’t make me less embarrassed, that reminded me that I’d been lollygagging through life. I rented a condo from an old woman. In the time I’d lived there, I hadn’t even settled in and put my stamp on the place. I didn’t have any investments, though my Uncle Levi who was a genius with money had offered to help me. I’d paid for my education while I was getting it. But like my parents had done with my siblings after graduation, they’d given me a check reimbursing me and paid off the loans I’d had. It was their gift to us and it was two-fold. The first part was to teach us responsibility, allow us to muddle our way through, juggle work and school. The bigger lesson though was not to quit. If we quit, we were responsible for the loans. The second part of the gift was obvious—they’d gotten us out of debt. They’d done that to teach us to plan for the future so you could take care of those you loved.
We’d never taken extravagant vacations, Mom and Dad drove decent vehicles, they had a nice home, beautiful backyard, they had five children to take care of and we were not rich. So I knew that saving college tuition for all of us cut deep. But they’d sacrificed and saved. Giving us the opportunity to start our lives free of financial burden.
But I hadn’t started planning for my future.
Trey had.
The evidence of that was a brick mansion in a gated community.
“This house has five bedrooms, four and a half baths, a pool, and an HOA board that should be BUD/s instructors they’re so quick to jump on your shit. If I so much as leave my trashcan at the curb past eight a.m., there’s a letter in my mailbox. I’m not an HOA kinda guy. As I said, I got this place so cheap I actually bought the seller a five-hundred-dollar bottle of scotch I felt so bad. But the seller had retired. He and his wife wanted to