Because eating pizza, despite whatever Luke might think, was not “epic.”
Keeping her tone light, Rori tried to push them into more personal territory. “For a guy who seems to like his home so much, you travel a lot. Any reason?”
He shrugged, putting his foot back in the stirrup and urging his horse forward. “I dunno. I guess since I never got to as a kid? My dad was always traveling to all these places for work, and I always wanted to see those places.”
“Did he take pictures for you?” she asked, her horse falling in step with his.
“Nah,” he said with a shrug. “He just said that he was always on site and that it wasn’t interesting, but I thought it was totally cool. He’s an engineer for oil companies, so he’d build these cities, or at least it seemed like it to me. I thought it was awesome.”
“Did he ever go to Thailand?” she asked.
“Nah, but once I started traveling, all of a sudden it became this thing, you know? Once you visit a dozen countries, all of a sudden you want to go to two dozen. And it’s not a huge leap from there to get to fifty countries.”
She nodded, understanding completely. “How many are you at now?”
“Thailand was thirty-nine.” She watched him scowl and knew that wasn’t the end of the story. “I always try to get Mike to go, you know? Him and Kris, but all they do is work. Mike wants to pay off his student loans and Kris is saving up for a down payment on a condo. Twenty percent. Once she gets that, she’ll move downtown so she can spend even more time at her office. That’s the one lame thing about those two. They always put work first. Well, family, then work.”
“Then you,” she finished for him.
His frowned deepened. “Yeah.”
Not exactly the answer Rori had been digging for, which helped explain why she had no idea what to say.
“Don’t they both live rent free?” she asked before she knew the words were even out of her mouth. Might as well finish. “Kris with her parents and Mike with you?”
He nodded.
“So shouldn’t they fine financially?” It was none of her business and completely impolite to ask, but if she and Luke were going to build a life, she needed to understand the dynamics. Mike was living off of his friend but wouldn’t take the time to take a few trips with him? It seemed a little ungrateful.
“Kris is, for sure,” Luke said. “She’s the scholarship queen and the youngest child, so her parents are all into supporting her until she gets married.”
“And Mike?”
“Well, I’m the one who talked him into coming back,” Luke said, a little proudly.
“Back from where?”
“California,” Luke said, as if it should be obvious. “After film school he was hitting some road blocks breaking into the business. Apparently it’s typical for directors to start out in porn. There are tons of producers and the work is never ending, but Mike promised his mom he wouldn’t do stuff like that, so he was a bit out of the loop. He had this plan of doing low-budget indie films to build his credibility, like Christopher Nolan, but no one would bite. Not even for ten grand. I offered to front him, but he said he didn’t want to be produced out of pity—that if no one in the industry had faith in his vision then he didn’t deserve the money, or something like that. So instead he made shorts and stuff until his loans came due and he realized he couldn’t pay up.”
“And that’s when you gave him a free place to land?” Rori filled in.
“Totally. No brainer. It was all weird with him gone. Empty, you know? Everyone missed him, and his mom had these worry lines appearing in her forehead, like her mother’s intuition was on red alert. It was hard to watch, so yeah. I gave him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”
“He takes care of your house and he gets to stay?”
“Well, yeah, and he pays the bills,” Luke added. “Had to throw him a little dignity, but it works out, really. I don’t have to worry about anything, and he gets to throw money at that mountain of debt he made learning to be the next Spielberg. It was like over a hundred grand.”
That raised Rori’s eyebrows. “For film school? He could be a doctor for that much money.”