5
Henry
We don't stay at the bar long because it gets louder and more rowdy with each passing hour. Instead, we go on a walk. I hold her hand as we meander up and down the empty streets of the small summer town where no one walks and everyone drives.
Surprisingly, the streets are welcoming to pedestrians and we enjoy the view of the large expanse of lawns and the weeping willows, along with a few thick oaks.
“Did you grow up in a house like this?” she asks, pointing to an enormous four-bedroom home that sits on two acres.
I stare at her and shake my head from side to side. She tilts hers as if she has no idea what I'm talking about.
“Do you really think I would be poor if I grew up in a house like this?” I ask.
She looks at the house again.
“It's probably only three-thousand square feet,” she says. “That's not very big. Not for a house in the country.”
I want to laugh but I don't want to make her feel bad. Instead, I tell her that my own house is about seven-hundred square feet.
“Wait a second,” she says, “but I thought you grew up in a two-bedroom?”
“I did.” I nod.
“Well, that's not nearly big enough, right?”
I shrug.
“That's all my mom could afford. My dad left when I was two and I haven't seen him since then. She only has a high school diploma, so she wasn't qualified to get any job besides being a cashier at the local grocery store. That's what she did for years.”
“How much does that pay?” Her asking this takes me by surprise and I shake my head no. I don't want to answer.
“I'm sorry,” she apologizes. “I shouldn’t have asked that. I didn't mean to pry. The thing is that I have never really talked to anyone who came from so little.”
I shake my head again.
“That sounds terrible,” she says.
“Yes, it does,” I agree.
“I shouldn’t have asked.”
I think about that for a moment. “No, I’m glad you did. How about this? I'll tell you the details of my life and you tell me the details of yours. ‘Cause I never really talked to anyone who came from so much either.”
Aurora smiles, pushing her hair behind her ear, and shakes my extended hand.
“My mom made minimum wage for about twenty years.”
“And a minimum wage is what exactly?” Aurora asks.
“It was around $7.15 when I was little and they raised it to $11.10.”
“An hour?” she gasps and shakes her head. “And she works forty hours a week?”
“No, she usually works sixty hours a week. And it's still not enough. The rent is $1300 and then there is food, utilities, and all of the medical bills.”
I look away, suddenly a mountain of guilt covers me as if it were an avalanche. Maybe I should've been a better son. Maybe I should have paid more attention to money and not just been out there pursuing my senseless dreams.
But it was my mother who always encouraged me to go after what I want. She was the one who said it was okay to pursue whatever degree I wanted in college. She was the one I wanted to see my dreams come true.
Hell, that makes me feel even worse. Perhaps, I should've gotten a degree in finance and have spent the last five years working on Wall Street and sending every penny of that back home to make her life easier, but the truth is that she would never have had it that way.
She always said that the most unfair thing about not having enough is that you have to compromise your dreams. She always wanted better for me. I don't go into all of these details with Aurora, instead I steer the conversation back to her.
“What about you?” I ask. “How much does your father make?”
“Well, it's actually both my father and my mother. She’s the CFO there.”
I wait for her to answer my question. “Are you going to tell me how much they make?”
“It’s hard to say,” she says with a slight shrug. “But they are both individually featured in Forbes’ richest people in the world list.”
“What does that mean exactly?” I press her.
“I don’t know what their exact net worth is because there are different ways of calculating that but it’s billions. Many, many billions.”
“That is so much money, it's actually difficult to comprehend,” I admit.
“I know exactly what you mean,” she says with a shrug. “It's stupid but I feel like no matter what I will do in my life, it will never be good enough. I will never be able to step from behind their shadow.”
“And what is it that you want to do?” I ask. Shrugging, she looks down at the ground.
“That's the whole problem,” she says. “I have no idea. I know what it is that they want me to do, but I'm not exactly sure if I can do that.”
“What's that?”
"They want me to take over the company.”
“You don’t want to?”
“It’s not that, it’s more that I don’t know if I can. It’s their baby, more than I ever was, and they want me to raise it exactly as they would. They want me to run it exactly as they would run it.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Yeah, tell that to them.” Aurora laughs. “On top of that, they don't trust me to make any decisions.”
“Do you even want to?”
“Not under these conditions, but I’m not sure if I’ll have a choice.”
“What do you mean?” I ask. She takes my hand in hers and gives me a weak smile.
“Let's not talk about this anymore. I don't have the energy.”
Her wish is my command. I don't press her for anything more. Instead, I try to make her laugh. I do impressions, the ones that I taught myself how to do through YouTube and the ones that have always worked well on my mother.
President Obama. President Bush. Britney Spears. Cher. Madonna.
Aurora laughs so hard big tears stream down her cheeks. When we get to a quiet corner and she stops laughing so hard, I pull her closer to me and kiss her.
Our mouths now feel comfortable with each other. There was never any awkwardness, but now we belong to each other completely.
I want this moment to last as long as possible. I kiss her harder and harder. She presses her body against mine, kissing me back with the same intensity.
“Let's go somewhere,” she says, pulling away from my mouth only briefly.
“Back to the boat?” I ask.
“No, absolutely not. I want to go somewhere private.”
The only hotels around here are the kind that rent rooms by the hour. They're dark and gross and the sheets are barely changed and that's not where I want my first time with this goddess to be.
“I know this is gonna sound strange,” I say. “But do you want to go to my house?”
“Isn't your mother there?” she asks.
“She's probably sleeping already.”
“Would she mind?” Aurora asks.
“No.” I shake my head. "I'm an adult, remember?”
“Yes, of course. I'm just being stupid,” she says with a nervous laugh.