I chewed on my lip. He stroked my hip.

“Okay,” I said carefully, then placed a kiss in the exact center of his chest. “Let’s hear it.”

We sat on the front porch on opposite ends of the old wicker sofa, separated by a pillow I’d unwittingly erected between us. Probably not the most receptive-seeming way to listen to his story, but I needed this small distance.

These strong emotions were exhausting. I now understood why, when my girlfriends complained about how stressful relationships were, they said they were tired of all the back and forth and arguing and feeling let down.

Frustration, elation, being determined and driven—I knew those feelings inside and out. But the emotions of being involved with someone romantically? I had no primer except my mother’s—hence the determined, driven, and avoidant.

After telling Leo okay, I went straight for the scotch, and he accepted my offer of a highball. So here we sat, just us and our highballs, and Leo told me his story.

“I was born in Manhattan, Lenox Hill hospital—”

“A poor black child?” I just couldn’t help it.

He smiled, but arched an eyebrow. “Pretty sure you agreed to hear my story, not embellish it.”

I mimed zipping my lip, locking it, then throwing the key over my shoulder. I then had to fish around in my pocket for a second key to unlock it so I could take a sip of my water, as I was thirsty.

He watched all of this with an amused expression, then waited for me to get settled. “You done there, squirmy?”

I nodded. “Proceed.”

He did. Being born into a family of extreme privilege brought its obvious perks, but also a side of life that I’d never given much thought to.

“What elementary school did you go to?” he asked.

“Bailey Falls East Elementary.”

“And why did you go to that school?”

“Because we lived closer to it than Bailey Falls West Elementary.”

“Mm-hmm. Easy. Simple. Not the same for me. The name Leopold Matthew Maxwell was on the list for Dalton two weeks after I was born. Unofficially, even before I was born, there was a Baby Maxwell on the list. My whole life, I was brought up according to the best things that particular life had to offer. When it came time for college, there was no question about where I’d go.”

“Adirondack Community College?” I asked, earning a grin.

“My father went to Yale, my grandfather went to Yale—guess where my great-grandfather went to school?”

“Adirondack Community College?” I repeated.

He gave me a shocked look. “How’d you guess?” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. I could hear the rasp against his fingertips, and I’d come to associate that sound with Leo and that sandy-blond gorgeous. “My great-grandfather was even a legacy student: we Maxwells go back six generations in New Haven.

“Everything was preset. Parties, trips, vacations around the world. There was a circuit I was on—we all traveled together, pledged the same clubs and fraternities together. And the girls—wow, they were everywhere. I was a dick back then. Girls and women all wanted a piece, and I was only too glad to give them one. My friends were all exactly like me: just going through the motions, enjoying the extremely easy lifestyle until we could get on with the business of real life. And the definition of ‘real life’ to us? Of the guys I went to high school and college with, there are at least three congressmen, four CEOs, an ambassador, and one host of a very important political talk show on CNN.”

I threw back the last of my drink. My head was starting to spin. “Okay, so life of a young rich boy, I got it. When did you get off the train? Where did you deviate?”

“Funny you should mention that,” he said with a rueful look.

As he went on, the picture of charmed life began to have a slightly darker underbelly. After Leo graduated from Yale he went to work for his father, going into banking as he simultaneously pursued his MBA.

“I was learning a little bit of everything, trying to find my place within the system. Each generation of my family tries it all, works in almost all sectors of our business, before finding their particular niche. I bounced around longer than most. It wasn’t that I didn’t have an appreciation for what my family had built. But nothing was ringing any bells for me. Nothing was interesting beyond the paycheck. What I was interested in was partying, enjoying the good life that, frankly, I hadn’t earned. But try telling that to a twenty-three-year-old.”

I kicked back on the swing, the movement soothing as I listened to Leo’s story—the parties, the women, the coke. I can’t say I was ready to pronounce him a poor little rich boy, but it certainly seemed there was a pressure that came with the extreme wealth he’d been born into. He did bounce around within his family’s company, although it was clear when your last name was Maxwell it wasn’t a hard forty-hour work week, like some. Forty hours, pfft. My mother worked fifty to sixty my entire life, and that was a hard fifty to sixty.

“Remember the financial crisis a few years back? All those mortgage loans, all those foreclosures, all those people who lost their homes because they couldn’t afford their balloon payments?”

“I sure do. My mother almost lost this house,” I replied, and I watched as he winced. “She’d been dating a mortgage guy who talked her into refinancing. And not thinking that the loan would surely outlast the relationship, she was completely surprised when the payments increased—something about an adjustable rate?”

“Yep, tons of people got suckered into new loans called ARMs: adjustable rate mortgages.”