Oxblood Read Free

comfy,” she said with a dreamy smile.
    â€œHow would you know if Gil’s bed is comfortable?”
    â€œI’ve heard his bed is comfortable?” she answered sheepishly.
    â€œI don’t want to know,” I told her. I knew she was joking when she implied that she and Gil had fooled around. The truth was that Gil didn’t have time for even a fling. School was his lover and that was okay with him. “It doesn’t matter anyway. No one goes into Gil’s room without his explicit permission and you know that. The man is obsessed with his privacy.”
    Gil’s room had a tendency to look a bit like a unabomber’s­ lair: piles and piles of research journals organized in a way that made sense only to him. I might have peeked my head in a couple of times after he left to borrow one of his old T-shirts and noticed that he took a dozen blank journals with him. I told him I was sure he could find some there, but he swears by the ones he gets from the student store on campus, claiming they “lay just right” when he writes.
    He threw himself into his studies after his girlfriend, Maria, died. We had just lost Mom and Dad two years prior, which made it especially difficult. He became obsessive about school, and I couldn’t blame him. We all have our coping mechanisms. Gil is an awesome guy and an amazing brother, but his obsession for the law sometimes trumps his ability to think rationally about things.
    â€œThe couch is perfect,” Tiffany smiled and changed the subject. “Did you hear from Chad today?”
    Chad was my on-again, off-again boyfriend of two years. He was nice enough, but Tiffany didn’t like him because he constantly mooched off me. His father was a heart surgeon who’d invented some valve used in valve-replacement surgery. Chad could have had all the money in the world if he’d gone to medical school like his parents wanted him to, but an argument about their unwillingness to replace the most recent car he wrecked, and a rash “I don’t need your money anyway” statement later, and Chad was on his own. It took him a year to run out of money, but by then he was too proud to go back and admit he’d been wrong.
    We met one night at the diner. He had come in twenty minutes before closing and ordered a cup of coffee. His hair was a mess and there were dark circles around his eyes. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. I asked him if he was okay and I could have sworn he was about to start crying. He said he didn’t want to burden me with his problems and called me “ma’am.” I refilled his coffee four times, and each time he told me a little more about how he was down on his luck. When the diner closed, he walked me to my car and told me I was the prettiest, sweetest girl he had met in a long time. He was the cutest, most polite guy I’d met in a long time, so it seemed we were made for each other.
    Unfortunately, gorgeous brown eyes, sexy abs, and good table manners only go so far. He barely worked and when he did it was only one or two days filling in on a construction gig. After six months of staying at my place and not contributing in any way, I told him he had to man up, grow up, and start helping with the rent and chores. That was when he decided it was better for our relationship if he didn’t practically live with me. Eventually, I stopped asking when he’d be back from an out-of-town day job because he usually stayed and mooched off his buddies after the job was done, which meant he wasn’t mooching off of me.
    The bottom line was if Chad had any idea how much money Gil and I had, he would have tried to put a ring on my finger to get a piece of it. He would be able to maintain his slacker lifestyle and never have to face his parents and admit he was wrong. Life would be a dream for him but a nightmare for me.
    Tiffany and Sam were the only ones in my life who knew about the money.