He appraises me before saying, “I’m sending you back.”
To my surprise, I feel dismayed. “You’re—but—why?”
He pulls out a silver cigarette case from his coat and lights a cigarette. After inhaling, then exhaling, he turns back to me. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
Taken aback, I don’t know what to say at first. “Excuse me?”
“I understand that you want the money, but this is not something you can undo. If you get buyer’s remorse, there are no returns.”
“I know that,” I say quietly.
“Why do you need the money so badly?”
“Well, I don’t make much of it at The Montclair. Lila—my mother—doesn’t make much either back in North Carolina. And my younger brother, he’s got a chance of getting a basketball scholarship, or so his coach says, if he can attend this special camp. Plus...there’s a lot of good reasons.”
“What about your biological father?”
“I don’t know who my biological father is.”
He taps the cigarette to dislodge the ashes before taking another draw. “A lot of people have things they need to pay for without resorting to what you’re doing.”
Finding his statement patronizing, I can’t help replying, “Easy for someone like you to say.”
He glances sharply at me.
Undaunted this time, I continue, “I have an opportunity, a unique opportunity, to make more money than I could working an entire year—well, I guess it would be more like two years because I only work part time because of school.”
“Where do you attend school?”
“I’m taking classes at the community college, but I’m hoping to transfer to UC Berkeley in the fall.”
His expression seems to soften—a little.
“Maybe you don’t understand what a relief it would be not to have to worry about money for a change.”
“I don’t,” he concedes. “My family always had money. At least since the fifteenth century on my mother’s side of the family, when China took over Vietnam.”
“That’s a long time.”
“You go through with your plan, the hangover is going to be worse than what you felt this morning.”
“You don’t know that.”
He gives me a who-you-trying-to-kid look.
“Really,” I say. “I’m very practical.”
He doesn’t seem to believe me. “Women always remember their first time.”
“And men don’t? Did you have a ‘hangover’ after yours?”
His stare deepens, and a faint smile tugs at a corner of his mouth. I realize how full his lips are. Usually I don’t notice men’s lips, almost as if they don’t have any, but Tony’s lips are supple and...sensuous.
“I do remember my first time,” he says, his tone lighter than before. “I don’t remember her name, but I remember what she looked like. And I remember it was hellishly humid because it was summer in Vietnam.”
“And did you have buyer’s remorse?”
“It’s not the same for men.”