Room-maid(52)

He thought about it and then said, “Let’s do Thai. What do you recommend?”

“I’ll look it up and see what’s close.” I did an online search and found a restaurant half a mile away. I showed the menu to Tyler, who read it over my shoulder. I could feel the heat from his chest next to my neck, making my skin tingle. He braced his arm on the table as he read it and the screen in front of me started to swirl and swim, so that I couldn’t focus. I noticed that he had such strong, nicely formed forearms.

I sighed. I was truly pathetic.

We decided on a few different dishes, like pad thai, noodle soup, and green-curry chicken. More accurately, he decided and I nodded, as I was so distracted by him that I couldn’t have said words even if I wanted to. It was both a relief and a disappointment when he moved away to call in the order.

When he hung up, he sat back down at the table with me. “We should go over your budget while we wait. Why don’t you show me your last month’s expenses?”

I quickly and mentally ran through what I had bought and whether it would show up on my account. Most of the replacement stuff I’d done through Amazon and Violet had paid for the shoes. I didn’t think there was anything too embarrassing.

After I logged in to my bank account, I pushed my laptop toward him.

“Do you mind if I download some software for budgeting?”

“Sure.”

He mentioned one by name that was free and would sync up with my bank account. After a few minutes, he angled my laptop so that we could both see it. “So it seems like your biggest expenses fall in this miscellaneous category. Part of setting a budget is figuring out how much you should be spending and then discipline yourself to stay under that amount. You should also be looking at monthly expenditures that maybe are unnecessary. Like . . .” He scrolled down a bit and said, “Do you really need Netflix?”

That was like asking me if I needed my firstborn child. “Uh, yes. I need it. That’s nonnegotiable. If for no other reason than it allows me to consume television the same way I do ice cream and alcohol.”

He laughed and said, “Okay, okay. You win. Netflix stays. What about this expense for Sephora? A hundred and thirty-two dollars?”

While I’d had to downgrade my hair dye, makeup, cleanser, and toner, I was not willing to give this up. “That’s for my moisturizer.”

He blinked at me a couple of times, as if he hadn’t heard me correctly. “You paid a hundred and thirty-two dollars for lotion for your face?”

“It’s not lotion. It’s moisturizer.”

“For one bottle? What’s in it? Dragon’s blood and the scraping of a unicorn’s horn?”

I wasn’t about to tell him it wasn’t for a whole bottle, but for like two ounces. “Ha-ha. I need it. My face needs it.”

“You don’t need it. You’re beautiful.”

“It’s why I’m beautiful!” I was caught between sheer delight and disbelief at his words, and partial terror that he was going to make me stop using it. But then I started thinking about the way he’d complimented me—he’d said it so matter-of-factly, like it wasn’t his personal opinion, just a truth he happened to agree with.

I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

While I was trying to figure out his deeper meaning, he chuckled and shook his head. “Come on, you’re easily the hottest girl in this apartment.”

If I thought I’d been thrilled before, it was nothing compared to what I was feeling now. A flush started at the top of my scalp and went down to my toes—unpainted because I couldn’t afford to get a pedicure. Then I realized that Tyler was quoting back to me what I’d said about him at the charity event. Did that mean . . . it was a joke? A callback and he didn’t really mean anything by it? Or was he trying to butter me up so that he could pry my moisturizer out of my cold, soon-to-be dehydrated hands?

Not willing to be taken in, I said, “You’re not going to flatter me to get me to change my mind. I’ll remind you that I’m the only girl in this apartment.”

“That’s not true. Pidge is here and she’s gorgeous. Aren’t you?” he asked his dog, bending over to pet her. She licked his cheek and I had never felt more of a kinship to her, ever. He turned his attention back to me. “Do you really need it?”

“The only time I get a facial now is when I open the dishwasher midcycle and the steam hits me in my face. I don’t buy the moisturizer every month. I’m really careful with how much I use on a daily basis. But I’ve had to give up so many other things. Let me have this one.”

“All right, all right.” He threw his hands up, as if I’d defeated him. “But there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. If your parents are super wealthy, don’t you have a trust fund?”

“My trust fund is gone.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Not because I spent it all on moisturizer. My parents took it back.”

“Revocable or irrevocable?”

“My understanding was irrevocable for the tax benefits.” I’d overheard Violet and Vanessa discussing their trusts in the past.

“That means they can’t take it away just because they’re mad at you.”

I shrugged. “They employ attorneys by weight and volume, and as you can clearly see, I’m in no financial position to fight them.”