Hands Off

The following Saturday at 6 am, I pulled up in front of Dylan’s place, an old Victorian house with four mailboxes. Why was I here? Simple. I was too stupid to learn from my mistakes. After Kyle’s guilt trip the previous weekend, I figured I owed Dylan an apology. A text message would have done it. A voice message would have been overkill. But in my stupid, inebriated state, I called him. I blubbered on for a good five minutes about how I’d been unfair and judgmental and over the top and a good twenty other things. Dylan kept quiet the entire time, never berating me, never interrupting to defend himself. When I finished my endless soliloquy, I had to check if he was still on the phone. He was. And when he finally spoke, I wasn’t prepared.

“Does this mean we can see each other again?” he asked.

“Uh…”

“How about we go hiking next Saturday?”

Hiking? When was the last time I did that? After all my blubbering, my defenses were down. “Um. Ok.”

Still, waking pre-dawn was not my idea of a first date. OK, technically, it wasn’t our first. But it felt that way. We’d been together in college for less than two months when he disappeared to Mexico, and we didn’t really “date” much in college anyway. We more “hung out” the way college students do. But I hoped he understood that we were no longer 18. At 25, I was done “hanging out.” Yet here I was. 6 am. Picking up my date because he didn’t have a car of his own.

I didn’t want to honk and wake the neighbors, so I pulled out my phone to write him a text. Before I hit send, Dylan came running out, carrying a backpack. How the hell had I gotten myself into this? “You know,” I said as he climbed into the car, “if one of my friends is on a date pre-sunrise, it means they hit it off with the guy the night before, not that the date is just beginning.”

Dylan shut the door. “Your friends aim too low.”

“At least we don’t have to worry about traffic at this hour. Unless a herd of cows tries crossing the highway.” I pulled onto the road. “It’s your job to keep me awake the whole drive, so you might want to brainstorm scintillating topics of conversation.”

“I could tell you about Mexico.”

At the very thought of Mexico, a wave of anger pulsed through my veins. I’d never felt so abandoned in my life as when Dylan ditched me for whatever he found south of the border. At the beach last week, I’d wanted to hear about it, not only because I was drunk, not only to satisfy my morbid curiosity, but also to bring closure on a painful chapter of my life. Now I was no longer drunk and no longer positive I wanted closure. I didn’t want to start our first date in seven years by bringing up anger, resentment, pain, and frustration. I shook my head to clear the haze of emotions already forming. “No, not Mexico. Not yet. Not today. You’ll have to find some other way of keeping me awake.”

Dylan opened his backpack. “I brought us a thermos of Neapolitan roast.”

That was more my style. “Let me guess, you roasted and brewed it yourself?”

“Just brewed it,” he said, slapping the thermos. “I splurged and bought the beans from Peet’s.”

“Impressive. What’s that, an investment of sixty-five cents an ounce?”

“Not quite. I buy in bulk.”

“Of course you do. Fill me up, Romeo.”

A little after 7 am, we pulled into a parking lot dotted with a half dozen cars. “See, it’s not so early,” Dylan said. “We’re not even the first ones here.”

“The existence of other crazies doesn’t make us any saner.”

“Doesn’t it? I swear we’re constantly surrounded by insane behavior, and the only thing that stops us from recognizing it is that everyone’s doing it.” Dylan lugged his backpack over his shoulders.

“It’s too early for a philosophy lecture. Come on, let’s hit the trail.”

My crabby, early morning attitude dissipated once we got moving. “I haven’t hiked in ages. It’s beautiful out here.”

“Sure is. I keep dreaming of this place but haven’t made it out here in years.”

“Why not? No car?”

He lifted a sagging branch high above my head so I could easily walk under it. “No, I get rides or rent a car when I need to. Hiking just isn’t something I love doing alone.”

“Why alone? You’re a friendly guy.”

“Hiking isn’t a priority for Kyle or my other guy friends. They’d rather watch a game. When they do take trips, I rarely want to shell out enough to join them.”

“No girlfriends?” I slapped his shoulder, trying to lighten the question, but I cringed at the image of another girl in his arms.

“Nothing serious.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one, the only girl I wanted to be with flatly refused to see me.”

I blushed. The only girl? Did that mean in the past seven years there hadn’t been anyone else? I’d erred on the other side. With Libby’s encouragement, I got right back out there and started dating guy after guy, hoping to find someone to fill the void Dylan left. None of them made a mark on my heart the way Dylan had, but at least the dates distracted me. I’d assumed he’d done the same. Had I been too hard on him by never giving him a chance to explain? “You need to learn to chase a little, Dylan. I was angry at you for leaving me, but I still had hopes that we’d get back together when you returned to college.”

“But then I never returned to school.”

No, he never did. The trail split. A sign hung over the branch to the right that read:

Dylan turned left onto the Daisy Trail.

I stopped at the trailhead and dug my hands into my hips. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“To the top.” Dylan pointed ahead. “It’s a beautiful hike.”

“On the Daisy Trail? I don’t think so.” I wagged a finger at him. “Unless you don’t think you can’t hack Widowmaker?”

“Look, I just thought…”

“Yeah, I know what you thought. You thought your dainty little date couldn’t handle the big boys’ trail. I didn’t wake up at 4:30 this morning for some walk through the daisies.”

“4:30? You picked me up at 6:00.”

Why are men so clueless? Did Dylan think I was going to pop out of bed and hop into the car? Show up on our date with bedhead and pillow lines on my face? Even if I wasn’t yet sold on this second go-around with Dylan, I still wanted that boy to swoon. “I’m going this way. If you’re man enough to handle Widowmaker, you’re welcome to join me.”

I turned my back on Dylan and headed up the trail with a sly grin on my lips. I just hoped I hadn’t bit off more than I could chew.

Dylan came running up behind me. “I wish I’d known you’d want to hike Widowmaker.”

“Why, to give yourself a little more time to Man-Up?”

“No, I would have brought my climbing gear.”

Climbing gear? That didn’t sound good. How much trouble had I gotten myself into? I suppose we could always turn around if it got too hairy, but until then, I’d be damned if I was going to show any fear. “There were no other girls all this time?” I braced myself for the answer.

“A few, but my lifestyle choices were so different that dating was never easy.”

“You weren’t willing to compromise for a relationship?” I’d certainly compromised plenty for my own. In the past seven years, I’d never fallen for a guy like I had for Dylan, but I still had a boyfriend more often than I didn’t. How often had I spent time with a guy who I wasn’t crazy about rather than be alone?

“I compromised some, but I never felt great about it. We’d go out to dinner and a club. I could easily blow enough in a night to feed myself for a week.”

“You never eat out?” That was so not going to fly with me.

“Now and again I’ll go out for business purposes, but it’s been four years since I ate at a restaurant for fun.”

“Four years?” When was the last time I’d gone even four days without eating out?

“I tried limiting it at first, but then every time a friend wanted to go out, it brought up a fresh debate. I wasn’t saving that much, and I constantly felt like I was missing out.”

“Sounds like in high school when I tried to lose weight by cutting back on dessert. Each day I’d convince myself it was OK to have just a little, then a little more. My weight stayed the same, and my stress levels went through the roof. You’re saying it’s easier to draw a line in the sand. So you went Cold Turkey on restaurants?”

“Restaurants and quite a few other things.” The dirt trail ended, replaced by a field of boulders. Dylan leapt onto the first boulder and extended a hand to help me up. I ignored the hand and jumped onto a second boulder, not quite as nimbly as he had, but at least I’d managed it on my own.

If Dylan was trying to sell me on why we should get back together, he was doing a horrible job. No restaurants. Presumably, no movies, concerts, or other entertainment. What did he hope we would do? Sit around The Crypt and watch videos together? Not my idea of a relationship. “But why? Why all this deprivation?”

“To build myself a strong financial foundation.”

My face flushed with the memory of the lecture I’d given Dylan at the beach. I’d accused him of lacking the maturity to make sacrifices for his future. I was right about him lacking maturity, but I had the direction wrong. He wasn’t one of those guys who couldn’t save money; he came from the more depressing breed who couldn’t spend it. Periodically, I’d read an article about some poor old fart who died and his family discovered he had millions stuffed away in his mattress. Having all that money and never enjoying a dime of it was so much worse than never having it at all.

Dylan pulled out a bag of trail mix he’d made, and I took a handful. As I ate, I thought about my own expenses. So much of the money I spent was social. When looking for apartments, I insisted on one with a nice big kitchen, where I could work my magic, and with a large enough living room to host a pack of friends. It also had to be in the right part of town, close to my favorite restaurants and clubs. I went out to eat plenty, but seldom alone. It hit me how incredibly lonely Dylan’s journey must have been. “You think all this has been worth it?”

“Has what been worth it?”

“All the deprivation you’ve subjected yourself to.”

“I’ve made tremendous strides these past few years.” He grabbed a handful of trail mix and shoved the bag into the side pocket of his backpack. “They’ll pay off in the future.”

Would they? Would he ever allow himself to enjoy all that money he was hoarding away? Somehow, I doubted it. “I bet it’s been tough in the meantime.”

“It hasn’t been too bad.” Dylan studied the seeds in his hand as though they were tea leaves. “Until now.”

“What’s changed?”

“Seeing you at the beach. Like God says about Adam, ‘It’s not good for man to be alone.’ I’d shut down a part of myself that can’t remain dormant forever.”

I couldn’t help but grin. “It was beguiled by my feminine charms?”

“It came roaring back to life.” I felt his eyes on me but dared not look up to meet them. ”It reminded me we had unfinished business.”

I chewed on the sweet yet tart mix of chocolate chips and raisins. Dylan’s business might have been unfinished, but I was more certain than ever that I’d made the right choice in keeping my distance. Why couldn’t he have just gotten himself a good degree, landed a solid job, and enjoyed the fruits of his labor like the rest of us? Sweet and handsome as he was, I wanted more for my future than living in some basement and writing off all social life as “too expensive.”

If we’d been out at some café, I’d probably make my excuses now and slip away. As it was, we were on a beautiful hike, and Dylan was pleasant enough company. I decided to finish the hike with him as a friend, then let him down as gently as I could.

The boulders ended at a rock outcropping. This was some of our easiest hiking yet, and we followed the bare rock until we came to a cliff that hovered over us like an enormous beast waiting to pounce. Off to one side of the trail, the mountain sank into what must have been Widowmaker Gulch. The other side of the trail was full of thorn bushes. That left two options. We could wimp out and turn around, which would add hours to our hike, or we could scale the cliff.

I’d climbed cliffs like this in the past. A decade ago. At summer camp. Wearing a helmet and strapped into a harness, with a counselor feeding me the belay rope. I supposed that was the equipment Dylan referred to.

I turned to Dylan. “You want to go first?”

“No, I think you should go first.”

“What’s wrong? You chicken?” And yes, I did the whole chicken-wing thing with my arms and made the chicken noise.

Dylan didn’t bite. “No, I want to be able to catch you in case you fall.”

Oh. Good idea. I swallowed hard, shrugged my shoulders, and started up the cliff. It wasn’t vertical, but it was pretty darned close. There were several small ledges in the cliff face, and these—plus other cracks and crevices—gave me the hand and footholds I needed. That was, if I could get high enough to use them. I slipped my hands onto a solid hold, but I didn’t have the leverage to hoist myself up.

“You want a boost?” Dylan asked.

I looked over my shoulder to see Dylan poised beneath me, his hands six inches beneath my butt, ready to push.

“You keep your gorilla hands away from my ass,” I said in my sassiest voice. “There will be no free feels today.”

Dylan pulled back. “I was just trying to help.”

Poor guy. He was too clueless to tell when he was being teased. “I know you were. I’ll tell you what. Bend over and make a basket with your hands.” He did, and I put my foot into it. “Now lift.”

Dylan hoisted me to the point where I could get myself nice and secure on the cliff face. “I really have to do 40 feet of this?” I called down.

“The top half is easier than the bottom, once you get past…”

Eager to be up at the top, I didn’t wait for Dylan to finish his sentence. I reached up and got my fingertips over some handholds. The rock felt strong, but I didn’t yet have a firm grip. If I could get a decent spot to plant my foot a few feet up, I’d be alright. There was a small crack in the rock, I dug my left foot into it, and felt some support. It wasn’t as much as I liked, but if I could get a decent push off, I’d…

“Wait, Amber, slow down.”

I pushed off hard with my right foot, hoping my left would support me while I found a strong foothold. My left held OK, but the angle I was climbing at put too much pressure on my fingertips. I tried to adjust them, to get a better grip, but it was too late.

The fingers of my left hand gave way, and my body swung like a pendulum. I twisted around and lost my footing. My right hand clutched the rock, but not securely enough to handle all my weight. I lost my grip and fell. I hit the ledge beneath me. If I could hold on there, I’d be OK. But I didn’t have the body control I needed. I got a foot on the ledge slowing my fall, but couldn’t hold it. I banged an elbow, then a knee against the hard rock before losing all contact with the cliff.

Dylan grabbed me. Awkwardly. Painfully. My head hit his shoulder. One of his hands grabbed a leg, the other an arm. But he stopped my fall. He protected me from smashing myself against the rocky ground.

“Are you OK?” he asked.

I tried to tell him, ‘yes, I’m fine.’ I tried to thank him for catching me. But it’s not what came out. Instead, a ball of fire rose from my insides, and I screamed, “Dammit, why weren’t you there for me?”

Dylan’s eyebrows twisted in confusion. “Amber, I’m right here.”

I hit him. My pathetic blows must have felt like raindrops against his muscular back. “How could you do this to me?”

“Amber,” Dylan whispered into my ear, “I caught you.” He lowered me gently to my feet.

Tears flooded my eyes. Dylan stood as a blur before me. “Not now,” I cried, “then.” I thought I’d made peace with him leaving years ago, but in my terrified, hysterical state, a load of baggage came pouring out. “How could you desert me like that?”

Dylan backed up. “Amber, I…”

All the pain in my knee was channeled into Dylan. “You tell me you love me,” I jabbed his chest with my pointer finger as I blubbered like a toddler, “then you go off on this two-week trip, and all I get back is some stupid letter! Seven years, Dylan. You left me alone for seven years.”

“Woah!” Dylan’s hands shot up in protest. “I came back after three months.”

“What a load of crap! You came back from Mexico. But you didn’t return to your life. You didn’t come back to me.”

“I called you as soon as I got home.”

I ignored his feeble retort. “You know who I went to the Winter Formal with that year?”

“Who?”

“Brian O’Dell. The six-handed groping machine. He didn’t give a damn about me. He just wanted a hot date who would put out. When I didn’t, he ditched me and went home with some floozy. I had to hitch a ride home with Kyle and Libby, who obviously wanted to be alone but took me anyway. Do you have any idea how humiliating that was?”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“You should have been there.” I smacked his chest with one hand after the next. “You should have been my date. You should have protected me from all those slimy guys.”

“Amber, I…”

“You had so much going for you. You went to a good school. You got good grades. You had this bright future. And you had me. I loved you so much. I used to dream about our wedding, about having kids together.”

Dylan’s eyes grew wide. “You did?”

“All I ever wanted was to be with a good guy. And there you were. You were so sweet. So present. You weren’t like those other guys who just wanted to score and could care less about the emotional wrecks they left in their wakes.”

“Amber…”

“And what do I get? A letter!”

“That wasn’t supposed to be—.”

“You hurt me so much more than the Brian O’Dell’s of the world ever could. Because I let you in. I trusted you with all my heart. And you tore out my heart and stomped all over it.” I stomped up and down, now completely out of control.

Dylan rested his hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I never wanted to lose you. And I tried to get you back, but you wouldn’t take me.”

I turned up to face him. “I wanted you back. I wanted you back in the worst way. But the Dylan that left, the one building this amazing life, never returned. You could have had a great degree, a successful career, and an incredibly loving wife. Yet you gave it all up for what? To move back in with your parents and get some dead-end job.”

“Amber, that’s not…”

I swatted his hand off my shoulder. “Why did you do it? Why didn’t you come back to me?”

“You know, when you were on the cliff, I tried to tell you to slow down.” Dylan crossed his arms, and his tone grew stern. “I saw that you didn’t have strong enough footing to get yourself up.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You didn’t want to listen. You were moving so fast. You thought you were so close to a place where you could get a secure footing. You failed to see that each move you thought would bring you closer to safety actually put you in more danger.”

“And…”

“I was just like you. Only when someone pointed out my risk, I stopped and listened to the warning. It took me three months to fully grasp how much danger I’d put myself in and to understand there was a much safer route up the cliff.”

“The path of staying at the bottom and not reaching for anything in life?”

Dylan shook his head, and tears welled up in his eyes. “For the first time in my life, I understood the impact of the choices I was making. Or so I thought. Because I thought I could have it all. I thought I could show you where I’d been off and how I’d finally gotten myself on a course I could believe in. I thought you’d come to understand it as I did. I thought you’d accept my choices. Even be proud of them. I thought you’d continue to love me.”

Now it was my turn to backpedal. “Dylan…”

“Had I known how much I’d have to give up, had I known that taking the smarter path would cost me the only woman I’d ever loved, then maybe I wouldn’t have done it. Maybe I would have continued to blindly climb the cliff. And maybe, just maybe, I would have gotten lucky and made it to the top despite my stupidity. But I couldn’t so easily ignore the warning. I couldn’t unlearn the better way. So I carried on alone.

“I’ll take responsibility for leaving you for three months.” Dylan’s eyes blazed, and he pointed hard at my chest. “But you need to own the last seven years. Those were your choice.” Dylan walked away. I thought for a moment he was ditching me here, but he only went a hundred feet or so and sat down on a boulder, staring off into the distance.

I cried my eyes out until I had no tears left. Once my eyes were dry, I inspected the damage. I had a couple of cuts from where I’d hit the cliff, and my neck was sore from hitting Dylan’s shoulder, but all in all, it could have been far worse.

I walked over to where Dylan sat. He still stared off into the distance, but when he felt my presence, he turned. I didn’t want to delve back into the emotional maelstrom, so I just focused on the immediate problem. “If you’re ready, I’d like to keep moving. Where do we go from here?”

“We have two choices. We can take another shot at the cliff or backtrack to the car.”

“We can’t hike back to the Daisy Trail and get to the top that way?”

Dylan shook his head.

“You sure? Daisies are my favorite flower, you know.”

“There won’t be time. We’ve come too far for that. The Daisy Trail is longer than this one. By the time we get to the trailhead, we won’t have time to summit on that trail and still get back by sundown, when the park closes.”

“But if we summit now, we can go back on the Daisy Trail?”

“We could, but it’s not my first choice.”

“You want to go back down the cliff?”

“No, the trail is a loop.” Dylan pointed up the cliff. “From the top, we’d climb down the far side of the mountain and along the river bank to the parking lot. There’s a nice little spot over there I’d wanted to share with you.”

“And we can’t get there if we head back?”

“Not this trip.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him this would be the only trip we’d take together. As long as I put in the effort coming out here, I wanted to reach the top. “Forward it is then.”

“I don’t want you getting hurt again.”

“Then it sounds like we’ll both need to slow down and think through how to do the climb together. I’m willing to give it a shot if you are.”

Dylan looked me up and down, not in that creepy way that guys sometimes did, but as if assessing just how badly hurt I was.

“I’m OK, Dylan. Some of these cuts may continue to sting, but I’m a big girl. I can handle a challenge.”

“Then let’s try.” Dylan got to his feet and handed me his backpack. “Put this on.”

The pack weighed twenty pounds, at least. “Yeah, right. If I can barely climb this damned cliff with nothing on my back, you think I’m going to be able to do it wearing your backpack?

Dylan didn’t pull it back. “Put it on,” he repeated.

This time I listened. I put on the backpack. It was huge on me. The long straps made the pack hang a good eight inches from my back. Dylan reached over to tighten the straps, but they hung next to my chest, and I shrank back. Sweet Dylan, he was never one to invade a girl’s space without permission. He withdrew his hand and said, “Tighten the straps. Pull there and there.”

I pulled where he showed me, and soon, the bag was tight to my back. We headed back to the cliff face. “But I still don’t think I can climb the cliff with this on my back.”

“You won’t need to.” Dylan squatted. “Climb on.”

“You’re not serious?”

Dylan looked at me over his shoulder. “You don’t want to turn back, and I don’t want to see you fall again. What choice do we have?”

“You can’t really make it up there with me on your back, can you?”

“We’ll find out.”

“No, we won’t. I’m not riding on your back, hoping you make it to the top. If you slip, we’ll both fall. Not only won’t you be there to catch me this time, you’ll come crashing down on top of me.” I slipped the backpack off. “No, thank you.”

“Then what do you want to do?”

“Let’s be smart about this. You’re the more experienced climber. You tell me what to do, I’ll listen, and we’ll get to the top together. OK?”

“OK.” Dylan strapped on the pack.

“What’s the first step?”

“Getting you back up to that first ledge.” Dylan bent over and made a basket with his hands as he had before, but this time, I didn’t put my foot into it.

“Dylan, you know what I said before about not boosting me up by putting your hand on my ass?”

“Yeah.”

“I was teasing. You know that, right?”

Dylan’s face remained blank. He didn’t quite shrug, but I could tell he was anything but sure.

“I know you’ve always been cautious about respecting a girl’s boundaries. That’s one of the things I appreciated about you. I never had to worry about you pushing me too far.”

“Amber, I promise I won’t—.”

“No, no, I want you to listen. I don’t want you to do that here. I trust you; I really do.”

“Even after everything that’s happened?”

“I’m not talking about trusting you with my heart.” I was never making that mistake again. “For now, just know that I trust you physically. The last thing I want is to fall because you were afraid to put your hands on me to support me. So if you have to touch me in any way to help either one of us get safely up the cliff, do it, and don’t think twice. You understand?”

Dylan nodded. “We don’t have to do this. We can go back.”

“No. We’re going to do this. Together.” I faced the cliff. “Now, push me up.”

This time, as Dylan helped me up, I held my tongue while he pushed his strong hand against the seat of my shorts. He thrust me upwards until I could get myself into a secure position on the first ledge. “Now hold still right there,” he said.

He climbed up after me. “Can you move your left foot six inches to the right and lean into the rock?” I slid my foot over, and he put his into the vacated spot. I leaned in to make room, and he came up behind me, enveloping me, like a soft hug. “OK, you’re going to let go of the handholds. Don’t worry. I’ve got you.”

I let go, held securely in place by Dylan.

“Now, reach up and grab the handhold right over there.” Dylan indicated the same place where I’d slipped the last time.

“I don’t have enough leverage there.”

I felt his hot breath against my neck. “You will; you just need better support for your feet.”

“But there are no good toe holds.”

“You won’t need it. Put your foot here.” Dylan bent at the knees, turning his thighs into shelves.

I licked my lips. “I don’t want to push you backwards.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got a strong grip.”

I reached up and grabbed on as tightly as I could. There was no way I could slip again with his body serving as a fence. I put my right foot on his thigh and pushed upward. That got me high enough to propel my left foot into a secure notch.

I climbed further, into a crevice in the cliff. I hadn’t been able to see this from the ground, but if I followed the crevice, I could move forward without fear of falling all the way down. “It gets easier over here,” I called out to Dylan. “I can make it forward on my own.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m good.” I climbed a few feet, then stopped. I secured myself in a strong position, turned back, and reached down. “You need a hand up?”

Dylan was already climbing, but he took my extended hand, and I pulled him up next to me. “We’re through the hard part,” he said. “Once we get through that crevice, it’s just a short hike up to the peak.”

We ate a picnic lunch on the peak, which had 360-degree views over the valley. Dylan’s cooking skills weren’t in my league, but were surprisingly good for a bachelor. He’d baked sourdough bread that morning and made sandwiches using heirloom tomatoes he’d grown in his garden. Somehow, I’d pictured him spending his days in some dark basement, eating ramen noodles to survive. How many other aspects of his lifestyle had I misjudged?

After lunch, we started our descent on the far side of the mountain, which opened into a lush river valley. “Something hit me during our little discussion at the bottom of the cliff,” I said.

“Really? Two things kept hitting me.” He was referring to my fists, of course, but I wasn’t taking the bait.

“What hit me was it sounded like you gave your choices intelligent consideration.”

Dylan’s eyes rolled in that you’ve-got-to-be-kidding way. “That’s a surprise to you?”

“Actually, yes. When you didn’t come back, I figured you couldn’t hack it anymore. I thought you’d lost all ambition, that you’d given up.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Come on, Dylan.” I grabbed hold of a tree branch to ease my descent. “You drop out of school, move back in with your parents, and get some manual labor job. If that doesn’t sound like an express train to Loserville, I don’t know what does.”

Dylan shook his head. “You are all so blind. Your stories are so deeply embedded that even when the facts are staring you in the face, you can’t see them.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What I was actually doing was cashing in my first-class ticket to Debtville and getting onto the slow, steady road to Assetville.”

“But why hoard money if you’re never going to use it.”

Dylan’s hands flew in the air. “What makes you think I’m never going to use it?”

“Well, you’re not spending any of it now, so why would you—.”

“That’s not forever. It’s just until I hit my goal.”

His goal? At the beach, he’d asked me what my goal was, as if it was perfectly obvious everyone had one, but of course, I’d had no answer. “What is your goal?”

“Financial independence.”

I laughed in spite of myself. “Really? You hope to go from living in poverty to mega-riches.”

“Mega-riches?”

“Isn’t that what it means to be financially independent? That you have so much cash, you never have to worry about money again?”

Dylan snorted. “No amount of money can ever make you financially independent.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Surely if you make enough money…”

“Oh? Mike Tyson made 400 million dollars boxing. He went bankrupt. Michael Jackson made billions, yet his estate was 500 million in the hole when he died.”

“Well sure, but I heard Tyson owned two white Bengal tigers, and didn’t Jackson try to buy the bones of the Elephant Man?” I’d read about both in an article on dumb celebrity purchases while waiting for my last dental cleaning.

“Exactly, that proves my point. The fact is, people tend to spend every dollar they get, regardless of how much they make. Hell, Kim Basinger went bankrupt after thinking it was a good idea to buy an entire town in Georgia.” We headed down rocky terrain, and with my bruised legs, I wobbled over the uneven footing. Dylan found a branch at the edge of the trail, cleared it of twigs, and handed it to me. “Here, use this.”

“Thanks.” I planted the branch on the ground and immediately felt more stable. “But Dylan, in all seriousness, I’m no Kim Basinger.”

“Granted, you’re cuter than she is.”

I couldn’t help but blush. “Last I checked, I wasn’t looking to buy a town…”

“It’s all relative. How you deal with money doesn’t change with how much you make. Haven’t you ever felt like money was burning a hole in your pocket? When you had more than you needed, you were pulled to buy something idiotic?”

A string of bad purchases ran through my head: the fountain pen I thought would finally get me to write in my journal; the seat warmer for my car that made me sweat; the espresso machine collecting dust on my kitchen counter. “You’re saying it’s bad to have more money than you need?”

“Not at all. It’s great to have money. But you have to understand what money is and how it works.” Dylan pulled out his water bottle, took a gulp, and handed it to me.

“Which is?”

“Picture an athlete—let’s say a marathoner—a guy who runs twenty miles a day for fun. One day he wakes up to a hurricane outside. He has no choice but to stay inside. His girlfriend suggests that instead of working out, they sit on the couch and watch a movie. What’s he feeling?”

“He’s probably bouncing off the walls. He’s got all this energy he wants to get out, and he’s stuck sitting there, not using it.”

“Money is also energy.” The veins in Dylan’s arms pulsed as he stretched them above his head. “It has the power to build skyscrapers or jumbo jets. It can fund schools or feed the hungry. If you have too much money in the bank, you’re going to bounce off the walls just like the athlete who can’t exercise.”

Too much money in the bank was not a problem that plagued anyone I knew. Most of my friends were squeaking by, even those with high-paying jobs like Kyle. Between school loans, car payments, rent, and socializing, that didn’t leave much to burn a hole in our pockets. But Dylan would say the opposite, wouldn’t he? He’d say those expenditures were a result of having more money than we needed. “What’s the solution?”

“You’ve got to put that money to work. It wants to be productive.” His hand soared through the air as if taking flight. “Let it.”

“How?”

“Investments.”

I stuffed the water bottle into the side pocket of his pack and continued down the trail. “Like in the stock market?”

“That’s one option. People invest in stocks hoping they’ll grow. But to me, growth should be the secondary objective, not the primary.”

“What’s the primary objective?”

“Income.”

I ought to be beyond my anger by now, but at the mention of income, my temperature rose. “If income is your objective, then why drop out of school? Don’t tell me you think you’ll make more in construction than Kyle will in law.”

“Calm down, Amber. I’m not talking about active income. I’m talking about passive.”

“Passive income?”

“Income you don’t have to work for.”

I stopped in the middle of the trail. “If you stop working, you stop making money. Isn’t that the definition of income?”

“That’s the definition of active income. If I stop working tomorrow, my active income will dry up, but my passive income will continue coming in.”

My eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“Think of a stock dividend,” Dylan said, starting to walk again. “The dividend money just shows up in the account of everyone who owns the stock. No need to work for it. Like these flowers.” He stepped to the edge of the trail, where a gray-green bush with purple flowers grew. “No one’s planting them, fertilizing them, or trimming them. They just grow.” He tore off a sprig, returned to where I was standing, and bowed. “Lavender for the lady.”

I closed my eyes to take it in the earthy scent. When I opened them again, Dylan was smelling the flowers as well. His eyes were so close to mine, so focused on mine. Then I remembered I had to keep my head straight. I literally shook it and started hiking again to regain my focus. What had we been talking about? Right, dividends.

I swallowed hard and asked, “So is that where your passive income comes from? Stock dividends?”

“Mine comes from rent on my apartments. But there are a hundred ways to make passive income.”

“You said your goal is financial independence. You rejected my definition, so what’s yours?”

“It’s simple. You’re financially independent when your passive income exceeds your cost of living.”

I climbed up and over a boulder as I chewed over his words. “Let me see if I’ve got this. If my monthly budget now is $3000 a month, then I’d need to make at least that much from dividends or real estate or some other passive source to be financially independent?”

“Not necessarily. You’ll need to generate some passive income. But if you can reduce your cost of living at the same time, you can become financially independent that much faster.”

“I guess if your passive income was more than you needed to live, you wouldn’t need an active income at all, right?”

“Exactly.” Dylan snapped his fingers. “That’s not to say that I wouldn’t continue to work. If I sat on my butt doing nothing all day, I’d bounce off the walls like the athlete in the hurricane. But once I no longer need to make money to live, I’ll be able to do whatever I want with my time. I could focus on my passions rather than on someone else’s agenda. I could live wherever I want, travel, volunteer. The thing I’m most excited about is the ability to take bigger risks because I’ll have a safety net.”

This wasn’t sounding like Loserville talk. “That’s some goal.”

“Frankly, I think it should be everyone’s goal. At least initially.”

“Initially? What comes next?”

“You can live in abundance. You can have more than you need.” Dylan offered his hand to help me down a steep decline.

“Isn’t that greedy?”

“It doesn’t have to be. The most generous people in the world live in abundance.”

“Like who?”

“Like Bill Gates. He’s spending billions trying to eradicate polio and cure malaria.”

“He’s spending some of it closer to home as well. Some of his educational initiatives have even reached my small classroom. OK, I see what you’re saying. Like those foundations with grant programs. Someone has to donate all that money, right?”

“Yes and no. Someone certainly donated the seed money. But the strongest foundations don’t use that money for grants. If they gave away their seed money, no matter how much they started with, sooner or later, it would all be gone.”

“Then what do they do with it?”

“They invest in assets that generate passive income for the foundation. Since they only give away the income generated by their investments, theoretically, these foundations can exist forever.”

Something clicked in my head. “It’s like a Cash Machine.”

“A what?”

“A Cash Machine. You insert your money into the investment cogs which churn out cash on the other end.”

His eyes narrowed. “You mean like some Dr. Seuss contraption?”

“Exactly. I’m an elementary school teacher. If I want to teach my kids about the environment, I don’t lecture about air pollution. We read and discuss The Lorax. If I want to teach about discrimination, I read them The Star Bellied Sneeches.”

“You want to lump together all these investment vehicles as some—.”

“Cash Machine. Exactly. Much easier to understand.”

“You ready for the real gem of this hike?” It was mid-afternoon, and Dylan stopped just as he rounded a bend of trees. “See where people have piled up rocks to make a small pool by the edge of the river? Know why they did that?”

I followed his gesture to the roughshod pool. The wall wasn’t tight enough to keep in the water, but it at least blocked the river from flowing quickly through. “Why?”

“It’s a natural hot spring. The water seeps out at 110 degrees.”

“I wish you’d told me. I would have brought a bathing suit.”

Dylan’s eyebrows rose like Groucho Marx. “Out here in the mountains, hikers normally go in without.”

Skinny-dipping on the first date? Was he kidding me? Even in college, we never got that far. More than once, I wondered if all that crap in his letter had been a cover-up, and if he hadn’t met some party girl who put out more than his prude girlfriend back home. “There’s something we need to talk about,” I said. I knew this issue would come up, but I hadn’t expected it quite this quickly.

“You’re not horribly deformed or anything, are you?”

I whacked the back of his head. “I’ll leave you horribly deformed if you don’t shut up. This is serious. You know how I was hesitant to date you because I was afraid of getting my heart into a relationship that wasn’t going anywhere?”

Dylan leaned down and cocked his head to meet my gaze. “You’re not having second thoughts about giving me a chance, are you?”

Of course, that morning, I’d already decided that there was no way I was dating him again. But something shifted at the cliff. I still wasn’t sure where he was going, but I didn’t want to let this great guy slip away a second time until I had a better idea of the life he was building. “No, but all I’m doing is giving you a chance. I’m not ready to jump in with both feet.” I forced myself to look away. “Until I know this relationship is going somewhere, I’m saying no to intimacy.”

“You’re saying we’ll have to bypass the hot springs?”

“There’s no way I’m driving all the way out here, hiking for eight hours, and skipping the hot springs. I’m going in dressed, and if you’re OK doing the same, you’re welcome to join me.”

Dylan held his hands before his chest in a pleading gesture. “Can I at least take off my socks and shoes?”

“Fine.” I crossed my arms. “I’ll avert my eyes.”

Fabulous as the hot springs were, going in dressed made the last leg of the hike less than comfortable.

“So I should never expect to go out to eat with you?” I was still struggling to accept what I’d gotten myself into.

Dylan shrugged. “I need to learn to compromise. I can’t expect you to make the extreme decisions I did.”

“Must have been hard missing out on all those times with friends.”

“You know the hardest part? It’s not like they were rich, and I was poor. It was the other way around; I was making money while they were in school. Each week, I’d watch them spend money they didn’t have, digging themselves further into debt, while I sat home alone. It would have been so much better if we’d all hung out together and watched a movie or played cards or enjoyed some other inexpensive activity.”

“Like hiking?” I shot him a grin.

“Yes, like hiking.” Dylan tightened the straps on his backpack.

“What you’re saying resonates on the flip side. I was one of those people spending money I didn’t have so I wouldn’t be left behind. I couldn’t stand the thought of being left out.”

Dylan jumped onto an outcropping of bald rock. “It wasn’t too bad. I can be obsessive, and I made the savings into a sort of game, seeing how little I could spend. But it would have been a lot more fun if I had friends doing the same thing.”

I followed the lines of Dylan’s sturdy shoulders. He was never one to back down from a challenge. Yet, when he wrote to me, telling me he’d discovered something amazing in Mexico, and encouraging me to join him, I hadn’t given him the benefit of the doubt. Watching him now, it struck me how hard these past seven years must have been. I’d been so angry he hadn’t returned; I’d barely spared a moment for what he must have been going through. Despite all of his friends writing him off, he carried on alone. I jumped onto the rock outcropping beside him. “It’s hitting me how little I know about your life since you left college.”

Dylan turned back to me. “What would you like to know?”

I wanted to know how much he suffered, but he would shrug off any more questions about struggle. Dylan didn’t complain; he just went through whatever he had to, silent and alone. I thought to ask him about all he’d learned, but when I opened my mouth, what came out instead was, “Did you think of me in Mexico?”

“Oh yeah.” Dylan gazed towards the horizon as if revisiting the small coastal town. “During the day, I was always busy, but at night, I slept alone on this old fishing boat, and my mind would wander. You were a favorite destination.”

“So you’d dream of me while sitting on deck, playing guitar in the moonlight in this quaint Mexican port?”

“You make it sound more romantic than it was. Throw in the stench of fish guts and cheap Mexican beer, and you’ll be closer to the truth.”

A girlish grin took over my face. “The point is, you thought of me?”

“Yeah, and I kept thinking of writing to you. But when I didn’t get a response to the letter I sent with Kyle, I figured you wanted nothing to do with me.”

I bit my lip. “That’s pretty spot on. Sorry, Dylan.”

“It’s OK. The truth is, some paths are easier to walk alone.”

My expression fell. “I thought you wanted me to join you?”

Dylan shrugged his shoulders. “It was a pipe dream. College was too important to you. Had we continued dating, I would have felt like an outsider. Either that or I would have given up and returned to school. It was better the way things worked out.”

“You make school sound like such a mistake. You think it was a bad idea for all of us?”

Dylan picked up an acorn and tossed it up and down. “Not everyone. Remember my old roommate Tim?”

“That’s Dr. Tim now. He recently graduated med school.”

“Tim knew he wanted to be a doctor from the time he was ten-years-old. While Kyle and I were rushing our fraternity, Tim was hunkered down studying biology.”

“I remember.”

“You know how long I spent in high school debating whether college was the right place for me?”

“How long?”

“As far as I can recall, the thought never passed my mind once.” Dylan threw the acorn over his shoulder. “All of my friends went; my parents expected me to go. It was such a given, I never questioned it. Sure, I debated which school to go to, but whether to attend school at all? Never.”

“You finally thought it over in Mexico?”

“Exactly. It was the first time I ever sat and thought about what I wanted out of life.”

I studied his face. “And what answer did you come to?”

“I realized that I had absolutely no clue.”

I giggled. “That was your big revelation?”

“It was a huge revelation. Here I was spending years of my life and getting myself hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt, and I didn’t even know what I wanted from my education. Had I been a guy like Tim, with a clear reason for being in school, I would have stayed.”

“But school’s such an amazing place to experiment and figure out what you want to do.” My hands danced through the air the way only an Italian’s can. “Hell, I didn’t know I wanted to teach until Junior year.”

“That’s another question I asked in Mexico: was college the best place to figure out my path?” Dylan bent over to tighten the laces on his hiking boots. “It certainly offered an environment to explore, but I decided the opportunity costs were just too high.”

“Opportunity costs?”

“Whenever you do one thing, you give up on the opportunity to do something else.”

“Like by coming out here with you in the wee hours, I missed the opportunity to get my beauty sleep.”

That line gave Dylan the perfect setup to tell me how beautiful I looked anyway, but of course, he missed it. “Exactly.”

“You just moved back home? I’m sure your parents loved that.” Why was my voice dripping with sarcasm?

“They were relieved. There are opportunity costs with time and others with money. My folks had taken out a fair amount of college debt in their own names. And not just for me. They were in their mid-fifties and had more money tied up in student loans to send three kids to school than they’d saved in their retirement accounts. Meanwhile, my older brother couldn’t find work in his field and wound up taking a retail job he could have gotten out of high school.”

I thought about my parents and all of our school expenses but quickly brushed it off. As a successful attorney, my father didn’t have the same financial struggles Dylan’s parents did. “What about your sister?”

“She studied education like you.”

“Did she ever teach?”

“Oh yeah. For five years, until her first kid came along, and she decided not to go back to work. Guess how much of a dent she made in those educational loans during those five years of working?”

I didn’t have to guess. I barely got by on my own teacher’s salary.

Dylan stepped off to the side of the trail and started clapping his hands.

“What are you doing?”

“Snakes hang out near raspberry bushes.” He pointed out dark red berries I had missed.

“Snakes eat raspberries?”

“Snakes eat creatures that eat raspberries. I want to make sure I’m not one of them.” Dylan slipped his hand into the dark green leafy mess and picked a bunch of the plump berries. He reached out and passed me a handful, then went deeper into the bush for more.

I popped a raspberry into my mouth and moaned the way only a food-obsessed Italian can. Dylan moved slowly through the thorny bush, getting pricked every so often, but remaining stoic. He didn’t mind a bit of suffering to get what he wanted. I, on the other hand, would have settled for only the berries in easy reach rather than risk getting cut by the thorns.

When Dylan emerged, we sat down to enjoy his harvest. “What happened after Mexico?” I asked.

“I got myself a construction job with a remodeling company so I could learn to fix and maintain houses.”

“You didn’t find it hard to find work without a degree?”

Dylan flicked a fly away from his face. “Not at all. For all the talk of underemployment these days, the construction industry struggles to find enough skilled workers.”

“What kind of skills?”

Dylan fingered off each word. “Welding, plumbing, electricity, carpentry.”

“You got yourself a certification in one of those?”

“Just some basic training in each, not a full certification in any.”

I popped a berry into my mouth. “You wouldn’t have made more as a specialist?”

“I would have. And if I wanted a long-term construction career, that’s probably what I would have done.”

“What did you want?”

“Lacking any clear life vision, I figured the best thing I could do was work on building a solid financial foundation, so by the time I figured out what I wanted, money wouldn’t be a barrier.”

I guess that sounded smart, but wouldn’t a higher-paying job be a better bet? Blue-collar work seemed beneath a smart guy like Dylan. “What does learning welding have to do with that?”

“The more I learned about money, the more I realized real estate would play a role in building my wealth. Short term, I thought it would be smarter to manage my apartments myself rather than pass them on to some property manager. I took night classes to flush out my skills and soon got a job refurbishing houses.”

“You just did whatever tasks they gave you?” A raspberry burst in my hand, turning it reddish-purple.

Dylan dug into his pack and fished out a napkin. “At first, I did all the lowest level jobs, then my responsibilities grew with my experience. After a year, I was elevated to foreman even though I was still the newest guy on the crew.”

“Impressive.”

“Not really.” We’d gorged on berries until our teeth looked like they belonged to vampires. Dylan helped me up, and we continued on the trail. “The owner needed a foreman who could communicate with him, the workers, and the homeowners. Virtually everyone else on the crew was Mexican, and most of them barely spoke English.”

“But thanks to your time in Mexico, you could communicate with them?”

“That and my first year working with them on the crews. I’d get stuck for words now and then, but between Google Translate and the experience the guys had on the job, we got through OK. Luther always told me that each additional skill I acquire adds exponential value, and that was certainly the case with Spanish.”

“Luther?”

“The guy I met down in Mexico.”

So Luther was his name. When Kyle came back from Mexico alone, he’d told me about some crazy old fisherman who captured Dylan’s imagination. But it wasn’t Dylan’s imagination I’d missed. I’d blamed Luther for stealing away his heart. Late one night, I’d called down a string of curses on this old fisherman that would have made my Grandma Mona blush with pride.

“So even with that first job, you were already preparing for a career in real estate?”

“I wouldn’t call it a career, but I wanted to position myself to invest.” He offered me a hand as we climbed up and around some steep boulders.

“My cousin worked a remodeling job one summer. It paid better than minimum wage, but not a ton better. At that salary, it must take years to save up enough to buy even a crummy property.”

“It took me nine months.”

“Get out of town!” Why did I keep slapping his arm? “You bought your first property only nine months after coming back?”

“No, I had the down payment money after nine months, but the bank wanted to see that I had a full year’s worth of stable income before they’d make the loan.”

“Where did you get the money? You couldn’t have been saving enough for a down payment with that job.”

“I moved back in with my parents, which cut my expenses to almost zero, and I waited tables on the weekends to get extra cash.”

“Even so, real estate costs a fortune.” A log lay over a small stream that crossed our trail. With my arms out, I teetered across as though it were a balance beam. “Look me in the eye and tell me you saved enough money to buy an apartment after only one year.”

I jumped off the log and faced Dylan. Those blue eyes locked onto mine. A girl could get lost in those eyes. Finally, he looked away and said, “You’ve got me. I didn’t buy an apartment after one year.”

“Ha, I knew it.”

His lips curled up. “I bought four apartments.”

“You are so full of crap!”

He stopped and held my eyes again, but this time he didn’t look away. “I swear.”

I had to swallow before I could get back my voice. He wasn’t lying. That much I could feel. But still… “That makes no sense.”

“It made no sense to me, either.”

“Then how’d you do it?”

“By taking advantage of government loan incentives. At the time, they felt like loopholes. I couldn’t understand why anyone would write the laws that way.”

“Does it make more sense to you now?”

“A bit, but mainly I stopped trying to make sense of it all.”

“You want to tell me about them?”

“Sorry, Amber, maybe another time.” Dylan headed up the trail towards a lush canopy of trees. “I have no interest in spending our first date in seven years going through technicalities of tax and banking law.”

“Hey, look!” I pointed up. Only a few feet ahead of us, a huge bird sat atop a nest on an oak branch. “Is that an eagle?”

“You got it. You can tell by its beak.”

“Is it nesting?”

“Right again. You know, eagle eggs take five weeks to hatch. The pair will sit for that whole time, even if it’s a bad egg.”

Futile as that sounded, I sympathized with the mamma bird, with how heartbreaking it could be to give up hope, especially when now and then, one you’d written off as a bad egg showed signs of life. I blew the eagle a kiss and continued up the rock face.

“Pull over here.” Dylan pointed to a gas station on the side of the road, halfway through our drive home.

“You need to use the restroom?”

“No, I want to fill you up.”

“That’s OK, Dylan, I’m fine covering the gas.”

He shook his head. “I asked you out, and you were nice enough to drive, which saved me from renting a car. The least I can do is take care of the gas.”

“I don’t mind paying for it, really.”

“Amber, don’t think that because I’m this guy who doesn’t spend much money that I think others should pay for me. It’s the opposite. The things I refuse to pay for are things I don’t think anyone should pay for, at least until they’re financially independent. Which I assume you’re not. So there’s no reason you should take the hit.”

Why was I arguing with a guy who wanted to treat me? “Fine. Go on, be a gentleman.” Dylan pulled out his wallet and drew out a gas card. “Hey, is that an actual credit card you’ve got there?”

“Did you think I’d pay cash?”

“Isn’t that what all those financial gurus say to do?”

“Don’t confuse your gurus.” Dylan inserted his card into the machine. “You’re referring to the guys who teach people deep in debt how to get out. They’re speaking to an undisciplined audience who struggle to control their spending as long as they’ve got plastic available.”

“Lack of discipline isn’t your problem, is it?”

“Nope.” Dylan filled the tank and got back in the car. As we turned back on the road, he swallowed twice, and I knew he was bracing himself for something. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said back at the hot springs about…you know, the intimacy thing.”

“Sorry if that was hard for you.” He had been alone for so long. ‘Don’t touch the girl you’re in love with’ couldn’t have been an easy thing to hear.

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to get physical, but I respect it.”

“I appreciate that.”

“What hit me was how focused you are on marriage. That’s what you mean when you say you want to figure out if this is going somewhere, isn’t it? It’s marriage or nothing, right?”

I pulled onto the on-ramp back to civilization. “That’s the stage of life I’m in, Dylan. Is that freaking you out?”

“Not quite freaking me out.” He fidgeted with his credit card.

“You’re not one of those guys who’s afraid of commitment, are you?” I gripped the wheel as I sped up to merge onto the highway.

“Not at all. But if that’s the direction we’re going, I’ve got a concern of my own to raise.”

“Uh oh.” I wasn’t expecting this.

“You can give it but not take it, eh?”

I sat taller and puffed out my chest. “I’m a big girl. Go on, lay it on me.”

“Divorce rates are through the roof in this country. You know what’s one of the biggest causes?”

“Infidelity?”

“Other than that.”

I bobbed my head like a clueless party girl. “Substance abuse?”

“Besides that.”

I tapped the wheel. “Men being dirty, beer-guzzling, misogynistic pigs?”

“Amber!” Now it was my turn to get slapped on the arm. Only Dylan was way gentler than I.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Money.”

“Right.”

“I gave you my line in the sand, and this is yours? I need to adopt your whole money thing for us to move forward?”

Dylan rubbed his knee. “I’m willing to compromise to some degree. All I’m saying is that we need to be on the same page.”

Yeah, right. “How much compromise are we talking about?”

“At the rate I’m going, I expect to hit financial independence in as little as five years and no more than ten. That’s even with my plan to relax my standards in three years.”

“Why are you planning to relax your standards?”

“As disciplined as you think I am, even I struggle with living like this indefinitely. Luther emphasized that the earlier you start building passive income—.”

“Your Cash Machine,” I corrected him. For a guy who acted like a financial whiz, he really could be slow sometimes.

“Right, the earlier you start building your Cash Machine, the easier the whole process is. So I committed at age 18 to spending ten years living frugally and laying the foundations of my Cash Machine.”

“A decade of deprivation?”

“You could call it that. Once the decade is over, I’ll continue to build my Cash Machine, but whether I’m financially independent by then or not, I’ll allow myself a few more luxuries.”

I switched into the fast lane to pass a Mack truck hogging the highway. “Like living above ground?”

“For one.”

“And the last thing you want is some spendthrift wife ruining all you’ve worked to build, right?”

“Exactly.”

“So you say compromise, but it sounds like I’d have to shift a lot more than you’d be willing to. Right again?”

“I guess so. At least when it comes to the money I’m bringing in. I won’t try to tell you how to spend what you earn.”

We drove on in silence as I chewed over Dylan’s words. I’d never been this greedy, materialistic girl like some of my cousins. But there were still things I wanted. My car must have slowed because a rusted jalopy whizzed past. Or maybe it just felt that way because my vision had blurred.

“You OK?” Dylan asked.

“Yeah… it’s just…I’ve got this friend Joanna. When she first started dating her husband Dennis, Libby and I couldn’t fathom what she saw in him. He was this geeky guy who’d rather read a dissertation about the mating habits of the lungfish than watch the Super Bowl. But he was a good, stable man who owned his own dental practice, made a strong living, and was home every day by 5 pm.

“Then, six months ago, Joanna gave birth to Ethan. All she ever talks about now are the new foods he’s eating, the clothes he’s growing into, how he’s starting to crawl, and all the smiles and giggles and play they share. I asked her recently how long she was taking for maternity leave. Joanna said she wasn’t sure if she was ever going back to her agency. Dennis makes enough to support the family, and she wants to throw herself into being a mom with all she’s got. Later on, she’ll decide if she’d rather be home full-time raising her kids or go back to work.” I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. Why was this making me so emotional? “If I went on this journey with you, that would never be an option for me, would it?”

“Are you kidding?” Dylan laughed. “Do you have any idea what I’m building?”

“Truthfully, not really.”

“Don’t think of me as some lazy bum who wants to quit work and live poor for the rest of my life.” He cupped his hands into the shape of a megaphone. “I’m building a Cash Machine.”

“I still don’t really know what that means.”

“Look, you want to know about being a stay-at-home mom? Let’s say we were a normal couple. At this point in our lives, we’d be doing great. We’d have two full incomes, and we could easily live in a one-bedroom apartment. We’d have plenty of money to pay our school loans, eat out, go to shows, you name it. We’d make our retirement fund contributions but otherwise spend just about everything we make. A few years out, the first kid would come along. Now we’d need a larger apartment. We’d need diapers, and cribs, and strollers, and new clothes every three months. We couldn’t afford to maintain our lifestyle on one income, but if we both continue to work, we’d need to pay for daycare. This is when most couples get squeezed.”

“But not if they have a Cash Machine?”

“Right. Since I’m not spending the majority of what I make now, I’m able to build resources for the future.”

“Wait.” I turned to look at him, but not so much that I couldn’t still see the road. “You save the majority of your income?”

“Over 70% of my post-tax income goes into building my Cash Machine.”

I did the math in my head. I was making a little over $50,000 pre-tax and a bit under $40,000 post-tax. I only managed to invest a couple thousand of that into my 401(k) retirement account. I spent all the rest on covering school debt, housing, food, and entertainment. My eyes bulged when I realized how my wee 5% of savings shriveled like a prune next to Dylan’s 70%. But I couldn’t imagine how that would relieve him of having to work forever. “Still, if expenses will go up so much in the future, won’t you burn through that eventually?”

“It’s not like I’m sticking it in my mattress to spend later. The idea of the Cash Machine is that you never spend any of the money you put into it.”

“None of it? Then what’s the point?”

“The point is that the money gets invested in income-producing assets. It’s what I said about foundations. The original investment is like the goose that lays the golden egg. You can spend all the eggs you want, but if you make a goose stew, you’re screwed.”

I laughed but couldn’t get past the fact that this guy who didn’t even own a car thought he could build this gigantic income machine. “You really think you can make enough from your Cash Machine so only one of us would have to work?”

“One of us?” Dylan’s head fell back in amusement. “When I finish my Cash Machine, neither of us would ever have to work again unless we chose to.”

My eyes narrowed. “And we won’t have to live like Charlie Bucket to do it?”

“Absolutely not.” Dylan spread his arms wide. “Financial independence is our Golden Ticket! We can travel the world, settle anywhere, and buy as much chocolate as you can sink your teeth into.”

“You make it sound like we’d have unlimited cash.” Why did I keep saying we? “How’s that possible?”

“It won’t be unlimited. Just the opposite. The Cash Machine will produce a certain amount of money each year, and as long as we don’t spend more than that, it’ll give us the freedom to build the future of our dreams.”

I hit the gas and pulled into the empty oncoming traffic lane to overtake the jalopy. “It still sounds delusional to me.”

“Look, I’m not telling you to make any changes now. We’ve only been on one date. You can wait to see how things develop.”

I shook my head. “That isn’t going to work.”

Dylan stiffened. “So that’s it? You’re dumping me?”

“It would serve you right for that letter you sent me all those years ago. But no, I’m not dumping you. But I’m also not going to wait and see. It’s not like I even have a philosophy around money; I just do what my friends do. You’ve put more thought and dedication into this than I’ve put into anything in my life. It’s not realistic to force you into some wishy-washy fifty-fifty compromise. You claim you’re willing to shift, but it’s clear this project of yours is non-negotiable. I’ve either got to be all in, with both you and your Cash Machine, or all out.”

“You can take your time on this.” Dylan lay his hand on my elbow, and I forced myself to ignore the heat radiating up my arm. “I’m not pressuring you.”

I shook my head and lifted my arm to prepare for another lane change. Dylan’s hand fell to his lap. “I can’t take my time. The longer we’re together, the more emotionally attached I’ll become. I need to know now, while I can still walk away, whether I can handle going down this road with you. And I can’t decide on something I don’t understand.”

“So what do we do?”

I couldn’t believe it. Was I seriously giving the guy who caused the greatest heartbreak of my life another chance? “You’re going to walk me through building my own Cash Machine. Where do we start?”