Ties That Bind (Arizona, #3)

I heaved the mattress into an eight-by-ten room where I’d be sleeping, and I leaned over myself to catch my breath. The apartment was smaller than what I’d had up in Morningside Heights, and we’d have to go without a living room since that was going to be Ken’s bedroom. A lot of folks would’ve said I had a screw loose, and here’s the reason. My daddy owned B&B Enterprises, the second biggest sugar manufacturer in North America. I was his only son, and with my monthly allowance, I could’ve afforded a flush apartment uptown. I didn’t have a screw loose, but you might say I was stubborn. I’d told my daddy now that I was a college graduate, I wanted the experience of paying my own way.

Jonathan and I had been recruited as junior editors at Macmillan Publishers. The three-way split on the apartment would be a good chunk of my monthly salary, but I was doing things right, being my own man.

Well, I’m gonna confess, you might say I had less noble reasons too. I couldn’t stand living alone. I’d only slept in my own apartment two or three times a week that year. Sometimes, that was on account of getting lucky, though mostly I was studying late in the dorms or stumbling home from a bar with this or that friend who’d shrug and say I might as well sleep over. I think I spent more time on a floor in a sleeping bag than in my own bed. After I moved out of the dorms junior year, my friends started calling me the wealthiest vagabond in New York. Well, I always paid my own way and then some when we went barhopping or dancing, and you could bet I was buying everyone’s breakfast in the morning and giving the delivery boy a ten dollar tip. A twenty if he was cute.