He should have turned his phone off so his mother didn't try to call him every ten minutes. Tyler had taken his own car into the city instead of the Lincoln she preferred he use. It was sleek and black, and it came with a driver. That was his mother, always trying to show off who they were and what they did and how rich they were. As if the world didn't already know them. They owned like half the world's oil reserves and had stocks in all the others. Or something like that. Tyler had never cared much about where they got their wealth from. He just knew they had it, and his parents thought that made them worth more than anyone else.
Tyler had thought so too for a long time, until his father had died. In the depths of his grief he'd gone online to forget for a while, and all he'd found were blog posts and Facebook statuses hailing his father's death as the end of an era of tyranny. He hadn't known what to make of it, and in efforts to understand he'd created a fake profile on several sites and started posting until he did. His father, and their entire company, had been accused of destroying the environment, endangering jobs, compromising international treaties and agreements, even interfering in political events in foreign countries. It still sent his head reeling. Especially when he thought about for longer than two minutes and Tyler realized... All those accusations were probably right...
But when those thoughts started to take over his brain, he forced them out. He wanted nothing to do with that blood money anymore, but he didn't know how to live without it. It was like a drug. Like his cigarettes. Or like Danni.
He parallel parked on a busy city street and got out, adjusting his leather jacket as he walked into a coffee shop he frequented when he wanted to be left alone. He order a black coffee and then went to sit outside among all the romantic couples and hipster playwrights on their laptops, then pulled out his phone and a cigarette and immediately texted Danni a short, "Hey."
In a second she replied, a much more excited, "Hiya! What's up?!" Tyler couldn't help but chuckle and smile at that. She was always so bright and colorful, like the art she created. He typed back quickly.
"Getting coffee at Biggby's."
"Sounds like high school all over again ;) "
He answered without thinking, "Except no Bree to bring us down."
As soon as he sent it he realized he shouldn't have. Bree was a sensitive issue between them. More sensitive than his tree-killing parents and her left-wing hairbrained ideas. Bree was a person they both loved and cared about, a person neither of them had ever intended to hurt. But they both still knew they had. She was his girlfriend of almost ten years now, ever since sophomore year in high school. She'd been Danni's friend for just as long. The two of them couldn't go one conversation without her name being mentioned. It was harder than it sounded... to pretend you weren't cheating on the one person who'd stood by you through everything...
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