Breaking Even Read Online Free Page A

that?” Kayla asked.
    “No, I’ll call him back.”
    “Since that’s out of the way, we can talk
about the elephant in the room.”
    “There’s not an elephant, Kayla,” Ben
said, his teeth smiling in a half-snarl.
    “Sure there is.” She stared at Lindsey.
“Why would a girl like you want to move in with a guy like him? It makes no
sense.”
    Ben spoke up, either not noticing or
ignoring the fact that she had directed the question to Lindsey. “Sure it does.
We’re friends and we’re both moving to Clemson. It makes sense to share space.
Everything totals at the bottom for you accounting types,” he added, for
Brittany’s benefit.
    Kayla laid her hands flat on the table,
palms hovering just above the wood. “Lindsey, you may not realize this, but Ben
and Brittany have an arrangement."
    “What is this, the twelfth century?”
Lindsey asked before she could stop herself.
    Brittany spoke up then. “Ben and I have an
understanding. Kayla thinks she's Ben's keeper, and she doesn't want you to get
your hopes up."
    “I have a boyfriend of my own, so I’m not
interested in Ben in that way," Lindsey explained. She couldn’t resist
digging a little bit. “But it seems to me that if you have an understanding, he
would be moving to Coral Gables, not Clemson.”
    “You have a point, but he doesn’t want to
move to Coral Gables. Ben, since you asked, I did talk to Dad, and he has
worked out an arrangement with Scott.”
    “Scott is my uncle,” Ben told Lindsey. He
turned back to Kayla, his voice wary. “What is this alleged arrangement?”
    “Well, he found out about the bar. You
knew he would,” she said when Ben rolled his eyes. “He found out and he wants
in on it. So he’s going into a partnership with Scott, to offset some of the
risk, and you’re going to help manage it.”
    Ben rolled his eyes. “This was my thing.
He has to stick his hands in everything, doesn’t he?”
    Kayla shrugged. “You wanted me to talk to
him; that’s what you get. If it doesn’t work out, you can always move back here
to South Florida.”
    Brittany was not happy with the
announcement. “It’s silly for Ben to be tending bar when he turned down grad
school offers from Duke and Georgetown.”
    “I told you I’m not ready to settle down
yet. I deferred my enrollment—we’ll see what happens next year. Right now, I
just want a break.”
    “And what do you want, Lindsey?” Kayla
asked, her voice cold.
    “I’m enrolling in the graduate program in
Mathematics at Clemson, and then I don’t know. I’ll either teach somewhere or
get a job in industry.”
    Brittany leaned back, smirking. “I’ve
always seen pure math as a waste. Without an applied field, such as accounting,
it’s all theory.”
    “Math forms the base of the computer
systems that we work with every day,” Lindsey explained. She grew tired of
explaining her career choice every time someone asked.
    “Even if Lindsey doesn’t stay in academia,
there are other jobs out there. Math doctoral students are always in demand at national
laboratories and at tech firms. The list is endless,” Ben said. He was
repeating Lindsey’s words from a few months ago, but it felt good for him to
defend her.
    “What are your thoughts on … illegal
substances?” Kayla asked.
    “What?” What had felt like the job
interview from hell just turned into some kind of weird reality show.
    “You know, pot, meth, coke—you ever take
any of that to help you study?”
    “No… Not my scene. I don’t know why you’d
think it would be.” Lindsey glanced at Ben. He sat ramrod straight and his leg
bounced under the table.
    “Just asking. Our dad wanted to come meet
you, but he couldn’t get away.” Kayla smiled her Miss Congeniality smile, which
only made the moment more surreal.
    Lindsey got a reprieve when the waitress
returned with their drinks. Lindsey squeezed the lemon into her tea and then
dumped it in the glass. Brittany’s eyebrows shot up, and she looked at