I knew my place when it came to dilettantes, and it was not by their side. The summer after high school, Ali and I fell into each other and didn’t find our way out. She’d been accepted to Vassar, close enough that it’d be easy to see each other on weekends. Even now, nearly a decade later, the thought of her brought a familiar pain. My first heartbreak. One I’d done everything to ensure was my only heartbreak.

In truth, she’d never promised me anything. We never spoke of our future, and I assumed too much—things were so happy, so easy, so seemingly perfect, I foolishly thought it was the natural course of things. We would carry on exactly as we had all summer, because who would be willing to put an end to something so undeniably right?

It was on the day that she left for school that I realized my folly. And even then, it wasn’t until she uttered the words with a disbelieving and pitying look on her face. She’d first laughed—not with spite, but with genuine surprise—at my asking to come see her the next weekend. And then she grasped my hand and told me slowly that there was no future for us, that there never had been. That even if we lived the same sorts of lives in the same sorts of circles and even if she were able to look past that we didn’t, her parents would never approve. That we’d had fun, hadn’t we? And that she’d text me when she came home for holidays, so we could hang out, which was code for hook up.

And then, she’d left me there on the sidewalk with a broken heart, one I built a wall around, using her words as mortar. It was a truth I should have already known, one I would have seen, had I been wiser. But I’d wised up quick, realized my place, and I’d never strayed again.

Instead, I went on all the dates my mother planned—which was plenty to keep me busy—and my reputation preceded me. I let every date be what it was—fun and free of feelings. Soon, I found I didn’t know many normal girls, only a selection of rich girls who were on the market for a good time. Nothing more.

Not for me, anyway.

Truthfully, it worked out. I really was too busy with Longbourne for a relationship—the older Dad got, the more responsibility I had. Single-serving companionship was convenient and safe. Sometimes, we enjoyed each other enough to make a regular thing of it. Even with Ali.