“It’s gonna sell you comfort,” he said. “It’s gonna sell you ‘deserve.’ It’s gonna sell you ‘just this once.’”
He tapped the table with one knuckle.
“And you’re gonna find out if you’re a man or a mood.”
That line made my stomach flip, because it wasn’t just tough talk.
It was true.
I got in my car twenty minutes later, heading back toward the city, and the first billboard I saw was basically a love letter to debt.
Bright. Smiling faces. The promise of a better life if you clicked a button.
Everything in America is engineered to make you feel like the next purchase is a rescue mission.
My gas light blinked on.
Of course it did.
And I had this weird moment where I almost laughed, because if Frank had been in the passenger seat, he would’ve said something like, “Even your car’s begging.”
At a red light, I checked my bank account.
Not the one Frank showed me.
Mine.
$81.12.
I stared at it until the light turned green and someone honked behind me.
Eighty-one dollars.
After a full-time job.
After working late all week.
After doing everything I was told to do to be an adult.
I drove the rest of the way with my jaw clenched so tight it hurt.
At work, the fluorescent lights made everything look sick.
People were moving fast, talking faster, clutching iced drinks and breakfast sandwiches like they were life rafts.
I walked past the breakroom and smelled something sweet and expensive. Someone had brought in pastries.
“Hey!” my coworker Jenna called out when she saw me. She was holding a fancy-looking cup with a straw. “We got a catering thing. Take one.”
My brain did the old math automatically.
Free. Free is allowed. Free is safe.
Then another thought hit right after:
Frank would say you’ll pay for it later.
I grabbed a plain black coffee from the office machine instead, because I didn’t know how to be normal anymore.
Jenna looked at my cup like I’d shown up to a party in a funeral suit.
“Who are you?” she laughed. “What happened to you?”
I hesitated.
I could’ve lied. I could’ve said I wasn’t hungry.
Instead I said, “My grandpa kind of… roasted me.”
That made three people within earshot turn around.
“Roasted you how?” someone asked.
I tried to explain the burger. The passbook. The whole exchange.
At first they laughed.
Then I said the balance.
“Three hundred forty-two thousand,” I said.
The room went quiet in a way that felt… hungry.
Jenna’s eyebrows shot up.