My wife, Alex, and I had never been what would would call particularly well off. We weren't destitute by any means, but we certainly weren't living in the lap of luxury. We had a modest sized, if fairly overpriced, apartment, working mundane office jobs to pay the bills. But despite that, we were happy.
We had been together for eight years, married for six of them, and while we both wished we could afford a home, or newer cars that would need less frequent, and expensive, repairs, we were happy as long as we had each other. Things hadn't been easy, a costly medical procedure that Alex needed put us into considerable debt and destroyed our savings, but we had managed to scrape through and having each other as support made that all the easier.
Alex's family had no idea. They knew, of course, but none of them had ever really dealt with the sort of financial issues we had put up with. The house her parents were living in had belonged to her grandparents, and her dad had received a sizable pension when he retired which had set them up pretty much for life. Her sisters also had some trouble understanding our situation. The oldest sister, May, was married to a successful lawyer, and even though they were still dealing with student loans the two of them, and their two kids, lived very comfortably in a large house just outside Boston. Her other sister, Hannah, had a good job, and her husband was an employee with a well known local construction company, so they were both bringing in good money as well. Granted, May and Hannah tried to be understanding, but neither of them really had the experience. May and her husband had gotten married and inherited some money from his grandfather, Hannah had gotten a great job right out of college and never had to look back.
And then there was Annie, their cousin. Annie had recently gotten married, much to the family's joy, and her husband was loaded. How loaded, you ask? They had a destination wedding, in a castle, in Ireland, and he didn't even bat an eye at the idea.
All this made some conversations with her family a little tricky. I had moved to the St. Louis area a year before meeting Alex, and while my family had never really struggled, and my parents had done fairly well for themselves, I had never really known true decadence on the scale of Alex's sisters and cousin. Although, to Annie's credit, she had only recently started living that lifestyle having been married for just over a year by this point. And while they never intentionally rubbed it in any faces, seeing pictures all over social media of their trips all over the world did sometimes make one wonder how out of touch they may be.
But they weren't bad people, in fact they were all quite lovely people. Annie could be a little abrasive at times, but we all got along quite well. May was the only one who didn't live in the area anymore, so whenever her family came to visit it was always a big event. Days were taken off of work, parties had and the likes. We didn't get a ton of time with her and her family, so we always wanted to make the absolute best of it.
This year, after May gave us the dates that she'd be back in town, the planning started early. Her kids and mine and Alex's daughter were roughly the same with my daughter being five and May's kids being seven, which was great, and Hannah's son had just turned three. May had mentioned a night for just the adults to celebrate her upcoming 45th birthday, somewhere outside the city and leaving the kids with their grandparents. My in-laws were more than happy to watch the kids, and the planning began.
Everywhere we could find that looked good wouldn't be available until the day after we were hoping to get set up. That left us trying to figure out where to go and what to do, since the other option was just sitting around at Hannah's house. That was when Annie chimed in on the group chat the sisters had set up, saying she had a friend who owned a nice, big, place about an hour's drive outside the city, and that if we wanted she'd be happy to reach out to him and see if we could borrow it for an evening. With a handful of "that'd be awesome!" replies, Annie said she'd reach out to him. It took a couple of days for her to get back to us, but she said he'd be happy to host a little get together if they were okay with him being there. Seeing as it was his property, none of us really had any objections.
May and her family made it to town, and while the grandparents took the kids to a local children's play zone, we adults grabbed some lunch to finalize plans.
"So yeah," Annie said "we go to Garret's place Wednesday, have some fun and celebrate our girl. He's even offering to put people up if everyone gets a tad too hammered."
"It's very nice of him to offer his place for this." Said David, May's husband.
"He's a nice guy." Annie replied.
The group consisted of Alex, May, David, Hannah, her husband Jason, Annie, her husband Nate and myself. So there would be nine of us at this shindig. While we tried to rope a few more of Alex's cousins into the party, having to plan it for the middle of the week made it tough for people to pull off. If Alex didn't routinely take at least a little time off when May was in town her boss might have fought her on it, and my boss was just happy to see me actually use some of my PTO since I only ever seemed to use it when I was far too sick to be able to go into the office.
"Garret bought this place to be a rental," Nate said "but he's between renters so it's open for our use."
Garret and Nate had been friends for a few years at this point, both being well to do property owners in the area. Nate owned some six or seven properties that he rented out, plus the house he and Annie lived in. Apparently he and Garret had met over their shared financial situation and really hit it off. Alex and I had sometimes joked that if Annie had gotten married before us maybe Nate would have given us a house, he had plenty to spare. He was a nice guy, though, so we tried not to begrudge the fact that housing was already in short supply and people like him and Garret were buying up multiple properties just to not live in them at all.
"Couldn't we have done this at one of your properties, Nate?" Asked Hannah.
"The only one I've got that would be big enough for this to be comfortable is currently booked that whole week. Everything else would be a tad cramped."
Hannah and Jason had offered to host if things fell through, but it was clear that they really didn't want to. Hosting eight people having drinks and getting a little rowdy, as we sometimes had a tendency to do, could be a bit much, and part of the appeal of doing it literally anywhere else was that they would have basically zero responsibility. They needed a break as much as the rest of us, with a very active three year old it was clear they needed to get away.
"Do we need to bring anything?" I asked.
"Other than ourselves?" Alex added in with a smirk.
"Probably any specific drinks you want. I think Garret mentioned that the plan to keep it pretty simple and he's just going to order a shit ton of food from a pizza place nearby." Annie replied.
"Lots of bread sticks." May chuckled around a mouthful of food, rather unlike her.
"Oh, actually," Annie said, turning back to Alex and I "if you guys wanted to provide games for the evening that would be great."
"Yeah, sure." I said with a smile. Alex and I had a pretty sizable collection of board games, including several party games more suited to an all adult audience. It seemed like a solid plan for us to provide such things, and we were always happy to have people to play with. We had amassed our collection over the years, but had always had trouble nailing down a friend group to play with on the regular, so many of our games saw little play as they didn't really work well with just two people.
We hammered out more details as we continued our meal, and eventually we had basically everything figured out. We were all pretty excited, it was always nice to get together as a group and just have some fun without having to worry about kids or grandparents who might not approve of some of our language and discussions. We didn't need judgment, we needed some relaxation.
The day soon came, Alex and I picking up May and David and the four of us driving out together with Hannah and Jason not far behind us. Annie and Nate had gone up earlier to help Garret get things ready, with the rest of us heading out in the early afternoon after a quick lunch with the kids and grandparents to say goodbye for the evening. Even if we didn't get too drunk to drive home, we had prepared to just stay there overnight anyway because driving home at night wasn't always what one might call fun.
When we arrived both Alex and I were astonished at the sight we saw. The building looked like a log cabin, but it was massive. It was probably as big as our entire apartment building, minus one floor, and I couldn't even begin to try and guess how much this beast cost. There was a detached garage that could easily fit six cars, a huge horseshoe shaped driveway that could accommodate another dozen cars and a sprawling front yard with beautiful full grown trees.
As we got out of the car I leaned over to Alex and whispered "who the hell needs this much house?"
"Someone with nothing better to do with their money, I suppose." She replied.
May and David seemed impressed with the cabin, but less flabbergasted than Alex and I clearly were. Two different worlds.
Upon entering the cabin we were met with a beautiful natural wood interior, which, despite the obscene size of the place, did make it feel a touch rustic. As we ventured further in we found Annie and Nate talking with who could only be Garret. They waved us down enthusiastically and introduced us to our host for the evening.
Garret was a fairly unassuming man. He had pale skin and hair that was more white than brown anymore, and wore a pair of thick rimmed glasses that were clearly in style somehow. He was average height, a little stocky, and clean shaven. He was also quite polite, greeting us with smiles and handshakes and, once Hannah and Jason caught up to us, offered a tour of the cabin.
We followed along behind him as he guided us through the building, pointing out the various rooms and the functions. From everything as mundane as bathrooms to the game room in the basement with a pool table, darts and foosball. It really did come across as a vacation home and not someplace someone would live, which made sense since that was Garret's intention with it after all.
When we made our way back to the kitchen and dining area there was another woman standing in the kitchen, fixing herself a drink. She was tall and slender with black hair that hung elegantly down to her shoulder blades.
"And this," Garret said in his quiet voice "is my girlfriend Isabella."
We all exchanged greetings with her, and she seemed just pleasant and polite, if slightly detached, as Garret. Afterwards we all gathered in the living room and sat and chatted for a little bit, Garret asking us some basic questions about our jobs and the likes, the weather in Boston and so forth. Basic small talk type shit.
"And how did you two meet?" Garret asked me, gesturing to Alex and I.
"Oh," I said after taking a swig of the beer in my hand "we met at a blood drive. We chatted for a bit and decided to stay in touch. We had been talking just as friends for a couple months before I decided to ask her on a date."
"He was very sweet." Alex added with a chuckle, patting my thigh.
"Savings lives and finding love, what a story!" Garret exclaimed. "And I understand you two brought some games for the evening?"
"Yeah, we grabbed a selection so people can vote on what they want to play." Alex replied, and as she did I got up and grabbed our bag with the games in them. I removed them one by one and laced five different games on the table in the center of the room.
