Since birth, I've been a rich girl. I never noticed that these Starbucks coffees were a sign of my wealth and utter carelessness in my hands. My daddy was a petroleum engineer until he turned CEO. The oil company took forever to adopt forms of energy that were more green. But hey, "Follow the money, my dear!" My father was also referring to my future suitable husband.

"If he doesn't have a yacht, don't even think of getting caught!"

That was a lame rhyme he often used. Often I came home crying about a guy whose father was only a seven-figure senator or A-list actor with an aging face and a stick up his ass.

"Listen to your father, dear." My mother always made me a glass of Nesquik chocolate milk to soothe my tears. Little did she know I wasn't four anymore. "It may seem like it doesn't matter yet, but believe me, all that money's going to come a long way once your hormones mellow out and the man you married loses his hair. Looks always go, but money lasts forever."

I never thought my parents were terrible people. I just assumed their overwhelming joy their friends at the expensive golf clubs gave them had muddled their integrity. You can never have enough rich friends. "Fly high with the eagles, not with the turkeys."

So, of course, I stayed with their advice. My current boyfriend was a tall fella, not a sporty, athletic type, but the guy who doesn't mind massaging my feet after I hit the gym. He was the guy who writes me poetry and professes his love for me and his loathing of the status quo. He is an artist all around. Paintings, novels, musical compositions—he was a nerd, and I loved him for it. He had the face of an angel. I always wondered if he was the type of young man to use his smarts to become a doctor or blow it all away (my father's words) and roam the world writing books. Heaven knows I would go with him, and that's just why my father hated him. (Making me like him even more.)

My father didn't hate him too much. After all, my boyfriend's father was the head correspondent to Israel. He kept up a growing eight-figure salary in stocks and business investments through old family money.

My boyfriend dreamed about living in a cardboard box in the pouring rain in a dark alleyway with only a pencil and an infinite scroll of paper to write to his heart's desire.

He played the saxophone with me in our school band. His name was Jacob. Jack for short.

Nothing, no plague or stormy weather, could ever break us apart...