by Nella Tyler
The hard strike of his hand on my head only missed my face by a little. I stumbled back a bit, and while I could hear him shouting something at me, I couldn’t discern what it was. It was all the same. It never changed, like a script to the world’s most nightmarish movie that I hadn’t auditioned for and didn’t want to star in.
Unsure of whether he was finished shouting or not, I stumbled backward and slammed the door closed. I heard the harsh sound of his voice start to dwindle, and I touched my hand to my head. No blood, but I could feel a small bump forming under my dark hair.
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. I couldn’t cry; I’d already spent so much of my time crying. My tablet buzzed in my purse, and I bit back a laugh at how pathetic I was, planning weddings out of my own inability to be in one. My head throbbed, and I went to my bathroom to see if I could wind down.
I couldn’t. Even after I’d washed my makeup off and scrubbed at my light brown skin until it nearly glowed red, I felt upset. Something inside of me had finally snapped. I couldn’t keep doing this, not forever, and if I couldn’t do it forever, I’d do well to pull the cord on this situation now. When I closed my eyes, I could still see Jason Paul opening the car door for me. I could still see him telling me I was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.
I could still see my father telling me that he was a keeper. My best friend swooning over the sweet voicemails he left for me. I remembered my plans to move downtown and become a successful wedding planner. Jason would go to business school, he’d said, and he was going to be successful, too, and then we’d be a happy couple in Rice Village, with money and time and happiness.
Now, I struggled to make ends meet, alone, with this dead weight that didn’t do anything but play video games all day. There was never going to be any business school. There was never going to be a nice house. Once, Jason had sat down with me and talked to me about the house we’d buy together, with a lovely foyer and backyard for a dog and maybe, someday, maybe kids.
While brushing my hair, I ran over the bruise and winced. That time was gone. Jason was a stranger now. I held my brush in my hand for a moment and then put it into my makeup bag. I started to put things in my backpack, in my suitcase, and my toiletries bag, without even really understanding why. I stacked T-shirts, old journals, some of my sketchbooks, and the picture of me and my best friend Nina at her 21st birthday, both of us drunk but smiling bigger than I’d smiled since.
When I finally stepped back and looked at my important possessions packed neatly into my suitcase on my bed in this shitty apartment in downtown Houston, I understood what I had to do, no matter how much it hurt me to do so. This wasn’t the first time he’d put his hands on me, but it was going to be the last. I was done wasting my life on someone who didn’t care about me enough to even be kind to me.
I waited until I could hear Jason snoring, and then I walked outside to make a phone call.
“Dad? Hey. It’s Briella. Do you still have my old bedroom set up?”
Chapter 3
Dexter
I woke up later than I’d meant to, sometime around 8:30 in the morning. For a Saturday, that was a bit late; on the weekdays, we got to work at 8, which meant a 6:30 rise. I tended to be an early riser anyway, with weekend mornings going no later than about 8. I pulled my phone off the charger and checked to see if I had anything I needed to worry about. It seemed work would stay calm for the day, so I rolled out of bed.
The window let in the daylight nicely. I pulled the curtains back and let the sun flood my room. My bed took up most of the space in the center of the back wall; I’d invested a good amount of money in a good bed since it seemed I wouldn’t ever be at a point where I was getting a lot of sleep. If I wasn’t going to sleep much, I had to make sure the sleep I did get was good. Against another wall was a desk that I rarely used, and against another, a dresser full of undershirts, jeans, underwear, and socks; my button-ups and suits were all hung up in my closet.
I considered going into that closet, but since I didn’t have plans, I didn’t need to. Instead, I pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and went to the restroom to brush my teeth and run a comb through my hair.
Feeling a little fresher now, I wandered out of the bathroom and into the house. My father had insisted on a much larger house when I was coming out of college, and certainly, we would have been able to afford some mansion-like monstrosity. I didn’t want all that space for myself, though. The house that I had settled on wasn’t small by any means, but it was more reasonable than the house my father lived in, at least.
I walked downstairs to go to the kitchen. Without any major plans for the day, the whole day was left open for whatever I wanted to do. I decided to make breakfast; I liked to cook when I could, despite my father’s insistence that I get a chef. Because of the size of the house, it made sense to have someone come by and clean the rooms that I didn’t visit often. Having a chef, though, didn’t make sense. I had two hands and a brain. I could cook my own food.
I cracked some eggs into a frying pan and fired up the coffee machine. I’d just started to get into the groove of cooking when I heard a knock at my door.
I hit the button on the intercom in the kitchen that broadcasted to the porch. “Be right there,” I said, and moved the eggs off the heat. I jogged to answer the door.
Tyler stood there, and I was so surprised to see him awake before noon that I almost forgot to let him in.
“It’s 9 in the morning! What the hell are you doing over here?” I led us back to the kitchen.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Tyler said. “Well, I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep.”
“Yeah?” I put the eggs back on the burner. “Hey, do you want some breakfast? Coffee?”
“Yes to both.” Tyler walked around the counter and got himself a cup of coffee. “Couldn’t stop thinking about you going off and getting married. It’s weird.”
I snorted. “Weird for you?”
“It is, actually,” Tyler said. I passed him a plate of eggs and some sausage, and this particular morning he didn’t make a dick joke about sausage. He glanced around the kitchen and shook his head. “Man, if you do get married, I get the house.”
“Ha ha.” As if I needed a bigger house. Maybe if I was housing a huge family, but this house had about five bedrooms, and I couldn’t imagine having kids in the first place, let alone five of them. “Just buy your own.”
“You got all the luck with Mom’s inheritance,” Tyler jabbed.
I rolled my eyes again. “We got the same amount of money, Tyler. You just blew most of it on drugs and partying.”
“Not all of it. I have some of it in reserve.”
“And I put it into this house,” I returned. “Doesn’t mean I got lucky. You just don’t take anything seriously.”
“Balance,” Tyler reminded me. He took a bite of food and kept looking around. “I wonder sometimes what it would be like if Mom was still around.”
I forgot, sometimes, that Tyler didn’t remember her as well as I did. I didn’t remember her very much—we were both old enough to remember her, but she hadn’t spent a lot of time with us, and Tyler had been in boarding school a good chunk of his life. Sort of my parents’ way of trying to get him to behave.
“I don’t think it’d be much different,” I said. “Maybe Dad wouldn’t be a hardass all the time.”
This got a laugh out of Tyler. “Dad’s always been a hardass. And kind of a dick.” He poured some more coffee into his mug. “Mom just made it slightly more bearable. Or maybe just kept him from being so obvious about it. He’ll always be a hardass.”
I didn’t really want to repeat our conversation from the day before. I knew that there was no talking sense into Tyler, and I didn’t like the turn the conversation had taken. So instead of rebutting, I shrugged and stacked our empty plates to put in the dishwasher. “Who knows. Hey, I need to go and get a new suit for Monday.”
“You’re seriously going through with that?�
�
“Yeah, but not without a new suit.”
“You’ve got suits.”
“DuBois,” I reminded him. “Tiffany’s an aspiring designer.” It wouldn’t do to meet them in an old suit, and for them, last season was old. Even if last season had only technically ended a month or so ago.
“Fine, but I’m going to try and talk you out of it,” Tyler warned me.
And he did. We went to the place we’d always gone for our suits, a private company that only sold to people who could afford it. The man there knew my measurements, and we got started on finding a suit for the occasion. Despite being raised in an environment where nothing mattered more than a well-fitted suit, I knew surprisingly little about fashion, though I held appreciation for the art.
“If you get married to Tiffany, you might be miserable and unhappy,” Tyler offered as his first point against it.
“I’ll be miserable and unhappy alone,” I replied.
“You might still have someone out there who’s right for you.”
“Everyone here cares about money and business. I can’t leave here. Ergo, I’m probably not going to find anyone who’s right for me, and I might as well make an intelligent business decision.” I winced as the man fitting the suit to me pricked my arm.
“Tiffany DuBois is the worst.”
“Statistically unlikely.”
“She’s going to drive you crazy.”
“Also unlikely. I can devote my life to work and never worry about it.”
Tyler sat back in his seat and glared at me. I sat next to him while the man who’d finalized my measurements went off to find a different suit—the one we’d been fitting for was apparently too formal. I couldn’t tell the difference between it and the one he brought out.
“He’ll die either way,” Tyler pointed out.
I raised my eyebrows at him. That seemed a bit cruel to say, even if it was true. “Come on, man.”
“It’s true. He’ll die either way, and he’s not leaving the company to me.” Tyler folded his arms. “You might as well not get married. He’ll still die, and he’ll still leave the company to you, and you’ll at least be a little less insane for it.”
“But the company won’t be as good as it could be,” I reminded him. “This DuBois selection isn’t random. He wants to create an alliance and strengthen the company after he’s gone.”
“So what? Screw the company.” Tyler rolled his eyes. “It doesn’t matter whether it does well. What does any of that matter if you’re left upset in a dead-end marriage?”
I shook my head. “It’s bigger than us, Tyler.” I knew he wouldn’t believe me and that there wasn’t any talking sense into Tyler in the first place, so I decided to let the topic drop where it was. True, I was likely to end up unhappy. But if I left my position, hundreds of employees would be at risk. An entire business would be at risk of crumbling. Locally, that could be a big deal for a lot of people who’d done business through our investment system.
It was selfish and irresponsible to ask for my own peace of mind when the path I had to take was so clearly carved in front of me.
Tyler grumbled something under his breath, and we decided on a suit for Monday. While it was being properly bagged up, my phone went off in my pocket. It was an email from my father, detailing where exactly I was supposed to meet Tiffany DuBois, and exactly when, with a reminder of how important the whole ordeal was. Not in so many words, though. The exact email read: “Dinner at 8. The Amelie. Don’t forget what’s at stake.”
I couldn’t help but scoff. My own personal future, and the man couldn’t be bothered to pick up a phone.
Chapter 4
Briella
“Briella? Briella, good morning.”
I squinted at the sunlight that stuck itself through my eyelids and resisted the urge to pull the sheets up over my head. For a second, I forgot where I was and nearly panicked. Then I remembered: I was in my room at my home. I sat up and rubbed my eyes.
My father stood in the doorway. He was a tall man, bulky, too, and some people who didn’t know him found him intimidating. I knew, though, that Heyward Green was arguably the kindest person on the planet. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, let alone a person, and he was smiling at me now from the doorway.
I smiled back. “Morning, Dad.” I ran a hand through my hair and winced at the tangles.
“Glad to see you awake. I made breakfast for us. It’s ready whenever you are,” he told me, still smiling. He went on his way to let me have some time to change and mentally assess myself.
I decided against thinking too much about where I was and why. I’d done enough crying the night before when I’d unpacked all my things and realized that there was no going back. If I went back, I worried Jason might actually kill me. As it was, I was worried he would show up here, demanding answers.
So, it wouldn’t do to think too much. I pulled on a pair of clean sweatpants and a T-shirt from my old high school and decided to shove my hair up into a ponytail. At least it was decidedly soft today; it was usually soft, especially compared with the coarse texture of my father’s hair, but today it felt especially soft. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and then went out into the kitchen.
It smelled like home. The sight of the kitchen I’d grown up in made my heart swell up, and I felt all at once like I was 18 again, still thinking about where I wanted to go to college. My dad sat at the table with a small dish of eggs, another with fruit, and another with bacon in front of him.
“Thank you so much, Dad,” I said. I sat down across from him and started serving myself.
“I made some hot water in the kettle. We have a few tea bags from last time you were here; I hope they’re the right kind.” Dad pointed to the tea kettle resting on an iron piece on the table and a few bags of breakfast tea sitting next to it.
I grinned, glad that he’d remembered that I wasn’t a coffee drinker. I preferred tea enormously to coffee; he liked to joke that drinking black coffee was how his skin had gotten so dark, and that mine was lighter because I drank tea instead.
“I’m glad you called me last night,” Dad said.
I looked up from my plate and smiled a little. I really felt like cringing; the night’s events hadn’t totally sunken in yet. I partly expected to get back in my car and drive back to my apartment like nothing had happened. “Of course. I was kind of out of options.”
“I’ve got half a mind to drive over there myself,” Dad grumbled.
“Dad,” I interjected. “Come on.” I’d lied to him a little; I hadn’t told him that Jason hit me out of fear that Dad would press charges and the whole thing would get blown up. I’d just told him that he yelled at me and made my life a living hell. And those things were true, to be fair.
“I won’t,” Dad said. “But I’d like to.” He took a drink of coffee. “Still, I’m glad you came over here. Got away from all that. It takes a lot of guts.”
I wasn’t so sure. It might have been braver to stay behind and try to fix the relationship. “Thanks. I guess it just doesn’t feel like it yet.” A piece of hair fell out of my ponytail and I tucked it behind my ear. “I’m just lucky I had you to call. And that you let me in at such short notice.”
“Of course I did!” Dad looked almost insulted. “You’re my daughter, Briella. You’ll always be welcome in this house.”
I smiled at the reassurance. “I know. I just don’t want you to think… I don’t know, I just hope you know that I’m not planning on staying here forever. I don’t want to take advantage of you.”
“Please,” he said. “You’re getting yourself on your feet right now. I’ve still got your bedroom here, and more food than I can eat. Don’t be ridiculous. You’re welcome here as long as you need to stay.”
“It won’t be long,” I promised him. I intended on getting out of his hair as soon as I could.
“As long as you need,” he reiterated. When I finished eating, I took the dishes to the sink to do them—that had always been t
he system at home. Whoever cooked didn’t have to do dishes. It made me think of how I cooked and did dishes for Jason. Every now and again he’d scrub a toilet badly enough that I’d have to do it again anyway.
While I was cleaning dishes, I bent over to grab a plate and my head throbbed again. I cursed and stood back up, touching the bruise lightly even though I knew that it would hurt. I thought that I’d not been noticed, but my dad stopped putting away dry plates.
He skipped the pleasantries and asked the question straight out of the gate. “He didn’t lay a hand on you, did he?” His voice was low, and I wondered, for a moment, what he would do if I told him that he had. Dad was the mildest person I knew, but something in his stature looked murderous in that second, and I feared prolonging anything with Jason. Justice, revenge, it all meant having to look at his face again.
“No. I hit my head on the top bunk.” I referenced the bunk bed in my room. I’d insisted on it as a child, despite not having any other siblings, because I liked to sleep on the top bunk. Now I slept on the bottom bunk and the top just stayed there. When Nina came over, sometimes she used it.
He didn’t look like he believed me. “You should call the police,” he said. “If he—”
“Well, he didn’t,” I insisted. And really, Jason hadn’t beaten me. Sure, he’d lashed out at me, but that wasn’t a real beating. Real beatings were different. I’d seen movies where women had been beaten nearly senseless by their spouses or boyfriends—this wasn’t like that. I couldn’t send Jason to jail for a long time because of an angry burst.
Dad relaxed a little. “If you say so,” he said. His face showed disbelief, though, and I sighed and went back to washing a particularly difficult pan. For a moment, everything was quiet, and then there was a knock at the door.
