by Nella Tyler
“Are you going back to Florida tonight?” she asked me.
I shook my head. “I’ll be in Houston for a few more days. Probably through Thursday. Do you think we could get dinner on Wednesday?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I was hoping you wouldn’t be taking off too soon.”
I made sure that we weren’t standing in the middle of the street before I pulled her a bit closer to me and kissed her. I’d missed that, and it was hard for me to pull away.
“You make it hard to leave, you know,” she told me. I grinned at her, and she pulled away from me and got into her car.
I watched her drive off into the Houston sunset and started counting down to Wednesday.
Chapter 26
Briella
The day after my date with Dexter, it was especially hard not to think about him. Knowing that he was in the area made it all the more difficult. I wanted to skip work and find out where he was, track him down, surprise him with a lunch date or a smile or a kiss. Or more. I could go for more, definitely.
But I went to work and did my job. I met with Stephen and Greg again, and they had an even less coherent idea of what they wanted at their wedding. In fact, it was so vague that we had to spend most of the meeting narrowing our options, and narrowing it down was difficult when their hearts were set on certain things that I couldn’t accommodate. When we finally reached some sort of conclusion on the color scheme and wedding theme, we went our separate ways, and I hopped in my car to go home.
On my way, I got a call from Nina.
“Hey,” I answered, setting my phone on speaker so I could leave my hands on the wheel.
“Hey,” she said. “So, I was wondering if maybe you wanted to have a dinner night, like old times.”
“Really? You want to cook dinner with us?” Back in high school and a few times when visiting in college, we used to get ingredients from the grocery store and cook with my dad. It felt like a family event, complete with music and laughter.
“Yeah! I miss you, it’s been ages.” Nina was probably only slightly joking. “You up for it?”
“Sure. Give me a few minutes to get home from work.”
When I got home, Nina’s car was already there. I rolled my eyes a little before walking in, and the smell of onion being sautéed in butter hit me like a stack of bricks.
“Oh, Jesus, it’s beautiful,” I whispered.
“Hey, you’re home!” Nina came running out of my kitchen and wrapped me up in a hug. “Get the hell in here. Your dad’s cutting up a pineapple.”
We walked into the kitchen and I gave my dad a careful hug so as not to disrupt the careful dissection of the pineapple.
“How was work?” He asked.
“Same old. Stephen and Greg decided on gold and white without a theme.”
“Thank God!” Nina said. “Themes are so cliché.”
“You planned two of your school’s proms,” my dad recounted. “You themed them both!”
“Um, yeah. Proms are themed. Weddings shouldn’t have a theme. The theme is wedding, and marriage.” Nina folded her arms, but she was smiling. I picked up a knife and helped cut up some chicken.
“What was your prom’s theme? Under the sea?”
“Ugh, junior prom was under the sea noir,” I said. “It was so weird. Do you know how hard it is to find a dress that says ‘under the sea noir?’”
“It’s not my fault that Emily David insisted on noir and wouldn’t let me have under the sea! I was the Prom Director. Just because she was student body president—”
“She was student body president?” My dad furrowed his brow.
“Junior year. I took it senior year.”
“Until you got impeached,” I said.
“It’s not called impeaching!” Nina rolled her eyes. “You’re so mean.”
I laughed at the memory. At the time, it had been shattering—Nina was involved with one of the football players, and she’d skipped a pep rally with him and got caught engaging in less than exemplary behavior in the girl’s locker room. After that, the student body presidency went back to Emily David.
“Doesn’t matter what they call it if you get kicked out,” Dad pointed out. He ducked to avoid a playful swat to his shoulder.
“It was not that bad!” Nina exclaimed.
“I don’t think they should have kicked you out,” Dad reassured her, probably to lessen his chance of getting swatted again. “It’s not like that David girl was a real role model herself. Besides, it’s high school. Kids do crazy things.”
“Like get bangs,” Nina said, and her gaze turned to me.
I nearly leapt at her. “Do not come for me about my bangs. I thought they were the shit. They were the shit!”
“Language,” Dad warned, and Nina and I both tossed our eyes up.
At the dinner table, Nina decided to pester me about Dexter, something she hadn’t done in a few days.
“Do you think you’re gonna see your boyfriend again?”
“I already did,” I countered, grinning at my defense. “We had dinner yesterday. He’s in town for some business thing.”
“Oh, sure, for some business thing,” Nina said, and I nearly jumped across the table to silence her. I didn’t need her explaining my sex life to my dad.
Dad was only smiling, though. “Nina, you’ve met Dexter. Is he all right?”
“Oh, damn, is he all right,” Nina exclaimed. “He’s tall, he’s handsome, he’s got an enormous house and a top-paying job. I’d marry him myself.”
“Nina,” I groaned, biting into a piece of chicken. It was probably best to accept defeat, but I didn’t give up so easily. “He’s not perfect. Besides, I’m not really into him.” It was a total lie, just something I said to make her mad, and the joke worked.
“The hell you mean you’re not really into him? Just because he’s out of your league with that jawbone?” Nina made a face at me, and I grinned back at her.
“Now, nobody’s out of my Briella’s league,” Dad said, as was his want to do as a protective and loving father. “If anything, he’s out of her league by default. Some boy wants to date my daughter, he’d better be well-to-do and polite for starters.”
“You know, no one is ever gonna marry Briella if you hold every man to that standard,” Nina said.
I couldn’t help but appreciate that they didn’t bring up the glaring flaw in my father’s logic. He held men to this standard, but said little to nothing when I stayed with Jason for three years. But then, he didn’t know, and I couldn’t hardly hate him for something that was mine and Jason’s responsibility to resolve. “Maybe Briella doesn’t wanna get married.”
“I want grandkids before I die!”
“Dad!”
“I’m kidding!” Dad threw his hands up and laughed. “I’m kidding. Do what makes you happy, sweetheart.”
“Ugh, I swear, I have to do everything myself,” Nina grumbled.
With everyone around the table making jokes, even if they were at my expense, I was starting to feel a little better again. Things were looking up.
Chapter 27
Dexter
“It’s been an honor to have you by, sir.”
I shook hands with the old lawyer and nodded. “Oh, the honor is mine, thank you.”
“It’s good of you to come by. It really shows initiative. Your father is lucky to have you in his footsteps,” croaked the old lawyer’s assistant.
I smiled and thanked them, shook a few more hands, and did whatever I needed to do to get the hell out of the old building we’d set up in. The meeting had been brief, and now the account was more or less squared away. One problem, at least, had been dealt with. Now, I faced a huge amount of gratitude from a bunch of old men who didn’t expect me to come down just for their little case.
If only they knew why I’d really come down. How little it had to do with their cases.
Today finally ended my painful countdown to Wednesday, and when I got into my rental car, I felt indes
cribably free. I was in Houston in a rental car on a business trip that probably wasn’t even necessary, but I was about to see Briella, and that was the only thing that could possibly matter to me.
I sent her a text to let her know that I was on my way to the restaurant, and she told me she’d rather meet me there. One of her appointments had run late. I didn’t want to lose the reservation, so I went ahead and drove to the restaurant and was seated at the table I’d chosen earlier.
Every time the bell chimed to signal that someone had entered the restaurant, I looked up. After about 10 glances at total strangers coming in, I finally saw Briella walk in. She wore a skirt and well-fitted blouse, and she looked every bit as beautiful as the first day I’d seen her—possibly and likely more beautiful, because now I had the sacred knowledge of what her skin felt like in my hands.
Those thoughts wouldn’t do to linger in my mind at the dinner table. I stood up to pull her seat out for her, and she smiled at me.
“You always surprise me with how well-behaved you are,” she said.
“Oh? Do you expect me to be a caveman?” I asked. It reminded me of the last conversation we’d had, when I ended up calling her a princess like we were in some stupid cliché movie.
“Men in general,” she corrected. “I just sort of expect a sense of… I don’t know, arrogance. In my experience, guys haven’t been nice.”
“Any man who isn’t good to you isn’t a man at all,” I reasoned.
She smiled. “Maybe not. But it’s not like you’ve never been treated badly by a woman.”
I shrugged and thought of the blind date I went on with Tiffany. “I wouldn’t say I was treated badly. I just was kind of ignored in favor of shouting about handbags. Not that handbags aren’t perfectly valid conversation topics. I just don’t like to be shouted at.”
Briella shrugged. “I don’t think anyone does.” She looked, for a moment, like she was thinking of something else, but she didn’t say anything else. We ordered and talked about her time at work, and then she looked up at me with concern out of nowhere.
“I don’t want this to be over,” she said.
I stared at her across the table. We’d been talking about whether or not we thought that butter should be on popcorn automatically or to the customer’s discretion—nothing to do with where we were in life. “I don’t... I don’t, either,” I said.
“But it would be really easy for you to have this be it,” she said. She swallowed hard and set her glass down, staring at her plate. “It would be… I don’t know. To have me on call and not need to worry about a relationship, that seems like the best option.”
“It’s the worst option,” I said.
She looked at me quizzically.
“Briella. Briella, to be in Florida, miles away, and not be able to see you, not be able to really talk to you, it’s torment.” I shook my head and wondered how I’d ever let it be so that she had room to doubt that. “The worst thing is to know that you’re in Houston and I’m not with you.”
She raised an eyebrow, looking almost like she didn’t believe me. “But why?” she asked. “Why… me?”
“Because you’re you,” I insisted. How did she not already understand? “And not anyone else.”
“You’re a sap,” she defended, and I could see her face getting a little redder. She shook her head and said, “I’m glad you took that case in Houston.”
“Me too,” I said.
She perked up. “Wow, I completely forgot to ask you how the case in Houston went! That was today, wasn’t it?”
I laughed at her concern, as if I gave a flying shit about the case in Houston and wasn’t here only to see her. The investment firm could burn, at that moment. “Oh, it was fine. I just needed to smooth some ruffled feathers and get everyone on the right track.”
“I’m proud of you,” Briella said. “Corporate bigwigs are never fun to work with.”
I smiled at her. She was supportive of me, I realized, supportive in a way that I wasn’t familiar with. I’d certainly never gotten praise without malicious intent from my father before. “Thank you,” I said. “I’m glad it’s over with so I can spend more time with you.” It was incredible to have someone close to me that made me feel this way.
When dinner was over, I asked her where she wanted to go.
“Your hotel, if that’s all right,” she said. “I want to talk more.”
I had to resist the urge to call her on her excuse to go back to my hotel—as if that wasn’t the very thing that I wanted, too. We couldn’t very well go to her place, seeing as to that her father was there and it would end arguably catastrophically. We drove back to my hotel, and Briella grabbed my arm when we entered the lobby.
“It’s beautiful in here,” she whispered. “I’ve only ever driven by this hotel. I’ve never been inside.”
I grinned at her and kissed her cheek. We went up to my floor, and my hand would touch her waist, her hand would tug my arm, I would kiss her cheek—we touched, casually, and it increased the closer we got to my room. When I got the door open, I pulled her closer to me, and before the door was even shut, her mouth was on mine again.
Chapter 28
Briella
To my credit, we didn’t knock any furniture over this time in a rush to get to the bed.
He pulled me closer and pressed me against the closed door. I fumbled to grab the lock as his mouth moved down my neck and I went at the buttons on his shirt with hasty fingers. My heart thrummed in my chest with enthusiasm to finally do this after so long away from one another. I’d missed his hands on my body.
While I hadn’t been paying attention, he’d pulled away my skirt, and I stepped out of it and yanked his shirt. It went over his head; I pulled him down to reconnect our kiss and nearly melted in his arms as he explored my mouth carefully and not too harshly with his tongue, and when he broke away, I made a few marks on his neck, just to remind him who he belonged to. If he left, I would have that much bearing, at least.
His hands met my bare waist—I couldn’t remember when I’d taken off my shirt—and he steered us towards the bed. I pulled my leg around his so that I could grind my hips up against him. The juvenile dry hump made us both smile, and he began to wander down my body. His mouth pressed like an iron against the skin of my neck, my collarbone, and he yanked my bra off without much need for assistance.
He bit and teased at me like he hadn’t missed a beat. When his fingers brushed against my underwear, my breath quickened, and he returned to kissing me. He was slow and breathtaking in his kiss, and slow and almost painful in how he dragged his fingers along my sex. Finally, he pushed my underwear aside, which gave me time to yank his pants down.
He stepped back to shove his pants off and set the palm of his hands against my crotch, fingers trailing along my entrance. Slowly, he pressed in, and I nearly came undone just with that much touch. He slid his fingers inside me and pumped as though he had nothing to do for the rest of the day.
“I’ve missed you,” he groaned, and I palmed his dick through his shorts to hear him sigh.
I’d gotten his underwear down and prepared to work him into a similar frenzy when his thumb bore down on my clit. I audibly gasped. As my hips started to pulse up, he drew away, and I almost smacked him for the frustration I felt.
“Dexter,” I moaned.
He kissed my shoulder and positioned his erection where his fingers left me. “What do you want, Briella?”
“Please.”
I could feel him nudging me open, and I gripped the bedsheets until my knuckles turned white. “Please, please.”
He wasn’t moving any further. His teeth caught my nipple, and I could have screamed at how overstimulated I felt, but with no relief.
“Fuck me. Just fuck me. Please.”
Those were the magic words. Dexter slid against me and seated himself with a steady groan. I ground my hips up against him and watched his eyelids flutter at the sensation. I wanted to get closer to him.
My hands ran up his bare back, and my nails dug at his shoulder blades. When I could sense him getting afraid to hurt me, I would push back up insistently, commanding him to not hold back on my account.
It didn’t take long before we’d both fallen apart, incoherent messes shouting with pleasure, and then incredibly silent all at once.
I’d missed him. I wanted to do it again, and again, and never have to stop missing him. He pulled away from me and held me close; I could hear his heart pounding in his chest and knew that mine was, too. I hadn’t known that I’d needed that so badly.
After a few minutes of regaining our breath, he got up to go to the bathroom and clean himself up. I sat up in bed and moved my hair over, tried to determine how messy I looked. I probably smelled like sex, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t wash up in the shower. I needed to go back home tonight, so I resolved to wash up before I went home.
It was incredibly high school of me, wanting to clean up the evidence so my dad wouldn’t find out. I couldn’t help but be gleeful.
When Dexter came out of the bathroom, I’d just gotten to fastening my bra back on. “Hey, would you…” I bit my lip and pulled the last strap on. “Would you be willing to have dinner with me?”
“Of course,” Dexter said, a bit incredulously.
“Well, me and my father. You could come over; he’s a great cook, and I’m sure he’d be happy to have you.” I bit the inside of my cheek. It was an obvious test; I was a little scared despite myself that now that Dexter had gotten what he’d come to Houston for, he wouldn’t want anything to do with me.
Dexter paused, pulling his sweatpants on. “I’m not opposed to it,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m just….” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m just, um, I’m not sure if he’ll like me.”
I furrowed my brow.
He continued to fidget. “Well, I mean, you know…” He shook his head, and I began to realize what he meant. He was trying not to misspeak or say anything offensive; that’s why he was fidgeting.
