by Nella Tyler
I stepped carefully to my side of the room and kept quiet for a moment. She didn’t say anything, and I didn’t say anything, and I began to wonder why she was so quiet.
Finally, I put down the shirt that I was folding. “I just came home in obviously not my clothes, and you have nothing to say about it?” I burst.
“So you did sleep with him again!” Nina exclaimed.
I cursed. I didn’t know she’d only been waiting for a confirmation of what she already suspected. “Yeah. Yeah, we had a good time.”
“Where did you go?” She was determined to get every detail out of me.
“We went to a pier.” I refused to relent.
“Outdoors? Kinky.” Nina shimmied her shoulders at me and ducked to avoid a pillow that I promptly threw at her. I was honestly surprised that I hadn’t broken anything in the room yet, throwing pillows like I had this week.
“For dinner.” I rolled my eyes and went back to rolling up my T-shirts and lining them up in the suitcase. I didn’t really feel up to folding everything carefully, especially since most of it was dirty by now anyway. “We went back to his place after, and, yeah.”
“And, yeah? What was he like?”
“He was really good.”
“Really good?” Nina groaned and threw a pair of underwear into her case with gusto to accentuate her irritation. “Goddamn it, Briella. Chocolate cake is really good. Sex with someone you barely know is different!”
“I don’t barely know him,” I balked.
She lifted her eyebrow. “Oh, did you have a long, romantic talk?”
“Something like that.” I rolled my eyes again and set to cramming socks into the empty spaces of my suitcase. “I…. I like him, Nina. He’s good. I had a good time, and I wish it didn’t have to end like this. And I feel stupid for being upset because I knew that this was going to happen, and I did it anyway.”
“You’re not stupid! You were having a good time. That’s the whole reason you came out here, right? Live it up without consequences, remember?”
“I guess, but I didn’t expect to form an actual emotional connection with anyone. And now I’m leaving, and I’m never going to see him again.” I rubbed my temples and wished that I wasn’t like this. I thought of Nina and how confidently she could stride from person to person, never really needing anyone for emotional dependence. I liked to think that I could do that, exist without consequences, but it seemed I managed to rope someone in at every turn and get myself caught in these emotional webs.
Nina set a hand on my shoulder. “You’re gonna find someone else, though. You found a billionaire who liked you right off the bat in a town you’d never been in. How hard do you really think it’s gonna be to get some average Joe to fall in love with you?”
I laughed at her logic. “I don’t want an average Joe.”
“Of course. You deserve someone amazing. But you’ll find someone amazing. Someone who makes more sense. Dexter’s cute, and he’s rich, and that’s good for vacation flings. But could you really settle down with someone like that?”
I thought for a moment. I didn’t think I could ever live in a house that big, or keep my room so neat, or constantly look nice. I needed to be able to let my hair down and relax more often than that lifestyle would allow for. Besides, I’d be constantly reminded of how normal I was next to his wealth and success. I slowly shook my head. “You’re right. He’s fun, but not… not forever.”
“Not forever. So let’s go back to Houston and focus on you. You’ll get a nice apartment, maybe a cat, get yourself an office for your business, and then you can start worrying about men.”
I smiled. Nina was right. I had my own life to worry about outside of my romantic life. I didn’t need to find a man to love me. I could rebuild on my own. “You’re right.”
“Duh. Come on, help me get these suitcases downstairs. I think the cab’s here.”
We lugged our suitcases and toiletry bags downstairs. Nina ended up forgetting her phone charger and having to run back up and grab it, but after that, we were smooth sailing to the airport. Despite the fact that I agreed with her logic, I still didn’t feel entirely comfortable with what was going on. I still felt like something was missing, like I was leaving this thing with Dexter entirely unfinished.
It felt dishonest, to tuck tail and go home now. I felt like I was lying to myself and to Dexter in my goodbye.
And it brought me a lot of dread to think that I was going back to the life I’d left in Houston. I didn’t have to worry about Jason anymore, that was true, but then maybe it wasn’t. He could still turn up at my door. I could file something with the police, but the police in my county were notoriously lazy about domestic violence issues.
When we reached the terminal, I almost expected to see Dexter barreling down the security line calling my name. I wanted to see him blowing up my phone with concerned texts and calls, pleading with me not to leave. I wanted the world to slow down as he convinced me to stay with him, as he told me that I was the most important thing in the world, and then carry me off to live with him in his expensive house and not worry about the rest of the universe.
But this wasn’t a movie. He wasn’t going to come sweep me off my feet. I had a plane to catch. Nina led me through the terminal and onto the plane, and when I sat down, I began to fully understand what was happening.
I was going to have to go back to living with my father. I didn’t have a house to my name, just a half-concocted business that would probably fail now that I’d taken a week off. I was going to wind up alone, a failure, and coasting from person to person to pay my rent. I might end up like Jason, resentful of anyone who came near me because of my unfortunate state.
When the flight attendant came by, she offered me Kleenex, which made me feel like I was almost certainly making a fool of myself. I asked her for a glass of water and leaned back in my chair, taking a sharp breath in.
“Do you think we should get something to drink?” I asked Nina.
“Alcohol? Bri, it’s not even noon.”
“Yeah, but….” I shook my head. “Never mind.” It would be nice to get a little tipsy and forget about my struggles, but it wasn’t like I could get drunk on the plane anyway. Not with the tiny little bottles that they served.
“Hey.” Nina seemed to read my frazzled emotional state, and she nudged me with her elbow. “Hey, it’s going to be okay. We’re going to do some cool shit, with or without any guys.”
I rubbed my eyes on the back of my hand and nodded. Jesus, this was embarrassing; I didn’t want to make a sobbing mess of myself in the airport, not over a man I’d only known for a few days. I decided to change the subject. “You know, I met his brother,” I said.
“What do you mean, you met his brother?” Nina’s enthusiasm bordered on a teasing hostility.
“He came over this morning. He’s really nice.”
“You didn’t set up a date with me?” Nina groaned and threw her head back. “You’re taking all the fun for yourself. I can’t believe you. I could be married by now, to a billionaire.”
“Hardly a billionaire. He spends all his money on parties.”
“Even better. He can spend it all on me. Or he can’t, because you didn’t set up a date with him. Damn it, Briella!”
Her teasing made me laugh. When the plane started to take off, I had a smile on my face. Perhaps things were looking a little emotional, but I could still find a way to get through it.
Chapter Twenty-One
Dexter
Going to work the next day was torturous. I pulled on a button-down shirt and a pair of slacks as I had every morning for ages before. I made a cup of coffee and put it in a travel mug. Everything I did came from a routine that I’d wanted to abandon. I was more than happy to live the way I had until I’d met Briella. She’d come into my life and raised the possibility that maybe I didn’t have to live as a slave to my father and his company.
Now, she was gone. Gone without a trace, almost so that I
didn’t know whether she’d been there at all. The solution, I knew, would be to get back to work. I’d had a few breakups before—not that this really constituted a breakup—and the solution to them was always to get my head back into my work. If I could forget everything else and give myself over to my job, I would forget.
When I got to the office, everything seemed to be moving in double-time. Secretaries were all talking on the phone, people were bustling in and out of the hallways, and my brother’s coat was hanging up in the lobby, which meant that he’d come into work, too. In the course of a week, it seemed things had really picked up in my absence. I wondered if my absence had actually caused enough of a backlog of work to make a difference.
I went to my father’s office to see if he needed me to do anything in particular, and I saw Tyler standing in there and talking to him.
“I’ve told you again and again not to make any of these mistakes on the paperwork,” Dad said. “You’re supposed to be running them through your computer and then sending them to the secretaries to proofread. I don’t understand why you aren’t getting this right.”
“No one cares if I don’t do those specific little things. People want their loans approved, not for every comma in the paper to be in the right order.”
“Laziness will get you nowhere, Tyler. You have to have things in order first before you can start taking people’s money into your hands.”
I decided to break up the dispute by knocking on the side of the door and announcing my presence. I felt bad for my brother; I knew he didn’t deserve a lot of the scrutiny he got. It was mostly because Dad wouldn’t let him live his dream, and I could sort of understand that.
Better now, anyway, after Briella.
“Dexter, come in,” Dad said. “Tyler, get back to your office.”
Tyler turned around and made a face at me on his way out that suggested we would be having quite the conversation later. I walked past him and sat down in the chair in front of my dad’s desk. It still made me sink into it uncomfortably, and I struggled to sit up a bit better to look less like I was trying to take a nap.
“It’s good to have you back. The company runs slower without you,” my father said.
So it had been my absence that caused all the fuss. I felt a little proud of that, at least proud that I did well enough at work that my absence worsened it. I didn’t like that everyone had to deal with the repercussions of me going on vacation for a week for no good reason, but I could deal with that later. I knew how to make it up to the secretaries. “It’s good to be back. Did you need to talk to me?” I forgot, suddenly, why I’d come in in the first place.
“I actually did want to talk to you,” his father said. “The situation with Tiffany didn’t work out, I remember the talk we had about that. You said you didn’t see you two working together.”
I was surprised he’d remembered, or even thought about it. “Yes, I did say that.”
“Well, I’ve considered it a bit, and I’ve decided that I won’t force it on you,” he said.
I sighed with relief. “Thank you. That’s a relief.”
“I will find a suitable match for you,” he continued, leaning back in his chair. “It might take a bit more poking around the families here to find someone more inclined to your interests. The Bernard and Thomas families have daughters, though I’m uncertain as to their status and age.”
I shook my head. “Actually, Dad, I was thinking that maybe it would be best that I didn’t try to date anyone currently. If I devoted my time and energy to work instead of romantic endeavors, I might be able to get more done.” If anyone could understand sacrificing emotions for work, it would be my father.
He laughed, though, actually barked a laugh and grinned at me with his strange, rodent-like smile. I thought of the things Tyler had told me about him and found it hard to keep my stance that he was not altogether a good person. “Come now, Dexter. Don’t be a child about it. We’ll find you a suitable wife who doesn’t drive you entirely crazy. That’s what you wanted, right? What’s best for the company?”
I didn’t remember ever telling him that, but I was certain that I’d spent most of my life embodying that principle. Now I worried that I was working for someone I couldn’t support. I didn’t want to get married to someone I didn’t like. I wanted to find Briella, I wanted to tell her how I felt. I couldn’t. I was stuck in this spot and unable to move.
“I think I really could benefit from focusing on work,” I repeated. “It might make up for any addition that another family could make for us.”
He waved his hand. “Nonsense. I won’t hear of it.”
I stood up, realizing that the effort to persuade my father of a different viewpoint was probably unbelievably foolish of me. “I’ll get back to work,” I said. I left his office and saw Tyler standing in the hallway. I waved him over to come with me into my office.
When I closed the door, Tyler nearly exploded with emotion. “He’s such an ass, Dexter!”
It occurred to me that at that moment, I could really only take two sides. I could agree with Tyler and betray my father, or I could agree with my father and betray my brother. I chose the cop-out. “I can’t believe he’s still going to try and set me up with someone.”
“What, you didn’t tell him about your new girlfriend?”
I glared at Tyler. “I do not have a girlfriend.”
“Um, okay. There’s a girl who regularly hangs out with you and who you have slept with more than once. Isn’t that exactly what a girlfriend is?” Tyler leaned against my desk, and I sat down in my chair.
“No. I don’t have a girlfriend, and you’re not going to tell dad about it.”
“Of course not. But don’t you think you should tell Dad about it? After all, she is your girlfriend.”
“Tyler!” I furrowed my brow. The pain that I felt about Briella hadn’t faded, and this only hurt more. “That’s enough. I’m not seeing anyone. I’m not going to see anyone. Between the two of us, someone has to take a single goddamn thing seriously, so I suppose I’ll be the one to do nothing but work for the rest of my fucking life.”
Tyler rolled his eyes. “Yeah, whatever. I’ll go do some serious reassessment of my commas and shit.” He made his way out of my office, and I tried to put my finger on exactly the look on his face.
It was the same look that he gave Dad when he was giving Tyler a hard time.
Had I sounded like my father? It was just like him to push away someone’s emotional needs and harshly cut them off. I looked down the hall and thought about the man who sat behind that desk. Someone I barely knew on an emotional level, but had learned to fear. A silhouette of a man who built an empire from hatred and discrimination and couldn’t be bothered to feel affection towards his wife, let alone the sons she’d borne him.
I didn’t want to be that person. I looked at the piles of paper on my desk and thought about what I’d said to Tyler, what I’d said to myself.
Was it already too late for me to stop becoming my father?
Chapter Twenty-Two
Briella
I woke up in my childhood bedroom and looked up at the ceiling. My father had left for a business trip a few days ago, and I had the house to myself, which meant that I needed to get up and make breakfast. I didn’t want to do anything. I wanted to lie in bed and deal with my suffering by doing nothing for the rest of my life.
It was a dramatic view, but then, that’s the way I couldn’t help but feel. I pulled myself out of bed and went to the bathroom to get ready for the day. There wasn’t really any point in looking cute. I only needed to meet with one couple today, and that wasn’t until later. I put on a clean shirt and some clean pants and went to the kitchen.
This home felt unbearably lonely. I couldn’t help the loneliness I felt. I missed Dexter, specifically, and every time I stood still too long, I could practically feel his arms around me. I wanted to call him, ask him how he was, or maybe get on a plane and go running back.
&nb
sp; My phone buzzed. A text from Nina with a flexing emoji, with the message, ‘You got this, Bri.’
I took a deep breath. I could manage this. I’d never thought that I would leave Jason; I expected to stay in that apartment forever. If I could leave him and everything I’d ever known, I could recover from a few days of dating some random person in Florida.
I tried to run through what Nina told me about Dexter and I not being compatible. It helped me to believe that we wouldn’t work together. If he wasn’t desirable, I wouldn’t be sad to miss him. Every time I thought of something Nina said, I thought of something Dexter did.
He wasn’t in my socioeconomic class.
He held me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered.
When I finally did get to work, I was more than eager to delve into it and lose myself in the work. That was another thing I would need more of: distractions. I thought that it was an appointment with Stephen and Greg, but instead, it was a new couple, a girl named May and a boy named James. They were incredibly clingy and could hardly keep their hands off each other.
“Do you think we should do two other cakes? I mean, your family’s going to be there, and there’s like, a thousand people in your family,” May jabbed at James.
James laughed. “If you want 20 cakes, I’ll make it happen. I just feel bad that we didn’t invite your cousin.”
“My cousin is an ass,” May replied. She kissed his cheek. “And I don’t want anything to ruin our special day.”
James pulled her into his lap to tickle her sides. “Do you think there’s any way we can get two cakes made? Besides the main one, anyway?”
“Some people will get a few others done,” I said. “The bakery that I tend to use most often will do taste tests and things. If the bride’s cake is vanilla, you could do a chocolate cake and another a different flavor. You’ll have variety and quantity.”
“That sounds amazing. Do you think they’ll let us sneak in later today?”
