by Nella Tyler
As I started going back to my car, I saw a man standing next to my car. I thought at first that it might be one of the clients, but they’d left a few moments ago. When I drew nearer, I could have sworn that it looked a little like Dexter.
It couldn’t be Dexter, though. Could it?
Chapter Twenty-Five:
Dexter
I saw Briella come out of the café and felt a little better. I hadn’t been sure I was at the right place, since I didn’t know what Briella’s car looked like, and I wasn’t about to go stalking her home to figure out when she left and when she’d be back. Nina told me that she’d met some clients at the café here, though, so this is where I’d chosen to wait.
She walked up to the car and my heart lifted. It felt so good to see her again, just to see her, and we hadn’t even said anything to one another. Her skin glowed in the afternoon sun, and her eyes lit up when she recognized me. I had been afraid that she might cringe, hide, run away, and wish that I hadn’t expected us to last. I’d still worried she wanted some sort of week-long fling, and that the phone calls were just out of pity.
Instead, she ran up to me and threw her arms around me. I caught her and held her close for a few seconds, pressing my lips to the top of her head. We were hardly in love, and I didn’t consider this relationship exclusive or serious—but then, I took it seriously. I didn’t know what I felt with Briella. That was part of the reason why she drove me so crazy.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Briella asked. Her smile told me that she wasn’t angry. “Also, hello.”
“Hello,” I returned, matching her smile with one of my own. I hadn’t smiled so genuinely in… since the last time I’d seen her. The stresses of corporate life felt like they might very melt off my skin in this place with her. “I came back on business. My brother fucked up some business agreement, and I thought I’d come to make sure everything went according to plan.”
She looked a little suspicious, and she raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t have anything at all to do with coming to see me?”
“Not a bit,” I teased back, and she looked delighted.
“How long do you have to talk?” she asked.
“I was going to see if you wouldn’t mind coming to dinner,” I said. “I know it’s short notice and you just got off work, but…”
“I would love dinner,” was the quick and eager reply. I grinned ear to ear.
When we got in her car, I could instantly feel how the roles had reversed. Where I’d shown her around in Florida and taken her nice places, I didn’t really know Houston very well, and couldn’t do the same kind of showboating that I’d done then. I was rather at her mercy to pick someplace she liked.
“What are you in the mood for?”
I had a few different answers for that, only a few of them appropriate, and I said, “Surprise me. I’m up for anything.”
She pursed her lips and sat back in her seat for a moment, thumbs tapping at the wheel. Then she sat up and said, “I know where we can go.”
Instead of being nervous at the potential of getting dumped somewhere, I knew that she had somewhere in mind.
We got to a pleasant, small restaurant on the outskirts of Houston. It wasn’t horribly upscale, but it wasn’t a sports bar, either. We didn’t have reservations, nor did we seem to need them; the hostess walked us to an available table without any wait time, and I found myself pleasantly surprised at how smoothly things were going.
And I couldn’t shake the fact that I’d actually managed to find her. I was actually seeing Briella here in Houston. I’d almost gotten accustomed to the idea of never seeing her again, and now, she sat across the table from me, smiling. If it weren’t for all the effort I’d gone to in order to get here, I’d think that fate had us inevitably linked or something.
“How has it been at work?” I asked.
Briella waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, you know. Same old. I had to give a pep talk to a couple today that didn’t seem to want to get married and didn’t care about their wedding at all.”
“Kinda strange to hire a wedding planner if you don’t care how it goes.”
“Right? It turned out they were worried about the cost.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“It was going to be hugely expensive, and they couldn’t see past that to have a good time,” Briella explained. “The way I see it, if it’s going to put you in huge amounts of debt no matter what you do, you might as well make a hell of a night out of it. And that’s what I’m there for. They’re going to have it in a museum.”
“A museum? I’ve never heard of anyone getting married in a museum.”
“The Fine Arts museum lets people do it. It’s not very expensive, either, if you hire your own caterer. And they have a friend who will do it for really cheap.” Briella smiled. “It all came together pretty quickly once they stopped being all upset about it.”
“Hard not to be,” I reasoned. “But I’m glad you could help them. They’re lucky they had you to give them a pep talk.”
“Oh, well, it’s my job.”
“No, your job is to organize weddings. You could have just marked down whatever you wanted and gone with that. You’d still get paid. But you’re considerate, and so you cared,” I said. I could only imagine how someone like my father would handle it. They’d take as much money from the client as they could and leave them even more in debt than they thought, all while thinking everything had been entirely necessary. Businesses could be real leeches on unsuspecting clients.
“Well, I don’t have anything to gain from being a vulture,” Briella pointed out. “I just plan the wedding. I don’t earn commission off cakes or catering or anything. So it doesn’t really matter if they choose the most upscale caterer or their friend’s barbecue joint.”
“You don’t make commission?”
“No, wedding planners usually don’t. We’ll just get a fee per appointment and service we arrange, plus extra if they want us at the wedding managing things on the day of, which is usually best. If anything is going to go wrong, it’ll go wrong the day of. If someone’s budget is short, though, I’ll usually just be on standby with my phone at home in case something goes wrong.” Briella took a drink of water.
“Do things often go wrong?”
Briella laughed. “Once I had a cake delivery for a bachelorette party show up to a wedding. It was a penis cake.”
My eyes widened. “What?”
“Yeah. It was a nightmare. The mother of the bride was… nearly inconsolable. A few well-placed phone calls and the issue was all sorted, but Jesus, that was a hilarious call to get. ‘There’s a dick cake in my banquet hall!’”
I laughed heartily. The prospect of something like that happening, especially in the upper circles of society, was too funny to bear. I could only imagine someone like my father or a coworker getting something like that. “Where I’m from, that cake delivery man would be ruined forever.”
“Not over one wrong delivery!”
“You bet. These people all think that they and their events are the most important things to ever happen,” I reminded her. “The delivery man might run a million perfect stops, but if he fucks up at their event, that’s the end of his career, if they’ve got any say in it.”
“Ruthless.”
“Evil,” I corrected. “I think it’s evil, anyway.”
“You’re not like them,” she observed. “How’d you end up different than them? You were born into wealth.”
A statement, not a question, and I wondered how she knew. I supposed it was pretty easy to find out anything about my past life with a quick internet search. “I don’t know. I think probably my brother. He always had a lot to say about the human condition and how people ought to behave. You’re not born into greatness, even if you are born into wealth. You still have to earn respect and not treat people like shit.”
“I always wondered why rich people tended to think of themselves as royalty,” Briella mused.
> “Probably because they used to be considered royalty. In medieval England, anyway,” I thought aloud. “Wealth was supposed to come from God, so if you’re rich, it was because God made you rich. If you were poor, same thing. You deserved your class. Which is bullshit, of course, and we know that now.”
Briella looked at me over the top of her glass and smiled. “Maybe. I like the idea that I’ve gotten myself involved with royalty. Does that make me a horrible snob?”
I smiled and couldn’t help but feel a little bashful at her remark. I was far from royalty of any sort. My family wasn’t even in the top 10 richest families—top 50, sure, but still. “Oh, I don’t know,” I said, never one to refuse to tease back. “But it would make you a princess.”
It was unbearably easy to talk to her. So much so that I dreaded having to talk to anyone else and pretend to enjoy the conversation. When we finished dinner, I walked her outside, and then realized that I needed to call a cab—I wasn’t used to having a car.
“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 Twenty-Six
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 expe
nse, I was starting to feel a little better again. Things were looking up.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
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 indescribably 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.
