by Nella Tyler
“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 Twenty-Eight
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, wantin
g 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.
“He knows you’re white,” I assured him. “And he doesn’t really care.
Dexter smiled at me. “Wait, he knows about me?”
“Don’t get a big head about it,” I warned him. “But yeah.”
He sat down next to me on the bed and kissed me for a moment. “Sounds good,” he said. I smiled at him and kissed his cheek. I couldn’t shake my excitement; finally, the man that I was hugely growing to adore was going to meet the person that I loved most in the world.
Chapter Twenty-Nine:
Dexter
I’d slept with Briella three times now and had taken her on several dates. Still, I’d never been more nervous than I was getting ready to have dinner with her father. I buttoned, unbuttoned, and then re-buttoned my shirt as I changed my mind about whether or not it was a suitable shirt. I didn’t want to dress like I was going to a business meeting, but I didn’t know how to dress to meet someone’s father. I hadn’t had to meet a girl’s parents since high school, and then it had been a quick ‘hello’ at the door before a less than satisfactory date at the movies, from which she’d called her father to pick her up.
I nearly wanted to back out of this date, which was ridiculous. I would never stand Briella up. But my nerves were really letting me have it, and I stood by my door for a few moments before forcing myself to be on my way. I wasn’t going to let this go by because of my fear; I’d come all the way to Houston, for crying out loud!
Briella had agreed to pick me up for dinner since my rental car had to be returned. There was an anomaly with the brake, and it was easier for me to just get a taxi than bother fixing it.
“You look nice,” she told me. I fidgeted in the passenger seat and couldn’t help but feel that the roles had been a bit reversed.
“Thanks,” I managed. “You do too. Is it hot in here?”
“The AC is on full blast,” she said. She looked over at me and grinned. “Aww, are you nervous?”
“Little bit.”
My honesty must have sparked some empathy because she didn’t tease me too harshly. “It’s all right. I really think it’ll be fine. I wouldn’t have invited you over if I didn’t think it would go well.”
That was true. There was no reason for Briella to lead me into some sort of trap where I would be hated by her father and lose credibility with Briella. It wouldn’t make sense. I tried to convince myself of that in order to calm myself down—this felt like a make or break moment, and anything that I said wrong would be a disaster beyond comprehension.
Briella led me into the house. It was a sweet house, definitely something I could imagine her growing up in, with little decorations for summer strewn about and some nice pieces of art hanging in different places, probably from a home goods store. It looked like the comfortable childhood home that I could only wish I’d had.
“Dad! I brought Dexter!”
The way she called it made it sound like she’d brought home groceries or something. I smiled at the casual nature of it; it wasn’t some formal or forced introduction where it was understood beforehand that we wouldn’t get along. If she met my father…
Her father rounded the corner, emerging from what looked to be the kitchen. He had a friendly face, and he smiled as soon as he saw me. “Ah, so you did. You must be Dexter.”
“Yes, sir.” I returned his easy smile and shook his hand.
“It’s good to finally meet you. I’ve heard lots about you.”
“Oh?”
“Dad,” Briella said, her tone warning. It was sweet to hear her get worked up, but I wanted to know what she’d told her father about me. I couldn’t imagine much in detail, but then, I didn’t know her father.
We sat down to eat, and I did my best to not seem out of place here. I wished that I fit in in places like this. This place had character and heart and felt like people lived here. My house felt like a museum or an exhibit, someplace that people should be reverent of and not get comfortable in.
“Briella tells me you work at an investment firm?”
“Yes,” I answered. “It’s my father’s firm, really. I sort of got adopted into it.” I didn’t want to seem like I was any smarter than I really was—I owed much of my success to my position, and my position was lucky because I was born into it.
“Oh? What’s your father’s name? Maybe I’ve heard of the company.”
My heart skipped a beat. I thought about what Tyler had said about father being blatantly racist. I wondered if that was something that the public knew, or at least that people knew about outside of our family. If it was, I didn’t want to end everything here.
“Dexter?” Briella tapped my arm.
“Sorry, lost in thought. Leonard Mason, sir.” I couldn’t make a big deal about not answering the question without drawing attention to my distress at the subject. I couldn’t exactly lie, either. I wanted to continue to have a relationship with Briella, which meant that my father’s real name would come up without much trouble.
Besides, Briella knew his name. It was not something I could avoid.
Instantly, I saw her father’s demeanor change. He looked me over like he expected horns to pop out of my head, and I felt shameful. I was wrong to be dating his daughter, coming into his home, eating his food, when I came from such a background.
In an unbelievable show of mercy, he didn’t kick me out on the spot. We continued dinner, albeit slightly more tersely than before, and he remained cordial. We talked about sports a little, and he asked me for advice on how to exercise with a bum knee. We talked to Briella about her job.
All in all, the meal went well, except that when Briella wasn’t watching, I could still feel her father’s eyes on me. Even after he said goodbye to me, I could feel his eyes boring into the back of my head.
This made for an incredibly awkward drive back to the hotel, at least inside my mind.
“I think that went well,” Briella offered.
“I think your dad hates me,” I blurted, at the exact same time.
She pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows. “Well. All right. What exactly makes you think that?”
I shook his head. “He… I mentioned my father’s name, and I thought he was going to stab me in the face.”
“My dad wouldn’t hurt anyone,” Briella defended. She got a bit quiet. “But he did seem to get a little tense, yeah. I wouldn’t say he hates you, just… well, why do you think he got upset about your dad’s name? That’s kind of a silly thing to be mad about.”
I knew; it was at the forefront of my mind, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it. “I don’t know,” I lied. “I don’t, um…” I shrugged.
“Well, I’m sure it’ll blow over,” Briella said. She came to a stop in front of my hotel building.
Walking back up to my room, I was almost certain that it wouldn’t.
Chapter Thirty
Briella
The morning after Dexter came over for di
nner, I woke up to the smell of breakfast cooking. It was enough to tempt me out of bed. I brushed my teeth and thanked God that my skin was dark enough to hide the more obvious hickeys that Dexter had given me a few days ago. A little bit of makeup was all I really needed to keep my dad in the dark about my private life.
I wandered into the kitchen and turned on the tea kettle. “Good morning. What’s cooking?”
“Breakfast.” Dad sounded almost irritated, like he couldn’t believe I’d asked. It reminded me of the night before, and I stopped rifling through the boxes of tea to look up at him.
“Hey, Dad. Yesterday when Dexter was over, he mentioned his father’s name and you kind of freaked out.” Maybe that was an overstatement, but I was only more concerned now to see that he was still annoyed about it. “What exactly is the deal?”
Dad looked at me for a while and then he sighed. He put the eggs off the heat and leaned back against the counter. “I never told you about Mason?”
“No.”
He shook his head. “A little while back, I was going to get my company off the ground. We’d been talking at work about opening up a sports supply store off 59, right by that Mexican food restaurant, in that shopping mall.”
I smiled, knowing exactly where he meant. “I remember that.”
“We didn’t really have enough money to open a shop, though. So we thought we’d get in touch with an investment firm and see if we could figure out some kind of deal. A lot of times investors like to work with small businesses because the payoff can be enormous in the end. So we got in touch with Mason Investment. They deferred me to the CEO of the company, and so I went down to Florida to go and deal with the whole thing.”
I frowned. He’d met Leonard Mason?
“I met the guy in his office. Huge building in downtown Florida. Took one look at me and said he couldn’t take my investment. I asked him why, and he told me he knew better than to get involved with people like me.”
