by Nella Tyler
My stomach turned. He couldn’t possibly be talking about the color of his skin, right? He must have meant something else.
“He said he knew that people in ghettos tended to run business poorly,” Dad said. “As if I come from a ghetto, or as if he has the right to judge me if I do. I was spittin’ mad, so when I went back to the hotel, I did some searching. The guy’s been sued maybe 60 times in the past three years for his discrimination, but he always settles the cases.”
I closed my eyes. “That’s…that can’t be true. The business is way too successful for him to be settling all those cases and still turning a profit.”
“They’re backed by just about every major chain in Florida. Every white-owned chain, anyway.” Dad shook his head. “They’re Teflon. You can’t touch them.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t process this right now. I didn’t know what to think or say or do. I didn’t want to tell my father that he was wrong, because I hadn’t been there, and I was all too familiar with the bitter taste of racism. Boys telling me I was pretty for a black girl, girls telling me I was lucky I had ‘white girl hair,’ getting turned down for jobs that I was qualified for with no good reason in sight—but seeing that job go to a less qualified white male.
My concern followed me to work. I met with the apathetic couple from Monday, and they seemed to be even more eager now than they had been when I’d left them at that session.
“Briella, okay, so I’m thinking we could do the buffet right next to the dinosaur eggs. How cute would that be?”
“There aren’t any dinosaur eggs in the Fine Arts museum.”
“There is an entire exhibit on paleontological art.”
“That can’t exist!”
I listened to their banter and shook my head. “We could set it up in the Renaissance exhibit. The banquet, anyway. Lots of lovely colors, lots of stuff to look at, it’s all very on-theme.”
“That sounds amazing.” She grinned and sat at the edge of her seat.
I could hear them continue to talk, but I couldn’t keep my mind focused on the task at hand. My father’s words echoed in my head. If he was right, it meant that I was dating at least the son of a horrible racist who didn’t think that black people were worth investment funds.
If he was wrong… then what? My father was lying about someone being racist to cope with his own inability to run a business?
The couple left, and I moved some books around. The group that had been in this library office before me was a little cluttered and hadn’t cleaned up well. As I started to leave and grab some paper towels to wipe up a spill, someone walked into the office with flowers.
“Briella?” The librarian smiled at me. “These are for you.”
I took the bouquet and thanked her. When I sat down, I pulled the tag out of the center of them.
‘I’m going to miss you when I go back to Florida. I’ll miss you every day. I couldn’t leave without giving you something to remember me by.’
I looked back at the bouquet. The flowers were all in lovely assortments of red and pink, and a few blues thrown in for contrast. He’d clearly gone to a florist who knew how to arrange a proper bouquet. I sighed and slumped against my seat.
All I could think of were the countless times that Dexter had smiled at me. He was kind, he asked me how my day was, and he genuinely wanted to know. He asked questions about my job, he respected my job, he respected my family, and he was good to my friend as well as me. He’d been cordial with my father.
In bed, he was amazing. He kissed me like I mattered.
I liked him. I liked him too much for what my father said to be true. And after the last relationship I’d had, where I felt oppressed for even walking out of my room too early in the morning and disrupting Jason’s sleep, I had a hard time understanding that Dexter could be every bit as dangerous, but in an indirect way.
I looked at the flowers on the table and held the note in my hand, reading over it one more time. He was going back to Florida. I could forget him now, probably, if I deleted his number and forgot about him. I could probably block him from my mind entirely, and I’d never think anything of it again.
I looked back up at the flowers and back down at the tag.
No.
My father was wrong. At least, he was wrong about Dexter. Maybe Dexter’s father was a horrible racist. But I knew Dexter, and I knew and believed that he was better than that. He was too good to be like his father.
Chapter Thirty-One
Dexter
Tyler didn’t show up to work until a week after I got back to Florida. It really added insult to injury that I’d had to go down there—even if I had gone there to see Briella and not to fix the account, I still had to clean up his mess, and then when he ditched work for a week, the burden fell on me twofold.
I had just thought about calling his personal number when he knocked at my door. The dark circles under his eyes and dazed smile on his face told me he’d been out partying, and he didn’t look at all regretful for it. Why should he? He could do whatever he wanted, and he’d never get fired or removed from the company.
“Hey, man. What’s up?”
“What’s up?” I raised an eyebrow. “What’s up is that I’ve been busting my ass trying to get your work done and my work done.”
Tyler shrugged. “Even when I’m here, you end up doing my work anyway. Someone has to make it right.”
“That’s a really shit attitude to have, Tyler,” I reminded him. “I know you think that this whole thing is impossible, but you don’t even try. I’m still reeling from cleaning up the mess in Houston.”
“Oh, yeah, the horrible, horrible time you had in Houston.” Tyler rolled his eyes. “I’m sure that entire experience was strictly work.” He laughed, clearly not understanding that I was legitimately frustrated with him.
My own tiredness got the better of me, and I sat forward in my chair. “You need to take things more seriously around here. I know you don’t think so, but this business is important, and you owe a lot to the fact that you’re lucky enough to be here.”
Tyler wrinkled his nose at me and turned to walk away. Before he did, though, he spoke. “All right. Thanks for the pep talk, Dad.”
I didn’t understand the misnomer until he left. I turned it over in my mind a few times before I made the connection of what he meant. He thinks I’m turning into Dad?
I was still turning it over in my head when I went to talk to my father about the account. We needed make sure that everything was finalized, and I wanted to talk to him after being gone for a while to make sure we were on the same page. His office was open, so I walked in after tapping the door.
“Good morning, Dexter. Did you see Tyler?” Dad asked. He looked particularly tired today, though I didn’t know why.
“Um, yeah. Yeah, I put him to work,” I lied. I’d given him a half-assed lecture of how important the company was. It was hardly putting him to work, but I didn’t want to be responsible for another lecture on Tyler’s behalf.
“Good, good. Did you have a question?”
“Not a question, I just wanted to let you know about the account in Houston. It got approved; everything should be running smoothly now,” I said.
Dad nodded. He tended to nod instead of smile.
I started to walk out, and something that had been eating at me made me turn around. “Hey, Dad. I was just wondering, do you remember a case from a Howard Green?”
“Green?” Dad pursed his mouth and shook his head. “No, I don’t.”
“You denied his account to open up a sports store,” I said. I’d done some light research when I got back to my office after dinner with Briella’s father had hit the fan. “You don’t remember?”
“I remember he was…” Dad trailed off as though he were so lost in thought that he couldn’t finish his sentence. I couldn’t help but be disgusted that he could remember that Howard was black, but not his business idea, or his account situation, or anything more importa
nt than the color of his skin.
“I was just wondering,” I muttered.
“I’m sure I had a good reason,” Dad continued. “I rarely deny accounts.”
That was true, at least. Dad rarely denied accounts. One of the reasons he’d grown so successful in this business was because he had a knack for spotting good investments and rarely turned one down now that the company was enormous. If they lost, we had nothing to lose, and if they won, we won, too.
But that reminder that my father didn’t usually deny investments didn’t sit well with me. I knew that it meant that he was remembering Green and probably patting himself on the back for being racist. I walked back to my office and sat behind my desk, staring at the mountains of paperwork.
I couldn’t turn into him. I knew that much. I didn’t know whether I could control how much I worked, and I might inevitably turn into him in the regard that I worked myself out of a well-fitting suit. But I had total control over whether I turned out to be a racist scumbag with no ability to feel empathy.
I’d started to think about calling Tyler into my office for an apology when my phone rang. I answered without looking.
“Hello?”
“Hey!” Briella’s voice on the phone made me grin. I made sure that the door was closed; it was nothing I was ashamed of, but I didn’t want anyone barging in while I was talking to her.
“Hey. How are you doing?”
“I’m so tired. I feel like I didn’t get any sleep last night. The neighbors were having some kind of barbecue, and no one went home until three in the morning.”
I frowned in empathy. “Aw. Try to get a nap during the day, if you can.”
“I have a couple billion clients,” she laughed. “But yeah, I’ll definitely try. What are you up to?”
Casual conversation didn’t bode well for me telling her that my father was proving himself more and more to be a racist with every passing day and my brother might be driving the company into the ground with his own inadequacy and attitude issues. So instead of talking about any of that, I said, “I’ve been fine. I think I might drown in paperwork.”
She laughed, and the longer we talked on the phone, the more I could feel myself slipping into a sense of indescribable calm.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Briella
After an exhausting week of back-to-back clients and endless barrages of work and appointments, I was more than happy to sleep in on Saturday morning. When I did wake up, it was to the sound of Nina talking to my father, and it made me smile that my friend had come over and made herself comfortable. She’d truly always been family.
I was out of clean leggings, so I put on a pair of shorts that I didn’t usually wear and a T-shirt, doing a quick check to make sure any and all recovering hickeys were still hidden. Even if my dad didn’t notice, Nina would, and she would make my life living hell about them. Especially in front of my father.
“Good morning, sleeping beauty!” Nina chimed. They had the breakfast table laden with pancakes, bacon, toast, eggs, and orange juice. My stomach growled helplessly at the sight and I sat down to give them both a small hug.
“Good morning. How’s it going?” I asked, and started to serve myself.
“Nina got a job,” Dad said.
“I got an interview,” Nina corrected. “But it went really well. Unless there’s some fluke, it should go great.”
“That’s awesome! What’s the job for?” I took a drink of orange juice.
“Secretary at a law firm,” she said. “I know, I know, but this one looks a lot better. It’s an all-black women’s law firm, and the people there are such badasses. The lady who interviewed me had probably a million degrees hanging up on her office wall.”
I grinned. “I never understand when they try and tell us that black people aren’t educated. Black women are the most well-educated group of people in the United States.”
“I believe that,” Dad said. “I’ve been outsmarted by pretty much every woman I’ve met since I was old enough to talk.”
I laughed. “When do you start work?”
“Like I said, I just had an interview. I don’t know if they want me working there or not. They said they’d let me know by the end of the week.”
I hoped that she could keep this job. “Did you tell them that you’re punctual?” I grinned, knowing that that was a little below the belt.
Nina set a hand over her heart and feigned a swoon. “I would never show up late!” She declared. “Besides, it’s people I actually wanna be around. Speaking of which, how is Dexter?”
I could see my father’s face drop and he swallowed hard. “He’s, um, he’s fine.”
“That he is,” Nina agreed. She didn’t seem to notice the change in my father’s demeanor. “Oh, you know what, do you want to come with me to go pick out a present for my stepdad? It’s always a pain to shop for him.”
“Sure,” I said, eager to change the subject. After I’d gotten dressed, we took off to a sports supply store—Nina’s stepdad was a workout junkie and pretty much anything she got him in a store like this would be a good gift.
“So what the hell was up with your dad this morning?” Nina asked, turning over a baseball glove in her hand to check the price.
I sighed. “Oh, you noticed. He, um, he kind of hates Dexter.”
“What the hell?” Nina set the glove down and picked up another.
“Yeah. So you know how Dexter’s dad has this huge investment firm? Well, it turns out that Dexter’s dad is like a blatantly horrible racist. He turned my dad’s sports shop investment down and left bullshit racist reasons why he denied his investment in the review,” I said. I hated to bring it back up; I hadn’t talked about it with Dexter yet because it still made me sick to my stomach.
Nina turned to me, eyes wide. “Woah, what? What did he say? Actually, that’s not important.”
I didn’t want to recount it, so I was grateful.
“Damn, I’m surprised at that. Dexter doesn’t seem racist. I mean, he sure as hell has been good to you.”
“That’s the thing. It’s his father, so I don’t know if I should be worried or what.”
“It’s definitely a surprise. Goddamn. Have you met his father yet?” Nina picked up a tennis racket, wrinkling her nose at it like she’d never seen a tennis racket before in her life.
“Jesus, no,” I said. I couldn’t imagine going in to meet his father. It would be a total nightmare, especially knowing what I knew about him. “I don’t think I want to meet him. It hasn’t come up, even.”
Nina grabbed a helmet off the shelf. “Carl’s always hitting his damn head when he goes to the batting cages with his friends,” she said. “This should help.”
We checked out and got back in the car, generally avoiding the topic of Dexter’s father’s shitty personality. I didn’t know what to make of it, and I knew Dexter personally. I couldn’t imagine how Nina could manage not to hate Dexter for all of this.
When we got back to my house, Nina set a hand on my knee. “Hey. Bri. You be careful with him, all right?”
I sighed. “Yeah, I will be. I think it’s just his father, and it should be fine, but I’ll be careful.”
“It’s just his father now,” Nina corrected. She shook her head and popped a piece of gum into her mouth. “Things are going good, and I’m glad for that. But you’re in a long-distance relationship. You can’t keep tabs on him.”
I didn’t like the insinuation that she was making, even if she was completely right.
“It’s worth remembering that some boys turn out like their father. A lot of boys do. They can’t help it, for the most part.” Nina shrugged and gave me a side hug. “I know you’re smart. I just worry.”
Walking back into my house, I thought about what she’d said. Sure, men tended to turn into their fathers. But racism wasn’t something that a person could just pick up on. Except… racism was inherently taught, and not bred. I knew that from interacting with children versus their
parents.
Not everyone became a carbon copy of their fathers. Dexter was smarter than his father, and he was different, too.
So why did my stomach still feel like a knot?
Chapter Thirty-Three
Dexter
“Things have been incredible. The distance makes things so much more difficult. I miss her every day.”
“Gross.” Tyler huffed as he pushed a weight off his chest. “Sorry I asked.”
I shrugged. He’d asked me how things were going with Briella over the last two weeks and if we’d still been keeping in touch. I told him the truth; for a musician and self-proclaimed artist, he didn’t seem to much appreciate the spectrum of human emotion, or human affection, for that matter. Maybe it was because it came from me, his brother.
“It’s been good,” I repeated. “I really wish she were closer. If she lived in Florida, maybe, or if I lived in Houston…” I trailed off, not sure whether either of those things were more likely than an alien invasion. Briella couldn’t leave Houston. It was where she was starting her business.
“I don’t think any of it is a good idea,” Tyler said.
I looked down at him. “What?”
“I don’t.” Tyler huffed again and lifted another set. “You’re just going to miss her more all the time if you keep this up. It’s not like you’re planning on leaving the company.”
“I could leave the company.”
“You absolutely could not.” Tyler laughed a little and nearly dropped the weight. “You would sooner die. The company is your baby, even if you didn’t have it. Dad’s never going to be okay with you dating someone who isn’t both white and incredibly wealthy, and that means you’ll have to choose between him and Briella.”
I couldn’t help but be a little insulted at the insinuation that I couldn’t make a decision that felt so obvious. I would choose Briella over my father, of course. I thought about losing my job, about the company going to shit, and about Tyler being at the helm of the investment firm in my stead. I wrinkled my nose and began to retrace my decision-making process.
