by Nella Tyler
Tyler’s house was in a much less well-to-do part of the neighborhood than mine. Despite his inherited money and the amount of money he made at his job, Tyler lived modestly, mostly because he tended to blow his money on parties and women he met over weekends abroad. I couldn’t help but envy him sometimes, living like nothing in the world had any consequence. For him, nothing did. For me, everything did. At the same time, I knew I wasn’t cut out to be irresponsible, so it was for the best that he was the one acting up while I took care of being an adult.
I knocked on his front door, using the ridiculous knocker he’d bought a few years ago. When father visited, he’d told him that Tyler ought to be living somewhere nicer, and in response, Tyler added a few luxury items that looked absolutely absurd on his home. One was this extremely well-crafted gold door knocker.
Tyler answered the door in sweatpants and a T-shirt. “Hey,” he said.
“Good morning,” I said.
“It is 10 o’clock in the goddamn morning.”
“Yes.”
“Go away.” Tyler tried to close the door, and I caught it.
“Tyler, come on. I get that being nocturnal is hard in a diurnal society, but I need to talk.” I expected him to close the door on me anyway, but he held it open with a sour expression on his face.
“Fine,” he said. “But I have to make coffee first.”
I stayed quiet while he made coffee, knowing better than to try and engage him before he’d sufficiently caffeinated for the day. I sat down at his kitchen table and watched him shuffle around the kitchen while the coffee brewed, and then he drank half the mug in one go before refilling it to sit down.
“All right. What’s the problem?” Tyler asked.
“I went on the date last night. Hey, why aren’t you at work?”
“I never show up. I’m a shit employee, remember? How’d the date go?”
I sighed. “It… It wasn’t great. Tiffany is kind of…she’s not my type.”
“Is she a bitch?”
“Don’t talk about women like that,” I retorted.
Tyler raised his eyebrows at me.
“Maybe a little,” I conceded. “But that’s not…she’s just not my type. I’m sure there’s plenty of people who she could get along with fine. But she treated the waiter terribly and all she wanted to talk about was fashion.”
“I told you so,” Tyler said.
“That’s not helpful.”
“Not to you. But I told you so. I very much told you so.” Tyler took a sip of coffee. “Did you make plans to see her again?”
“No. I mean, I don’t want to see her again.”
“Told you so.”
“Tyler!”
He shrugged. “Well, what about the prosperity of the company and that whole speech you gave me at the tailor’s?”
I groaned. “Tyler, really, you don’t have to rub it in.”
“I kind of do a little bit,” Tyler pointed out. “I do feel bad for you, though.”
“Well, that’s not the worst of it,” I admitted. “The worst of it is that right after she left, I saw a woman at the bar.”
Tyler raised his eyebrows as a sign for me to continue talking.
“She was… she was unbelievably beautiful. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had to go talk to her, so I did, and she was also really cute and charming and great.” I wanted to bury my face in my hands. I should have walked out of The Amelie at the first chance I got. Now, I was in a whole mess because of my inability to make decent decisions.
“Damn. Did you hook up with her?” Tyler asked.
“No!” I shook my head furiously. “No, we just talked for a little while and had a good conversation about Galveston. I walked her back to her hotel, but just the lobby. It was probably weird to walk her back at all.”
“Shit, dude. What did she look like? Tiffany’s pretty cute, too,” Tyler pointed out.
“She is, but… I don’t know. She’s like every other rich girl in Florida,” I said. “Which is fine. And there are people who like that. But Briella’s just different. She’s not as tall, but she’s got this amazing smile…” I debated for a moment whether or not it was racist to bring up that she was black, or whether it was racist for me to not know whether I could bring it up. It was neither here nor there to me; Tyler asked what she looked like, and that was a physical descriptor. I didn’t really want to know if Tyler was a horrible racist, though, so I kept that out.
“Ew, never mind.” Tyler rolled his eyes. “I forgot you’re a sap. Do you know what her deal is? She could be an equally good business opportunity or whatever her deal was that made Dad set you up with Tiffany.”
I shook my head. “Unlikely. She lives in Houston. She just came to Florida for vacation, apparently. I don’t think she’s in the upper one percent or whatever. Just kind of a tourist.” I didn’t like referring to her as ‘just a tourist.’
“So she’s only going to be here for, what, a few days?”
“I don’t know.” I hadn’t thought to ask her. “I asked her out to dinner, and she said no.”
Tyler winced. “Yikes. Well, you need to act fast if you’re going to get anywhere with her.”
I raised my eyebrow at him. “You’re suggesting that I should go for something with her in the first place.”
“Yeah. I mean, why not? Dad gave you the week off. You can have a really great week, have fun with this girl, and then at the end of it, you can go back to being boring and having a desk job and shit. You could probably still get married to Tiffany.”
I didn’t like the dodgy way that Tyler set up the situation. I didn’t want to see someone under the pretense that it wasn’t going to last or work. At the same time, that was exactly what I was looking for. Before last night, I had fully accepted the possibility that I would go through life without any excitement and just work until I died. Now, at least I could experience some fun before I entered a serious relationship. And Tiffany and I weren’t really in a relationship, anyway. I couldn’t cheat on someone I wasn’t dating.
“What do you think I should do?” I asked him. “Go and live this week up like it doesn’t matter?”
“That’s what I would do. You’re the good brother. Dad will have to forgive you. What’s the worst that can happen? A little sadness?” Tyler shrugged. “Dad’ll get pissed, sure, but he’ll forgive you pretty quickly. Especially once he remembers that either he forgives you or deals with me forever.”
I nodded. I’d made up my mind now. Even if it seemed like a terrible idea, I had to at least try my hand at seeing Briella. She’d already denied me once; maybe I’d go to her hotel, and she’d deny me again, and the whole problem would be gone. But I had to at least try, because if it never got resolved, I would never know if there was some chance that something could have happened. I couldn’t bear to be responsible for a missed opportunity like that.
I drove back up to her hotel, newly determined. Of course, I wouldn’t push her; if she didn’t want to see me, she didn’t want to see me, and no amount of coaxing on my part would change that. But I could certainly try to get her to give me a chance. If she was on vacation, maybe we were both looking for something short and inconsequential. Temporary fulfillment might be dangerous in the long haul, but my long haul included Tiffany fucking DuBois.
When I reached the lobby, I realized another problem. I didn’t know where Briella was staying exactly, and unless I was going to wait here until she came down, I had no way of finding out. I walked up to the front desk and decided to ask.
“Hey, do you know where a girl named Briella is staying?” I asked.
“Room 4430,” the woman behind the counter said, without even looking up from her phone. I went on my way to the fourth floor and knocked on room 4430.
When the door opened, it wasn’t Briella. Another woman, also very attractive, stood at the doorway. She was much shorter than Briella, and she looked like she’d been woken from a nap. “Hey. Hey, are you room service?” She rubbed
at one eye and set her free hand against the door frame, almost posing across the entrance.
“I—no, I’m Dexter.” The response was so stupid and underdeveloped in my head that I could only wish for my own death in that instant. “Um, I must have the wrong room.”
“Maybe.” The woman looked me up and down rather bluntly, and I felt almost the way that I felt in business meetings. Very much like a piece of meat and very much like I was about to get devoured. “But, you might also be at the right room.”
I didn’t understand what she meant, but imagined she was insinuating she was glad I was there after all. She was perfectly attractive, but I didn’t really like the idea of hooking up with strangers, and besides, I had someone that I was trying to find. She wasn’t the woman I was looking for. “No, I really think I have the wrong room. I should be going.”
I turned to go, and before I could get out into the hall, I heard a familiar voice.
“Wait, what are you doing here?”
I turned around and saw Briella standing in the room. She wore a pair of leggings and a T-shirt, and her wet hair up in a bun on top of her head. The smell of shampoo was strong in the air, and I realized she’d just come out of the shower.
“You know him?” The woman looked at Briella. This woman was her friend, then.
“We only talked for a little while,” I assured her friend. “Just a few minutes. I had asked you yesterday if you wanted to meet me for dinner.”
“Yes, and I told you no,” Briella said. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t call security.”
I understood that this looked extremely creepy and began to wonder if I had any reason to be here at all. Who did I think I was, entitled to time with a woman this beautiful? I had no right to invade her personal space and badger her for a date. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, this is… this isn’t like me. I don’t…” I shook my head. “You’re very lovely, and I just got excited.”
Her friend elbowed her harshly, and Briella shot her a glare.
“You just thought you’d hunt down my hotel room?” Briella asked me.
“I… yes.” I had no excuse. “Sort of. I didn’t get your number, and I wanted to ask you one more time.” I felt strangely vulnerable standing here. And I was quite taken with how down-to-earth Briella was. Instead of getting swept up in the moment, she was hesitant to trust a stranger at her door.
Was it odd to admire that when it was myself who was the stranger at her door?
“I believe you,” Briella said finally. “Or, I don’t think you’re a creep. You’re kind of a dork. That’s what I gathered from yesterday, anyway.”
I couldn’t help the blush that rose to my cheeks, and I cleared my throat. Once upon a time, I’d been suave, confident, maybe even sexy. Now I felt like a fish, floundering and hoping to get thrown back into the sea. “Thank you.”
This brought a smile to her face. “Don’t you have a job? It’s a weekday.”
“I have the week off,” I told her. “Perks.”
“I see.” Briella leaned against the doorframe. I tried not to be distracted by the curves of her body and the tilt of her head. “I’ll give you a second chance, Dexter. Showing up at my hotel room was definitely a strike, even if you are cute.”
She thought I was cute. I nodded. “I understand. Does that mean you’ll come to dinner?”
Her friend, still standing at the door, grinned. “She’ll be ready at 6.”
Briella rolled her eyes. “Nina!”
Nina grabbed a pen from behind her ear and my arm, scrawling some numbers on it. “This is our room number. Call instead of showing up next time. She’ll see you at 6.”
The door closed, and I grinned ear to ear, resisting the urge to jump up and down out of sheer excitement that my risk-taking had paid off and not horrendously backfired. I had a number, although maybe not her cell. And something told me that this date was going to be much better than the one I’d been on the night before.
Chapter Eight
Briella
When Nina closed the door, I thought that I might kill her. I’d had the entire thing under control. This guy had shown up at my hotel room, as though that were acceptable, and then Nina had signed me up on a date with him instead of calling security, telling him no, or doing anything else that a good friend might do in that situation.
She threw her hands up when she saw that I was glaring at her. “Hey! Don’t get mad at me. I just got you a date.”
“I didn’t want a date!” I exploded. “I talked to this guy for like 20 minutes last night, and he comes up to my hotel room, and you set me up on a date?” I didn’t understand how she didn’t have the urge to call the police.
“Oh, please. He’s less than harmless. You saw him flustering like a middle- schooler. He probably just didn’t think about how awkward it would be. It’s not like you gave him your number when you talked to him and then didn’t tell me about it.” Nina frowned.
I rolled my eyes. “You really want to know what happened, don’t you?”
“Duh! I’m supposed to know! I’m your friend! How else am I going to do my job?” Nina shook my shoulders lightly and then broke away to laugh and sit down on the bed. “You hung out with an unbelievably hot guy, and you didn’t tell me. That’s honestly tantamount to ruining our friendship.”
I rolled my eyes again. “Right.” I started to go back to the bathroom to comb my hair, and she stopped me.
“No! You have to tell me,” Nina pleaded.
“Fine!” I turned around. “We talked for a little while. I went to the bar at this restaurant down the street and saw him in the VIP section, and you know, I was just looking, it wasn’t weird or anything. And then he came over and talked to me. We just talked about Galveston and Florida and vacationing and stuff. Nothing major.”
“VIP? Is he rich?” Nina’s eyes were like saucers. “Oh my God, you are so going on a date with him.”
“I could kill you,” I said. “I think he might be rich, but I could still kill you.”
“So, let me make sure I have all my facts straight,” Nina said. She held up a finger. “He’s rich.” A second. “He’s unbelievably hot.” A third. “And he’s absolutely adorable.”
I reached over and lifted a fourth finger on her hand. “And he’s a stalker.”
“Oh my God.” Nina rolled her eyes. “I’m not asking you to marry him, Bri. All I’m saying is that it can’t hurt to go on a date. It really can’t. Don’t you deserve to have a little fun? Why shouldn’t you flirt with him? If he wants to take you someplace nice, let him! We can go back to Houston in a week, no harm done, and you get free fun out of it.”
It was hard to argue with that. In fact, when I looked at this from the perspective of just looking for a little fun on vacation, I couldn’t see an issue with it. Maybe it was dangerous, but I’d be lying if I said that didn’t add to the appeal. I could go out if I wanted, for the first time in ages, with a really attractive man who liked me. I could have a little harmless fun and go home, no problem, without any consequences.
“You have to help me figure out what to wear,” I told Nina.
A few hours later, we ended up going shopping for a few things. I’d packed for vacation with a friend, not a date with a potential rich guy. When we got back, the room was strewn with shopping bags, and I tried on every possible combination of the two outfits we’d picked out.
“Do you think this is too much?” I stepped out of the bathroom my outfit of choice. It was a skirt, not too short but certainly not office appropriate; simple and black, and it hugged my curves. I chose a blouse with a slightly low V in the front and thick straps instead of sleeves. It looked just a bit too risqué for a business outfit, but not risqué enough to justify being called slutty.
“Damn! I forget you actually have a body sometimes when you wear all those T-shirts,” Nina said. She walked over to me and pulled my skirt down just a little, like used to do in high school before I went on dates. I’d seen her mom do i
t to her millions of times, usually saying afterward that she needed to go change.
“What the hell do I do with my hair?” I asked.
“You have no place to complain about your natural hair,” Nina scolded. I knew she was right. My hair cooperated; if Nina wanted to wear her hair naturally, it required a ton of work and coconut oil and gel and effort to keep it looking healthy and shiny. I insisted that it looked fantastic, and Nina always grumbled about what a pain it was.
I decided to put it in an updo that I’d learned on the internet not long ago. It made the ensemble just a bit classier. Paired with some heels I’d brought in case Nina and I were going to go clubbing, it honestly didn’t look too bad for something I’d thrown together at the last minute. I put on a little makeup, but didn’t feel the need to wear too much. He’d already seen me without it, after all, so it wasn’t like I needed to maintain the illusion that I always had flawless skin and fantastic eyeliner.
I put a pair of earrings in to finish everything off. “What are you going to do while I’m out?” I asked Nina.
“I’m going to find me a millionaire, too,” Nina called from the bathroom. “Or at least get drunk enough to think I’ve found a millionaire. Don’t worry about me, Bri. We’re both gonna live it up.”
I hoped she was right. It was finally 6 o’clock, and despite myself, I felt nervous. I hadn’t been on a proper date in ages. Jason hadn’t taken me out in at least a year before we broke up, except the time that my dad took him with us to dinner a few months back. I pushed the thought of Jason out of my head.
The phone hadn’t gone off all day in our room. I worried that maybe Dexter had forgotten about me, or that I’d scared him off. Honestly, over the course of the day, I’d let myself get excited about this potential little vacation fling.
Before I could get too nervous, I heard a knock at the door, and when no one shouted ‘room service,’ I knew it had to be Dexter. I opened the door and nearly lost all my resolve.