by Nella Tyler
“She didn’t insult you?” he asked. “She didn’t do anything to you?”
“No, not… technically.” I frowned.
“The conversation was just bland?”
“Bland is… political sciences courses are bland.” I regretted telling him the truth at that moment, and I could feel a lecture coming on.
Sure enough, he settled back in his chair in a way that signaled he wasn’t going to get up for some time. He set his hand on his knee and set his jaw. “Dexter, in all honesty, I can’t say that I’m surprised. In fact, I understand.”
Understanding was not in my father’s vernacular. I was immediately suspicious.
“These marriages, these setups, if you will, they’re rarely easy. We don’t go into them expecting some sort of fluid, fairytale romance, or even a decent relationship. Have you heard of arranged marriages in Eastern cultures?”
I shook my head.
“Commonly, they find that in arranged marriages, the people put in them don’t like one another at first. They’re opposed to the idea of the marriage and to one another. They’ll spend a good amount of time in opposition. Then, after a time, they begin to develop affection.” My father had never looked so foreign as he did saying the word ‘affection.’ “And so, love follows. Marriage comes first, and the consequence of it is a rather substantial bond.”
I disagreed. I knew that that arose out of necessity—people in those situations came to feel love for one another because it was the easiest thing to do without going completely insane. In a place where people couldn’t escape the other, they would turn to affection. It was almost like Stockholm Syndrome.
“So it is with these marriages, too,” he went on. “For example, your mother and I.”
I hadn’t heard him mention my mother in a very, very long time, and I dreaded the implication of bringing her up now.
“She and I hardly got along when we were introduced. She was the daughter of an oil salesman who had gotten rich quickly when he found oil in his backyard, essentially. She’d come from Texas, a small town, an affluent family but little to no name recognition.” He sounded every bit as detached speaking of her as he did speaking of accounts. It made my skin crawl. “We had little in common when we met. Still, we went through with the marriage. It wasn’t always easy, but over time, we managed to come to terms with the situation.”
I couldn’t stand to hear this. It made me want to shove up from the table and leave the room. My mother didn’t deserve to be spoken about like a technicality. She deserved to be spoken of with love, as an equal partner, not as an asset to a corporation.
“Do you follow what I’m saying, Dexter?”
The condescension in his tone grated in my ears. Still, I didn’t argue with him. It would be a lost argument from the start, especially as angry as I was. “Of course,” I managed to tell him. “I, um, I simply can’t imagine that Tiffany and I will settle our differences.” The attempt to stick up for myself was weak at best.
It was so weak, in fact, that he completely ignored it. “You’ll see in time. That’s all I needed you for.”
I stood up and started to make my way out. I wanted to go home and take a nap since it was still too early to have a drink.
“Oh, Dexter,” my father called.
I turned around. “Yes?”
“The account you approved last week, the one before you’d closed the other account, do you remember?”
“Um, yeah,” I tried to recall. I’d approved several accounts the last week. “Why?”
“I had to deny it,” he said. “It looked suspicious and unreliable.”
I thought about the account I’d approved immediately before closing the account that had gotten me praise, and remembered. It had been a middle-aged black man asking for an investment on something, either a building or a car or something to that effect. I remember how quick and trivial the process had been; we approved dozens of investments of his sort. “I don’t recall it being particularly suspicious,” I said.
“Well, you didn’t pay much attention, it seems,” he said.
I raised my eyebrow. My father had approved an investment to many men who had less favorable deals than that man had. I considered, briefly, that perhaps this was an issue of race. Florida had issues with systemic racism, ones that reflected in the types of people who applied for investment loans. Most of our business came from wealthy white people.
Had my father made a blatantly racist business choice? “I did pay attention,” I returned. “And there was nothing shady about it. What did you find?”
He sat up in his chair, appearing a bit stiff, like he hadn’t expected me to retort. “I merely suggest that you look more carefully into the situations our clients are in before approving their investments. It’s something you should be doing for every client. I have an appointment coming in; you’ll need to be on your way.”
I was more than eager to get on my way. The conversation about my mother was enough to boil my blood; this unabashed racism made me want to punch a wall. I couldn’t believe that my father would be so abruptly horrible to someone. Terminating an account could do serious damage to a person’s business, and to do it with no basis whatsoever was a stupid business choice. My father was a businessman.
In the car, I finally realized my conflict and groaned. I looked up to my father. I did everything for the company, sure, and for its prosperity, but wasn’t that ultimately for my father’s benefit? I didn’t know how to cope with these flaws in his character. I’d always assumed he did what he thought was best.
When I got back home, I wanted to take a nap. I remembered that I’d scheduled a date for later that evening, and decided it would be better to prepare for that. I needed desperately to get the conversation with my father out of my head, whether that meant drinking or cooking or cleaning.
Briella would help, I was sure of that. She made everything else go away. I’d developed a sort of dependency on her company in a very short period of knowing her. She’d made me hope for a bond with someone that came from love, not that might grow love after already pledging alliance to one another.
Yes. This night with Briella would ease my conscious. I got my tablet out of my room and started looking for recipes to make dinner.
Chapter Twelve
Briella
“You’ve got a date! You’ve got a date! Girl, get the hell up!”
Despite the full-grown woman who had jumped onto my bed and cheered in my ear, I only groaned. “Yeah, yeah, in a few minutes,” I groaned.
“Come on, come on. You’ve gotta get up. We have a lot to do today,” Nina explained.
I sat up and ran a hand through my hair, cringing when I realized how dirty it was. I needed a shower, and a bit more sleep, but I could tell that Nina wasn’t going to relent. “I don’t follow,” I said. I had clothes, I had toiletries, and I couldn’t think of anything we needed to do. Maybe it was because I was so tired that all I could imagine was sleep.
“You need a new dress,” Nina argued.
“I don’t think I do,” I mumbled. I pushed myself out of bed and started getting together an outfit to wear during the day. I needed to do laundry, but I still had some underwear and leggings left. “I think I’m fine. I have the skirt we bought last time we went out.”
“Yeah, but you need something that shows off your curves. Give him a little waistline, a little cleavage—”
I grabbed a pillow off Nina’s bed and tossed it at her. “You’re impossible.” There was a mall nearby, though, and we didn’t have any other plans during the day. I liked shopping well enough. “But we can still go. Let me shower first.”
After a long shower and a few moments getting ready for the day, Nina and I went off to the mall. We didn’t need to take a cab; it was a pretty short walk to get to there, and if we walked, we had to limit what we bought to what we could carry back.
After getting distracted by some amazing gag gift stores where Nina nearly purchased a box of macaro
ni and cheese where the noodles were cut out to look like penises, we found some dresses in a department store. Nina treated it like she was my mother and I was about to go to prom. Or, perhaps a stage mom directing her daughter in a beauty pageant was a bit more accurate.
“This is one is nice. This one has a low back. Are you okay with low backs?”
I rolled my eyes and found a simple black dress with a low cut and defined waist. I held it up, and Nina sighed. “I mean… look, if you’re going to go for a black dress, make it more exciting. I get that simple goes a long way, but that’s more… business formal?”
I had no idea what business formal even meant, but I put the dress back. In the changing room, burdened with about 20 million different articles of clothing, Nina started badgering me more specifically about Dexter.
“You know, I’m kind of surprised about you with Dexter,” Nina remarked.
I laughed and stepped out of a dress that didn’t quite fit me. “Um, excuse me? You’ve been up my ass about sleeping with him for the last 24 hours.”
“Yeah, no, I still am, but I mean, I’m surprised you’re into him.”
“You told him, to his face, that you thought he was hot.” I picked up another dress, this one obviously not my color, but I was willing to buy a little time in the dressing room before stepping out and back into the whirlwind of dresses and getting shoved into racks by an overenthusiastic Nina.
“I do.” Nina set her back against the changing room door, and I made sure the lock held fast. “But you know, he’s just…”
“White?”
“Yeah. You’ve never been into white guys.”
I considered this for a moment and looked at the dress I’d found in the mirror. It didn’t look too bad, but I was eager to try on the black dress I’d snuck back into my pile earlier. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’m into them or not into them.”
“Don’t give me that ‘I don’t see color’ bullshit.”
I laughed. It was the most annoying and insufferable thing for someone to say, and it always came from white people; ‘I don’t see color; I just see people.’ Of course people saw color! It was whether or not they were going to make assumptions based on that that mattered. “Of course not. I just don’t think it matters. He’s funny and smart and nice…” I paused to pull the dress up over my head. “And none of that has anything to do with the color of his skin.”
“I guess,” Nina said.
“I mean, wouldn’t it be awful if he didn’t like me because I was black?”
“Duh.”
“I guess I see it as the same thing. It’s dumb to disqualify someone based on their skin. We’re adults, you know?” I pulled on the black dress I’d been trying. I never really indulged in nice purchases when it came to clothing—I had a few nice outfits that I could mix and match for work and never needed anything for events. My ex had never taken me anywhere nice, after all.
“He is a good guy,” Nina admitted.
“He is.” I set my hands on my hips and glanced at my reflection in the mirror. I remembered that Nina had complained about the dress, but looking at it now, I adored it. It hugged my curves just enough to bring attention to them. The cut was low enough to show a bit of cleavage, but not so low that I wouldn’t be able to lean over. And, a feature I hadn’t noticed, the back was cut low as well.
“Nina, what about this one?” I stepped out of the dressing room and gave my friend a grin.
She shook her head. “Goddamn it, Briella.”
“Was I right, or was I right?” I gave her a little shimmy, and she giggled.
“Let’s get it and get out of here,” she agreed.
Getting ready for the date, I decided to wear a pair of heels with the dress. It was a bit more overtly sexual than the ensemble I’d worn to our first date night, but that was the point, wasn’t it? I let my hair down, too, in loose curls to the middle of my back. I loved the way that it accentuated the slight arch my back.
I kept makeup simple, mostly because I hadn’t brought much with me when I came to Florida. I’d hardly been expecting to go on multiple dates with a billionaire and need to look the part of someone worthy of getting into such a situation. I mostly defined the features of my face and added a lip stain that I knew wouldn’t come off no matter what.
When I came out of the bathroom, Nina was all over me. “Don’t act like you’re not trying to get laid looking like that!”
“I’m not!” I wasn’t so sure. Maybe a part of me genuinely did want that much adventure. Still, there were plenty of risks… but I took birth control, and I knew that I’d make him use a condom if we did have sex. This was ridiculous. I shook my head and said, “But thank you.”
“Bri, you have got to tell me everything when you get back.”
“I know.”
“If you don’t come back tonight, I’m gonna assume—”
“Oh my God.” I darted out the door before she could further emphasize that she thought I looked ready for sex.
I took a cab to the address that Dexter sent me. I didn’t know for sure where he lived. I knew he had a lot of money, but the cab started to take me into a nice part of town. All the houses started getting bigger, the lawns more ostentatious, with fences and enormous gardens out front. I started to get nervous, and then the cab stopped.
I got out of the cab before I could back out, and took a moment to take the house in. I’d never seen anything like it. It wasn’t as big as some of the others, but it was unbelievably beautiful, with a sprawling green lawn and tall gates surrounding it.
I was in over my head here. I could still call the cab back, probably, and go home to forget that any of this had ever happened.
The front door opened and Dexter stepped out onto the front porch. He leaned against the railing and waved at me.
Damn it. He looked more alluring than ever leaned against the railing with a smile on his face. I took a deep breath and started walking.
Chapter Thirteen
When I walked outside and saw Briella standing on the front lawn, it nearly made me lose my resolve. She wore a black dress, and her hair was down, and she looked, in short, like a goddess, and I didn’t know how I was going to manage to focus on anything while she was over. She walked up to the front porch, and I led her inside.
“Your house is beautiful,” she said.
I smiled. I’d never cared about the size or quality of my house until now, when it was under evaluation by the most beautiful girl in the world. We walked into the kitchen, where I had dinner on the stove—I’d been trying my hand at a stir fry and was waiting until she arrived to throw the ingredients together, so it stayed fresh.
“I hope you’re all right with stir fry. I should have asked,” I realized out loud.
“It smells amazing. I didn’t know you could cook.” Briella closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
I threw the chicken, peppers, and some spices into the mix and started to toss them in the pan. “Well, I did say I would cook you dinner.”
“I guess I sort of expected you to fake it,” Briella admitted. She grinned at me, and I laughed. It wasn’t entirely far-fetched.
“No, I do actually cook. My brother, on the other hand, he lies. He’s actually had me make dinner to give his dates and say he made.” I shook my head and remembered how quickly that whole situation had unraveled.
“Did she buy it?”
“Not for a second. Tyler can’t even make coffee without a Keurig. I love him, but cooking requires a small amount of detail.”
“Really? I just toss things together,” Briella said. “Baking is where measurements are important.”
I stared at her with a small smile forming on my face. “What? You don’t measure when you cook?”
“Well, I do with some stuff. Powerful spices, baking soda, that sort of thing. But I don’t need to measure out one and a half cups of water to boil.” She laughed and leaned against the kitchen counter.
When I was satisfied t
hat the food had mixed and warmed sufficiently, I poured it into two separate bowls. I carried them to the kitchen table; there was a dining room here, of course, but it was an enormous table. It would make for an awkward and far away dinner. I’d put a tablecloth on this table and some placemats and set the table with some of the nicer silverware and a few glasses that I didn’t like to use often for fear of dirtying.
“This is delicious,” Briella declared within moments of sitting down to eat.
I looked up and smiled. “Thank you. It’s a new recipe.”
“Where do you get your recipes?”
“The internet.” I would die before I admitted to her that I went on Pinterest for recipes. In my defense, it was the only place where I could see reviews, people’s attempts at making it, and get a really good idea of what I was getting myself into before I cooked.
“I see.” Briella winked at me, and I knew that on some level she knew. “And how exactly did you learn how to cook?”
“Taught myself,” I said.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t believe you.”
I shrugged. “I had some help from the woman who used to come over and cook for my father, back when I lived with him.”
Briella shook her head. “I can’t imagine. Honestly, I don’t know how I would have learned if my dad hadn’t taught me to cook.”
“You’re smart,” I reasoned. “You’d have figured it out.”
Briella leaned her head on her hand and raised an eyebrow. “I’m a wedding planner.”
“Yes,” I said. “You are.”
“You think I’m smart?”
When she tilted her head, all I could think of was the way she’d looked at the bar when I first saw her. The urge I’d had, at that moment, to know her. I had that same feeling again, but now that we were closer, my mind wandered beyond the table, and I cleared my throat. “Of course. You know more than I do about most things, I think.”
She twisted her mouth to one side slightly, smiling at me coyly. “There’s not a whole lot I could know that you don’t.”