Chapter 12
Brittany
It had been a few days since my father had come by to tell me about Reginald Briggs, soon to be doctor, and I was dreading every day that brought me closer to meeting him when he flew in from Who-Cares-ville.
Reginald had called me the day after my father had left his number. He’d recited a laundry list of his accomplishments and told me he had looked me up online and considered me what he described as, “a highly sought-after partner.”
It had left a disgusting taste in my mouth, but that was easily remedied when I decided to study out in the courtyard behind the apartment. I soon forgot all about Reginald Briggs, the almost doctor, while watching Dalton lift weights through the window in the apartment gym facilities that looked out into the courtyard.
It seemed five other women from upstairs had coordinated their schedules to work out at the same time as Dalton. I watched them all greedily eat up the visual of him seated in front of the free-weights, his elbow set against his knee while he slowly lowered a barbell down in between his thighs and then back up. Sweat from his arm inched its way down the veins of his thick forearms, finding their way onto the metallic surface of the weights.
I tried to turn my focus back to my studies, but Dalton did not make it easy for me. When he was done doing curls, he sauntered over to the water fountain and splashed himself on the face and back of his neck, soaking the neckline of his t-shirt even further. He threw some water on his forehead, getting the brown hair that fell over his ears wet. He shook his hair dry like a dog, then wiped himself down with one of the white gym towels.
He grabbed a water bottle from one of the cubbies in the gym, and made his way out into the courtyard to cross back through toward his apartment. I could tell four of the five women working out alongside him had only been in the gym to watch his routine because they started packing up to leave the second he stepped outside. I casually looked back to the textbook on my lap and turned the page even though I had yet to read anything off of the previous one. I glanced back up as Dalton passed, pretending to notice him for the first time, and he nodded politely at me as he continued walking. The sweat at the bottom of his shirt caused the fabric to cling to his lower back and drew my eye as he passed, but I had to suddenly avert my eyes and pretend that I hadn’t been staring when Dalton hesitated at the door to go inside the apartment complex and turned back around to me.
“You’re not one of my fangirls, are you?” he chuckled, gesturing with a nod of his head back through the window at the four girls hurriedly evacuating the now Dalton-less environment. He sidled back up to where I sat, slipping a hand into his pocket and taking on a suave pose. He was trying to look confident, but I laughed.
“No,” I said, and I could see that Dalton enjoyed my answer. “How much did you have to pay those ladies to work out with you and make you look so sought-after?”
“A thousand each. They said they wanted hazard pay.” He chuckled to himself. Even though we were poking fun at his expense, he seemed to not have a care in the world. “I saw you come out here while I was on the treadmill. Studying for a test?”
“One could call it that, or one could call it syphoning out one’s brain through the ear canal until one’s skull holds nothing but ash and soot.”
“Sounds quite pleasant,” he said with a laugh, “but please refrain from draining your brain in the courtyard or I’ll be forced to clean you up when you get messy.”
“Don’t bother, just let the rain wash me down some drain.” I sighed, closing my book and rubbing my eyes.
I hadn’t been sleeping very well the past few days, and it wasn’t only because I kept myself up late at night massaging my hands over my body and imaging Dalton had his own hands over me. His hands were so close yet so far away on the other side of the wall in between our two rooms every night. I was also losing sleep because I honestly hated everything about getting my MBA and everything involved with the track my father had planned for me. My entire apartment was suffocating because I was constantly reminded that I was stuck there because of my father, and it made it so I couldn’t sleep. I was too uncomfortable in my own skin, because I was living someone else’s life.
I looked up at Dalton and said, “I can’t wait until I’m just done with it and I can start the next step, tick off the next box in the checklist.”
“You really don’t like where you’re going, do you?”
“No, I really don’t. The only thing I could ever invest this much effort into and actually enjoy no matter how much it beat me into the ground is painting. I could forgo sleep, food, and sex for weeks working on a painting. I would live in a cardboard box to afford art school if I had to, instead of going to school for this work that I dread but my father loves…but it doesn’t matter because it’ll never happen.”
“Who told you that? It just plain isn’t true.” Dalton came over and took my textbook out of my lap.
It took hearing it from somebody else to actually take a step back and pose the question to myself. Who had told me that? Nobody had, not even my father. It was just a voice I had ingrained into myself.
Dalton opened my textbook and continued his thought, “I mean, look at this, you understand all of this? I almost feel like I’m reading another language here, but you understand all of this because you work your ass off and get yourself wherever you want to go.” He handed me back my textbook. “You, Brittany Wellington, have just convinced yourself you’re not allowed to steer.”
“Said the man working for his father when he probably has enough money of his own to do whatever he wants and give his father the finger,” I shot right back at him. Even though what he said had calmed me down, I didn’t want him to see how attracted to him and how much I wanted to embrace him, so I decided to point out the contradiction between his wise words and his life choices.
“Touché.” He feigned clutching his stomach as if I’d gutted him with a spear, which made me giggle. He chuckled along with me. “Actually, I work for my father because I have to.”
“You don’t have to do anything, Dalton Jones, that you don’t want to. You have a choice in everything you do in life.” I affected my voice to sound like his, smiling as I teased him.
“I mean, I really don’t have that much,” he said. “A lot of it is tied up with my father’s money. It’s a long story, but something that happened to me in the past…well, something I did makes it so he has all of my money until I’m either granted access by him, I get married, or I become a partner in my father’s business. Two of those won’t happen, so the only actual way is for me to get married to someone my father approves of and only if I court her exactly as he prescribes. There’s also a lot I’m not allowed to do. You could say I’m in debt to my father until I prove myself. But I don’t care about getting access to the money, I just don’t want him to kick me out. This is the only place I can afford to live.” He shook his head and pinched the top of his nose between his eyebrows, squeezing his eyes shut as he took a deep breath.
I wanted to stand up and squeeze him. I had no idea he had this much financial stress on himself. I refrained from giving him any physical comfort, knowing that I could spook him in his current vulnerable state. He had shared something heavy with me, and I knew that he had kept this secret guarded where he didn’t want anyone to see. Yet, the details he’d omitted made me wonder how dark the rest of his secrets were, and he seemed like a wild animal his father kept caged in this building. It was almost as if he were a young rebel fresh from dropping out of college, breaking into homes just to sleep on a couch for the night, and he was only staying in the building until he could hitchhike and catch the next van leaving for anywhere-but-here, working on the road to feed himself as he went.
“You’re still choosing to live here,” I said gently. “You don’t have to follow the path your father has laid out for you; you’ve just convinced yourself that it’s the only way possible.”
“Said the girl following the path her father laid out for her and is convinced it’s the only path possible,” he quipped back. “You’re right though, we both need to stop listening to our fathers.” Suddenly, Dalton seemed to be standing up straighter, the tension in his brow and shoulders gone, and a confident smile had settled beneath his nose. “I want to take you out to dinner tomorrow night, at eight o’clock. I can’t take you anywhere nice, like I was just explaining I’m not as gold plated as I may seem, but I can take you somewhere decent with a top notch atmosphere. Would you want to go eat somewhere like that with me?”
I could hear my father in my head, saying, “Don’t dash your future for this derelict.” I could also hear Talia’s voice, whispering, “Why not?”
“As professional apartment manager and his tenant, you mean?” I asked.
“No, this is a date.” He gave off such a calm and commanding air, completely sure of his words.
My decision had already been made. Probably before he’d even asked. “Then yes, that does sound like something I’d enjoy very much.”