Chapter 7
Denise mechanically thanked and tipped the teenage boy who brought her suitcase to her room, shut the door behind her with a thud, and sank against it.
God, what was she doing? Why was she even still here? She couldn’t do this! That’s all there was to it. She needed to call her dad and tell him to get someone else to handle this conference like he should have all along, or reconcile himself to not having one at all, because she was out.
Her heartbeat thudded in her ears as her mind swirled with potential outcomes.
Had Maddox recognized her? On some level, it hadn’t seemed that way because they’d behaved like a professional.
Yet beneath that, there was a layer of something else with them.
They’d seemed to pick up on her discomfort and had played on it, prolonging the resort tour and highlighting the property instead of getting on with the conference details.
Was this some kind of twisted game meant to mess with her? Her mind raced to Fi, and her insistence that Denise hook up with the person she’d gotten to know when she’d been here. What had she been playing at?
Without giving it serious thought, Denise pulled her phone from her handbag and dialed Fi for a video call.
Fi’s face appeared on her screen. “Babe, hi! Good timing. Solange and Trace will be here any minute. You can say hi to them too. Meanwhile, how is Arkansas?”
“Why did you keep pushing me toward Maddox Daniels?” Denise snapped.
“What are you talking about?” Fi asked, eyes going wide.
“Was it your usual inability to mind your own business, or was there something more to it?”
“I-I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Fi said. “The Maddox thing was just something that happened last year. Like I said, I was at the resort for a conference. I met Maddox at the hotel bar. We had a few drinks, and then we went back to their room for a little fun. That was all.”
Denise stared at the phone screen, trying to work out if Fi was being truthful with her or not.
“I wasn’t telling you how to run your life or anything,” Fi pressed on, her voice getting loud enough to make the phone speaker vibrate in Denise’s hand.
“I just thought you might be interested in getting laid. And I was probably right that you need to, since you’re calling me up, biting my head off right now, and accusing me of…
I don’t even know what you’re accusing me of! What the hell, Denise?”
Fi’s agitated tone, combined with her use of Denise’s name instead of the usual “babe” or some other term of endearment, snapped her out of her spiral. She closed her eyes for a second.
Stay in the moment.
She forced herself to focus on Fi’s face instead of her stormy thoughts.
Fi’s brow furrowed in what most people would have read as irritation.
But Denise knew her well enough to recognize it as hurt.
Denise had upset her, and Fi didn’t even know why, because she didn’t know about Maddox or how Denise had met them before.
“I-I’m sorry, Fi. I thought…” How could she even explain what she thought?
Now that she’d calmed down, she could barely make sense of it herself.
What? Did she believe Fi knew the part Maddox had played in Denise’s life and was using it against her?
That didn’t make any sense. That level of paranoia was ridiculous.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Fi asked in a softer tone. “You look shaky.”
Denise drew in a deep breath. Fi’s steady kindness bolstered her.
“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on with you? You know you can talk to me about anything, babe.”
Confusion and shock from seeing Maddox threatened to overwhelm her and, for a wild second, Denise was tempted to spill the details of the situation and unload.
But that would mean pulling back the curtain on the things in her past that she’d barely thought about, let alone revealed to Fi in their several years of knowing each other.
And just the thought of doing that left her feeling cold and exposed.
Denise straightened to her full height and shook her head. “It’s nothing, Fi. I’m sorry. It’s been a long day, that’s all. Please forget it.”
Fi fixed her phone camera with a somber stare. “Denise, you always do this. It was the same thing when we were together.”
There was a knock at Fi’s apartment door that mercifully interrupted the tense and potentially too revealing moment between them. Fi sighed and moved away from her phone to answer it.
A moment later, Solange appeared on the screen, impeccably dressed as usual with her hair arranged in stylish braids around her head. “Hey, girl. We miss you! Well, I do especially. Fi and Trace don’t wanna hear about Owen.”
Fi groaned. “You broke up! And it was one of your better decisions. What’s there to talk about?”
The familiar exchange made Denise smile.
Solange was the entrepreneur of a cosmetic and skincare brand that catered to customers with ethnic skin tones.
She’d gone to business school at the same time as Denise and Fi to learn how to protect and expand her brand.
Despite being savvy and talented with her business, her dating life was a disaster most of the time.
Trace appeared next. He grinned and waved at the camera as he removed the light gray Stetson he always wore.
On some people, the hat might have been a little much, even by Oklahoma standards, but he carried it off well with his tan skin, blue jeans, and western-cut sport coat.
Trace had worked in corporate law for several years but had been focusing more on nonprofit work after he’d started transitioning five or six years ago.
He’d gone to business school to audit classes on nonprofit management.
The four of them had met while working on a group project together.
For one reason or another—maybe because three of them were queer—they’d each felt like outliers among their other classmates, and they’d bonded over it.
They’d stayed friends afterwards and now met up nearly every week at one of their homes.
Denise chatted for a few minutes before ending the call so the others could get on with their dinner.
She sat on the end of the bed afterwards and stared at the wall.
Talking with her friends had grounded her after the shock from earlier.
Since they’d all started hanging out, she’d felt comfortable and accepted in a way she’d never really had in the past. They were all important parts of each other’s lives.
But there were plenty of things she’d never shared with them, too. Not even with Fi.
On a whim, she picked up her phone and opened the social media profile she rarely used. She scrolled through old photos, further and further back until she got to the last one taken with her and Carl. It had been a month or two before the ten-year marriage had ended.
The difference between the woman looking back at her and who she was now was striking. She’d been paler and considerably thinner then, usually from nearly starving herself with fad diets in hopes of being attractive enough to deserve Carl.
Handsome and charming Carl, who’d seen her more than her needy mother or her preoccupied father ever had. When they’d met, she’d been swept away by his flattery and attention like a princess being saved by a hero in one of the books she’d loved reading as a girl.
It took her far too long to grow up enough to see that his charm was manipulation and his heroism was control.
She’d disappeared into him and his world right up to the moment she realized he’d been cheating on her from day one of their relationship, and that the marriage to him had only been a stepping stone to money and social importance.
Once she’d realized all this, she’d felt bereft.
Emptier and more alone than she had been even before meeting him.
She refocused on the picture.
Some might have thought she had been more conventionally attractive back then, but she knew the truth. She was far healthier now. Every pound, every curve on her body now represented survival, healing…and life.
Tears swam in her eyes, obscuring her view of the image.
She had all these things now. Plus friendship and respect.
She wasn’t about to let a face from the past change that.