Chapter 1 #2
“I enjoyed him walking away after I told him I owned a funeral home,” Trinity replied, and there it was, the truth sliding into the room like a draft under a closed door.
She had said it lightly, almost lazily, but Dominique heard the bruise beneath it because she had her own collection of those moments, all folded away behind lipstick, good posture, and perfectly timed humor.
Men liked the glamour first, the body next, the confidence after that, and the mystery until the mystery gained a license, a building, a staff, and a professional obligation to grieving families.
They flirted easily when they thought Trinity and Dominique were boutique owners, event planners, nonprofit executives, image consultants, or women who simply dressed like they had somewhere important to be.
But when the truth arrived, when the word funeral entered the conversation, something in a man’s expression often shifted, not always cruelly and not always dramatically, but enough.
Enough to make a woman notice. Enough to make the air change.
Dominique set her tea down and leaned one hip against the dining table, her humor settling into something more serious without disappearing completely.
“That man from Queens was not for you, and I told you that before you wasted your good perfume on him. He had soft hands, loud shoes, and the emotional range of a parking ticket. Besides, anybody who hears what we do and instantly turns into a nervous usher at somebody else’s service was never going to be able to handle you.
” She paused, then added, “But that does not mean every man is like that.”
Trinity gave a quiet laugh and rose from the staircase, moving through the foyer with the deliberate grace that made even a morning walk through her own house look like an entrance.
She stopped beside the orchids and touched one petal with the tip of her finger, admiring how fresh they still looked despite the heaviness of the occasion that had brought them there.
Funeral flowers did not disturb her; they never had.
To Trinity, flowers were the last language some families knew how to speak when grief made regular words collapse.
She understood their beauty, their purpose, their timing, and their sadness, and because she understood those things, she could never understand why so many people acted as if compassion became frightening just because it stood near a casket.
“Every man may not be like that,” she said, “but enough of them are. They want a woman who looks good in black until they find out black is not just fashion for her. They want poise until they realize poise came from years of standing beside families on the hardest day of their lives. They want maturity until maturity has paperwork, refrigeration contracts, staff schedules, and a chapel calendar.”
“See, that right there is why you need a man with depth,” Dominique said, pointing as if Trinity could see her.
“Not one of these men who think a deep conversation is asking your favorite vacation spot and then telling you he likes a woman who can cook. We need men who can sit with a grown woman’s life and not start sweating because her career has some weight to it.
We need men who understand that beauty is not always light and easy.
Sometimes beauty has responsibility attached to it. ”
Trinity stopped near the front window, watching an older couple walk slowly down the block under one umbrella.
The man held the umbrella badly, tilting it too far toward himself while the woman fussed and tugged him closer, and Trinity smiled despite herself because there was something tender in their small disagreement.
They were not glamorous. They were not dramatic.
They were simply together, moving through weather as a unit, and that ordinary intimacy touched a place in Trinity she did not always admit was still soft.
She had dated enough men to know attention was easy, attraction was common, and compliments were cheap when delivered by men who wanted access but not understanding.
What she wanted now, at forty-eight, was not a man impressed by her brownstone, her figure, her wardrobe, or her reputation.
She wanted a man steady enough to remain impressed after he understood the full truth of her days.
Dominique must have sensed the shift through the phone because her voice gentled, though only slightly, since tenderness between them usually wore heels and carried sarcasm in its purse.
“I’m not saying we go out here desperate, Trinity.
Please. We are not two women standing outside the supermarket squeezing avocados and hoping somebody’s uncle asks for our number.
I’m saying we stop acting like being successful means we have to be alone with dignity.
I am tired of coming home to a house that looks this good and nobody is here to tell me I look better than the furniture. ”
“That is because you keep buying furniture that competes with you,” Trinity said, and Dominique laughed because it was true.
The bronze velvet chaise in her front room had been an emotional purchase after a disappointing date with a surgeon who talked too much about golf and too little about anything worth remembering.
Dominique had named the chaise “therapy” and refused to apologize for the price.
Trinity had a similar weakness for lighting, coats, and shoes so sharp they could turn a sidewalk into a runway.
Between them, they had built homes that were part sanctuary, part stage, part evidence file in the case of women who had done everything right and still found themselves eating dinner alone too often.
“Laugh if you want,” Dominique said, “but I signed up.”
Trinity’s hand froze on the curtain.
“You did what?”
“I signed up.”
“For what?”
“Forever Forward.”
Trinity closed her eyes briefly, not because she was shocked, but because Dominique had a habit of announcing life choices after making them, then acting like the announcement itself counted as consultation.
“Forever Forward,” Trinity repeated, tasting the name with suspicion.
“That sounds like either a matchmaking app or a suspicious financial seminar at a hotel near LaGuardia.”
“It is an exclusive matchmaking platform for mature professionals who are serious about partnership, personal growth, and intentional dating.”
“You sound like the brochure.”
“I read the brochure.”
“I know.”
“And before you start, no, it is not one of those swipe-left, swipe-right foolishness factories where men hold fish in their profile pictures and say they’re entrepreneurs because they sold one pair of sneakers online in 2016.
This is different. They screen people. They verify careers.
They have compatibility interviews. They ask about lifestyle, values, future plans, emotional readiness, and whether you can communicate under stress. ”
Trinity opened her eyes and stared through the window again, but now she was no longer seeing the older couple or the damp sidewalk or the parked cars lining the street.
She was imagining herself sitting across from some unseen interviewer, being asked to explain what she wanted in a man, and the thought made her strangely uncomfortable.
Not because she did not know. She knew too well.
She wanted intelligence, confidence without arrogance, humor without cruelty, tenderness without weakness, faithfulness without performance, and the kind of mature desire that did not need to announce itself loudly because it could walk into a room and change the temperature.
She wanted a man who saw her as a woman, not a project, not a prize, not a frightening profession wrapped in designer fabric.
She wanted arms that felt like rest and conversation that felt like home, but she also wanted a man who could survive a call from her funeral home without looking at her afterward like she had brought the end of life into his living room.
“And you told them what you do?” Trinity asked.
Dominique took too long to answer.
Trinity turned from the window as if Dominique were standing directly in front of her instead of miles away in another borough, wearing that look she got whenever she had done something bold and was waiting to see whether applause or correction came first. “Dominique.”
“I told them I own and operate a family care business.”
Trinity stared at the phone.
Dominique rushed on before the silence could indict her. “Which is true. We care for families. We serve families. We guide families. We arrange services. We manage transitions. It is not inaccurate.”
“It is incomplete.”
“It is strategically incomplete.”
“It is funeral-home camouflage.”
“It is emotional pacing.”
“Dominique.”
“Trinity.”
They both went silent, and for a moment the years between them filled the line: mortuary school hallways, late-night studying, first jobs, first losses, first business loans, first time somebody underestimated them, first time somebody praised them, first time a family hugged them so hard after a service that both women cried in the car afterward.
They had learned early that people could handle the funeral profession in theory far better than in proximity.
A stranger could admire their compassion at a distance, but dating demanded closeness, and closeness required a man to step into homes where funeral flowers sometimes arrived before dinner, where black dresses were not mourning costumes but work attire, where a call at ten o’clock might mean a family needed guidance, and where the women did not flinch from words other people avoided.
Trinity did not want to hide any of that.
Dominique did not either, not truly. But both knew timing could change everything.