Chapter 1 #10
Trinity noticed them.
So did Dominique.
Neither commented immediately.
Eventually Dominique spoke.
"You know what scares me?"
The humor disappeared from her voice.
Trinity looked up.
"What?"
Dominique traced a finger along the edge of her glass.
"That this part is easy."
Trinity understood immediately.
The attraction.
The conversations.
The anticipation.
The dates.
The possibility.
All of that was easy.
The hard part remained waiting patiently in the future.
The truth.
The funeral homes.
The profession.
The flowers.
The calls.
The schedules.
The reality.
"I know," Trinity admitted quietly.
For a moment neither woman spoke.
The restaurant noise continued around them.
Silverware clinked.
Conversations blended together.
A server hurried past carrying plates.
Life continued.
Yet both women were thinking about the same thing.
Neither Cedric nor Jamal knew.
Not really.
Not completely.
They knew enough to begin.
Not enough to understand.
Dominique sighed.
"I keep imagining Jamal walking into my brownstone."
Trinity nodded.
"Me too."
"He notices the flowers."
"Mm-hmm."
"He notices the service schedules."
"Yes."
"He notices memorial programs on the dining table."
Trinity smiled sadly.
"And suddenly he's not relaxed anymore."
Dominique pointed.
"Exactly."
Neither woman feared rejection.
That wasn't it.
Both had survived rejection before.
What troubled them was something more complicated.
Cedric and Jamal were not hypothetical anymore.
The men had faces now.
Voices.
Habits.
Humor.
Presence.
They had become people.
That changed everything.
Because disappointment hurt more when affection had already arrived.
Dominique glanced down at her phone.
A new message.
Her smile appeared instantly.
Trinity noticed.
"Jamal?"
Dominique nodded.
"Read it."
"No."
"Read it."
Dominique laughed.
"He says he passed a flower shop and thought of me."
Trinity froze.
Dominique froze.
Then both women stared at each other.
The irony was almost cruel.
A flower shop.
Thought of her.
If only he knew.
The two women burst into laughter so hard that nearby diners looked over.
Dominique wiped her eyes.
"Oh, this is bad."
"It really is."
"He thinks flowers are romantic."
"They are romantic."
"You know what I mean."
They laughed again.
Because the truth was funny.
And painful.
And complicated.
Everything they feared sat inside that simple message.
Jamal thought flowers meant romance.
Dominique knew flowers also meant business.
Memory.
Loss.
Goodbyes.
Comfort.
Responsibility.
A whole world he hadn't seen yet.
A world he might not want.
Later that evening, after dinner ended and they stepped outside into the cool Brooklyn night, the conversation followed them onto the sidewalk. City lights reflected off windows. Cars rolled past. Somewhere in the distance, a siren briefly cut through the air before fading away.
The women stood beneath a streetlamp.
Beautiful.
Successful.
Confident.
Yet unusually vulnerable.
Dominique folded her arms.
"What if they don't understand?"
Trinity looked up the street before answering.
"They won't."
Dominique frowned.
"That's encouraging."
"I'm serious."
She turned toward her friend.
"They won't understand at first."
The distinction mattered.
Dominique listened.
"They don't understand now because they haven't seen it."
Trinity continued slowly.
"They haven't seen the families."
"They haven't seen the gratitude."
"They haven't seen what we actually do."
Dominique nodded reluctantly.
"But what if they only see death?"
The question lingered between them.
Trinity thought about it.
Then she answered honestly.
"Then we will have a problem."
A car horn sounded somewhere nearby.
Neither moved.
The city flowed around them.
"Because I already like him," Dominique admitted.
There it was.
The truth.
No jokes.
No sarcasm.
No deflection.
Just truth.
Trinity smiled softly.
"I know."
Dominique laughed weakly.
"That's the problem."
"I know."
"You?"
Trinity looked away toward the glow of Manhattan in the distance.
For several seconds she didn't answer.
Then she finally did.
"Yes."
Dominique's eyes widened.
"Cedric?"
Trinity nodded.
Not dramatically.
Not romantically.
Just honestly.
"Yes."
The admission surprised both of them with its weight.
Because now the stakes were real.
Not theoretical.
Not entertaining.
Not casual.
Real.
Two accomplished women.
Two promising men.
Four hearts moving steadily toward one awkward truth.
The city lights shimmered around them.
The evening air cooled.
And for the first time since joining Forever Forward, neither woman was worried about whether the men would call again.
They were worried about what would happen when the men learned everything.
Back in Harlem that same night, Cedric sat in his apartment reviewing blueprints he had stopped reading twenty minutes earlier because his thoughts kept drifting toward a woman in black who carried herself like certainty.
Across Queens, Jamal stared at a financial report on his laptop while smiling at a text conversation that had absolutely nothing to do with investments.
Neither man knew it.
Neither man could know it.
But both were already moving beyond attraction.
That was what made the situation dangerous.
Because attraction could recover from surprise.
Feelings were much harder to negotiate.
And somewhere in Brooklyn and the Bronx, two elegant brownstones waited quietly beneath the New York night, filled with flowers, memories, business schedules, black dresses, and truths that would eventually demand an introduction.
When that day arrived, nobody's heart would be entering the conversation as a stranger.