Chapter Twenty

I can hearZenny’s breath trembling over the phone. “This is for me?”
“It’s for you,” I confirm. I pin my phone between my shoulder and my ear and glance around the dull-ass country club. Valdman is supposed to meet me here, and I’ve encountered several Valdman-like men, pouchy and white and entitled, but no actual Valdman. Just lots of polo shirts and huffing laughter.
“Sean, I…this is beautiful. Thank you.”
I scrub at my perfect hair in frustration. I was supposed to be there right now, I was supposed to be there with Zenny surprising her with the gorgeous gown I bought for her, helping her change into it, dropping teasing hints about when I’d peel the dress back off her body. I’d made big fucking plans about every detail of tonight—Zenny hadn’t even known I was taking her to this fundraiser, it was going to be a little surprise—and now it’s been ruined because I have to see Valdman about Northcutt before he does any more damage.
“Nothing’s too beautiful for you,” I tell her seriously. “I’m so upset that I can’t see you right now.”
She laughs. “You’ll see me soon enough. What time is this party again?”
I look at my watch and stifle an impatient groan. “Ninety minutes. Look, I have to meet with my boss, but I’ll—”
“I completely understand,” she says, although she doesn’t exactly. I haven’t spoken to her about Northcutt yet because I want to have everything fixed before I ask her what happened and what inevitable shitty thing he did or said during the meeting. I want to be able to pull her into my arms and croon that Sean’s taken care of everything, that everything is going to be okay, and that Northcutt is going to be castrated for his crimes. “You’ve got a job. A big fancy job. I get that and I’m a big girl, Sean. I can handle dressing myself.” She sounds amused.
“Okay, well, there’s a car service planning to pick you up in eighty minutes in case I’m running too late to get you myself. I’m not sure how long this thing with Valdman will go.”
“You do remember who my parents are? I’ve been to hundreds of these parties. They’re all the same, and I know what to do.”
“I know, but—”
“Sean,” she chides. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”

I worry about her.
It’s almost an hour later that I pin down Valdman wandering in drunk from the golf course, a young woman who is definitely not his wife petting his arm and asking about dinner. And look, generally I’ve never cared that Valdman is a garbage person because he’s good at running his company, and there didn’t seem any reason to care about the first when the latter seemed more important.
But I don’t know if it’s Jesus-osmosis or working more closely with the shelter or hearing Zenny speak so passionately about her callings, but I’m actually kind of grossed out by Valdman right now. Embarrassed for him…and then embarrassed for myself, because I’m honestly not on track to be any better than he is.
He stumbles to a table, dismissing the woman with an impatient wave of his hand…and gesturing over a waiter with the same hand once she’s gone. He orders a scotch and then looks at me through narrowed eyes.
“I thought you were going to be at the fundraiser representing us tonight.”
“I am,” I assure him, although an irritable part of me wants to remind him that I’d already be there if he just would have met with me on time. “But I’ve got to know that we’re keeping Northcutt away from the Keegan deal.”
“I’ve gotten your messages,” Valdman says, accepting the scotch glass that comes his way. “But I don’t understand, Sean. You were the one who wanted off the deal in the first place.”
I wish that I could tell this red-faced old fuck the truth and have him care, but I know him too well, so I spin the truth so that he’ll actually care. “Look, we both want this thing to get fixed and get fixed quietly. And Northcutt is a recipe for an unsavory news story. If he says or does something to those sisters, they are not the type to stay quiet about it. And that’s not the kind of press we or our clients want.”
Valdman considers this, and I press on, sensing a victory. “Yank him off anything to do with the Keegan deal. You can trust me to keep my nose clean and get this swept up.”
I don’t mention, obviously, that I’m planning on fucking one of the nuns tonight, and that’s probably the exact opposite of keeping my nose clean. I’m different from Northcutt, what Zenny and I are doing is different and fun and good.
I think.
I mean, I hope I’m different from Northcutt. And Valdman.
I look down at my hands as Valdman takes a drink, and I have a moment of real doubt all of a sudden. Why am I working with these people? Why have I made it my goal to be Valdman? Do I really want to be a gouty lecher with no meaningful relationships in my life when I get older? Is there any amount of money that’s worth such a hollow life?
“I’ll tell him personally to back off,” Valdman says finally. “You have my word.”
“Thank you, sir.” I shake his hand and leave the country club. I’m going to be late to the fundraiser, and all I can think about is Zenny alone, waiting for me in her pretty new dress, at the mercy of the wolves.

My biggest fearwhen I stride into the hotel ballroom is that Northcutt is already here and he’s causing some kind of mayhem with Zenny, but once I get into the event itself, I don’t see him anywhere in the room. Thank God. It takes me a heart-poundingly long minute to search out Zenny, but once I find her, that strange new gap in my chest expands and contracts with enough force to make my breath catch.
She is magnificently, indescribably, painfully beautiful.
The dress I bought for her is a delicate shade of blue-green—seafoam is what the girl at the store called it—and it gorgeously sets off the amber-brown of her skin and the copper in her eyes. And then there’s the way the chiffon flutters and kisses along her body—over her perfectly curved shoulders and teardrop breasts. Along her narrow waist and then over that sweet ass. She’s living, walking art. And she’s mine.
For the next three weeks, a hateful voice in my head adds, and that hollow in my chest starts to physically ache.
I go straight to her, not even bothering to make eye contact with the people telling me hello as I pass, and then I pull her into my arms. And for a moment, the ache eases.
“Hey you,” I murmur, nuzzling against her hair.
“Hey yourself,” she says back, smiling. “Glad you could finally join me.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, still nuzzling. “Dumb boss. Dumb meeting. All I could think about was you in this dress.”
“You like it?” she asks, suddenly shy.
I pull away enough to look at her, to run my hands over her waist, and then I pull her back into me so she can feel where I’m getting hard. “You look like something out of a fucking painting. Like a princess. I can’t wait to do very un-princesslike things to you when we get home.”
“A princess? Really?” she says, but I can tell she’s pleased.
I nod, pressing into her belly and running my lips over the shell of her ear. “The kind of princess who ends up bent over a bed with her gown up over her waist while a prince kneels behind her and kisses her pretty cunt.”
“Promises, promises,” she replies, her voice hitching with undisguised arousal.
I want to tell her that tonight is the night that I’ll do more than kiss her cunt, that tonight is the night I’ll finally give her what she wants so much, but then she pulls away and I realize her phone is ringing.
I make a grumbly noise as she pulls it out of her clutch, wanting to be pressed against her and murmuring dirty words into her ear once again, but it’s someone from the shelter with a question, and I understand when she has to duck out of the party to take the call. I do some discreet adjustments to my body and find a drink, suddenly feeling very grouchy and restless without her, my Zenny-bug, and that hateful voice pops up in my head again.
Less than three weeks left.
Less than three weeks.
“Sean Bell!” a stupid voice says nearby, and I turn and try to look polite, because it’s not this person’s fault that they aren’t Zenny and therefore aren’t interesting to me. “It’s been ages! It’s Hayley, remember? And this is Sophia, Todd, Katelyn, and Jeremy. Sophia, Sean used to work with Mike, before Mike moved into consulting.”
And before I know it, I’m swallowed whole by a cluster of stupid people and their stupid chatter.
Introductions are made—apparently I used to work with “Mike,” although if it’s the Mike I’m thinking of, Hayley needs to get a divorce and take him for everything he’s worth. (At the office, we used to call him Cocaine Mike, until a fuzzy and very illegal night involving a park bench and an escort earned him the new nickname of Double Condom Mike.)
Ugh. I can’t believe I ever hung out with that guy. Or anyone like him.
Why am I spending my time with these people? I run my gaze over the group currently gabbing at my face, and all I see are entitled, self-absorbed faces honking like geese about their entitled, self-absorbed lives. I feel the same wave of discomfort I felt earlier with Valdman, but even stronger this time.
I don’t like this, I realize, and the realization is like a leviathan circling my raft. I don’t like these people and I don’t like this life.
It’s a terrifying thing to consider, because I’ve spent every year since graduating college working to be here. Working for the money and the parties and the hilarious-but-disgusting nights with guys like Double Condom Mike. I thought it was what I wanted; I thought it made me strong; I derided anyone too weak to see the world for what it really is, which is a fish tank of angry eels. But now I want out of the tank, and I really, really want away from the eels.
I want what Zenny has. And Tyler and my mom and everyone else in my life who’s actually good and not a human dumpster fire.
It’s while I’m processing this that I register a lull in the conversation, and I see that everyone in the group is looking at me. Well, not actually at me, but at someone behind me. I catch a blessed glimpse of seafoam chiffon and a crown of scrolled, luscious curls, and turn, ready to yank Zenny to my side and nuzzle her some more. Or maybe I’ll simply take her hand and lead her back to the car, because now I can’t even remember why I thought this would be a fun idea. Her parents are so involved with Kansas City society that surely she’s been to enough of these in her life to be bored by one, and I’m definitely bored here, and this was a dumb idea.
Yep. I’ve decided. I’m going to lace my fingers through her slender, perfect ones and then we are going to my car, and then we are going home and I’m going to let her claim my body the way she’s been aching to claim it all this time.
I get as far as reaching for Zenny’s hand and finding it, which is then that Sophia (or Hayley, I’m not sure which) says casually, “I’ll have another glass of champagne.”
There’s a silence, and I’m completely lost as to why the hell Sophia (or Hayley) is telling us this, and then she adds, “Actually, make it two. And you can take this one.” She holds out an empty champagne glass into equally empty air, as if she expects someone to take it.
As if she expects Zenny to take it.
Zenny’s hand feels carved from rigid stone inside of my own, and the world seems to slow down, time accordioning out, as the absurdity of what Sophia or Hayley is saying starts sifting through my mind. Because of course Zenny isn’t going to take the glass, of course she doesn’t work here—obviously she’s dressed as a guest, obviously I know her because we’re holding fucking hands—and then everything sifts lower and oh my God, this isn’t just Sophia or Hayley being stupid (well, yes, she’s also being stupid) but it’s something else on top of that, something worse—
“No, no,” one of the guys interrupts. “That’s Jeremiah Iverson’s daughter.” There’s a resounding chorus of oh yeses! where it becomes clear that she must be Dr. Iverson’s daughter and it also becomes clear that nobody knows her name but it’s definitely, definitely his daughter and they all love Dr. Iverson and the Honorable Letitia Iverson and does everybody remember that time Judge Iverson pardoned Hayley’s parking ticket, because Hayley does, Hayley remembers it.
They’re talking about Zenny like she’s not even here, and there’s a small intake of breath from next to me, and I realize I’m squeezing her hand too hard. I give her a gentle pump in apology, and then turn back to the group of garbage geese people ready to rip them apart.
Which happens right as Sophia or Hayley says one last terrible thing. “Oh, so you’re a guest here!” she says, reaching out to give Zenny a playful tweak on the shoulder. “You should have said something!”
“Get your hands the fuck off her,” I say, in what I think is an admirably calm voice, given the situation. Because it’s finally become clear to me exactly what dynamic is at play, and I’m beyond angry, I’m beyond furious, I’m something else altogether. I’m biblical, I’m Jehovah finding Israel worshipping false gods, and I’m going to smite these motherfuckers, I’m going to unleash plagues on them and watch their bodies be eaten alive by sores and fires and famine.
And locusts. I’m going to kill them with locusts too.
“Um, what?” Sophia/Hayley laughs nervously, thinking surely she misheard. Surely.
“I said,” I say (again, in a voice that I think is graciously calm, given the circumstances), “get your hands the fuck off my date. And don’t you ever fucking insinuate she doesn’t belong somewhere ever the fuck again.”
The silence that follows is appropriately deep, and I straighten up a bit, feeling slightly better, although still very smitey, and then Sophia/Hayley laughs. “Oh my God, Sean! You are so funny!” And her friends laugh along with her, bleating, oblivious idiots, and I’m so confused.
Unless…
Unless it makes more sense to them that I’d be joking, pulling one over, rather than actually telling them not to insult the girl holding my hand. A girl who happens to be black.
And that—well, that makes me want to breathe fucking fire.
The hell of it is that if you’d asked me just this morning what racism was, I’d have given you an answer that involved slurs and bus seats and throwing rocks, I would have said that I’d never personally seen racism, I might have even said something about how we live in a post-racial world and racism is over.
And the extra hell of it is that, based on words alone, you could almost make a case that everything was fine, that this was just an awkward misunderstanding. But it wasn’t. Because I was here, and I heard the subtle condescension in that woman’s tone, I heard the layers and layers of assumptions she was making about Zenny in just a handful of careless words. It’s dangerous because of how subtle it was, how insinuating. Almost hard to pin down, and then once you have it stabbed wriggling and wormy to a board to examine, it tries to morph, it tries to shapeshift, it tries to hide in plain sight.
And the extra, extra hell of it? There’s this gross, almost instinctive part of me that wants to make some kind of excuse for Sophia/Hayley, that wants to justify or defend her, and as soon as I recognize that impulse for what it is, self-loathing roils violently in my gut.
I open my mouth to say more, to set these people the fuck straight, but before I can get a word out, Zenny is flashing a smile at everyone and tugging me away. “So sorry, I need to have a word with Sean, one second.”
And before I know it, I’m in some strange giant hallway outside the ballroom, tucked behind a plant where I can’t smite anyone. Before Zenny even says anything, my eyes are on the ballroom doors, because I’ll be patient and let her tell me whatever it is that’s so urgent, but then I’m going back in there and I’m killing everyone, killing them and then stomping their corpses into the parquet floor until they’re flat enough for Zenny and me to dance on.
ThenI’ll calm down, I decide. Once I’m waltzing on their corpses.
“Stop being an asshole,” Zenny says, and it’s not at all what I expected her to say, and also over the past week I’ve become painfully attuned to that word—asshole—latching onto it as our safe word of sorts and marking it in my mind as a signal to back off.
And so I tear my eyes away from the ballroom and focus on her—on my Zenny-bug, who is beautiful and who also looks like she’s a combination of angry and amused and annoyed and…pitying, maybe?
I take a deep breath, trying to harness my fury, because it’s not directed at her and I don’t want her to think for a second that it is. “Zenny, they were saying—”
“I know.”
“They were acting like you—”
“I know, Sean. I know.”
But how can she tell me that she knows and still act like she doesn’t want to pour boiling oil over everyone in that cursed ballroom? “Zenny, they were acting like that because you’re—” and here I falter, because I’m still so angry, and saying the bald truth out loud feels like having a nest of hornets in my mouth. “Because—”
“Because I’m black,” she says. “They assumed I was working the event because I’m black. They saw me, a black woman, in what they think of as ‘their’ space, and to them it was a logical assumption that I was the help.”
“But…that’s shitty,” I protest.
“I know.”
“Because why wouldn’t a black woman belong in there? Why is it more likely that you were a server than that you legitimately belonged there?”
“I know, Sean. You don’t have to tell me.”
“And that part about you belonging only after they realized who your dad was!” I fume, barely even listening to her now, so lost in my own anger. “That almost makes it worse, like, oh, now it’s okay because we’ve vetted your parents?”
“Sean,” Zenny says, holding up a hand. The first edge of bitter impatience lines her voice. “Please. I know all of this.”
“But,” I splutter, “then why are you so calm right now? How can you live with it?”
This strikes a nerve; I see it in the copper flash of her eyes. “This is my life, Sean. I deal with this every fucking day. What am I supposed to do? Not live? Not go anywhere ever? Not talk to anyone ever?”
“But then why aren’t you angry?” I demand.
“Because I can’t get angry!” Zenny bursts out, her words loud and shaking with frustration. And then, clearing her throat and glancing around the empty hallway, she says again, “I can’t get angry. If I get angry, then I’m the Angry Black Woman. If I admit to having my feelings hurt, then I’m being too sensitive. If I ask for people to treat me thoughtfully, then I’m being aggressive. If I joke back, then I’m being impertinent or sassy. If I cry, then I’m hyperemotional. If I don’t react at all, I’m intimidating or cold. Do you see? There’s not a way I can react where I win. I can’t win.”
Her words gouge at me, at the space in my heart that’s cracked open just for her in the last week and they also gouge at my mind, where my admittedly flawed concepts of fairness live. I hurt for her, I want to bleed for her, I want to fix it—
I want to fix it
I want to fix it
I want to fix it
“Okay,” I say. “But I can get angry—let me go back in there and—”
“Sean,” she says sharply. “Stop. If you go back in there and do anything else, the headline is not going to be ‘Noble Sean Bell Heroically Defends Young Woman.’ It’s still going to be ‘Black Girl Causes Scene.’”
“But—”
“It will reflect back on me. And,” she adds in a defeated tone, “it will reflect back onto my parents. I can’t risk that. I can’t risk their standing and their livelihoods just so that you feel better. Please tell me you understand this.”
And all at once, I feel like seventeen emotions are collapsing in on me. Rage and righteousness and concern for her and the need to protect her and—ugh, defensiveness. Shame. I don’t like admitting them to myself; they’re such gross feelings to have right now, when all of me should be focused on Zenny, but they’re there.
And I realize those flashes of shame and defensiveness are there because I’m just as guilty as Sophia or Hayley. Maybe not tonight, maybe not in the exact same ways, but I’m still guilty. Of assumptions and careless words. Of unkindness and disrespect. Not once ever in my entire life have I been put in a position like Zenny was tonight—a position that she’s put in every day—and with deep, ugly regret, I recognize times that I’ve been on the other side of it. The times when I’ve been the garbage goose person, the one casually spraying a room with my entitlement.
I’m not innocent of harm and the thought is painful.
“Zenny, I’ve—I think I’ve done shitty stuff like this too.” I want to reach for her but I don’t let myself. I don’t deserve it. “I mean, I know I have.”
“I’d be surprised if you hadn’t,” Zenny says. “You’re a straight, cisgendered white man from the Midwest.”
“I—” I stop, because I still feel a swell of defensiveness, because I can’t help those things, I can’t change them—but in light of what just happened in the ballroom, I can’t deny that they’ve given me blinders, that they’ve shaped how I see the world, and probably not for the better.
“Even good people can do or say racist things. Even white boys with an actual, literal, black best friend.” She cracks a small smile as she says the last part, and I huff out a self-deprecating breath.
“It’s stupid of me. I always knew Elijah was black, that you were black. It’s not like I didn’t know, but it never seemed like something different, not when we had so much in common. I just never thought outside myself enough to consider what it might mean for you…”
“It’s okay,” she says, and she takes my hand. “I mean, not okay like I’m absolving anything, but okay like…you’re learning. And learning is good.”
I search her lovely face, which looks sad and tired and still all the lovelier for those things. “How can you want to hold my hand after all this? How can you want to touch me?”
She puts her hands on my chest, and then slides her arms around my waist in a full hug. I can’t stop myself; I crush her tight against me, bury my face in the crown of her hair. “I’m sure there’s something smart and insightful I could say about human interactions within the locus of marginalizing social constructs, but I can’t think of it right now,” she says into my chest. She tightens her slender arms around me. “All I can think of is that I still trust you. I still like you. I still want you.”
That doesn’t change reality, but I’m willing to navigate it with you.
That’s what she said the night we discussed us and what an us would look like, and here we are. Navigating. I thought it would be only about our age, about our shared connection with Elijah, but here it is about something else entirely.
I remind her of what she said, and I can feel her smile into my chest.
“You’ve missed your calling as a prophet,” I say, and she sighs against me. Not a sad sigh or a happy sigh. Just a sigh.
“It doesn’t take being a prophet to know these things will happen,” she says.
Which stirs me up all over again. “I want to build a tower around you, and then build a castle around that tower, and then dig a moat around that castle, and then I want to guard you like a dragon. Burn anyone who tries to hurt you into ash and then scorch those ashes a second time.”
She doesn’t answer in words, and simply burrows her face in my chest. And together we stand, arms tight, breathing in harmony, her cheek to my heart and my lips pressed to the top of her head.
“I’m getting makeup on your tuxedo,” she mumbles, but I don’t let her move.
“Fuck the tuxedo.”
Finally, she tilts her head to look up at me with liquid eyes. “Take me home,” she says.
And I take her home.