Swink

by Adriana Locke

  “Yeah. Travis is a roofer, I think. I’ll ask and send that to you too if it would help.”

  Camilla beams, the smile on her face the widest I’ve ever seen it. “I love this, you guys.”

  “What?” Lincoln asks.

  “Not you talking with your mouthful,” Cam groans. “Mom would kill you right now.”

  “Mom’s not here.”

  Cam rolls her eyes. “You’re disgusting.”

  He makes a point of swallowing, much to Camilla’s disgust, before looking at me. “Tell us about yourself, Dom.”

  “Dom?” Cam laughs.

  “You call him that.”

  “I’m also having se—”

  “Easy,” Ford warns, making us all laugh. “We don’t hate him now. Don’t push your luck.”

  The table bursts with laughter, Camilla leaning her head on my shoulder. I lay my arm along the back of her chair. My tattoos peek out from beneath the rolled-up sleeves of my shirt, the edge of a cross that I had inked to remember Joey visible.

  Something about the moment stills time. The voices around me are muffled as I feel trapped somehow in this weird spot mentally—thinking about Joey, how he had Nate’s laugh and our mother’s need to please everyone. If he were an adult, I wonder how he’d fit in this situation. Probably better than me.

  I look up to see two women sitting at the table across the aisle from us. They’re decked out in bright dresses and huge, tacky necklaces. They smile politely at Ford, and I wait for them to also look my way. I hope they don’t.

  Their smiles falter, slipping from their faces when they see me with Camilla. It’s almost a look of horror before they recover when Cam sits up, posture perfect, and addresses them.

  “Good afternoon, Paulina. Raquel. How are you this afternoon?” she says, going into what I call pageant mode. It’s so not the Camilla I know. And it’s not one I particularly like.

  “So, back to this thing about your brother calling me a dick . . .” Lincoln’s words draw my attention away from his sister. When I look at him, he’s grinning. “Tell him I paid for the entire bottle of Patrón and we only drank half. He owes me.”

  Camilla

  THE ROAR OF THE ENGINE is the only sound I hear as Dom’s car takes the curves leading back to my house. It’s been a quiet ride since we left Hillary’s House, neither of us saying much.

  It’s a lot to process. For both of us.

  Letting my head roll to the side, I watch Dominic control the car. One hand on the steering wheel, one on the gear shift, his jaw is pulsing like it does when he’s working something out in his head.

  Why does this have to be so damn hard?

  Ford promised to call me later to talk about things. There was an edge to his voice, but I think he was surprised in a good way. He offered again, before we left, to get him info on some contractors to help with The Gold Room and the two of them had an in-depth conversation about fighting styles and things that went way over my head while they ate apple pie.

  It was a little more contentious with Lincoln, but it was mostly Linc keeping him on his toes. I’m just not sure how Dominic felt.

  “Hey,” I say, my voice barely heard over the engine.

  He decreases the gas and the rumble softens. “Hey.”

  “I think things went well. How about you?”

  “Yeah, I mean, it didn’t go too bad.”

  “What did you think of them?”

  He gives me a weird look and turns his focus back on the road. “Ford was okay. Lincoln . . .”

  “He’s just a big kid,” I explain. “He makes a lot of jokes and has this whole Daddy-role thing now that he has a baby. I really think you two could be friends.”

  His laugh is loud and amused, and I don’t know how to take it.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I think that’s a pretty strong, and inaccurate, word.”

  “You didn’t like him?”

  “I didn’t say that. I just, uh, I’m not sure our personalities mesh well.”

  Looking away, I watch the marshmallow-like clouds high in the sky as we make our way back through the city. My nerves start to wobble the closer we get to my house. Whether or not to push the conversation more or to let it be is murky. I don’t know.

  “Who were the two ladies you were talking to?”

  “Paulina and Raquel?”

  “The two wearing more perfume than a department store,” he clarifies.

  “That’s them,” I sigh. “They’re friends of my mother’s. Raquel is really nice. She’s working with Ellie and Danielle on a joint project for helping restock local food pantries. Paulina . . .”

  “Is she the brunette?” he asks.

  “Yeah. She slept with Barrett—”

  “Your brother?” he laughs, looking at me quickly.

  “Yes, my brother,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Probably Graham, too, if I’m guessing. She’s married to a friend of my father’s but he’s about a million years older than her and she’s never had any interest in him besides his checkbook.”

  “So she uses your brothers as her harem.”

  “Ugh,” I groan, crossing my arms. “That whole thing is disgusting to me.”

  When I don’t look at him, he chuckles. When I still don’t look at him, he pokes my thigh with the tip of his finger. “Well, I think your mother’s friends weren’t too entertained with you being with me.”

  My heart leaps in my chest as I twist in my seat. “What?”

  “Both of them looked at me like I was hitting way out of my league.”

  “To hell with them,” I say, trying to simultaneously keep my irritation at a minimum and think back to their reactions. “Did they really? What did they say?”

  “Nothing. You know how they roll—they’d never say something publicly. That would hurt their stock. Just, you know, be ready for your mom to get a call about it.”

  He focuses on the road and makes a valiant attempt at keeping his features void of emotion. But I know him well enough to see it for the façade it is.

  The corners of his lips barely turn down, the sadness in his eyes only noticeable if you look for it. Dominic excels at hiding his feelings, and when we first met, I thought maybe he didn’t really have deep emotions. Over the weeks and months we’ve been together, I know differently. I suspect, even, that if he were broken open, maybe he feels them more deeply than most.

  My chest squeezes at the signs he’s not meaning to give off, and I wish I could get my hands on my mother’s friends and straight tell them what I think of them. How dare they make Dominic feel any which way? They don’t even know him.

  I touch his arm, letting my hand lie gently on the curve of his bicep. It’s as if the contact releases some of his tension because I can actually feel him relax.

  “I’m sorry they looked at you that way,” I whisper.

  “Don’t worry about it. Women like that—if I wasn’t with you, they’d be asking for me to be their dirty little secret.” He watches for my reaction. “When I go to houses like that—”

  “Like mine?”

  “Like yours,” he concedes, “those women like the tattooed, blue-collar asshole. We’re what they’re not supposed to have. I’m exactly what their missionary-style, four-inch-cocked husbands are not.”

  “Dom.” His name is a sentence, not a question or the start to anything more. I remove my hand slowly.

  “So it’s nothing for you to apologize for. If I wasn’t sitting with you, it would’ve been a different ballgame.”

  There’s so much I want to discuss, so many directions I want to go with this, that I can’t pick one. I just sit, buckled in my seat, and wish there was a way to strap in my thoughts too.

  “For the record,” he says, smirking, “the brunette has fucked Ford too.”

  “How do you know that?”

  He just laughs.

  “Is that what you think of me?” I ask guardedly. “That I’m with you because I shouldn’t be?”

  He
takes a moment to respond and with each passing second, my anxiety grows. “Maybe.”

  “Really? That’s offensive, Dominic.”

  “That’s the truth.” He bites his lip as he waits for the guard at the gate of my subdivision to let us in. “Do I think that’s what got your attention at the start? Yeah. Absolutely.”

  The gate moves up and he eases the car through. “Is that why you’re still here? No.”

  “I hate that you think I’m so shallow.”

  “I didn’t say that. I said you wanted me at first because you shouldn’t. The same way you always want a pint of butter pecan ice cream that you lament you shouldn’t eat because of the calories. Then we buy it and you eat a couple of spoonfuls and then you’re done because it’s not really what you wanted. You wanted the lemon sorbet. You just were proving to yourself you had choices and could go off-script.”

  “So you’re the butter pecan ice cream?” I ask, trying to follow along.

  “Yes. I was at first. Now, maybe, I’m . . . those little chocolate cookies you keep in the back of your cabinet behind the cereal.”

  “Wait,” I laugh. “I thought we were talking ice cream.”

  “We were, but let’s broaden it to food.”

  “Fine. Keep going. This is interesting.”

  He whips the car into my driveway, but not without a quick squeal of the tires that he knows pisses off my neighbor. The black marks in the maintained streets are undesirable, the guy two houses down calls it.

  Turning off the Camaro, he faces me. “I’m the cookies you love, but don’t want to love. That’s why you keep them behind the cereal. The cereal is a good choice, full of fiber and all that bullshit you look at on the label. I’m the snack full of preservatives, fake colors,” he says, nodding towards his tattoos, “and cooked in some cancer-filled oils. I’ll be the death of you one day. You know it. You just can’t quite say no when it’s in front of you.”

  “Okay,” I chuckle, waving my hands in the air, “while that is a very thought-provoking analogy there, Waylor’s Cookies, you’re wrong.”

  “I don’t think so.” He hops out and races to my side. The door is opened, letting in the warm afternoon breeze. Lending me a hand, he helps me out and closes the door behind me. “Again, you look very pretty today.”

  “Is the cookie conversation over?”

  “Yes.” He pulls me into his chest, wrapping his arms around my back.

  I snuggle into the soft fabric of his shirt, breathing him in and shoving off the ice cream discussion to be analyzed later.

  “You know,” he says, his chest moving with each breath, “I could never be like your brothers.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “How do I not mean?” His voice sounds hollow, almost third-person, and it glues me in place. “They’re so laidback. Like they have nothing to do, nothing to worry about. Like they pick their battles, not the other way around.”

  “We all pick our battles, don’t we?”

  “Not where I’m from,” he admits. “Sometimes battles pick us. Sometimes our lives don’t come with trust funds and fairy godmothers.”

  Pushing off, I look at him. “I can’t help I have a trust fund. Just like you can’t help you don’t.”

  “I know,” he says, brushing a strand of hair out of my face. “I’m just saying today was really eye-opening for me.”

  My spirits sink like a weight as I watch him search for his next words. There are a million I could come back at him with, but I don’t. I’m too afraid to.

  “There will be a day when someone like Lincoln or Ford catches your eye, a quality lemon sorbet,” he grins sadly, “and you’ll wonder what the hell you’re doing with the butter pecan.”

  “I wonder what I’m doing with you every day,” I say, trying to get playful Dom back and failing. “But every day, there’s no one else I want to listen to telling me about leg kicks or air conditioner units or bringing me Chinese at eleven at night when I just make an off-handed comment that I could really go for some General Tso’s.”

  His eyes lock with mine. “I gotta go.” He kisses my forehead and starts around the car.

  “You don’t want to come in?”

  “I gotta watch Ryder for a while today,” he says as he reaches the driver’s side door. “Nate has to work and Chrissy bailed or something. I don’t know. I don’t want in the middle of their shit.”

  I wait for him to invite me to come over. I’ve helped watch Ryder before. After a few solid, uncomfortable seconds, it’s obvious no invitation is coming.

  If I gave in to my emotions, I’d start crying. Being in limbo is the worst feeling in the world and that’s where we are—in limbo. We’ve never been an official item, yet . . . we have. I don’t even know if we are that unlabeled item now.

  Demanding things from Dominic gets you one thing—the opposite of what you want. So I can’t just ask him what he’s thinking or feeling. Even if I did, by the look in his eye, I’m not sure he even knows.

  “Okay,” I say, heading to my door. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  He waits until I get the door open and the security system off. Tossing my purse on the settee inside, I turn to face him through the doorway.

  “Thanks for going with me today.”

  He bows his head for a moment. “This is going to sound really weird, and I don’t want you to think about it too much, but . . . thanks for introducing me to your family.”

  I flip him a half-smile that’s immediately returned. “I thought you didn’t like my brothers.”

  With a wink that makes me laugh, he climbs in the car. “I don’t.”

  I watch him zip out of the driveway, listening to the long bark of his tires, and wish I were in there with him.

  Dominic

  “HEY.” I GIVE A QUICK nod to Nate as I enter the kitchen. Throwing my keys on the counter, I peel off my shirt. “Where’s Ryder?”

  “Asleep.”

  Wadding the shirt up, I toss it next to my keys. It lands half-draped over a bunch of bananas. “Has he been asleep long?”

  “No. Just laid him down.”

  “Good. I’ll grab a shower then.”

  It would be easier for the both of us if I would just do what I said. Just turn around and go to the shower and when I came back, he would be gone.

  Tension was high last night, and while we managed a few words, it’s Nate that I’m most pissed off at. He knows it. He’s been smart and avoided me for the most part. Until now.

  Now he stands next to the refrigerator, his Gold Room shirt on, hat pulled down low on his forehead, keys in hand. He’s ready to walk out the door I just walked in. But he doesn’t move.

  “How’d it go with the Landry’s?” he asks.

  “A lot more complicated, thanks to you.”

  “I’m sorry. Again, Dom, I’m sorry.”

  “Again, Nate, fuck off.”

  He hangs his head, taking off his hat and letting his hand fall to his side. Maybe I’m tired of expending the energy to be mad or maybe I’m just exhausted from the last twenty-four hours. Either way, I blow out a breath that catches his attention.

  “Just pay her back. Every fucking penny plus interest.”

  “I will,” he promises. “You know I will.”

  “Yeah, I know you will.”

  He extends his hand, and when I take it, pulls me into a one-arm hug. “I am sorry. If I fuck up your relationship with Cam, I’ll never forgive myself.”

  “Nah, I think I’m capable of doing that on my own.”

  “So, how’d it go? For real.”

  I inhale slowly, the air crackling as it seeps into my lungs. Thinking back on the day, I don’t even know where to start. “I mean, her brothers were okay. Ford’s a decent guy. He’s gonna send us some numbers for contractors he does business with for the renovations, actually.”

  “Really? Do they know about the money?”

  “Yeah. It’s weird. I know,” I say, scratching my head.

&nbs
p; “Ford. He’s the bigger one? Military-looking motherfucker?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s the one that threatened me,” Nate grins. “He’s the only one I probably could hang out with.”

  “We’re so fucked up,” I laugh. “I thought the same thing.”

  We exchange a look that goes beyond a smile. It reassures me, somehow, that I have someone on my side just because.

  “Now Lincoln,” I continue, “kind of an asshole.”

  “He played for the Arrows, right?”

  I nod. “He was decent. I mean, I didn’t knock him out or anything, although I was considering it might come to that a time or two. And,” I wink, “he said to tell you that you owe him a half a bottle of Patrón.”

  “Fuck that,” he laughs. He waits as I grab a bottle of water from the fridge and crack open the top before continuing. “So, you and Cam are okay?”

  The water is ice cold going down my throat, and at the mention of her name, it splashes into my stomach. I cough, water coming back up. Holding my head over the sink, my eyes searing with tears, I cough until I think I’m going to black out.

  Once I’m righted and breathing normally, Nate furrows a brow. “Is that a yes?”

  “It’s an I don’t know,” I admit.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Do I really need to explain the obvious?”

  “No, but you need to explain the stupid.”

  Rolling my eyes, I place the water on the counter and lean against it. “I’ve always known she came from a completely different world than we do. Her life is picture-perfect. It’s like a fucking movie, man.”

  “Fast forward to the part where you get to the point.”

  “The point is,” I say, sucking in a breath, “I’m never going to fit into her world and I’ll never trust mine with her.”

  He doesn’t respond because I’m right.

  “At the risk of sounding like a pussy, I’ll admit I hate it. If she were anyone else, anyone else, I’d wife her. There wouldn’t be a second of hesitation. But she’s not just anyone else, and I can’t do that to her.”

  “You make it sound like you’re an ape or something.”

  “I may as well be from the jungle.” I lift the bottle again and down the rest of the water, managing to not choke this time. As I lick my lips, cool from the liquid, I toss the plastic into the garbage. “I think I’m going to need something a little stronger tonight.”