I watched Dominic closer than I should have. He engaged with his group of boys, laughed with them, demonstrated how to hold a pool stick, then clapped and cheered when one of them made a shot. They were having fun. In less than three hours Dominic had earned the loyalty and adoration of every single boy. I wondered if he even knew how rare and exceptional this was . . .
Happiness.
The word was like a poke to my ribs, cutting off all trains of thought. As Dominic laughed, mussing the hair of a boy bent over in hilarity, anyone could see how happy he was. There wasn’t a glimmer of the person who had driven us here—nothing of the angry boy from eleven days ago, either. The whole time . . . this whole time I had been missing what was right there in front of me, all along.
On my stomach, assisting Gigi with a picture of a giraffe eating a leaf, the green crayon slipped from my fingers. The smile on my lips died.
It’s you. It’s you that makes him miserable.
I wanted to assure myself this was crazy. Dominic didn’t know me. It wasn’t possible that, in the little time I had spent with him, I had made myself his greatest enemy.
And maybe it wasn’t possible. But that didn’t make it untrue.
~
Night had graciously taken over the evening. Above, the thick spongy stratum blanketing the sky had finally cracked and crumbled apart. It looked like the top layer of a coffee cake. It was cold outside; but after being cooped up in a room with over a hundred warm bodies, the air that hit my cheeks felt blissful.
I had closed my eyes for only a second when the toe of my boot caught the gate piping embedded in the pavement. Somehow, through a combination of balancing on the balls of my feet and clawing my nails into the box I was holding, I didn’t fall.
I did, however, run the risk of tripping again, when I saw who was waiting for me.
I squinted to be sure it was him. It was. More surprising than finding Dominic standing at Hattie’s backside, was my reaction to this: a sort of erratic, nervous relief that flew up and down my body like a pinched balloon being released.
What exactly, I wondered, was I relieved for?
This pull he had on me was one I neither understood nor had control of—as puzzling as it was dangerous. Asleep or awake, it didn’t matter how hard I tried; I couldn’t stop thinking about him. At first I had assured myself this was normal—considering the tumultuous manner in which we had met. But I was becoming more and more certain my interest in Dominic wasn’t only of the circumstantial kind.
And this terrified me.
I could fill up an entire notebook with all my questioning wonderment. Every single one of my instincts told me to stop this hungering for information now, while I still could. Either it will lead to nowhere, or what I intuitively suspected—some place I wouldn’t like. It wasn’t safe to be this curious about him; there would be no way of keeping him out as I made my way in. Was I willing to risk my anonymity for answers about someone I hardly knew? I couldn’t deny that the truth became a slippery slope when I was with him—as if all of a sudden I couldn’t help myself. No. It wasn’t nearly that neat and simple. Music and numbers—these were constants I could trust. People . . . people were always changing—their minds, their opinions, their behavior. And it only got more complicated from there. Within each change was a layer, where an infinite amount of smaller possibilities existed—variables and contingencies—dependent mostly, once again, on people.
What took place when I was around Dominic was entirely new and unfamiliar. Something happened; I became two parts; not halves, but two complete wholes. There was the me I had always been: safe, obscure, reliable. And then there was this other me: a girl I didn’t know very well, someone I didn’t trust at all. As I walked toward Dominic, working through these insights, it did not hit me like a ton of bricks. It went deeper than that. It touched my marrow, made the hot blood flowing in my veins go cold.
Dominic was changing me. I had to stop this before it was too late.
He watched me as I approached. His eyes were the color of lapis lazuli, and as clear as tumbled stones. He said, “Hi,” and the word was white.
It was colder than I thought.
“Hi.” I will drive him home—and that will be the end of it.
“Those look heavy—here.” Dominic used his hands to push off Hattie’s bumper. He reached for the supply boxes and his fingertips overlapped mine, briefly. I felt them bend inward. “How’s your head feeling?” he asked.
I lifted a hand, touching the spot that was still tender. “Much better, thank you.”
“What happened to your raincoat?”
“It’s not in there,” I told him, when he began sifting through the top box. “I gave it to Angelina. She didn’t have one.”
He nodded and placed the boxes on the trunk. “That was very nice of you.”
The admiration in his voice made me uncomfortable. “It didn’t fit me anymore,” I said. “Did you have a good time today?”
“I did.” A genuine smile lit up the otherwise pensive expression. “I didn’t know what I was walking into—especially in the beginning. But they were all really nice and fairly well-behaved. I was lucky.” He snorted and shook his head. “The first thing one of them asks me is ‘Can I see your phone?’”
“You didn’t give it to them, did you?” That group of boys was notorious for asking for phones and then accidentally misplacing them.
Dominic afforded me a dry look. “Give me some credit.”
“Sorry. It’s just that it’s happened before. You were great with them.”
“Thank you.” He smiled. “And you . . . you can tell how much those kids love you.”
“Thank you.”
There was an awkward pause where we both shuffled our feet and smiled like we had swallowed lemons.
“Do you—”
“I’ve nev—”
We laughed. Then Dominic raised his hand, indicating I should go first.
“I just wanted to tell you how amazed I was,” I said. “I’ve never seen those boys respond to someone like that—so quickly. I was watching you—teach them pool,” I added hastily, hoping the night concealed the color in my cheeks. “They could hardly bear to give you space to shoot,” I said, softly laughing. “When they get close to you like that, physically close, well it’s their way of showing trust. It doesn’t happen very often—never on the first time. I know they—It would mean a lot—” Dominic’s eyes were fastened on me, taking it all in: the stammering, the blushing, the way I could not seem to say what I wanted to. “If you ever wanted to come back—”
“I do,” he broke in. “I plan to.”
I released the air trapped in my lungs. “You do?”
“Yes, Foster.”
The way he spoke my name . . . gently, like a caress. A great and powerful chill swept over my body; the strength of it made me heady.
“It’s getting late,” I announced. “Are you ready to take your clothes off?”
It’s fascinating really, and bizarre; how in the subsequent seconds following a horrifyingly errant remark, Logic—with a hasty salute to the forehead—departs without so much as a “See ya,” and Instinct arrives on a purple dragon to take you to a place of chimerical semi-lucidity; and there you are willing to do and believe almost anything if it means what just happened never happened.
I shook my head and said, “No.” I don’t know what Dominic looked like because I couldn’t see anything but a purple dragon, me clutching its neck as we flew through the sky. “That is not what I meant.” I shook my head again.
“No?” he asked.
Then I had to. I met his eyes, and if not for his mouth, maybe—maybe, maybe, maybe—I could have believed my purple dragon had saved me.
I pointed to the ground, to his jeans, the bottoms soaked all the way up to the middle of his calves. “Your clothes are wet.”
“They are,” he agreed, nodding. “I should probably change soon.”
“YES,” I said, then, �
�Yes. That is what I meant. You should change.”
Dominic’s eyes sparkled, saying the things his mouth wouldn’t. “Wouldn’t want to catch a cold, right?” he said.
“Right.”
“You know, I heard that’s a myth. Catching a cold from wearing wet clothes,” he explained, leaning his hip into the bumper. “Something a mom made up to keep her kids from tracking muddy shoes into the house.”
No. I couldn’t believe it. Was he actually going to let this go? Easy as that? No, had it been Emily or Jake, I never would have been granted a pardon. Emily—she wouldn’t even be close to being through laughing yet. Emily would still be on the floor, rolling on her back, eyes glued shut.
“Yes,” I said, very, very gratefully. “I think you’re right.”
And again something happened.
Only I didn’t have a word for it; instantly trust had come to mind, but that wasn’t exactly right. Neither was honesty, empathy, or respect—though there was a fractional bit of each. I decided the best I could do was call it an understanding.
“Foster?”
“Yes?” I was bit breathless. This was caused by the way Dominic was looking at me.
“I don’t have anywhere I need to be right now,” he said, “so unless you do, I was hoping we could talk before heading back home.”
When I didn’t immediately refuse him, I knew I was in for trouble. “Okay.”
Better do it now, Foster.
“I want to apologize.”
We spoke this in unison.
Dominic spoke again. “What? You? No, why?” A deep furrow appeared between his blinking eyes. “What do you have to be sorry about?”
“For today,” I answered quietly, looking down at my feet. “For upsetting you in the car on the way here. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed to slits of scrutiny. “What is it you think you said, Foster?”
“Oh, I . . .” I fidgeted with the zipper of the jacket. “Well that I’m not exactly certain of, but it obviously upset you, so—”
“So you thought you should apologize to me. And take the blame for something that, at best, was an unintentional misunderstanding?”
Yes; though again, not exactly. What I truly wanted to apologize for, I couldn’t; not without also bringing unwanted focus to the subject I feared and was grotesquely curious about. What I wanted to say was: I’m sorry that when you’re around me, I make you a miserable, sad, and angry person. I wish I knew what it was, so I could stop doing it. I’m sorry you ever had to meet me.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Unbelievable. That’s ridiculous. I—I don’t even—Who does that?” Dominic began to pace up and down the length of the trunk. He stopped suddenly, turning to me with such ferocious desolation I thought he might be ill. “Foster, no. You have nothing to be sorry for. It’s me,” his voice wavered. He hung his head. “It’s me who needs to apologize to you. For everything.”
My arm rose toward him without permission. Quickly, before he could notice, I lowered it. “It’s okay,” I told him.
His head lifted slowly and his eyes were hard, but not at me, I didn’t think.
“No. It is not, Foster. It’s not okay at all. None of how I’ve behaved is okay.”
I observed both the feeling and frequency with which Dominic spoke my name. It was almost as though he was reminding himself to whom he was speaking.
“The way I treated you was inexcusable. And not just today.” He laughed humorously. “I can hardly believe you’re still willing to talk to me after everything I’ve put you through. Foster.” His expression changed. He put his palms together and placed the tips of his fingers to his mouth, gently tapping them on his lips. He said, “I know I have absolutely no right to ask you this—and if you say no, I will completely understand, but I have to ask. Can you forgive m—”
“Of course I can.”
Dominic blinked. I smiled a little because I had shocked him.
“You didn’t even let me finish,” he said.
I lifted my shoulders and let them fall. “I didn’t . . . need to.”
A look of determination formed in his jaw. “You shouldn’t give me an answer right now,” he advised. “Tomorrow. Or in a few days. After you’ve had time to really consider it.”
“I don’t need to wait until tomorrow. My answer won’t change.”
It was obvious he didn’t approve. “Well, there is a second part,” he hedged, two deep indentions burrowed between his eyes. “Something else I wanted to ask.”
“Okay.”
“I want to know—to ask you, I mean . . . what you think about . . . if you would be willing—” Dominic made a noise in his throat, of extreme irritation, then blurted, “I would like to be friends with you, Foster.”
It was my turn to be stunned.
“I understand if you would rather not. That would be fine. I would understand that. I’m fine with that.”
I thought of Emily, and the perspicacity with which she used the day I had tried to convince her and Jake that I was ‘fine.’
I could read Dominic’s face; he was trying to read mine. I concentrated on giving him little to work with. Because I wanted to say it, not show it. That is when I realized I was in more trouble than I originally thought.
“I want to be your friend, Dominic.”
He blinked. “Just like that? Without an apology or a promise not to ever behave that way again? You would say yes?”
“But you did apologize,” I pointed out.
He looked confounded. “I did?” I began to nod, but he was already shaking his head. “Yeah, but only the one time.”
“How . . . many times should it be?”
“Oh, I don’t know! For me? For how I treated you? A million would be a good place to start.”
“That could take a while.”
“You’re too nice, Foster. Too forgiving.” He exhaled strongly. “I’m sorry. You surprised me is all. I didn’t expect you to give me an answer, and I definitely didn’t expect you to say yes.” He ripped off his beanie and his hair exploded from under it, like black feathers from a burst pillow. “I still think it would be a good idea for you think about it first.”
I stared at Dominic’s profile, recalling a piece of artwork; a statue, made entirely of white and gold marble, carved into the likeness of a man. There in the museum, I was privately musing over the expression on his face—a man conflicted; at war with himself—when I looked down at the plaque naming him Confliction’s Agony.
The gauzy orange light overhead illuminated the sharp planes of Dominic’s face, washing his forehead, cheeks, and the straight slope of his nose with shimmery copper radiance. Even distraught and unsettled, there was an unearthly exquisiteness about him that demanded to be recognized. His eyes cast downward, the tips of his long black lashes brushed at the dark hollows beneath his eyes. I had a strange but very strong urge to reach out and touch him; to lay a finger, maybe two, on his marbled gold cheek, to stroke the jaw clamped tight; to see if I might ease the tension running chin to temple, and coax one of his rare smiles.
Dominic made a noise beside me and I shook my head, dazed, wondering what on earth had just come over me.
Dominic turned quickly. “Why?” He sounded strangled. “Why would you forgive me? I’ve done nothing but horrible things to you from the first day we met.”
There was urgency in his face; not only an impatience for an answer, but for something else I couldn’t begin to decipher. I glanced away, down to where his hands were bunched into fists inside his pockets.
“Because.” My voice shook. “Because if I don’t, then you won’t forgive yourself.”
“Well I don’t deserve it.”
I sighed. “Forgiveness isn’t for the guilty. It’s for the joy of the one offering it. You can’t earn it. You can only accept it.”
“And you’re offering it? To me? After everything there is behind us?”
I couldn’t help smili
ng. “Yes, because it is behind us.”
He whispered it. “You are different.” I didn’t have time to contemplate his words. He asked in eagerness, “Foster, can I share something with you? A story?”
“Of course.”
He rubbed his hands together and then folded them, letting his arms hang down in front of him. “So growing up, no matter how busy or hectic things got, my family would always sit down to a big supper on Sunday evenings; my grandparents would come over and sometimes my aunts, uncles and cousins, too. And my siblings and I loved Sundays because it was one of the few days we were allowed to stay up past our bedtime. Anyway, after dinner and dessert we would all sit around the huge kitchen table and play a game. It was always the same one, actually, and now that I think about it, there really isn’t a name for it, because we never officially gave it one. I can’t remember exactly who made it up. My Aunt called it Liar’s Snare, my little sister The Tricky Truth, and my dad—” He waved a hand indicating that detail was inconsequential to the story. “But the reason we always played the same one was because it was the only one where all sixteen of us didn’t end up at each other’s throats at the end. If we tried to play something else, things got intense and heated very fast. Team preferences, cheating allegations, rule disputes.” He laughed, deep in memory.
“This one was the favorite, though, so everyone played. Well,” he smirked, “everyone except my mother, who claimed ‘someone has to be responsible and clean up the kitchen,’ but really, it was because she was always the first one to lose. The object of the game was simple: don’t be caught lying. Once you had a statement ready, but before you said it aloud, you had to say whether or not it was true by whispering into the ear of the person on your left. This was so no one could claim you were cheating. After that, you said your statement aloud—just once—to the person on your right. Then, that person was given no more than thirty seconds to accuse you of lying, or confirm you were telling the truth. If they were wrong, they immediately were out of the game, if they were right, they stayed and everyone switched places with the person on their right. The switching was important for a multitude of reasons, but mainly it was to keep things constantly fresh. You were always whispering and stating things to a new person. Okay, I think that’s the gist of it.” He took a moment to think, wrapping a hand around his neck and rubbing. “Yes, I’m pretty sure that’s all of it. So . . .” He smirked, showing a hint of white teeth. “There were some of us who—well, who were better,” he said simply, shrugging with matter-of-factness. That he used “were” instead of “are” did not go unnoticed. I stored this away for later inspection.
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