Dominic wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then let it fall, revealing a smile that even in my lugubrious state, I could appreciate.
I replayed the end of the night in my mind; Rhoda and me walking Emily to the door, she turning to me and asking, “So? Did you like—”
“The Notebook,” Dominic said, finishing my thought. The only thing that took precedent to my own shock was Emily’s mouth, gently parted.
“Hey.” Jake nudged his sister with his elbow. “Coincidence, yeah? You guys have the same favorite movie.” Said with a full mouth, I couldn’t tell whether or not this was said with sincerity or with the knowing that Emily would likely not appreciate their shared fondness for the film.
“It appears so,” Emily replied, voice calculated and with a smile that assured me my latter thoughts proved correct. Skepticism crossed her face. “What makes that one”—she narrowed her eyes—“more than any other movie out there, your favorite?”
Dominic was silent for a moment, clearly thinking about this question before he answered. I thought to myself that the idiom, “watching water boil,” seemed an adequate comparison to how I was feeling just now. He was staring sightlessly across the room, toward the open glass door.
“Truthfully, there’s many reasons,” he murmured softly, and there was an honesty in his voice and something else, too, that instantly filled me with questions.
Emily wasn’t nearly as affected as I, and smiled with a politeness that I knew caused her a fair amount of effort. “Just one will be fine,” she said.
“Okay.” Dominic met Emily’s eyes straight on, and I saw that they were immense. Not in size, of course, but it was copious life that poured forth through the glowing blue irises. Looking at him you could not discount the depths that stared back, leaking life only slightly more than consuming it. He paused only long enough to inhale, and to fist one hand loosely inside the other.
“Because it wasn’t easy for them,” he said. “Because they both made really bad decisions, hurt the other, and nearly died from the pain of it. But th”—he swallowed and cleared his throat—“but they didn’t. They didn’t die. They lived. He numbed himself to avoid confronting the fact he’d survived with only half his heart, and she gave hers to a love that only ever amounted to a shadow of the real thing. They lived and they coped. Neither could forget the other, though—even when they went on with their lives—or tried to anyway. But them trying to forget each other was like trying to forget you have another eye or another hand. Whether you’re willing to recognize it, or you choose to ignore it—it’s there. Always will be. Even if you gouge it out, rip it off, you would still have the memory of it, aching.” Dominic’s eyes traveled toward me then, slowly and deliberately. My heart tightened, as if a fist clenched it between iron fingers. “It’s my favorite movie,” he said, “because being together wasn’t the simple answer to their happiness; it was the only answer.”
For the first time since sitting down for lunch, I had not even the tiniest urge to look over at Emily and see what she thought. I wanted nothing more to look back at Dominic for however long he decided to look at me. Questions and thoughts flooded my mind, but I silenced them. Right now I would make room for only this. That quiet time that routinely fell over students pervaded; as the bell’s nearness grew closer, those with fourth periods prepared for another hour in class by growing sleepy. Our small cluster especially, though, was severely quiet.
It was Jake who spoke first. “Dude,” he said, his deep voice low and whispery with reverence. “You’re like really poetic, man.”
Dominic laughed at this. “Yeah, you think?” He sat up, shrugged, and smiled. “Must be all that Elliot my mom used to read me before bed.”
“Who’s—”
“Don’t bother, Jake,” Emily cut in. “You won’t know who he is even if he tells you.”
“How do you know?” he asked. “I’m a pretty deep guy. Ask Maddie.”
Maddie confirmed this with a proud nod. “And sensitive, too,” she added.
“That he is,” Emily agreed in low, derisory tones, and what I thought was quite generous of her, left it at that.
“So,” Dominic said, reaching up to scratch his neck, “does that qualify as a good reason, Emily?”
Emily shrugged, noncommittal. “It’ll do,” she replied unceremoniously, and took a sip of water.
Dominic remained silent, nodding. He glanced at me, a trace of smirk pulling at his lips. I smiled back, distinctly recognizing another “first” take up residence inside me; it was the first time I felt as if Emily wasn’t tolerating Dominic purely for my sake.
“I’m starting to think that maybe you might not suck as much as I previously thought,” Emily said unexpectedly, and shrugged again, flippancy decorating her face where there might otherwise have been warmth and affability.
A brief flash of shock sprang up on his face, then quickly disappeared. He smiled genuinely. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she said evenly, and looked away as someone hollered across the cafeteria. “It still doesn’t mean I like you, though.”
Chapter Twenty-three
“So I guess we passed, right?” Dominic asked, his voice coming from just behind me.
“Passed?” I inquired, turning to see I had thought correctly; less than a foot separated us.
He raised both eyebrows. “The tests, of course,” he said with exaggerated enthusiasm, but kept his voice low. He sent a furtive glance in Emily’s direction, then back to me. “Seating arrangements? Favorite movies?”
“Oh.” I took a deep inhale, unable to tell if he was mad or not. “You knew she was testing you?”
He smiled, tilting his chin down. “Didn’t you?”
“Well, yes,” I replied. “But I thought you might . . . maybe you wouldn’t . . .”
“Maybe I wouldn’t know I was getting grilled like a hamburger?” he finished for me, laughing. “Of course I knew, Foster.” The smile and gentle way in which he spoke my name, sent a prickly sensation running up my back. “Emily’s gifts lie in efficiency and implementation, not in subtly.”
I grimaced, sighing. “I’m sorry if you felt interrogated. She meant well, but you didn’t deserve to be put on the spot like that. I’ll understand if you would rather not—”
Dominic gave me a look that stopped me short. “First of all, yes I did. I absolutely deserved that,” he said firmly, dark eyebrows hovering low. “In fact, she went a little easy on me, if I’m being completely honest with you. My guess is she did that for you, though.” He closed his eyes briefly and then opened them, warmth and laughter swimming in both. “You have a good friend—friends,” he corrected. “Maddie and Jake, too. I like them all.” I smiled in return, feeling a little bubble of elation burst deep inside of me, breaking into fragments of happiness. “You’re lucky to have them,” he added softly. “Friends like that are rare.”
I nodded in agreement, then turned my head toward the three of them standing a little ways away. Maddie was balanced on Jake’s bare feet, not nearly tall enough to kiss him, but trying. Emily talked with her teammates, but must have felt my eyes on her; she turned and locked eyes with me, looking away before the impish smirk could be shown on her face, and went on speaking without a blip stunting her speech.
“I am,” I said, and raised my eyes to his that watched me intently. “And they’re your friends now, too.”
“Yeah?” He laughed, pulling his backpack around to the front and placing the Gatorade bottle inside the large pocket. “At least Jake and Maddie, right?”
I laughed, understanding why he might say that. “Emily, too,” I said affirmatively. “She may have restrained herself a bit, but Emily is not someone who will hide her emotions. With her, what you see is what you get—always.”
He nodded, considering this. “Yes, I would have to agree with that,” he put in, raising one eyebrow. We both laughed and a comfortable lull fell over us then. “It will certainly make being friends easier,” he said with
a wry smile. “Not having to keep it a secret from her.”
For a moment, air stopped flowing through my nose and into my lungs. Suspended in self-inflicted suffocation while the wave of pain washed over me, smile was all I could do to not let the effects of that tiny, innocuous, and thoroughly devastating word show up on my face.
Friends.
Why should this news come as a surprise, or bother me? I wondered. The question was ready for me with an answer; leaping up to squeeze and subvert my attempts at feigned lightheartedness, was the truth. Before lunch, I might have made that my only wish and desire—to be friends with Dominic publically. This was when I had all but written that off as possibility, never imagining Emily would actually grant him a second chance, let alone take a liking to him, even if cautiously. The initial conversation had gone better than I could have hoped for, and for me—however unaware of it I might have been—something had changed. I didn’t want it to, but it had not asked my permission.
“Certainly would have made things interesting, though,” he went on abstractedly, his attention aimed to my left, presumably on Emily. “We would have to develop hand signals to communicate.”
Friends. The word was like sulfuric acid, burning the part of my cerebrum thinking it.
He looked down, the corners of his mouth pulling down. “Is something wrong?” he asked, narrowing his eyes and searching my face.
I sucked down a gulp of air, which made my voice choked and whispery. “What? No.” I felt my lips pulled at strange angles, though my mouth had barely moved. He continued staring at me, waiting for me to say more. “Nothing is wrong at all,” I said, sounding slightly more believable. “I’m glad we can be friends, too. All of us friends.” I couldn’t stop saying it; I mashed my lips together, determined to not let a single word out until I was sure it wouldn’t be the same one, screaming like a banshee inside my head.
He inhaled strongly through his nose, blinking slowly and speculatively at me. I tucked a floating tendril behind my ear for no purpose but to ward off the intuition he was exuding toward me. If I didn’t say something soon, he would.
“Do you need to stop at your locker before Music?”
He shook his head slowly, studying me with watchful eyes. “No, I grabbed my binder during last passing period. You?”
“I have mine, too,” I said cheerfully, and continued to smile.
“Sure you’re okay?”
I nodded hard. “Uh-huh. Yes. Definitely.”
He made a noise in his throat, sort of like a grunt. Glancing down at my hands, something akin to surprise registered on his face. He raised both his eyebrows and stared. With some reluctance I followed his gaze and was immediately descended upon a hot blush. There, being pulverized between my white fingers was the napkin I’d packed in my lunchbox. Slowly I released my grip, smoothing it out. Pointless; it was beyond saving.
“May I?” he asked, reaching out to take the napkin from my hand. “Or did you want to keep it?” The amusement in his tone was clear, though he did a stellar job keeping his face stoic and placid. I handed it over, a fresh heat burrowing into my cheeks, and I watched as he turned and tossed it in the trashcan.
I took that instant to pull myself together; taking a deep breath and releasing it, by the time he had turned back around, I thought something less frightening and more passable as a smile might be on my face. It was his turn, however, to look a little drawn. A small furrow appeared between his eyes.
“If you’re at all worried about us,” he said, gesturing to my left with his chin, “don’t be. I made a promise to you and I’ll keep it.” A second or two was spent in utter and total confusion until I realized that “us” referred to him and Emily.
“Oh—no,” I said, upset that I’d led him to those conclusions. Would he always assume I was thinking the worst of him? How was it that he could spot a fallacy or prevarication on me with nothing more than a quick glance, but when it came to recognizing how I felt about him, he remained rooted in the oblivious and unaware? And me: couldn’t I have executed a little more self-control?
“It’s not that, I promise.”
Frustration and disappointment flashed vibrantly across his face. “Well, it’s something.”
“Yes,” I agreed, before I was tempted to deny it. I looked up into his eyes, knowing I couldn’t very well tell him what it was—that was out of the question for numerous reasons—but also knowing I couldn’t let him go on believing it was anxiety over my friendship with Emily that had me acting strangely. “Something,” I said, “but not that, though.” I whispered it firmly, with as much assurance as I could offer, and reached out to touch the back of his hand.
Immediately, his eyes lowered, fixed to where my fingertips brushed against him. As I began to pull away, he did this flicking thing that resulted in the flipping of our hands. My palm was now up, his fingertips pressing into my wrist. He didn’t look up. I waited, tremulous and breathing heavily, but he continued to stare as if transfixed by our joined hands. Then without any warning at all, his eyes took mine. It was as if a dial, one controlling volume and occupancy, suddenly slid all the way to the left. Voices dimmed to silence, motions stilled, and everything other than the two of us vanished from awareness.
Still holding onto me, he took a very small step forward. That was all it took to bring us a few inches apart. I was close enough to feel the warm air gently streaming from his nostrils—eye-level with the shiny scar that ran directly up the middle of his bottom lip. The lip began to curl at one side, inviting me to look up. I did, and very literally went weak in the knees. Fortunately, I locked them before I could crumple, and said a prayer for balance. I felt my body pull forward, lift up to the balls of my feet, then sway back like a lawn sign blown in the wind. He held tight, though, resisting any movement that might take me in the opposite direction. He leaned in another few inches, not quite touching me, but hovering near my ear. Somehow over the roar of my blood pulsing in my ears, I was able to hear my thoughts and identify this experience for what it was: a form of incapacitation. I decided then that touching, for all it implied, was slightly underrated in this case. It would have been like standing before the blaze of an out-of-control forest fire, insisting that you couldn’t feel anything because the fiery licks weren’t touching you. The truth was, plainly, that my skin felt like it was on fire.
I kept my eyes forward—concentrating on the laborious task of breathing in and out, in and out. With my peripheral, I could see him staring straight ahead as if he watched something in the distance. Moving closer still, every muscle in my body tightened, then broke out in a shower of goosebumps. He opened his mouth to speak. I don’t know how I knew, but I could tell he was smiling.
“You’re blushing.” His voice, deep and silky, brushed across my ear as he whispered into it. At that moment, I was fairly confident my skin did me the honor of darkening a couple shades. I was aware of every pore on my body, opening up and breathing him in. He pulled back, stood up straight, and met my eyes. “Can I walk with you to class?” Not trusting the sound of my voice, I nodded.
Now . . . if I could just remember how one went about doing that.
~
Surprisingly, the rest of what had been quite an eventful day so far, proceeded in a relatively unremarkable manner. Eventually the moment between Dominic and me—what had felt like hours suspended in a place outside of time—ended, and we made our way to Music class, my legs taking control of the situation when my brain left me momentarily stunted. Though I wanted to understand, and possibly even lean toward the optimistic, I couldn’t be sure anything had happened at all. What I could be certain of, was what Dominic had said with his own mouth.
Friends.
With Vanya missing from Music class, hopefully by now sleeping off the flu in bed, even that hour passed without anything disastrous occurring. More than that, the time spent with Dominic was enjoyable, if not somewhat surreal. Were we not in this exact same spot, doing everything we could not to loo
k at, or speak to each other a little over a week and a half ago? Incredible how fast things could change . . . and Mr. Balfy—elated to see the two of us in accord with one another—gave the class the entire hour to work on the Senior Piece. By the time the bell had rung, we’d made a little progress and given ourselves plenty to work on the following day. When Dominic dropped me off at fifth period, I slipped through the door with a huge grin on my face, deciding this day was turning out to be rather wonderful—even if all we would ever be was friends.
When I arrived home, eventually making it to my room after stopping first at the greenhouse, the day was quickly promoted from wonderful to fantastic! For there on my bed, still wrapped tidily in butcher paper and twine, was the book I had been waiting over three months to receive: Oscar’s Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol. I let out a squeal of delight, scaring the daylights out of Rhoda, fast asleep and snoring in a patch of sun on the wooden floor. After a very quick nuzzle and rub, sending her back to doggy-dreams, I padded over to my bed and sat down beside the package.
For a minute or two I just held it in my lap, cherishing the substantial weight of it, smoothing out the crinkles in the paper. Tentatively I raised it, pressing it against my nose. I inhaled deeply. A smile broke out on my face. I had yet to be disappointed by the unexplainable phenomenon of the distinct smell classic books carried with them. Originality and artistry was as fragrant as any flower in my opinion. When I could wait no longer, I carefully tore at one corner removing the covering in one piece, then crawled into bed, putting off the homework I would spend the rest of the evening attending to. It didn’t matter; I had no other plans or obligations. While the powdery blue sky beyond my balcony doors began imbuing with pinks and lavenders, I happily turned pages for the next three hours.
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