Still a bit dazed by Dominic’s response, I huffed, “I’ll have an iced tea, please.”
“And I’ll have a Pepsi,” Dominic added.
Joan twirled toward Dominic like a wayward ribbon. “A Pepsi it is,” she said. “I’ll get those started and be back with you shortly.” She said something else, but my attention was elsewhere and I missed the short ventose speech.
As Joan headed off behind me, Dominic and I sat in silence, staring at one another. He searched my face, rubbing his lips meditatively. “Well,” he sighed, “you didn’t throw your water at me, so am I safe to assume you’re not angry?”
“Angry?”
“For not asking first?” he replied.
“For not asking first?”
He laughed, and his sapphire eyes sparkled in the candlelight. “This could take a while if you’re planning to repeat everything I say.”
“Sorry.” I released the breath I hadn’t known I was holding. “I . . . I didn’t expect that.”
He nodded. “My plan was to ask you tonight—officially, but”—his eyes flicked somewhere behind me, focusing on something or someone I couldn’t see, then blinked back toward me—“the moment felt right and I just . . . went for it.” He smiled crookedly. “Do you mind?”
“Do I mi—” We both laughed as I began to repeat him for the third time. “No,” I said slow and precise. “I do not mind at all.”
“I would still like to ask you . . . ” he said, a lingering note in his voice. The confidence melted away from his face, revealing a more sober Dominic underneath. “A little bit later,” he finished.
I leaned across the table and took his hand and squeezed. “My answer will be the same as it is now,” I told him. “Yes.”
Chapter Thirty-five
Joan’s behavior had improved slightly throughout the course of the evening, though she still favored Dominic when taking our order and forgot to bring me a fresh set of silverware when I dropped them on the floor. Still, I felt a little shameful for having such harsh opinions of her. Perhaps she was that way with all her customers, I thought, as she stacked our dirty plates neatly—the male customers, anyway.
“I hope everything was to your liking,” she said, lifting the plates from the linen cloth. Bent over, she settled her eyes on Dominic and added in hushed tones, “And, are we ready for desert?”
Then she winked. Every harsh thought came hurtling to the surface.
“Ah, yes . . .” Dominic replied, stealing a glance at me and swallowing back a laugh. “That would be great, thank you.”
“Wonderful,” Joan purred, and left us.
Dominic cocked his head to the side, casting a long shadow on the wall. “I would pay a million dollars to read your thoughts right now.”
I flushed, knowing that anything I told him would come off sounding both petty and jealous. Never—not even when girls at school vied for his attention or said hello to him in the hallways—had I felt like this. I couldn’t figure out what was different about Joan’s affinity for Dominic—which really wasn’t all that different from every other girl who found him attractive—that had my insides roiling like I had swallowed a bottle of vitriol.
I felt my lips twitch, then blurted before I could think better of it, “I was thinking Joan might benefit from a seminar about appropriate workplace behavior.”
Dominic burst out laughing. “That might be the most diplomatic answer I’ve ever heard someone give in response to jealously.”
I didn’t feel all that diplomatic at the moment. “Thank you,” I replied, a little petulant.
“I honestly can’t begin to say where her head’s at.” He shook his head dazedly. “But there are two things you should know: one, you have nothing, absolutely nothing, to be jealous of,” he declared and reaching for my hand, he bent forward and kissed my fingers. “And two . . .” His eyes wandered over my head and he smiled broadly, “I think she deserves a pass for the wink.”
Joan sauntered up from behind me before I could finish processing, a plate of something steaming in her hands. She placed the dessert between us, along with fresh linens and forks.
She stood back and placed her hands on her hips. “Is there anything else I can get you two?”
“We’re good, thank you,” Dominic said, his eyes darting from the dessert to me.
“Very well then,” she said, bringing her hands together in front of her. “I’ll leave you both to enjoy your Banana’s Foster.”
My eyes snapped up. My what? How did she know my name, I wondered? Quizzically, I stared at Dominic, searching for clarification.
He was still watching me with intensely amused eyes, having trouble not speaking, I thought.
“Did she . . . am I . . . I’m missing something,” I stated without criticism, too flummoxed to mind any insipidity.
“That,” Dominic gestured meaningfully to the dessert, “is called Banana’s Foster.”
I felt my eyes pull wide and incredulous. I whispered conspiratorially, “There’s a dessert with my name?”
Dominic’s eyes squeezed shut in jubilation. “There is,” he said a moment later. “And I’m guessing you’ve never had it—let alone heard of it!”
A delayed blush set fire to my cheeks. “I haven’t,” I admitted, a little embarrassed. I leaned in closer, studying the foreign looking dessert in avid curiosity.
Though the lighting was poor, I could discern easily enough that the very top layer was vanilla ice cream, bespattered with a dark grainy ingredient I determined was cinnamon. What was beneath that, I could not be as sure; a spongy substance, pliable and gooey, was smothered in sauce. The chunks—even if they hadn’t been a soft obvious light yellow—were by far the most fragrant element of the dessert. The puissance of banana wafted through my nostrils, cloaking the air with its powerful scent.
“I couldn’t remember whether or not you liked banana,” Dominic broke in, staring at the dessert as he spoke. “I thought about asking you, but I really wanted it to be a surprise, and decided to ask Emily instead. And she told me she was pretty sure you were allergic.”
“What?” I asked, shaking my head. “But I’m not.”
He met my eyes, smirking. “Oh, I know. And I knew Emily was lying,” he said smugly, giving a long blink. “I called over earlier this week to see if the chef would be willing to make it since it wasn’t on the menu. I’ve never had it either,” he said, sliding a fork from the napkin, “But I figured with a name like Banana’s Foster it had to be really good, right?”
“That was very sweet of you to do that for me. It looks amazing.”
He smiled, and pushed the fork in front of me. “Ladies first.”
I would have felt partially responsible if Banana’s Foster tasted like a sweaty sock—it didn’t. For once my name had done me very proud.
“By the look on your face,” Dominic began gravely, “I see that you are repulsed and would like me to return it immediately.”
I opened one dreamy eye. When he started pulling the plate in his direction, I clamped onto the other side, bringing it firmly back to where it was. He grinned, pleased. “Forgive me, my mistake,” he amended. “So what does it taste like?”
I rolled the bite around my mouth, savoring the textures, the warm and the cool, the sweet richness of the bananas. “Magic.” I sighed. “You try,” I prompted around a full mouth.
Dominic laughed, and picking up a fork said, “Okay, I try,” and sliced in to the melting ice cream.
~
Dinner—the whole evening—had been flawless. The food was some of the best I had ever tasted. My stomach gurgled, satiated and content, full of bread, soup, salad, bow tie ravioli with scallops, and a few bites of Dominic’s shrimp linguini. Somehow I managed to fit more than my share of dessert into that place of perennial vacancy. And now, I was very, very full.
Dominic carefully set his fork down in front of him and instantly, without a word spoken, I knew.
My crowded stomach squeezed as I saw
that look of stark fear cross his face. Had it been there all night, I wondered? If so, he had concealed it expertly. However, the light that shone from behind the loud eyes grew dimmer and heavier somehow.
Taking a deep breath, Dominic met my eyes and nodded wordlessly. “Have you had a good time so far?”
My hands were sweaty, but I didn’t care. I reached for him, speaking fervently. “I have had the most amazing night with you.”
He smiled genuinely. “Good. That’s all I wanted for you. I think it goes without being said that we both know what tonight is all about—but . . . it is also our first date,” he said softly, glancing down at our hands, “and I wanted it to be special for you.”
“It was—is,” I corrected, smiling brightly—too brightly. I was nervous and the look of woe and imminent doom on his face hurt my heart, so I overcompensated with a blinding, dreadful smile. “You made everything incredibly special for me. I could not have imagined a more perfect date. And there isn’t anyone I would have wanted to share this with. I didn’t exactly have expectations, but if I had, this would have exceeded all of them.” I spoke windily, wanting to resume him with comfort and confidence. But it was as if my confirmations and assurances only inflicted more pain into his face; each declaration an arrow, the latter puncturing him deeper than the former.
It was only a shadow, but from where I sat and his plaintive posture over the candle, Dominic’s face no longer retained its natural bronzy pallor. He looked gray.
Releasing something between a sigh and wince, he said quietly, “I think it’s time I tell you everything.”
Summoning calm, I held a steady gaze and nodded, resisting the urge to reassure him yet again that there was nothing he could say that would jeopardize my feelings for him. “Okay.”
“I’ve had trouble deciding where to start,” he conceded, leaning back but keeping his hands fisted loosely on the table. “How far back I should go. I guess the beginning’s as good a place as any, right?” He quirked a sad smile and his eyelashes swept low.
These words now rang with plangent familiarity. The first time I heard this line spoken it was by Mr. Michaels, moments before Dominic poured out to him the story I was moments from hearing. The second time Dominic had spoken them to me as I, reluctantly at first, recalled the day I fell in love with music. And here we were again. I wondered idly how this phrase had come to be. Did at one time people work their way backward? Or start from the middle and weave around the events circuitously? I couldn’t imagine that I would ever be one to alter sequential history. For what was any story without its beginning?
“My whole life I’ve lived in only one place,” he said, his voice a soft, deep hum. “I think I’ve mentioned to you that my grandfather spent most of his life serving in the Military.” I nodded but he didn’t look up. “Often we would go and stay with him and my grandmother—sometimes just my sisters and me if my parents needed a time alone, but the house, the neighborhood we grew up in always stayed the same.”
He paused to collect his thoughts. “Our neighborhood was looted with kids—tons of them, all different ages. I can’t remember a single time I went outside to play and there wasn’t at least ten kids looking to do the same. Usually, though, it was the same three people I hung around with—my three best friends, Justin, Matthew, and Summer. Justin had family in the army too, so we always had that in common, and Matthew and Summer were siblings very close in age. Justin, Matthew, and I weren’t more than a couple months apart in age, and Summer younger by only fourteen months. Justin I’ve known since I was three, and Matthew and Summer moved in next door to us when I was five. Sorry,” he apologized suddenly. “I know this a lot of backstory. I’m just trying to make sure I don’t leave anything out.”
“No, please, I’m—” I bit back the rest of the sentence, saying instead, “Take your time.”
“Basically, we all grew up together; sleepovers at each other’s houses, family vacations, and of course getting into as much trouble as we could.” He reached out absently, taking the straw in his fingers, and began to stir slow circles around his water glass, smiling.
“Our favorite game to play was called Army Patrol. It’s completly made up. We invented it one day after our moms told all three of us we did not have permission to hunt the neighborhood cats with our BB guns.” He chuckled. “We were kind of fiends at seven. Anyway, the way it was played was two would be officers, while the other two would play terrorists attempting to blow up our forts. Justin was a bit on the shy side. He tended to let the three of us do the plotting and would go along with whatever. Matthew was very meticulous. He had a certain way of doing things and didn’t like to deviate from plans once they were made. And Summer . . . Summer was intrepid—brave as they come. We usually took turns being the General. She refused to be my Lieutenant based on the fact alone that she was a girl. Of everyone, I definitely fought the most with her. But it never lasted very long. Really, there wasn’t a day that went by, unless one of us was really sick or on vacation, that we didn’t see each other. We went through elementary school, middle school, and eventually started high school together.”
“Summer had already started to make girl friends in the third or fourth grade, but she started preferring their company to ours around the sixth grade. She would still hang out with us after school and on the weekends, though, if she had nothing else to do. Justin . . . he sort of fell away from our group in ninth grade when he met some people who in his words ‘understood him better’—whatever that meant. They were a really bad influence on him; he started to change. For as long as I could, I tried for a while to convince him they were not people he should be hanging out with. I even went so far as to say that if he didn’t like us anymore—fine, but at least find a group of people that didn’t thrash on him and make him do stupid stuff for their enjoyment.”
He sighed deeply, letting go of the straw suddenly. “He wouldn’t listen to me. Said I was trying to control him. The things he was saying, it didn’t sound anything like him. I finally figured out that they were saying stuff behind our backs—brainwashing him. I tried. For as long as I could, I tried talking sense to him. But eventually I got so frustrated . . . I gave up trying.”
“But I’m stubborn.” A touch of humor reappeared as he raked a hand through his hair, returning once more to the story. “And I pushed Justin—too much so.” He angled his head, eyes combing over my face. “It’s what I always do when I want something badly enough. In pushing Justin, I ultimately pushed him away. I thought by being relentless, I was being a good friend. What I was being was arrogant. One day I was following him down a hallway at school, railing at him that he was throwing his life away, when he turned around and punched me in the face. Right here.” He pointed to the scar on his bottom lip, rubbing a finger over the raised shiny line.
Riveted by the story, I almost missed the explanation of the curious scar. Learning of its origin simultaneously soothed and unsettled me. I winced, as he continued to stroke the battle wound. No doubt it had long since healed; still, the thought of someone—a friend no less—taking an armored fist to Dominic’s defenseless lips made my stomach ping.
“It was a tough break. Matthew and I both dealt with it in our own ways; him trying to ‘handle’ his emotions, and me brooding openly about it. Even Summer took it pretty hard. She would try and talk to Justin at school and he would pretend he couldn’t hear her. Walk right past her as if she was invisible. We all were hurt, but . . . life went on, I guess you could say.
“Matthew and I remained close all throughout high school. And actually he’s one of my best friends to this day.” He had his elbow on the table, his head propped by his fingertips at the temple. Closing his eyes, he breathed in deeply through his nose. “Not in a hundred, thousand, millions years would I have ever imagined what happened between us. Suddenly she was thirteen and I noticed.” He laughed out loud. “I’d looked at her every day since we were five, only ever seeing a gap-toothed, freckled-face girl with curl
y copper hair.” He glanced up for the first time and smiled. “A little lighter than yours,” he commented. “Then one day her freckles lightened, her teeth filled in, and she lost the pig tails. I went over to Matthew’s house, like I did every day after school—to watch a movie and play video games—and there’s Summer, answering the door in a tank top and jean shorts—with someone else’s figure underneath it.”
I was watching Dominic very closely at this point; the way his mouth unfolded, went soft and proprietary around Summer’s name. How he gazed into the candlelight, conjuring Summer in his mind. There was no conscious effort put into these gestures. Nor was there yet any evidence of these claims. Still, I could see plainly that Dominic loved this girl.
“I can’t remember now,” he continued, smiling, “how long I stood there like an idiot, acting as if I had never seen a girl before. She gave me a funny look, asked me if I was okay, and then let me in like she always had. Obviously she was not experiencing any of the same feelings I was having. And that, I’m pretty sure, was the moment I discovered what a crushed heart felt like. Pathetic,” he laughed and shook his head.
“So Summer went back to whatever she was doing before I came over and I found Matthew in the living room. He put on some horrible movie like Nightmare on Elm Street for us to watch. But I couldn’t get into it. I kept pretending to stretch, leaning backward over the couch, and peeking around the corner to see if Summer was coming down the stairs. I thought I was doing a decent job playing it cool until Matthew, who didn’t even look at me when he spoke, said, ‘Dude, you’re so pathetic. Just go ask her out already.’”
Dominic met my eyes, and so used to the distance in them by now, was startled by the look of propinquity and attendance.
He said importantly, “You would have liked that, I think. I blushed so badly, it about burned a layer of skin off my face.”
I shook my head. “I have a hard time imagining that,” I said softly, “You nervous.” I shook my head again. “No, I can’t see it.”
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