He took his thumb and gently swiped across the back of my hand once, then dropped the thumb, grazing the skin just below the cuts. “Does it hurt when I do this?”
“No. Not at all,” I assured him.
He nodded and slowly turned my hand over. He was incredibly gentle with me; every movement measured and methodical. Staring down with all the intensity of someone examining something very interesting, he continued to trace small circles over the prominent veins and tendons at my wrist. I watched him for a while, and then I also looked down at the thin blue rivers snaking under glittering milk-white flesh. And then, for no apparent rhyme or reason, as if the idea had only suddenly occurred to him, he raised my wrist and dropped his nose, leisurely. His nose lingered there for a moment, eyes closed and calm. Then, in the slightest of movements, his head tipped upward.
I held my breath while he placed a chaste kiss at the base of my wrist. “How about this?” he asked.
My pulse had sped up some, and my breathing had become short and irregular. “No, that’s, um . . . good.”
An eyebrow flicked upward then fell, as if he had asked and answered his own question. He pulled his lips into his mouth, moistening them, and again moving with purpose, skimmed from my wrist to the curve of my palm, pausing intermittently for brief, firm kisses along the way. My skin prickled. Summoned, the hairs at the back of my neck raised at the same moment my arms and shoulders sprouted gooseflesh.
Pressing one last kiss to the very center of my hand, he glanced up. His eyes were dark, the color of sapphires hewn into a mine, glinting in the moonlight shone down from a fissure in the ceiling. Thick, black lashes hovered closely, brushing every now and then at the hollows above his cheeks. He spoke again, and though my heartbeat was neither shy nor modest about beating for him, it was very quiet and I was startled.
“And this,” he drawled, the deep voice husky and melted. “This feels all right to you?”
My throat was too thick to speak. I swallowed a couple times before replying with something mumbly and incoherent. His mouth entertained the thought of smiling, but he bit it off, a shadow of a furrow appearing between the dark gem eyes. When he spoke, his voice dripped like wax sliding down a candle.
“Let me try one more thing—just to make sure.” I offered no remonstrations.
Extending my arm, he pushed the sleeve upward and continued his work from my wrist, all the way up to the crook in my elbow, stopping every couple of inches to deposit a generous kiss before moving on.
My breath left me, tremulous and erratic. Through the lightweight cardigan my body radiated with heat, like a fire blazing beneath a blanket. And even my veins gave me away, the pulse mad with fervor, thumping against the skin.
He held my arm aloft, but pulled back to look at me with eyes serious and sinuous. “And none of that caused you any discomfort?”
Beyond the capacity to speak, I shook my head.
“That’s good,” he said quietly and lowered my arm. Then his eyes were suddenly locked on mine; something had been decided. I waited for only a second before realizing what it was. “Then this shouldn’t cause you any pain either.” Leaning forward, he searched for any sign of protest. I gave him none, but felt my shoulder blades pull together, as if an eager force impelled and encouraged me from behind.
Less than an inch from my lips, he paused, his eyes full of longing, blazing blue. In a study that made me blush, his eyes poured over my lips. I could feel the warmth of him swarming all around us, leaving his nose and touching me where I wanted his lips to be.
A hand rose up from somewhere; he caressed my bottom lip with his thumb, then slid his hand around to cup the back of my neck, pulling me toward him the last couple of inches. When our lips finally met, my stomach—hard like granite—suddenly gave way and I dissolved into him.
It started out slow.
I told myself to remain still and let him guide me, to respond, but careful not to try anything that might be considered strange or wrong. I had only one chance to do this right; the wise thing to do was defer to the one who had experience kissing another person. I gave him my lips completely, but did not take his.
Dominic’s explorations held no such reservations, inquisitively roving from the top to the bottom, then both at the same time, drawing me forward and inward, upward and wayward. It was like spinning in a glass ball. And it was then that this compliancy came to an abrupt end. Prudence and caution had their time, and now it was over.
While Dominic had expertly managed the kiss with control, I had proceeded to lose all of mine. I had no idea my hands were in his hair until I was drawing him toward me, crushing my mouth against his. I felt him smile against my lips, only faintly aware of the hand at my neck squeezing. The space between us unoccupied now felt like something that needed to be conquered and subverted. For weeks there had remained inexorable space between us. No more.
I all but leapt at him.
After that, I lost track of the kiss; it was now uncharitable. I couldn’t tell where his lips started and mine ended, and my mind . . . it became a loose thing, unable to hold any thoughts that weren’t explicitly him. With equal abandon and desire one sought the other; which one, I wasn’t sure, nor did I care. I took as much as I gave, and then I gave him more, surrendering to a kiss that stole me of my breath and pried uncertainty, fear, and doubt from my soul.
When he eventually removed his mouth form mine, both of us panting, my lips felt swollen and loved. Glowing, I was the moon. Dominic bent his head, resting his forehead against me, the eyes wakefully shut.
I couldn’t shut my eyes, however. Never had I felt more awake than in this moment.
Dominic’s chest rose and fell as he worked to catch his breath. “I have to tell you something.” He chuckled, but it was a weak sound deprived of oxygen. “And I need my mouth to do it.” He inhaled and exhaled, deeply, and angled his head to regard me with a look I had never seen before. My chest suddenly felt constricted; as if Dominic was made of bronze and my heart a magnet, pushed against the ribs and flesh preventing it from going home.
“Foster, I’m in love with you.”
It was with those six words that I thought I understood that expression about time standing still. Something like a million years and no time at all left a flavor of uncanny knowledge lingering in the inches separating our faces.
I took Dominic’s cheek in my hand and brought him forward, close enough that there would be no mistake, no question about the truth when I said with all my heart’s strength, “I love you, Dominic.”
Chapter Thirty-six
“Finally—you’re here!” Emily gave a whoop of glee when she noticed I had arrived in the doorway of her dim bedroom, glowing with television light. She sat up in the unmade bed, looking beautiful in a baggy t-shirt and black spandex shorts, despite having been very ill for the last forty-eight hours. It was a relief to see her looking well.
“Em, you look wonderful. How are you feeling?” I asked, smiling as I set my purse down on a chair near the door.
“Way better than I was two days ago,” she replied. “Whatever you had, though, that was not what I had. I felt fine after the first day, but mom pulled the parent-card and wouldn’t let me leave the house all weekend. No joke,” she said, taking hold of her head in her hands, “my brain was going to explode, or melt, or just turn off if I watched even one more episode of Doctor Who.” Her hair was loose and tousled, concealing half her face as she aimed the remote at the television before it went black. Immediately, she switched on the standing lamp near her bed, bringing the slightly stuffy room to life. “I started watching season one last night and couldn’t believe how good it was. So frickin’ good. I don’t think I even went to sleep last night. If I did, it wasn’t until this morning. I made it all the way up to season four, but one can only take so much science fiction, you know?”
Though I had never seen the show myself, I nodded along enthusiastically, absorbing Emily’s exuberance. Staring directly at me, E
mily lips suddenly trembled and she gave a breathy laugh. “Woah,” she said, and smiled as if she had surprised herself. “I don’t know where all that came from. I think between the show and being confined to this bedroom, with no one but the dogs and Jake to talk to, has made me a little crazy.”
At that moment, Jake appeared behind me, bare-chested and with a sub-sandwich poking halfway out of his mouth. “I can vouch for that,” he mumbled around the sandwich, one side of his jaw working feverishly. He spun a finger near his ear, signing crazy. “I can’t get her to talk about anything but the show.”
“How could you possibly be hungry? We just ate dinner twenty minutes go.” Emily regarded her brother with a look of baleful incredulity; then realizing whom she was talking to, rolled her eyes and said in dry tones, “Jake didn’t like the show. He couldn’t keep up with the plot shifts.”
Jake, leaning in the other side of the doorway, shrugged a wide, lazy shoulder. “Nothing made sense,” he said.
“It wasn’t supposed to—and yes, it did,” she said angrily, just a bit defensive. “Maybe if you had stayed awake for longer than two minutes.”
He shrugged again and stuffed the end of the sandwich in his mouth with one finger; like he was feeding a pencil into a sharpener. “I was tired,” he explained easily, brushing his hands together to remove excess crumbs, then reached into the pocket of his navy blue board shorts. Even I couldn’t help but goggle a little when he came away with another sandwich, wrapped in cellophane. “I spent the whole day at the beach surfing. You know how it is after being in the sun all day. I was wiped.”
At this painful reminder, Emily’s brows lowered and her eyes narrowed into a glare. “What do you want, Jake? Foster is here to see me. Go bother Maddie.”
“I can’t,” he replied, a gloomy look crossing his face. “She’s got some big deal Math tournament until late tonight.” He bit off another hulking bite and pushed it into his cheek. “I’m bored.”
Emily grinned. “That isn’t my problem. Go away.”
Continuing to chew industriously, Jake glanced from Emily to me, and back to Emily; his bushy white eyebrows knit together. “Foster’s my friend, too,” he said finally. “I wanna stay and hear about her date. Did he kiss you, Fost?”
Before I could answer, Emily responded in a voice that could have been confused with calm if I didn’t know her better. “No.”
“What—why not?”
Emily crossed her arms over her chest, tipped her head down. “Because you’re an abandoner.”
Jake swallowed prematurely and exclaimed, “Not-uh! I stayed with you all night on Friday. I even made you mac and cheese.”
“Which you ate—all of it.”
“Wull”—Jake threw an exasperated hand into the air—“that’s ‘cause you said you weren’t gonna eat it! I couldn’t let it go to waste.”
Now it was Emily who looked bored. “Get out.”
“I think we should let Fost decide,” Jake hedged and turned to me smiling, full of boyish charm.
“Out!”
Keeping a watchful eye on Emily, Jake pitched his voice low and full of dread, whispering, “I’m not kidding about the show. Run, Fost. Run while you still can.”
Emily plucked a pillow off her bed and prepared to launch it across the room, no doubt realized that it was me she would hit, offered threats instead. “Get out, idiot,” she said, menacingly, “before I sic Slater on you.”
Slater—twisted like a shiny brown pretzel and snoozing soundly on her back in the middle of Emily’s room—grunted and gave a thin shake to one of her large paws aloft in the air, as if she tried to move and obey, then promptly gave up.
Jake erupted in laughter, a fine spray of crumbs flying from his mouth. He gave the supine dog a look of pity. “What’d you do to her, Em?” he asked accusingly. “You literally talked her into a coma, didn’t you?”
Emily, like the red haze that looms atop a volcano, rose from the bed and padded over to where Jake leaned and I hovered in her doorway.
A grinning Jake said, “I mean it, Fost! Don’t end up like Slater,” before arching backward, only millimeters out of arm’s reach as Emily clawed for his bare chest. Taking my wrist, she pulled me forward and slammed the door.
“Never mind my brain, though,” Emily said, as if we had never been interrupted. She raised one brow suggestively. “Let’s hear about that date. And if you leave out a single detail, Foster Kelly . . .” She trailed off ominously; her face lit up instantly, however, when I offered up her favorite smoothie. She took it with two hands, secured her lips around the straw, closed her eyes, and drank deeply. Bright orange liquid surged up the tube. Emily sighed, though didn’t fully release the straw when she said reverently, “It tastes like happiness in a cup,” and slurped again. “This doesn’t mean you can omit any details, though.”
“No,” I agreed laughing, and took a seat on the edge of her bed. “Absolutely not.”
She dropped down beside me just as a knock sounded on her door.
“Go away, Jake!” she hollered. “I mean it. Unless you want to wake up tomorrow without nipples, you will leave us alone.”
The door swung open, revealing a pouty-faced Jake on his knees, supplicating hands clasped together. “Pleeeeeease.” Having spent the majority of the day at The House of Hope with Dominic, Jake appeared no older and no less competent at pulling my heartstrings than one of my kids. “Please,” came another obtestation, and this time he removed a Twinkie from his pocket, offering it to his sister like a holy sacrament.
Emily gave an unappreciative snort. I could tell she wasn’t thinking twice about gladly refusing him and started to do just that when I touched her hand.
“It’s all right with me if he stays, Em,” I said and smiled. “You know you’re going to end up telling him everything, anyway.”
Though Emily recognized this as the truth, she gave her twin a long considering look, saying nothing for minute. Then, “Poop patrol—two weeks,” she bargained.
Jake groaned, dropping his head to his chest. “I just had it last week.”
“Take it or leave it,” Emily offered lambently, a victorious smile already tugging at the corner of her mouth.
“Deal.” Jake sprinted across the room, hurtling a recumbent Slater, and belly flopped onto the bed between us. “Tell me everything,” he said, flipping onto his back in one graceful twist, “and don’t leave out any details, either.”
~
Other than a first date where I received my first kiss—from the most wonderful, kind-hearted, sensational boy, who told me plainly that he loved me—not a whole lot had changed. At least, not in any obvious ways: Dominic still picked me up before school each day; I went to all my classes, ate lunch with my friends and my . . . boyfriend—a word I couldn’t think or say aloud without incurring the flutters and a giddy smile; my kids and The House of Hope were still very much a part of my routine, as was spending time with my parents in the evenings; only now, Dominic was included when he wasn’t expected at home.
There were changes, however—immeasurable and unquantifiable—that while obscured from sight, assured me that I was no longer the person I once was: little things, such as looking at myself in the mirror and deciding that maybe I liked my hair. This occurring to me on the cusp of an evening where Dominic had spent a majority of the movie with his hand in my hair, toying with the tight curls spilling from the nape of my neck.
More noticeable was the amount of stumbles I had in a day—or lack thereof to be more specific. Entertaining zero possibility of ever being one hundred percent cured of my clumsiness, it was almost startling to realize the difference it made walking with my head up rather than down. I would have thought it the other way around: that watching my feet would prevent more accidents, but it was not the case. And when I didn’t rush to pragmatism’s side or divvy up logic and reason to explain the unexplainable, I recognized this, too, as yet another change.
I was still the quietest in our grou
p, and I imagined I always would be; some things about my nature would always remain the same. But when I did speak, even to my own ears I sounded more decided about things; less ambiguous, more confident. Less thought went into casual conversation; when discussing trivial things, I spoke without need of a filter, and a time or two I found myself disagreeing with people.
It was Emily, actually, who touched on this subject one day while the two of us stood in line for lunch, meeting my eyes portentously after I sidestepped a backpack lying incongruously on the cafeteria floor. I tripped and fumbled on objects considerably less overt. She remarked then that I seemed different to her. Not a bad different, just . . . different.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” she observed, keenly.
“Yes,” I replied, a slow smile matching her own. “It’s him.”
~
One way or another, Dominic was bound and determined to change my opinion. The rich aroma of chocolate wafted through the downstairs as if a leash were leading it through each room. These weren’t just any brownies, Dominic purported: they were dark chocolate Ghirardelli brownies. I was told in no uncertain terms that these brownies would change my life. I amended my earlier thoughts, as my father appeared in the archway of the kitchen, nose elevated like a hound dog tracking a scent in the air. The scent was not evidently limited to downstairs alone.
“Wow,” my father said, exhaling. “Those smell great.” His glasses were smudged and printed, so I couldn’t see his eyes. “How much longer?”
“Five minutes,” Dominic and I answered in unison, then laughed.
“I’ll be back.” He started to turn and go, then whirled back around. “Do I have enough time to take a shower before the movie? If not, I can skip it, I might just . . . smell.”
“Definitely,” Dominic answered. “The brownies still need to sit and we haven’t made the popcorn yet.”
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