The Ex Talk

by Rachel Lynn Solomon

  15

  “You didn’t have to do this,” Dominic slurs when I find him hunched over the bar, proving exactly why I had to do this. A few empty shot glasses are stacked next to him. He has one cheek pressed to the countertop, and I don’t want to think about how sticky his face is going to be when he sits up. God, it’s strange to see him like this outside of work, like seeing your middle school principal at the grocery with a cart full of Lean Cuisines.

  “Maybe not,” I say, sidestepping a beer puddle. “But I can’t host the show alone if you fall in a ditch on your way home, so here I am.”

  He couldn’t have picked a divier place to drink away his sorrows, if that was in fact what he was doing. Or maybe he was just being young and sprightly. The bar is small and dark and playing Nickelback, which should on its own be a reason to shut it down. It also just feels damp.

  “Shay.” He schools his features into this expression of utmost concentration. With one hand, he strokes the counter, his ear intimate enough with it to contract an STD. “Shay. Shhh. I think I can hear the ocean.”

  “I’m sure you can, buddy.” I pat his back, and it’s meant to be reassuring, maybe even a little patronizing. It’s rare for me to feel any kind of power with Dominic, and I can’t say I’m not enjoying this. But I can feel the flex of his shoulders beneath his shirt, the firmness of muscle. How warm he is.

  I drop my hand.

  “Careful. I might have cooties.” He snickers at this.

  My head is starting to throb. I should have stopped after one glass of wine, but at least I’m not as far gone as he is. If I’d said yes to drinks earlier, would we both be this plastered?

  “I’m so sorry about him,” I tell the bartender, a woman with full sleeves of tattoos who looks like she could probably bench-press two Dominics. “I didn’t realize I’d be taking care of a six-year-old when I came to pick him up.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ve seen much worse.” She fills up a glass of water, plunks it in front of him.

  “Drink,” I instruct, and though he grumbles, he manages a few sips. “Have you eaten anything?” I interpret his shrug as a no. “Do you serve food?” I ask the bartender.

  “Just fries and tots,” she says, so I order one of each.

  Since I don’t want to leave until he has a bit of food in his stomach, I hoist myself onto the too-tall stool next to him. Our baskets of grease arrive, along with a bottle of ketchup with just enough inside to make it look like I’m doing something obscene when I slap it against my palm.

  “Wow. You really just get right to it,” Dominic says.

  I give the bottle another hard shake before the ketchup comes out.

  Despite this bar looking like you wouldn’t trust anything that comes out of its kitchen, the food is crisp and salted to perfection. I am eating Tater Tots with my former nemesis in a dive bar at eleven o’clock on a Monday night. My life has ceased to make sense.

  After he’s had enough to stop swaying in his seat, I figure it’s safe for us to leave. He struggles to extract his wallet from his back pocket, though, so I fish out my own. “I’ll pay you back later,” he says.

  “Oh, I know you will.”

  The bartender passes back my credit card. “You two have a good night.”

  You two. It’s not an implication that we’re together, just that we are two human beings leaving a bar at the same time.

  It might be a Monday, but that doesn’t stop Capitol Hill. Hipsters loiter outside bars, the chilly April air thick with cigarette smoke and weed. Dominic isn’t wearing a jacket, just the slate-gray button-down he had on at work that’s come untucked.

  He slings an arm around my shoulders and slumps against me, which, given our height difference, must look comical. After a moment’s hesitation, I reach around his waist to steady him. It’s the closest we’ve ever been—even closer when his shirt rides up, and for the briefest moment, my fingers graze the warm skin of his lower back.

  I draw back so suddenly that he attempts to right himself, relying more on his own legs than on my five-two frame. “Sorry. I was probably putting too much weight on you.” He pats the shoulder of my jacket. “You’re tiny.”

  “The least you can do is try not to insult me after I rescue you from Nickelback and Jägermeister.”

  “It wasn’t an insult.” He stares down at me, his gaze impossible to read as always. I feel not just tiny but like I’m giving a presentation at a senior staff meeting wearing only nipple tassels and my favorite public radio socks—I wouldn’t be Shay Goldstein if I didn’t have multiple pairs—with a fish holding a microphone beneath the words Ira Bass. “What’s the tallest guy you’ve dated?”

  “I don’t understand how that’s relevant.” And yet as I think through my dating history, my wine-jumbled mind snags on the memory of us in the station kitchen. The way he loomed over me, caging me in. Pressing the glass of water to my cheek. How I felt small but safe, and a whole lot of other feelings I never gave my body permission to feel. Feelings I am definitely not experiencing right now.

  I guess it doesn’t hurt to humor him. “I dated someone a few years ago who was six one.”

  “Silly,” he says, and he boops my nose. He’s going to die when I rub this in his face tomorrow. “You’re supposed to say me. Where’s the car?”

  “Since I was in the middle of a glass of wine when you texted, I took a Lyft.” I pull up my phone to order another one, then maneuver us to a bench facing the street. He flops onto it next to me, head dropping to my shoulder. With this lack of control over his limbs, he’s like once of those inflatable tube creatures at car dealerships. But heavier. And smelling only a little like alcohol—much less than I’d think after spending a couple of hours in that bar—and a little like sweat, but mostly like Dominic. Woodsy and clean.

  “Why did you drink this much?” I ask.

  “Thassagoodstory.” He stretches it into one long drunken word. “I was already buzzed after Mahoney’s. I had to drink away my misery after you told me a story about a fake dog so you wouldn’t have to hang out with me.”

  “He’s real! His name is Steve! I have photos!” I rush to get out my phone again, but Dominic just holds up a hand, laughing.

  “I know. I know. Then I got home, and you were in a sexy Gritty costume, and I guess I wasn’t done celebrating the show. And you know. Being young and sprightly and everything.” He waves a hand at this. “And then I started thinking about how there was no one I could ask to come out with me. I don’t even like going out that much. Not enough to get in the habit of doing it alone. But there I was. Drinking alone at a bar on a Monday night, and I figured drinking more would help me feel less like shit about it.”

  At first, I can’t formulate words. This isn’t the Dominic who teased me about Puget Sounds or even the Dominic who fed me truffles in the dark, his teeth on the tips of my fingers. I try to picture a version of Dominic lying on a couch in his comfy sweats, idly scrolling through Netflix but not finding anything to watch, texting with me because he had no one else to text with. Going out alone because he had no one else to ask. He grew up here, so this makes me even more curious about his background. He said he’s the youngest of five kids, and I’m not sure where his siblings live or if they’re close. I don’t know which Dominic this is, and it makes me both hesitant and curious.

  His confession turns me serious, drags out a secret of my own. “I feel lonely sometimes, too,” I say in a quiet voice. “I basically have one friend, and she might be getting a job on the other side of the country.”

  “I’m so sorry,” he says, and it sounds like he means it. Then he brightens, straightening his posture. “I’ll be your friend!”

  “That sounds like the alcohol talking.”

  “We’re not friends?” There’s an odd vulnerability there. He seems hurt, maybe, that I wouldn’t consider us friends.

 
“No, no,” I hurry to say. Are we friends? “We can be friends. We’re friends.”

  He drops his head to my shoulder again, and I make myself stay very, very still. “Good.”

  The Lyft shows up then, relief of reliefs, and I manage not to sprain anything while helping this giant into a Prius.

  Once we’re inside, the driver confirms the address before returning to an impassioned argument about soccer with whoever’s on the other end of his Bluetooth. The throbbing in my head has become a maddening, insistent tattoo. I let out a long breath as I relax against the seat, shutting my eyes for a moment.

  “You smell good,” Dominic says, and my eyes fly open.

  “Oh—I, uh, took a bath earlier. It’s probably the lavender bubble bath.”

  “When we were texting?”

  “Mm-hmm,” I manage. Yep, this will be what keeps me up tonight. “Just a typical wild Monday night. Right up there with drinking alone.”

  “Have I said thank you yet?”

  “Nope.”

  “Thank you,” he says emphatically, seeming to come back to himself a bit more, at least, the part of him that’s genuine. The part of him that’s peeked through a few times since we started this whole charade. “I mean it. I know I could have found my own way home, but I’ll probably feel a lot less like death tomorrow, thanks to you.”

  “You’re welcome. I was the one who encouraged you to go out, so. I felt bad.”

  “Maybe, but I’m the one who decided to do Jägerbombs.”

  When a streetlamp catches his face, the light hangs on the cut of his jaw, the curve of his mouth. It’s rude that he looks good even sloshed. Even with—especially with—his hair disheveled. I like messy Dominic, the Dominic who is literally less buttoned up than he is at work.

  “I hope I didn’t get in the way of you trying to get someone’s number or anything.” Shit. I hate myself the moment I say it. Why why why why why.

  He lifts an eyebrow. “You didn’t. It’s been a very long drought.”

  “Your last relationship ended about a year ago?” I ask, and he nods. “It’s been about the same amount of time for me, too.”

  A very long drought. Does that mean he hasn’t slept with anyone since his relationship ended, or that he hasn’t dated? It’s not unrealistic, of course. Maybe he isn’t one for casual hookups. I tend to get too attached for them to be healthy for me, a lesson I learned in my early twenties. Which is where he still is.

  “You haven’t dated at all?” he says.

  “I’m on a dating app hiatus.” I stare down at the floor, realizing that in my haste to leave, I put on one black shoe and one brown shoe. Jesus, speaking of messy. “In the meantime . . . there’s always the fun drawer. Never lets me down and never wants to go to brunch in the morning.”

  “There’s a whole drawer?”

  I am never drinking again. Dominic is going to think my nightstand is overflowing with dildos.

  I steal a glance up front, making sure the driver is still immersed in his phone call. “Well, half a drawer.” I am still tipsy, right? Or I have a contact drunk from him. That has to be the explanation for why I’m talking to him like this.

  “You could find someone if you wanted.” A lazy roll of his head toward me, a lowering of his eyelashes to half-mast. “Someone who isn’t battery powered, I mean. You’re cute.”

  It’s the first time he’s complimented me outright, and I have no idea what it means. Drunk words, sober thoughts? Even if that’s true, I shouldn’t care if Dominic thinks I’m cute. I am cute. He’s simply stating a fact.

  Of course, I’m not going to tell him that the finding isn’t the issue—it’s the scaring away once I inevitably fall faster than the other person does.

  “I thought I was ‘cool,’” I say, trying to project a coolness I do not feel. An aloofness. A nonchalance. I am Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher! I am Meryl Streep in that movie with the nuns. My gaze falls to his mouth, to the hollow of this throat, to the triangle of skin exposed by his unbuttoned buttons, and all pretense of cool vanishes. I am Meryl Streep in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.

  “Both.”

  “And once again, Drunk Dominic is much more fun than Sober Dominic.”

  “Sober Dominic wants to tell you that he’s fun, too, but he’s too busy shaking his head disapprovingly at Drunk Dominic.”

  I’m still laughing, heart still hammering, when the car stops outside his place. The bar wasn’t very far from his place downtown, but the ride felt shorter than I thought it would.

  “I like this area,” I say as we get out of the car and I five-star Julius. The air against my face is a welcome respite from the heat of the back seat.

  He shrugs. “It’s not great. You don’t have to sugarcoat it. I picked it because it was close to work.”

  Each step we take is heavier than the last. I’m just walking him to the door. Surely I’m not helping him inside. He already seems much less wasted than he was at the bar. Still buzzed, but perfectly capable of entering a building without me fearing for his life.

  “Thank you,” he says when we reach the front steps of his building, a newer construction that looks the same as all the other apartments on this street. He leans against the door, his trademark stance. Somehow, it doesn’t bother me as much as it usually does. “Again. I’m sure I would have made it home okay, but it’s nice to know, I guess . . . that you cared.”

  That lands across my heart in a way I didn’t at all expect. “Of course I care.” I shuffle my weight from side to side, run my hand up and down the strap of my bag. “Just because we broke up doesn’t mean I stopped caring. I care about all my exes.”

  This earns me a half smile. He likes that I’m playing along. He makes a move to reach for his keys—at least, that’s what I think he’s doing, until his hand lands on my wrist instead. I swear it happens in slow motion as he pinches the hair elastic I have there, snapping it against my skin.

  The whisper of a sting goes away in an instant, but the aftershocks are vicious. I swallow hard. I’d wear elastics up and down my arms if it meant he’d do that again.

  When he speaks, his voice is low. “I like your hair down,” he says, and it makes me grab at my hair on instinct. I was in such a rush that I didn’t think to put it up. “I know you wear it up all the time, and I like it up, but this . . . I like this a lot.”

  “It’s really coarse,” I say quietly, awed that I’m able to make any sounds at all. “It can never decide if it’s curly or straight. That’s why I usually wear it up.”

  His hand travels to my hair, sliding into it, and oh. I sway closer to him as his fingers get lost in my curly-straight mess, grazing my scalp. I inhale his earthy, heady scent. God, it’s been so long since someone touched me this way, even if it probably doesn’t count, given he’s my cohost slash fake ex slash possible friend. And drunk. Sober Dominic may be fun, according to him, but he would never do this.

  “It feels pretty soft to me,” he says, and that is when I perish.

  He uses that hand in my hair to guide me closer to him. Then he leans down, and before I can process what’s happening, his mouth is on mine.

  And I’m kissing him back.

  The press of his lips is firm but curious, a burst of warmth on a cold spring night. I can’t figure out what to do with my hands, not yet, not when this is already sensory overload. The lovely scrape of his stubble against my chin. The way his fingers grasp at strands of my hair. The rumble of a groan in his throat.

  We shouldn’t do this, my brain screams at me.

  Maybe he’s the only one who hears because he suddenly pulls away, leaving me desperate for air, gasping into the dark downtown. The kiss must have lasted less than three seconds. Three seconds that stole my bones and left me weightless.

  The look on his face is abject horror. “Shit. Shit. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t
have—”

  “No, it’s—” I break off, unsure what I was about to say. That it was fine? Because it’s definitely not. Because now I’m wondering what a sober kiss would feel like, what might have happened if I’d opened my mouth. If he’d pushed me up against his front door. “I mean, I’m still pretty tipsy too, so . . .”

  “Fuck, this is embarrassing,” he says, shaking his head, scrubbing a hand down his face. Mistake is written all over it. “I’m clearly still a lot drunker than I thought. Let’s just—”

  “Forget that happened?” I let out a sound that might be a laugh, but it’s much higher pitched than I’m used to hearing. I bring my fingertips to my mouth, as though grasping for the memory of his lips there.

  His shoulders sag. Relief—that’s what it is. “Please. I really am so sorry.”

  “Me too,” I say, because didn’t he realize I was kissing him back? Maybe he couldn’t tell. Maybe that’s for the best. Maybe I should quit The Ex Talk. It sounds about as rational as any of the other thoughts racing through my mind. “Then I should . . .” I nod toward the street, making this supremely dorky gesture with my thumbs.

  “Right. Yeah. Thank you. Again. Let me know how much I owe you for the drinks, and the Lyft, and—”

  “It’s no problem.”

  “Okay. If you’re sure.” He scratches at his elbow, unable to meet my eyes. A minute ago, that hand was in my hair. “Do you want me to, uh, wait out here until your ride comes?”

  “Nope!” I chirp back. I am a Disney character. An animated mouse. “I’m good. Thanks.”

  “Well—okay,” he says, fumbling with his keys before fitting them in the lock. “See you tomorrow?”

  If I haven’t flung myself into Puget Sound by then. “See you,” I echo, and when his door shuts, I sink to the ground and vow to never drink again.

  16

  It’s a relief to see Ameena on Wednesday, even if it means subjecting my poor ego to another wine-and-paint night. Tonight’s Blush ’n Brush subject is a bowl of artfully arranged trinkets: a locket, a mirror, a doll with a sad haircut and a single eyeball. She has definitely seen some shit.