“I think it’s cute!” I cross my arms over my chest, hiding the taco from Dominic’s judgy eyes. I don’t usually wear a bra to bed, but I didn’t want to prance around braless, so I figured I’d finagle it off once I got under the covers.
“You are cute,” he says. “The shirt is not.”
That is a definite compliment, and I’m not sure what to make of it. It’s the same thing he said to me on the night we don’t talk about. I hope it’s dark enough in here to hide my blush.
We creep toward the bed as though it’s a wild animal and we’re afraid to make any sudden movements. Sleeping next to him sounds at once terrifying and thrilling, his long body inches from mine, dark hair fanning across the pillow.
Slowly, I peel back one side of the blankets.
“Did you bring anything from the fun drawer?” he asks. “Because that might make this awkward.”
I gape at him. A few beats of silence pass before I start laughing, a full-body laugh that makes me bend over and clutch my stomach. Then he does, too, and we’re both completely losing our minds. I have to grip the bedpost to keep from falling over.
And it eases, just a little, some of that tension between us. It makes me feel like maybe we can be okay. Maybe we are okay.
When I steal a look at his face, his expression is a mix of amusement and something else I can’t name. I’ve never seen him like this, without that confidence shield he puts up for everyone else.
I like that he’s allowing himself to be this whole person with me.
We slip into bed without any other major catastrophes, and I manage to safely wriggle out of my bra. I’m thinking I can finally relax when he turns to face me, propping his head on one arm. Maybe it’s the lingering alcohol or the dim lamplight, but he looks even lovelier than usual, as though painted with soft brushstrokes.
“Hey,” he says. “I wanted to say thank you. Again. For being so great about all of that earlier. I haven’t been able talk like that in a while, and it meant a lot to have you listen.”
“Like you said,” I say, turning to match him. “You’ll have to be able to open up if you don’t want to end up a cat man.”
I expect him to laugh. Maybe I imagine it, but he seems to stiffen at my words.
“Or you’re just really easy to talk to.” Beneath the sheets, his foot grazes mine, a friendly little touch that makes me think unfriendly thoughts.
It would be so easy to slide closer to him, to line up our bodies, to press my face into his neck. It’s a good thing we’re under the covers, because otherwise my nipples would be glad to let him know exactly how turned on I am.
I let out a slow breath, convinced he can hear the hammering of my heart.
“Since we’re being honest,” I say. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.” He lifts his eyebrows, as though encouraging me to continue. “When we started this whole thing, you were so against the lying aspect of it. You were going on about taking down bigots and using journalism to really help people. And yet . . . none of what we’re doing seems to bother you.”
He’s quiet for a few moments. “Compartmentalization is a powerful drug,” he finally says. “My mom actually learned English through NPR. That’s kind of the reason I was so excited about getting a job out here. So I’m pretty desperate to stay there, even if it means . . .”
“Compromising your morals?”
A wry smile. “Well . . . yeah.”
Huh. “Dominic Yun, you keep surprising me. I’m just—” I break off, take a deep breath. “I’m glad I’m not going through it alone.”
“Me too.” With a fingertip, he doodles on the sheets between us. “We’ve been talking too much about me. I want to know more about Shay Goldstein.” He drags his finger over to my bent arm, tapping at my elbow. “Tell me about your dad?”
It’s a question, and the way he says it makes it clear I could easily say no. But I find myself giving in, only marginally distracted by the rhythm of his finger on my skin.
“He had the absolute best radio voice,” I say. “Like Kent times a hundred.”
“He worked in radio?” Dominic pulls his hand back to his side of the bed.
I shake my head. “He owned an electronics repair shop. Goldstein Gadgets. He started it before I was born. I spent most of my afternoons there as a kid, and I loved watching him work. He had so much passion for it, not just for the technology itself but for the art of radio. We listened to everything together, pretended to host our own shows. So I guess we kind of have that in common—inheriting radio from our parents.”
I worry, for a moment, that I’ve slipped too deep into nostalgia, but Dominic is listening intently.
“My mom plays in the symphony,” I continue, “so I never had a quiet house, though sometimes they fought about what to listen to. Even today, I can’t stand the quiet.”
“Do you want to turn something on?” Dominic asks.
“No. This is . . . this is nice.”
“Is it okay to ask what happened? How he—” He breaks off, as though unsure how to verbalize it.
“How he died?” I say. It’s been a long time since I told this story. I roll over to stare at the ceiling, unsure if I want him to see my face as I tell it. “Sudden cardiac arrest while he was at work. No one could have done anything or detected it. A random horrible thing. I remember getting the call from my mom, but then my memory goes dark for like a week. I can’t even remember the funeral.
“My life just . . . fell apart after that. People would tell me I was lucky to have eighteen years with him, lucky he didn’t die when I was much younger. None of that made it any easier to lose him. So I lived in my bed for what felt like months, made some bad choices, then some slightly less bad ones. And it wasn’t until I started interning at PPR that things finally started to feel like they could be okay.”
I close my eyes, trying to fight off the worst of the memories. The days I cried until I lost my voice, the night I lost my virginity to someone who didn’t know it was my first time. Hoping it would help me feel something again when all it did was make me feel worse.
I try to focus on something happier: the radio shows my dad and I hosted in the kitchen, how excited he’d be to show me a new recorder or microphone. It’s how I used to feel all the time, every day coming into work.
When did I lose that?
“I don’t even know what to say,” he says after a while. “I’m so sorry, but an apology doesn’t feel like nearly enough. I guess I’ll say thank you. Thank you for telling me.”
“Goldstein Gadgets is a vape shop now. Isn’t that depressing?”
“Incredibly.” And then he apologizes again: “I’m sorry, Shay.”
My name sounds light as gossamer.
“I’ve spent most of my twenties chasing this idea of domestic bliss I grew up with. And I’m not even sure what that means anymore . . . just that I want that constancy and comfort so badly sometimes that it scares me.”
His fingers are back on my arm, a gentle stroke. Back and forth and back and forth and then they’re gone. “Being an adult sucks,” he says, and the bluntness of it makes me laugh, in spite of everything.
“It really does,” I agree. The ghost of his touch lingers on my skin. “What should we do tomorrow? Fewer soul-searching conversations? We could explore more of the island. If the rain stops, we could go hiking.”
“I’d be down for a hike,” he says. “There’s supposed to be some great antiquing on the island, too.”
“Antiquing?”
“Ah, maybe I never told you. My parents own an antiques shop. I have an incurable fondness for old kitchen gadgets. Cast-iron cookware, specifically.”
“Then it’s settled,” I say around a yawn. Just when I think I’m figuring him out, Dominic reveals another layer. “We’ll go antiquing, and then we’ll go hiking.” I rol
l over to check the time. “How is it one thirty?”
“You tired? I’ll let you go to sleep. I’ve always been kind of a night owl.”
And the thing is . . . I am tired, but I don’t want to sleep. I want to stay up talking like this. I’d love to learn his mouth for real, for him to roll his hips over mine and press me down into the mattress, but I also want to hear more secrets, to tell more secrets.
But I don’t know how to do any of that, so I switch off the lamp and plunge the two of us into darkness.
“Night, Shay,” he says, and it breaks my heart, just a little, that I’ll only get to hear those words from him one more time.
* * *
—
The first thing I feel when I wake up is warmth. Sunlight pours into the room, and there is a very tall, very stubbly guy next to me. He has one arm beneath his pillow, the other stretched out on the bed between us. And god, he looks cute. I’ve always been weak for morning-guy sleepiness. They’re so soft, so innocent in a way they rarely are in real life.
Steve is at the foot of the bed, softly whining for a walk, as though he doesn’t want to wake Dominic, either. The bed creaks when I lift myself off it, and Dominic stirs.
“Sorry, did I wake you?” I say.
“No, no,” he says, but his eyes are still closed.
I can’t help smiling at that. “You can go back to sleep if you want. I’m going to walk Steve and shower.”
“I’m getting up,” he says as he rolls over, face mashed into the pillow.
After I walk Steve, Dominic showers downstairs and I shower upstairs. I put on something much less dressy than my work outfits: black leggings, graphic tee, gray hoodie. He’s similarly athletic-casual in jeans, a Northwestern sweatshirt—seriously, how much college apparel can one person own?—and a Mariners cap.
Our weather apps predict morning drizzle and afternoon sun, so we decide to antique first, hike later. We spend the morning at a farmers’ market, grabbing pastries and fresh fruit. Maybe Kent was right about the two of us bonding because this really does feel like something I’d do with a boyfriend. We take Steve with us, who greets every stranger like he wants them to take him home.
“Steve, where is your loyalty?” I say, mock-offended.
Once we’re adequately carbo-loaded, we get in my car to map directions to Dominic’s antique shops.
“Here,” I say, passing him my phone while I secure Steve in his crate. “Look up where you want to go.”
When I get into the driver’s seat, he’s grinning down at my phone. “I see you’ve been listening to a certain judicial system podcast.”
I grab for my phone, but he holds it out of reach. “It was just—research. You know. Had to learn more about you.”
“Uh-huh.” He scrolls down, smirks. “Then why does it show you’ve listened to . . . all twelve of their most recent episodes?”
“Steve and I take a lot of long walks,” I insist, and he grins the rest of the drive.
I’m more interested in observing Dominic in an antique shop than the antiques themselves. It’s as though he immediately knows where to go, despite never having been there. I follow him to a section full of kitchen supplies.
He unearths a cast-iron skillet and inspects it. “A Griswold number seven. Nice.” Upon seeing my perplexed expression, he turns sheepish. “It’s an addiction. I probably have about twenty of these in my apartment.”
“And you cook with all of them?”
“I restore them first,” he says. “You have to remove all the rust with some steel wool before seasoning it.”
“Seasoning it? Like . . . adding oregano or rosemary or what?”
“Not that kind of seasoning. You rub it down with oil, then place it in a hot oven for an hour or so, and after that, it’s ready for cooking.”
“Wow,” I say, genuinely impressed. “Ameena and I go to estate sales sometimes, but that’s mainly just for clothes.”
“Yeah?” A corner of his mouth quirks up as he sorts through the cookware. I kneel next to him, trying to help, though I have no idea what I’m looking for. “I like the way you dress.”
My face heats up hotter than that skillet probably could. “I thought you weren’t a fan of the taco shirt.”
“Oh, you should burn the taco shirt, don’t get me wrong. I meant what you wear to work.” He digs into another stack, obscuring his face.
“Oh. Um—thank you,” I say, and then, in attempt to change the subject: “Show me what we’re looking for?” And so begins my cast-iron education.
Dominic’s pretty pleased with his haul: that Griswold number seven and a Wagner number five. After a quick café lunch, we head off on our hike. It’s an easy one, fortunately, easy enough that we’re able to talk without getting too out of breath. Which is good, because that’s a sensation I tend to experience around Dominic regardless of physical activity. Steve trots along beside me like he’s just happy to be here.
“I haven’t hiked in forever,” Dominic says. His strides are much longer than mine, and I can tell he purposefully goes slower so I can keep up. It’s both sweet and infuriating. “I love having the time to just think.”
“My mom and I used to go hiking a lot in the years after my dad died.” Our therapist suggested it as a bonding activity. We never talked much on those hikes, but I think it helped.
“Was your dad into hiking?”
I snort. “God no. He hated the outdoors. It was more that it was therapeutic for my mom and me. My dad actually had this joke—that it was wild he’d wound up in the Pacific Northwest because he and nature didn’t get along. I mean, sure, he could appreciate a sunset or a particularly nice tree, but he was super fair skinned, and he had to wear like SPF ninety, and he claimed mosquitoes loved his blood because he always wound up covered in bites.”
“Was he a redhead?”
“No, he was blond. But my mom is. Why?”
“Your hair”—he gestures—“it’s not all the way brown. In the right light, it has this reddish tint. Or are those highlights?”
“Oh.” I smooth my hands over my ponytail. “No. I’ve never dyed my hair. But I usually just call it brown. Not that exciting. The red is really subtle. Anyway,” I say, moving away from the topic of my hair. “I haven’t gone hiking in a while, either. Been busy. You know, dating you.”
When he smiles, it’s a genuine-looking one. “I did tend to monopolize your time. All the dinners out, all the dumb shit I made you watch on Netflix with me, all my insisting that we spend our weekends at antique shops. And then . . . then there were those weekend mornings where we’d stay in bed for hours.” At that, his smile turns crooked.
“Hours?” I say, my heart picking up speed as my shoes thud against the dirt path.
“Sometimes the whole weekend. We’d order takeout so we wouldn’t have to leave the bed.”
I’m not sure what, exactly, he’s trying to pull here. Surely he’s just messing with me. Again.
“Sometimes you’d even call in sick,” I say. “Because you needed me that badly, and you’d have been too distracted all day at work.”
“Except for that time in Booth C.”
I tap my chin, trying to appear cool and nonchalant. It’s ridiculous how much I want all of this to have been true. “Refresh my memory?”
“You remember.” He knocks my arm with his elbow, and for a moment, I’m convinced I really do have that fake memory locked away somewhere. “You sent me an email, asking me to meet you in Booth C. I thought you wanted my input on something you were recording, but you just locked the door and . . . well, let’s just say, I’d never done that in a sound booth before.”
His words stop me in my tracks. I’m going to need a very long shower when we get to the house. This must be a joke to him—right? Or is he screwing with me because he wants all of it to have been real, too?
“Yeah,” I say. “That was, um. Pretty wild.”
We’re quiet for the next ten minutes or so. I try to focus on the rhythm of my breaths, the jingling of Steve’s collar. It’s not my imagination that Dominic’s flirting with me—at least, I don’t think so. But I can’t tell what’s real and what isn’t, what we manufactured in the studio and what’s grown since then. God. Dominic Yun, who I despised the moment he started at Pacific Public Radio. The guy I’m beginning to like more than I ever planned.
When we reach the top, the puffed-cotton clouds and the endless trees feel more like home than Seattle sometimes does. Steve selects a rock for a triumphant pee.
Dominic pulls me in for a victory hug, and it’s criminal that he still smells good after an hour spent trudging up a mountain.
“Take a picture with me?” he says, pulling out his phone.
I make a face. “I look gross right now.” All sweaty and grimy, my hair coming out of its ponytail.
“I’m sure I’m gross, too.”
I reach up to swipe an imaginary smudge off his cheek. “Absolutely filthy.”
He stares down at me, and I wonder if this is the kind of light that makes my hair look more red than brown. “You just climbed a fucking mountain. You’re beautiful, Shay. At work or in pajamas or at the top of a mountain.”
“I . . . ,” I start, because I am speechless. He said it so effortlessly, like it wasn’t meant to affect me quite this way. “Fine. Take the photo.”
I pick up Steve, and Dominic leans in close and holds out his selfie arm. I get another whiff of soap and sweat, and suddenly it’s so intoxicating that I have to press my body against his so he can hold me up.
He turns the phone to me so I can see how the photo turned out, but all I see is his smiling face, his hand on my shoulder, the dimple in his left cheek. How he looks truly happy.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen that on his face before.
21
In typical Pacific Northwest fashion, it starts raining on our way back down, and by the time we make it to the house, it’s pouring.
The Ex Talk Page 18