by Abby Brooks
Next time.
Ha.
I say that like there actually will be a next time and I’m not going home to reinsert myself into my rut.
My phone buzzes as I’m waiting for boarding, reading through what I wrote and daydreaming about Dominic. First, I see a text from him.
No no, sweet Dakota. Thank you. Miss you so much it hurts. Can’t wait to see you again.
My heart does a victory lap and I smile like an idiot. He wants to see me again. Maybe I’m not going back to Townsbury to pick up where I left off. Maybe I’m just going back to wait until my next adventure with Dominic.
They call for boarding as I read through a slew of texts from Maya and Chelsea, excited to see me, worried about my concussion, eager to hear all the dirty details of my time here. Bolstered by the text from Dominic and all the love flowing from my sisters flowing across the country to me, I smile like an idiot as I crutch my way down to the plane.
The flight is long and awful. My head hurts so much I just want to cry. Okay, so much I do cry. My foot throbs and I can’t prop it up on anything. My heart aches for Dominic. It’s like I can’t breathe without him. Like now that I know what it means to be whole, I can’t manage the thought of going back to only being half of myself. Between the head and the foot and the heart, I am nothing but pain. I want to drink myself into a deep sleep. Drink until I laugh from the sheer absurdity of it all. But, that’s not the smart way to handle a concussion. Instead, I drink plenty of water and take some ibuprofen and hide my face so no one can see my tears.
Chelsea and Maya are waiting for me at the gate and I’m carried out of the airport on a cloud of sisterly love. If they notice my tear-stained cheeks and red-rimmed eyes, they don’t say anything. They just load me in the car and get me home where they stretch me out on my couch, prop my aching foot up and cover the cast in bags of ice to ease the pain.
They stay and chat and I avoid breaking down in front of them by some miracle that I don’t understand. I tell them about the beauty of the place, about how perfect Dominic is, hell, I even tell them about the plane sex. I give them everything but the hole in my heart because that will only fuel their fire. Give them reason to remind me that they were right and I was wrong and as perfect as Dominic is for me, he still didn’t meet their criteria and I’m here, left broken in his wake, needing my sisters to help put me together again.
When they leave, I cry again. Big ugly tears and sobs that feel like my heart wants out of my chest so it can show me just how broken it is. How can I miss him this much? How can he already be so entrenched in my soul that being without him hurts like this? I text him, needing some sort of contact between us.
I miss you.
I don’t wait long for his reply.
Miss you too, beautiful girl.
And in that instant I am both put back together again and destroyed completely. I pull the notebook out of my bag. Read what I wrote sitting on that bench on the rim of the Grand Canyon. I scribble notes in the margin. Cross out words and make revision. Rewrite it until it’s late and I can’t see through my exhaustion, but the words on the page are an exact replication of my time there. The beauty, the grandeur. A perfect reminder of everything I want to be from this point forward.
A traveler.
A doer.
Someone who takes chances and hops out of ruts.
Someone who loves and is loved in return.
I tear the papers out of the notebook and hobble over to stick them to my fridge with my Grand Canyon magnet. I pour a shot of whiskey into my new shot glass and down it, my heart crying out for Dominic as I taste him on my lips.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Weeks pass and I get my cast off. Suffer through physical therapy appointments and finally start walking without a limp. Dominic and I are in constant contact. Texts. Emails. Instagram. Skype. We talk late into the night and early into the morning and the whole time I’m at work. We’re so connected, the only thing I miss is his touch.
And holy hell, do I ever miss his touch.
There’s a blank spot in his schedule coming up. And a few weeks after that, another one. Originally, he was going to spend those weeks doing what he does. Finding odd places to pitch a tent and camp out under the stars. Grabbing a cheap hotel room if the weather is bad. But now? He’s coming to spend those blank spots with me.
Just thinking about it makes me giddy.
Our conversations have strayed from the surface area stuff. Dominic has started asking me questions about why I think the things I do, why I want what I think I want and I have learned more about myself in these last weeks of trying to answer his questions than I have in most of my life. And in return, he’s answered my own questions. And his answers match my answers and I have come to realize that he’s going to understand me better than anyone in my life because he is just like me. And I am just like him.
And it’s so fucking good to be understood. To just say something and not have to go back and explain what I meant. Or take it back or try to explain away the weirdness. He and I are wanderers and wonderers and our souls know what it means to yearn to see and experience. While Chelsea worries about me, Dominic encourages me and wow. It makes all the difference in the world.
I am vibrant. I am alive. I am happier than I have ever been until the next day when I’m happier still.
I told him about the article I wrote and he can’t wait to read it. I’m equal parts exhilarated and terrified about having his eyes in my head like that. The words on that page? They’re raw. They’re me. They’re a window into my soul because my hopes and dreams are wrapped up in writing and what if he laughs? Or he’s confused? Or he just shakes his head and forces a smile, pats my knee and tells me it’s great, it really is, while I can tell he’s thinking the exact opposite…
I think the last would hurt the most.
I’ve written every day since I came home. Sometimes little bits of fiction, but mostly, bits and pieces about who I am and what I want. Honest, hard truth kind of stuff. Sometimes, I Google some of the places he’s been and stare at images, try to write something like the article I have still stuck to my fridge with a Grand Canyon magnet. But, a picture never does the place justice. Even his pictures. I use color words to describe the sky and the ground. Trite explanations about the beauty or the harsh rawness of a place. But I never come close to capturing the feeling of the place like I did in my fridge paper because you can’t feel through a picture and I need the feeling to write.
He’ll be here tomorrow and I can’t sleep tonight. I take a shot of whiskey in my souvenir shot glass and put myself to bed, counting the hours between us.
“This is really fucking good, Dakota.” Dominic shuffles through the papers in his hands. My Grand Canyon article.
I’m perched on my couch, my butt all the way on the edge, my hands clasped firmly in my lap so I don’t fidget myself into oblivion. I watched him as he read, trying to discern all the different nuances of his expression. His pursed eyebrows. The way he sucked on his bottom lip. The tiny little twitch of a smile.
And now he hits me with those deep eyes, shining with awe and wonder. “Really, really good.”
“You think so?” I slide even more forward and honestly, I don’t even know how I’m still sitting.
“Hell yes.” He shakes his head, his mouth open. “You’ve got a gift.”
“Yeah. It’s called you.” I want in his arms. I want him to open them up and invite me in. He’s been here at my apartment for all of twenty minutes. I greeted him with my lips, tasting him, touching him and the very next thing I did was show him the article. But now that he’s seen it, I need to touch him again.
He laughs and shuffles through the papers, rereading certain passages. Finally, he puts them down on the armrest and stands up, opening his arms to me. “Come here.”
I rush him. Crush my body to his, breathe him in and revel in the way his arms fit so well around me. I am grounded with him here. Made whole. Anchored. And so
totally set free.
And then his lips find mine and there’s urgency in his kiss. His hands in my hair. My hands under his shirt, finding that skin I crave so much.
He grinds his hips into me, his erection pressing into my stomach and fire rushes through my veins. We tear at each other’s clothing. Pulling away the thin layers of cloth still separating us, desperate to come together. Desperate to be connected again. Two becomes one, joined at the soul, my body for him and his for me.
I lose myself to oblivion of physical and emotional and spiritual pleasure and call out his name as he drives into me again and again, my name a prayer on his lips. I meet his eyes as an orgasm tears through me, just in time for him to shudder and come. He holds my gaze and I hold his and never in my life have I felt so complete.
We are tangled up in each other in my bed. Legs and arms and sheets twisting together until we are one. He runs a hand through my hair while I wipe away tears.
“Don’t cry,” he says, worry in his voice.
“I’m sorry.” I sniff. “I just really missed you.”
“But I’m here.”
“I know. That’s why I’m crying. I’m relieved.”
I want to tell him that I can’t fathom the fact that I only have him for a few days. That I don’t know how I’m going to go back to surviving without him. That as much as I love being with him, I don’t know how to go about reconciling with the fact that most of the time, I’m not with him. How can I live a life that is all about waiting for him to show up, ever so briefly?
I don’t know how to say all that, not without ruining this moment. “I love you,” I say and freeze. It’s the truth. So true, it might as well be a force of nature. But talk about ruining a moment. What if he doesn’t feel the same?
Dominic pulls away from me, the sheets hissing underneath his bare skin. His eyebrows are pulled taut, an angry dark line over his even darker eyes. I feel my face mimicking his as panic strums in my chest. Eyebrows tight with worry. Mouth puckered.
I take a breath, looking for the right words to take it all back when Dominic smiles.
“You promise?” he asks.
I nod, tears welling again. “With all that I am.”
He pulls me close and wraps me up tight. “I love you too, Dakota London. For all the things that make you who you are with all the things that make me who I am.”
And in that moment I am crushed with the weight of my feelings for this man, desperate to know that we will go on forever, and totally unsure how we can make that happen.
Chapter Twenty-Four
My few days with Dakota are fantastic. We laugh. We fuck. I realize just how much I love her laugh. I thought I was good with our relationship the way it was. Texting and Skyping. Even with thousands of miles separating us most times, I’ve grown closer to her than I have anyone else in my life. But now that I’m right here next to her? There’s no comparison for the beauty of actually being in her presence. It’s like no matter how hard I try to capture the majesty of this earth in my pictures, I can never quite get it right.
Texting with her is good. Skyping with her is better because I get to see her beautiful face. But being right here next to her where I can touch her and feel her energy, where I can see the tiny nuances of her expressions, it’s just better. But what am I going to do with that information?
I can’t stay. It’s not in my nature to sit still. And I can’t ask her to go with me. Look what happened to her in Arizona. She fell. I treated her like shit because she asked hard questions and got harder answers and she walked away from me and fell. I almost lost her. She swears she doesn’t hurt anymore, but I still catch her limping from time to time. She’s safe here in Townsbury. She may be bored, but isn’t that better than putting her in danger?
There’s this part of me that wants to ask her to travel with me. Her article about the Grand Canyon is good. Really fucking good. It’s like if we could just pair her words with my pictures than maybe we could distill what it’s like to actually be there down to one experience. This idea has been poking around in my head ever since I read it. She could travel with me. Write about the places I photograph and we could start a travel blog.
We could wander the world together, describing what we see in our own special way for all the people who can’t leave their family, their homes, their jobs. We could be together. Living a life outside the norm, a life that makes sense to no one but us.
But.
As soon as I start to feel that flowing euphoria of a great idea, as soon as I start to imagine her small hand in mine as we stare out at the Saharan Desert, or down off the cliffs in Bora Bora, I remember that moment as she lost her footing, as the rattlesnake leapt towards her and she disappeared over the edge of the North Rim. That moment I saw her crumpled and unmoving, blood trickling from her hairline.
The desperation of knowing she needed me and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
The knowledge that I had let her into my heart and that it just fell over the cliff with her. It stuttered along with hers. Terrified to discover another person sized hole in my heart at the end of the day. How? How could I survive that?
The truth is. I couldn’t.
I know that with all of me. As much as I need her near me, I need her safe even more. And where I go? The things I do? They are not safe. If I bring her with me, I will be knowingly putting her in danger.
I want her with me. But that’s a selfish thing. And love shouldn’t be selfish. If traveling the world with me means that her life is at risk, then the right thing to do is to leave her here.
Part of me curls up and dies thinking about saying goodbye to her time and time again. Or worse, saying goodbye to her and meaning it forever. But isn’t that what I should do? Isn’t that the best way to show her that I love her? To sacrifice my needs in order to make sure she’s okay?
Isn’t that what a real man would do? A protector? A provider?
My heart and my mind battle. I cherish my time with her. These few days where we are just lost in each other before I have to leave again.
Come with me. Those words are on the tip of my tongue at all times. Leave this life that has you feeling squashed and squandered and misunderstood and join me because we are two of a kind. Cut from the same cloth. Because life is better with you in it.
But I never say it because that last thought is so very true. Life is better with Dakota in it. And that’s true even if she’s not with me. I love her and it’s my job to protect her. And I will do that even if it means that I have to learn to live without her. Even if it means I have to leave her for the last time, saying the worst kind of goodbye. The kind that is permanent. The kind that means I won’t be coming back to her here in Townsbury.
I watch her on the day I have to leave. She swipes at her eyes and clutches her stomach like her insides might fall out. Grief tightens her features and her chest heaves as I walk away from her. I pretend like I don’t notice. Pretend like I don’t feel the same.
But I love her. And I don’t want to hurt her. Maybe the right answer is that I need to let her go. That I need to stop being selfish and set her free. Break my heart to save hers.
I barely notice as the plane takes off because my mind is still back on the ground with Dakota.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I can’t get my eyes off my phone. Seconds feel like years and minutes might as well be eternities. I have died a thousand deaths since I showed up at work today, just waiting for nine o’clock to be here and those doors to open and Dominic Kane to walk through, that same swoon-worthy smile lighting up the whole goddamned room. Thankfully we’re busy, still just the new normal for us ever since his YouTube video hit, and I’m able to burn off some of my nervous energy by racing from person to person. Even so, I’m sure my smile is too wide and my eyes are a little crazed and I can’t keep my attention on the people who are talking to me because I’m too busy checking out the door to see who just walked in.
Finally, the
hour hand kisses eight and I am jubilant. I might as well just let the customers behind the bar to serve themselves because my focus is on nothing but Dominic and his eminent arrival. He’s only been gone a week this time, and I don’t know if that has made it better or worse. I didn’t have time to get used to missing him again. I’m just ready, so ready, to see him.
And then I do.
It’s a simple thing, seeing the face of someone you love, but it has such a profound effect on me that it’s like, I don’t know, seeing the face of God or something. Which is a silly way to describe something as simple as seeing the man I love, but that’s the way it feels. Like he is my prayer. Or the answer to one.
“Hey, stranger,” he says as he saunters up to the bar.
“Hey there, Mr. Wonderful.” I pour him a couple fingers of whiskey and lean towards him for a kiss. I don’t care if it’s appropriate or not. People can stare. Big Jake can come lumbering out of the manager’s office and fire me on the spot. I don’t care. I’ve got Dominic with me and so all is right with the world. I am safe and invincible. Powerful beyond measure.
He leans forward and kisses me, the bar crammed against my ribs and hips, an unwelcome barrier between us. “You get more beautiful by the day,” he says when he finally pulls away.
“And I didn’t think you could get hotter…” I stand back and let my eyes rake over him. “But damn, Kane. You are one mighty fine human specimen.”
I get lost in the circus of serving drinks and taking care of customers, all while keeping my eyes on Dominic while he’s busy keeping his eyes on me. I’ve got one thing on my mind and that’s getting him home and having my merry way with him. Or rather, letting him have his merry way with me.