I look down, and when I look back up he’s smiling. The tiniest shiver shakes through me because the rain has seeped into my clothes and onto my skin.
“Do you want me to dry your clothes? I got caught in the storm too, so I was just about to start the dryer with my jeans and stuff.”
I don’t know if that is what I want, but I know that this is what I’ve wanted for a while: To be close to Dom again like I was the first time we talked about Macbeth on his rooftop; to be alone with Dom in an empty house where anything might be possible. I want to trust him, I suddenly realize, in a way I haven’t let myself trust anyone since my life started to fall apart piece by piece a few months ago. I want to trust Jase and Sydney and Willa, my mom and my dad and Ms. Novak. I even want to trust Layla again, though I know I probably never will. But Dom is the one I’m standing in front of when this realization hits. And maybe that’s a sign. Maybe I can start right here, with him.
I’m terrified, but I take a breath. “Okay,” I say.
And when Dom reaches out his hand, I grab it and let him lead me forward.
A NEW BEGINNING
“Why do you like Shakespeare?” Dom asks out of the blue.
After he pulls me out of the rain and leads me up the stairs, he offers me a pair of his sweats and a long-sleeved T-shirt. I step into his room with my dripping jeans and sweater in hand and he takes the wet clothes from me and dumps them into the dryer in the hall. I’m still wearing my damp underwear because I was worried that either my body touching his clothes directly or seeing his hands on my bra would make me spontaneously combust. I’m barely holding it together with the soft fabric that smells like him touching easy places like my wrists and the backs of my knees. I wouldn’t be able to handle much more.
When he steps back into his room, I’m standing in one corner near the window looking out at the rain. His clothes are all way too big, and a part of me wants him to occupy the space my small body has left in the unrolled sleeves of his shirt, the drooping fabric of his pants.
“Why do I like Shakespeare?” I repeat, turning slowly to face him, because I’m surrounded by too much Dom-ness for my brain to operate at full capacity.
He nods. “Do you like it for its beauty or for its meaning?” There’s a light in his eyes that isn’t normally there, and I want to give him the answer that will make me seem smart and interesting and worth knowing. I’ve decided to trust him, and I want to prove that he should trust me too.
Somehow I am a girl who makes all the wrong choices, but I am also a girl who aches in every way to be wanted despite my mistakes. I’m about to answer when he steps closer to me and keeps talking.
“Pretty words are easy, Shorty,” he says, reaching out to me. He rolls up the sleeves of the shirt I’m wearing, revealing one of my small hands and then the other. “But the stories are the complicated part. They’re messy and tragic and funny and broken.” Dom licks his lips and something inside me falls off a cliff.
“Shakespeare, he used a lot of pretty words, and sometimes he used them to obscure the truth a little.” I nod and Dom kneels. He rolls up the bottoms of my (his?) too-big pants, and his warm thumbs graze my ankles. He looks up at me from the floor.
“You just said a lot of pretty words to me,” he says, his eyes not wavering from mine, like he’s trying to see inside me. He sits back on his heels. “So I’m just curious,” Dom continues, “what it is you like most about the plays. Is it their elegance or their…deception?”
I swallow hard. He stands up slowly and he’s so close to me that I can see his individual eyelashes. They’re dry now. The storm is still raging outside, and I can hear the rain beating on his windows like it wants to come in and cover us. I feel like my answer will matter more than it should. That he’s asking because this will reveal something about me that Dom is desperate to know.
“Can’t I like both?” I ask, sounding bothered and breathless.
“But which,” Dom asks, “do you like more?”
I reach up to adjust glasses that aren’t on my face. I must have left them in the bathroom when I changed. I drop my hand, unsure of where to put it. I want to touch him, but I just hold on to my own fingers again.
“I like that he can use beauty to reveal the scariest, worst parts of being human,” I say, watching Dom’s dark eyes. “I like that the truth is only hidden if you don’t read closely enough.” I think about Ms. Novak and my dad—there were signs everywhere that I ignored. Dom’s eyes flicker, and he kind of grins.
I want to know why.
Dom nods and moves a single wet braid from where it hangs over my forehead, and every part of me is aflame. And then, all at once, I can’t take it anymore: the smell of his skin on the clothes that I’m wearing, the inscrutable look in his eye. The way that I decided to trust my heart and him tonight over everyone and everything else. I lean forward without thinking and kiss him.
He kisses me back. Dom puts his warm hand on the back of my neck and I reach around him and wrap my arms tight around his torso. I haven’t kissed a boy since last summer, and even though it’s a freezing cold night instead of a humid, hot day, I’m so glad this is happening now—in Dom’s warm bedroom, in the middle of a storm—right after he asked me why I love Shakespeare.
He backs me toward the door and I trip over my wet boots, and when I almost break away laughing he doesn’t let me. I’m glad. His lips curl against mine in a smile, but we keep kissing, all hot mouths and wet hair and hands. We make out against the door, and his arms rest against the wood on either side of my head, making his body feel like it’s filling the whole room. All I can see is him. When I lift my hands to wrap my arms around his neck, I accidentally hit the light switch. The room goes dark, and then I do break away, giggling. I say, “Oops,” and I feel his flirty whisper against my cheek in the sudden darkness.
“You move fast,” he says.
“It was an accident,” I reply, slapping at his chest, and then I blindly grope the wall for the switch. But when I find it, it’s already flipped up, in the on position, which is strange. I flick it down, but the room still stays dark.
“Oh shit,” I say. “I think the power’s out.”
I feel more than see Dom grin. “Nice,” he says, and for a second I’m laughing too hard to kiss him more.
Dom has his phone in his pocket, so he pulls it out, flips on the flashlight, and shines it above us, so we can see each other’s faces.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hi,” I say. I feel exposed and suddenly shy in the bright light from his phone. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say or do next. My face is burning because I can’t believe what has just happened, but I hope Dom can’t tell.
He reaches out and puts another rogue braid behind my ear. He kisses me again, soft and slow, and I close my eyes until I feel like I’m sinking into the floor. He pulls away for a second, and I go up on my tiptoes to give him another peck on the lips. He says, “As much as I want to do this until the power comes back, I think Lolly and Pop will be home soon, and I don’t want them to trip on anything downstairs. I was supposed to come home to make sure all the windows were closed against the rain, and since I’ve been a bit…distracted, there could be puddles.”
I nod. “Oh,” I say, and then I blush at the fact that I can distract Dominic Grey. “Sorry. Let’s clean up, and find candles and stuff.”
He pushes away from where he’s leaning against the door, and I step forward, but he doesn’t go any farther at first. “Just one more,” he says, and before I can ask One more what? his lips are on mine again.
“Okay,” he says a few minutes later. “Okay, what were we doing?” I grin a little. I press my thumb against my lips, then dip my finger into the hollow in his throat before tracing a long line of gentle pecks across his collarbone and up his neck. It’s as magical as I thought it’d be. I look up at him and his eyes a
re closed; his brow is furrowed like he’s genuinely confused.
He stares down at me and I stare right back. I can tell already: he’s going to be another end to everything I knew to be true.
But maybe a new beginning is exactly what I need.
“Making sure your grandparents don’t break a hip when they get home?” I answer.
“Right,” he says, nodding. But he doesn’t move.
“Dom. We need towels or a mop. We need to find candles.”
He points at me, his eyes coming into focus a little more. “Right, yes. Mop. Candles.”
He takes my hand again and pulls me forward, and I’m surprised that a touch as casual as this one makes me feel almost as heady and lost as kissing him does.
SPINNING STORIES
We fill his hallway with light. Candles glow softly from every corner of Dom’s entryway, the kitchen, and atop the bricked-over fireplace in the den. I think, but don’t say aloud, a line from The Merchant of Venice every time a wick catches and brightens another corner of the house. How far that little candle throws his beams!
There is only a slight spray of water under two of the upstairs windows, and I leave Dom downstairs to clean that up with the thick towel I used to dry off.
My phone buzzes and it’s Sydney.
Ok. I think I know how I’m going to murder Sloane.
But I’m Dom-drunk, and the rumor feels like something that happened a lifetime ago.
I send a cry-laughing emoji. Let’s talk about it later. I’m at Dom’s.
She sends back about eighty-seven exclamation points, and I smile and click my phone’s power button so that the screen goes dark.
Dom finds me a few minutes later, and kisses me hard and long against the damp curtains.
We put small tea light candles on the right side of each stair so Lolly can pick her way up without any trouble. For Pop, we leave a battery-operated lantern on the kitchen counter so he can make his way through the house regardless of where he decides to go. And in each bathroom we leave a scented candle so that they smell sweet and are lit with a soft, golden kind of shine. In Dom’s room, along with candles, we light incense.
“Good job,” I tell Dom once we’re back upstairs. Watching his steady hands light dozens of candles hasn’t done much for my psyche. If anything, I want him more now in this dimly lit dark.
He turns after lighting a candle that sets the last corner of his room aglow.
“Thanks for the help, Shorty,” he says.
He looks over at me, and for the first time since he asked me about Shakespeare I purposely look away from him, out at where the rain still pours. I squint at a nearby lamppost that’s as dark as all the rooms in Dom’s house. The power lines that lead to it are strung with a few pairs of sneakers. The wet shoes shine in the moonlight.
Dom sits on his bed, and I walk toward him slowly. He swallows, and I feel the possibilities opening up before us like a book that is filled with blank pages. Instead of kissing him again, which is what my body is screaming to do, my eyes land on an old copy of The Secret Garden that’s sitting on his nightstand. And once again, something about Dom surprises me.
“No way,” I say, reaching for it. “You’re reading this?” He looks a little embarrassed for a second, but then he admits it with a nod. “I haven’t read this book since I was a kid, but I loved it when I was younger,” I tell him, turning it over in my hands.
His copy is well worn, with yellowed pages and a frayed paperback cover, and when I flip it open, I see THIS BOOK BELONGS TO Dominic A. Grey, written in a child’s scrawl. It makes me smile to imagine him writing his name in this book, proclaiming it his because he loved it so much.
“Lolly got it for me the year I turned ten,” Dom says. He looks at me closely, like he’s making a difficult decision about something. He takes the book from me and picks up one of my hands. He plays with my fingers and then, it seems, he decides to trust me with another small piece of his story.
“When I was ten, I was kind of a little asshole,” Dom says, and I laugh. “It was the year when I realized my mom and dad weren’t ever going to show up in the way they had been promising to since I was little. They would call all the time and promise that the next time they visited it would be for forever. Or that I’d come to live with them soon. They’d send me birthday cards and Christmas presents but never actually stick around. And I think when I turned ten I figured out that everything they’d been telling me was all…bullshit, you know? So I was kind of a shithead to Lolly and Pop for like a year. I took it out on them since I couldn’t take it out on the people I was really pissed at.”
I look down at our hands in his lap. He twists the ring I’m wearing on my thumb around and around. He presses our palms together, then laces his fingers through mine before he starts talking again.
“So, I think she got me that book to try to shake some sense into me. Mary, the main character, is a bit of a bitch at the beginning of the story.”
I laugh again and nod. From what I remember, he’s right.
“And like, then everyone she’s ever known dies and she has to go live with strangers. I don’t think Lolly meant it as a threat—like ‘if you don’t shape up we’re all going to die.’ ” I chuckle and so does he. “But Mary, she doesn’t have any friends until she stops being shitty, and then she finds this badass garden full of magic.”
I unlace our fingers and take his forearm in my hands. I trace his veins from the base of his wrist up to the crook of his elbow. He squirms a little, I guess because it tickles, but he doesn’t pull away. I want to study every inch of his skin.
“I obviously now know how fucked up it is that the garden ‘fixed’ Colin, the kid who had to use the wheelchair? And there were some other pretty problematic things in that story. But overall, I still totally relate to that book, and to Mary. Her parents didn’t give a shit about her and it pissed her off, so she was a crappy kid for a while. But then she realized that there’s still so much good in the world, you know? There’s still a chance for things to be amazing even if your life didn’t start out so great. But it’s kind of up to you to build the life you want.”
He’s killing me with this history of his—the way it’s all tied up in books and his philosophy about everything. And now that we’ve been touching for the last hour, I don’t know how I’ll ever survive not touching him again. I throw my legs over his lap because even though I’m right beside him, it’s not close enough, and everything that is happening feels like the beginning of our story. The end of the prologue to the short past we’ve shared.
“Cleo,” he says seriously, and I don’t think my name has ever sounded quite as good as it does when Dom speaks it aloud. I’m lost in him, but he’s trying to tell me something, so I pull myself out of my own head and listen more closely. “Yeah?”
“You’re doing that thing you do.”
“What thing?” I ask.
“That thing where you start telling yourself a story about what’s happening instead of paying attention to what’s actually happening.”
I blush, thinking of Gigi. “When I went dreamy and silent around my grandmother,” I tell Dom, “she’d say I was spinning stories.”
“You miss her?” he asks. And I nod.
“All the time.”
“I can’t imagine not having Lolly,” he says softly. “So I get it. But maybe stop spinning stories for a second?” He smiles a little. “I’m trying to tell you something.”
“I know. I’m listening.”
He looks up at his walls, then back down at where my legs are flopped over his. “It’s like this,” he says. “I saw you that first day in Mr. Yoon’s class, right? On the first day of school? And you were sitting there with your freckles and your purple glasses, your fresh braids and those ridiculous boots. I remembered you right away. And bumping into you like that—endi
ng up at the same school and in the same homeroom against all odds—it made me wonder about fate. It made me rethink everything.”
I think I see where he’s going with this, though I feel like we’re in a philosophy classroom instead of on a bed. I feel like there should be books in front of us instead of sweatpants-clad legs, tingling skin, and our own urgent fingers. “Like how you wouldn’t be a person determined to take control if it weren’t for the things that happened to you that you couldn’t control?”
He nods. “Kind of. And then, after we talked about Macbeth and I started writing that paper, I realized it’s not one or the other: fate or free will. It’s both. Things you can’t control happen all the time.” He shifts, moving closer to me, just as we hear his front door open and Pop call out to us from the entryway. Dom’s voice is soft and urgent when he speaks again.
“But you can control what you do next.” He picks up a card from a deck on the table behind him. He holds it, waves his hand, and makes it disappear. I grin.
“Action is eloquence,” I say, quoting Coriolanus, a play I’ve only read once.
He moves his hands again, in a way that’s too quick for me to see. The card reappears. “Exactly,” he says back.
still now
THE HOT SEAT, PART II
I can’t stop thinking about Dom or what he said as we sat together on his soft bed. How we talked endlessly about fate and free will, helplessness and control. I might not be able to control what’s happened with my parents, or anything that Sloane and Layla have said or done to me, but I can control what I do next.
I want to bitch Layla out for telling Sloane about my parents. I still want to punch Sloane right in the face. But I don’t do either. I do send Ms. Novak an email, though. I’m tired of hiding—of pretending I’m okay when I’m not. And I have an idea that might be the beginning of fixing everything.
When You Were Everything Page 24