Chapter 20 #2
He shrugged as he sat across the kitchen table with his coffee. His dad had puffy dark spots under his eyes. “You too.”
“Yep. Bad night all around.” Dad sipped at his coffee. “Mom tells me you’re having some trouble with your boyfriend. Trey?”
Hearing his dad refer to his boyfriend made Dom smile. He’d never heard the word from him before. “Kind of. I was a dick to him last night, and he didn’t deserve it. He won’t answer my text or voice mail, and okay maybe his phone died or something, but it’s scaring me a little. He hates driving.”
“How so?”
Dom described the car accident that killed Trey’s best friend and his anxiety over being in a car for any period of time.
His thoughts inevitably turned back to their first date and how adorably high-strung Trey was over Dom’s driving in traffic while distracted.
“He came all the way up here for me, and I overreacted and told him to leave me alone.”
His dad studied him for a moment. “Why do you think you did that?”
“I didn’t want him to see me hurting. Telling him what happened dredged up a lot of old feelings, and my instinct was to drive him off and deal with it alone, even though he kept saying that couples worked through the hard stuff together.
I didn’t want to hear him. But I don’t want him gone, I want him with me. ”
“Dominic, you are a very emotional young man, and you always have been, even though you’ve done your damnedest to show otherwise. And you know how devastating it can be to ignore those emotions. They eat away at you until there’s nothing left.”
Dom swallowed hard. His dad didn’t usually read him like that, and it was both terrifying and kind of freeing.
Neither of his parents had ever been stingy with their feelings, showering their kids with love, but growing up different from the other kids—first with being a half Filipino adopted by black parents, and then with the gay—had taught him to be tough and not crack.
To let remarks roll right off his back and not let on that they left scorch marks on his skin.
To pretend he didn’t give a damn, while he silently cared so much his chest ached with it every single day.
To let it all get so bad that the only way out was a pile of pills.
Never again.
“I fucked up, huh?” Dom said.
Instead of scolding him about the cussing, his dad pushed his chair away from the table and leaned back, hands folded over his stomach.
“Son, you will fuck up from now until the grave, because you’re a human being just like the rest of us.
No one is perfect. We all make mistakes.
Your mom and I have had some pretty intense blowouts over the years. ”
Dom started to protest that he’d never once seen his parents fight, but Dad held up a silencing hand.
“We kept it away from you kids as best we could. Zelda and I love each other very much, but we also have our faults. When we’re having issues, we deal with them.
Never go to bed angry is a pretty cliché piece of advice, but that’s because it’s good advice.
Now I’ve only just met Trey, and he seems like a very nice young man.
The fact that he faced a very big fear of his to come see you says a lot about his character and about his feelings for you, and I respect that.
I also have a lot of respect for how far you’ve come with XYZ. ”
Dom nearly sloshed hot coffee on himself. Even though they both knew his deadline was approaching, they hadn’t sat down and talked about XYZ’s big win at the regional competition, or next month’s trip to New York. “You are?”
His dad chuckled. “I suppose I deserve that. I was very hard on you when you chose not to go to college.”
Understatement of the decade. While they hadn’t had an epic fight over it, Dom had felt his dad’s disappointment over the road he’d chosen—music instead of a college degree.
The disappointment had driven him to work harder, to be the best at what he and Lincoln did.
They’d both had something to prove, to other people and to themselves.
“And now that you’re going to play at a national competition, I’ll tell you a secret,” Dad said.
Dom leaned forward, insanely curious now.
“Even when it didn’t seem like it, Dominic, I always believed in you.
You have a gift for music like no one I’ve ever known, and it was a joy to watch you grow and develop that gift.
You can play any instrument you set your mind to, but you were born to play the violin.
And when you stopped playing”—dark emotions flashed briefly across Dad’s face—“when you stopped, I wanted to kill that son of a bitch for taking that gift away from you.”
Dom’s heart thundered in his chest, and a surge of love warmed his insides.
He’d never heard his dad get so emotional about the assault.
His mom had blamed herself, because she’d insisted Dom attend the private tutoring lessons.
His dad had always been silently supportive, a rock to stand on when everything else had turned to quicksand.
He swallowed hard, eyes watering. “I found that gift again, Dad.”
“I know you did.” Dad pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I watched you tiptoe around your potential. Saw how much you wanted it again, but it was like you were scared to reach as far as you had before. Giving you that four-year deadline wasn’t about proving anything to me.
It was me pushing you to prove yourself to you.
To strive to be everything I know you can be.
And you did, and I am so proud of you, son.
” He cleared his throat hard. “So proud I can hardly see straight some days, and that’s the truth. ”
“Really?” Dom hated that his voice cracked.
He never doubted his father loved him. He had, however, doubted his father’s faith in him.
Everything he’d done for the last four years had been about restoring his dad’s faith, and he’d never actually lost it.
As much as Dom wanted to be angry over the subterfuge, he couldn’t find any anger in himself.
All he had was love and respect.
“Really, really,” Dad said in a spot-on Donkey impersonation, a movie character Dom had been obsessed with as a child.
Dad stood and came around the table. He tugged Dom up and into a rare hug. Dom leaned into the embrace, so incredibly grateful for his parents and their unwavering faith in him. Even if he’d managed to push Trey away for good, with their support he knew he would be okay.
Lincoln pounced the moment Dom walked in the apartment door, his expression as serious as Dom had ever seen it. “What happened? Is Roxy okay?”
Dom’s trip home yesterday wasn’t supposed to be an overnight, and it was exactly like Lincoln to worry when Dom didn’t show up the night before. “A lot happened last night, but Roxy’s fine. Chambers is getting out.”
“What?” Lincoln’s shock shifted right into anger. “Why the hell did they let him out?”
“I don’t know, but they did. Needless to say, Mom had a minor meltdown.”
“How about you?”
Dom flopped down on their thrift-store sofa and threw his feet up onto the coffee table. “Fuck if I know right now. Trey was there when I found out.”
Lincoln plunked down next to him, frowning. “I thought you and him weren’t talking.”
“We weren’t.” He told the car accident/anxiety story again so that Lincoln would understand the magnitude of Trey’s gesture; it also managed to make Dom feel like a bigger asshole for sending him away.
He spilled everything, from explaining Chambers to Trey and pushing Trey away, to his talks with both his parents.
Linc listened like he always did: laser-focused and totally present. When Dom had nothing left to say, Lincoln reached over and smacked him on the back of the head.
“Dude, really?” Dom said.
“Yeah, really. I told you the next time you held in what you were feeling instead of talking it out with someone, I’d smack you upside the head.”
“I talked it out with my parents.”
“You should have talked it out with Trey, you idiot. You two just made up and you shoved him away so you could try and handle it on your own, and you made things worse.”
Dom blew hard through his nose. “Again.”
“And now he’s ignoring you?”
“Yeah. I probably deserve it, though. Hell, he groveled for my forgiveness over the video nonsense. I owe him some first-class groveling of my own.”
“Yes you do.”
“If he’ll ever talk to me again.”
Lincoln shrugged. “That’s up to him. He’s probably pissed, though, considering he faced his worst fear to kiss your feet.”
“Please, make me feel worse about this.”
“Nah, you’re too easy of a target right now.” Lincoln’s face softened, his mouth going looser the way it did when he was in deep thought.
“What?” Dom said after an awkward amount of time had passed.
“Don’t flip out on me, dude, but I kind of agree with Trey. About Unbound.”
“What about Unbound?”
“About you adding your strings into one of our songs. Playing violin.”
Dom’s insides twisted up tight. He didn’t immediately shut Lincoln down, though. Lincoln had seen Dom at his worst. He would never say something like that without being behind it one hundred percent. “Tell me why.”
“Because you’re a fucking genius on that thing. Because it’s time, especially now that the fucker is getting out. Because it’s the very best ‘fuck you’ possible, considering it’ll be the same stage.”
Trey had made similar points, but Dom hadn’t wanted to hear them. He’d been too busy quietly freaking out over Chambers’s release. Nothing else could get through that haze of negative emotion. Not even how much Trey cared and wanted to help.
“Why does it sound so reasonable coming from you?” Dom asked.
Lincoln preened. “Because I’m the shit and I give the best advice.”
“Bitch, please.”
They both cracked up, and as Dom sobered up he felt calmer. Lighter. As if the entire situation wasn’t quite as screwed up as he’d thought, and that things really could get better. “Will you help me pick a song?”
“Hell yes.” Lincoln sprang from the couch, probably off to find his iPod.
Dom dug out his phone and sent Trey another text: I wasn’t in a place to really hear you last night, and I’m sorry. Lincoln talked sense into me. I’m going to play V at Unbound. You inspired me. <3
“You do realize,” Lincoln said as he trotted back into the living room, “we’re going to be playing this new song, like, nonstop until nationals. We need to be one hundred and twenty percent perfect.”
“Agreed.”
They hunkered down over Lincoln’s playlists, searching for the perfect number to add to their set. Dom kept his phone close while they played song after song, waiting for inspiration.
Trey never answered his text.