Chapter 38
Dom
“Que estoy bien, mami, ya te lo dije.”
“Mira Dominic Alejandro Díaz, que no me impolta que tú tengas casi cuarenta ano’ que yo sigo siendo tu mamá.”
“I know you’ll be my mother regardless of how old I am, but I’m telling you I’m fine. I’m also not forty.”
“I did not say you were. I said almost. Casi, casi.”
I roll my eyes.
“Dominic,” she spits. Fuck, I forgot if I can see her, she can see me.
“If you are so fine, como dijiste, how come you look sad?”
I’ve never been able to hide anything from her—not my feelings, not my thoughts, and certainly not Riley if she were to ask.
I don’t want her to ask.
Or maybe I do.
I need to talk to someone, and my brothers are going through it right now, Oliver with his daughter struggling in school and Lucas with whatever is going on with his best friend.
I don’t have a lot of friends, and I don’t think Arnie would give me unbiased advice.
He might kill me, now that I think about it.
“What did you do?” she asks, reading me like an open book.
I sigh. “Why do you always assume I did something wrong?” I rest my arm behind my head, relaxing on the chair on the porch, my eyes trained on the beautiful woman next door’s window, but I refuse to look for her in the shadows.
“You are right. My therapist tells me I need to stop assuming for people. Or the worst of people? Uno de eso, you know?”
I love her and miss her. I miss them all, but I don’t miss who I was when I was there. And there’s too much to do here to take a vacation, even a short one. It would be detrimental to the ranch and to the progress I’ve made here.
I’m happy here.
Or so I thought.
Because the way I felt when I was with Riley is something I can’t explain or describe, other than bliss.
“I know,” I reply.
“?Hay una nena que te tiene enchulaó, Domi?”
Smitten? We’re past that, but, “Why did you assume there’s a girl involved?”
“Because your eyes have not left whatever is behind me, and my guess is it’s a girl. Or is it a cow? A horse? A goat? Did you get a goat like that friend of yours?”
None of that; just the cabin of the woman whose heart I broke when I lied about what I wanted and who I can’t stop thinking about.
“It’s not a goat.”
“A cow?”
In any other situation, I would laugh at the absurdity of the situation, but I can’t get out of my head, Riley front and center. “Not a cow.”
She smiles. “Un caballo?”
“There are no animals here, Ma. They are on the other side of the ranch. Only cabins here,” I point behind me, “and the river over there.”
“Then what are you looking at?” she asks. “I hope it’s a girl, because the only reason you wouldn’t be paying attention to your mother when she is talking to you is because there is someone you’re interested in, right?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, unable to reply, not wanting or willing to give her more information. Or any at all.
“You know I won’t judge you,” she says, living up to her witch label everyone in our family has given her. How does she know exactly what I’m thinking, always?
“No, you will just gossip with all the tias and the neighborhood book club.”
“It’s just to gather more opinions, Domi. That’s not judging or gossiping. No me digas chismosa.” She smiles, pushing her glasses back, my own eyes reflecting at me through hers. “Now, if you wanna tell me el chisme, I’m here.”
It’s not gossip, it’s a crossroads, with both sides leading to a train coming head-on.
“Why did you assume it was a girl?”
She smiles, and even through the screen, I can see her grabbing her cafecito in her green and tan, Coquí-decorated mug, which she carries with her everywhere she goes. “It’s always a girl. There’s a different look you Diazes all get when you’re in love. I’ve been waiting to see it on you.”
“I’ve been in love before,” I reply.
Her features soften. “Not like whatever you’re feeling right now. You look like it physically pains you, whatever is going on with her. ?Que e’ lo que pasa, and how can I help?”
How do I explain to her that there is a girl, but there can’t be a girl? At least, not this one. How do I tell her how I feel about the one woman I wasn’t supposed to feel anything for and one I can’t give what she needs?
I do anyway. At the risk of sounding needy or stupid, I do. I tell her about our age difference and how she’s wild and free and I’m not. How she’s art, music, colors, and sunshine, and I’m the complete opposite—a tainted shadow just trying to keep my head down.
But I also tell her how I’ve never felt more alive than when I’m with her, and how just thinking about her fixes my mood. How I had lost hope at finding love ever again, and how Riley gives me an inkling of it, even if I can’t go there.
I tell her how happy she is and how she makes everything she touches bloom.
“She’s young.”
Mom smiles. “So was I when I met your dad. I was an adult, though, and so is she, correct?”
Yeah, they’re ten years apart, but Mom was twenty eight when they met, not barely out of college.
A sigh escapes me. “If we were in different stages of our lives, I would tell you I feel like I belong to her beyond my body, Ma, with my entire soul, but that’s not the case.
And I won’t ever be enough to keep her flame alive. ”
Mom softens her features, relaxing her expression lines the way she would when we were little and skinned our knees. It makes me feel like a little boy again, asking for something he can’t quite have.
“She deserves to shine bright. She deserves to fly,” I add.
“Have you told her this?” I don’t know what I was expecting my mom to say, but it was definitely not this.
When I told her about the divorce, she was not surprised.
She’s pro-marriage, or so she says, but she said anyone who couldn’t have seen that happening was blind, including me.
She had no questions about it; she heard me and offered support. Now, though, it’s different.
I shake my head.
“I don’t think you should count a relationship out just because you think you’re not enough for them or because you think you shouldn’t be in one with them, especially when you clearly feel that way about her.”
“Which way?”
“You know, and if you don’t, you need to stop lying to yourself.”
How do I feel about Riley? If I let go of the fear and the concern of what people would say…how do I truly feel about her? “I don’t know that there’s a word for this feeling.”
“It’s love, carino. Love.”
“I’ve never known this feeling, and I’ve loved before.”
Her know-it-all smile shows up, framed by the phone, reminding me she’s not here, but at the same time taking me back to moments when all I needed was for her to understand, and she did.
Like she’s right.
“You said that, but I’m telling you, you’ve never loved like this before, and that’s okay.
It makes it even better. Maybe she’s not your soulmate.
I know you have an all or nothing mentality, and the whole remarrying after divorcing might not be in the cards right now, and that’s okay.
She’s what you want right now, who you want, and I think you should go after her. Stop living in fear.”
Fear.
I’ve always considered myself brave, but I don’t think that’s the case. I’m more measured, careful, only taking calculated risks. Even taking this job was one. I knew if it didn’t work out, my savings would carry me for a while. My investments too. But falling in love again?
There’s nothing calculated about it.
But is life worth living like this? Am I wasting it in fear?
If I think about it hard enough, it always comes down to that—the chances and risks we don’t take, the jobs we keep, even if they’re sucking our souls, the trip we never book, the words we never say. I could keep going.
But I don’t, because right now, in this moment, I realized that not only have I been living in fear—all my life, it seems—but how much of a coward am I that I can’t swallow it and tell this woman exactly how I feel about her?
Or, at the very least, ask her if she feels the same?
Instead, I shattered her with my this was just to get it out of our systems bullshit.
“It’s clear you love her. It’s changed you so deeply, I can see it in your skin. You glow.”
“Ma.”
She smiles, giving me the thing that was always able to fix my mood. I may not be able to go to them all the time and expect understanding, but I know I can always count on them wanting what’s best for me. I’m lucky because I have them.
Luckier that I get to know what love is for the first time, even if it took my mom’s wisdom for me to understand what was happening.
“What if she leaves?” I ask the last question I have. The deepest in my heart. The one stitched to the darkest part of my life. “What if I do?”
“Ay, muchacho, what if you fall? What if you live for the first time in your life? What if she stays? What if you find the reason to stay too? You’ve found you. Now go find her.”
You’ve found you. Now go find her.
But it was more than finding Riley—it was finding myself in her, in this place. And if fear wasn’t a thing, I would’ve recognized it for what it was, and we would be together right now.
Again, stupid ass man.
“I see your brain working in overdrive, so I am going to leave you with that and go find your father. I have the urge to tell him I love him right now.”
“Gracias,” is the only thing I can say.
“No hay de qué, carino. I’ll talk to you soon, and maybe we’ll come visit un día de estos.”
“I’d like that.”
She hangs up, leaving me with my feelings raw and a clear mind of what needs to happen next.