Chapter Five
Chapter
Five
There are plenty of bars in Rehoboth, but a lot of them close for the winter. We finally find a restaurant/bar combo near a cluster of hotels.
“Do you have Dogfish Head on tap?” I ask the bartender as I claim a stool covered in faux leather. The material squeaks as I situate myself, the butt of my dress damp from underwear that was never intended to be a bathing suit. This is the unsexy version of soaked panties.
“Of course.” The middle-aged white man pouring drinks attempts to appear interested in our arrival, but I can spy the boredom in his eyes. “Which one do you want?” He points to a chalkboard behind him, and I realize there’s three beers from the Delaware brewery to choose from.
Dom situates his long-limbed body on the stool next to mine, grimacing as he takes a seat. He’s got on a dark pair of pants, but I can still see the water saturating them.
How the material clings to certain areas…
I shake my head to rid myself of the thought and wave him toward the drink display.
“You first.”
Dom considers the board, and I consider if the bartender will kick us out if I start shoving cocktail napkins down the neck of my dress to soak up excess moisture.
“Ninety Minute IPA,” Dom says.
“I’ll take that, too.” And I decide to hold off on the napkin plan until another customer distracts our server. He pours us two glasses of the dark, hoppy drink, setting them on Dogfish Head coasters with their little shark logo.
Once the drinks sit in front of us, the bartender wanders off, leaving us to hesitate over the first swallow.
Time for the toast.
That’s what Josh demanded in his letter.
Problem is, I don’t have any words. They’re all lodged deep in my chest where I can’t think of them, much less speak them.
Dom wraps his fingers around his glass, then pushes mine toward me. Stiffly, I pick up the cold beer, wishing I were clutching a cup of hot tea instead.
Or a glass of gin.
Dom clears his throat, then raises his IPA high. “To Josh. A good friend. And a good brother.”
“That’s it?” I scoff. If I’d known how basic the toast could be, I’d have done it myself. “I can do better than that.” Glaring into Dom’s dark eyes, I finally force some loving words out without fracturing to pieces. “To Josh. The best friend. The best brother.”
If I’m not mistaken, something like a smile tugs at the corner of Dom’s mouth. But next I know, he’s tapping his glass against mine and taking a sip. I follow suit, tipping back the beer and downing one large gulp, trying not to gag as the bitter taste hits my tongue.
Done. Letter requirement fulfilled.
I set the glass down hard on the bar top and slide it Dom’s way. “That’s yours now.” I wave the bartender over and order a gin and tonic. When he turns his back to pour my drink, I glance to the side in time to find Dom watching me. “What?”
His brows are drawn together. “Why did you order a beer if you didn’t want it?”
“Because the note said to. And I’m not about to lose on a technicality.”
“Lose?”
“Yeah, lose. Break the rules. Whatever.” I flick my fingers toward the jacket he draped over the stool next to him. The jacket that has Josh’s Delaware letter. “I told you I’m doing the tasks, so I’m doing them. Which reminds me…”
The bartender sets a glass of clear bubbling alcohol in front of me, and I hold out my hand before he can wander away again.
“Could you take a quick picture of us?” I offer the man my phone. He shrugs and accepts it.
“Smile, asshole,” I mutter to Dom the second before I slap on a false happy expression and the flash goes off. I thank the bartender as he passes my phone back, and I consider why I felt the need to even pretend happiness in the photo. It’s not like anyone is going to see it. There’s no photo essay I have to turn in.
Josh isn’t going to peek his head out of the afterlife to review our performance.
Trying to get my mind away from more reminders of my brother’s death, I drink my cocktail with relish, savoring the piney taste on my tongue.
“I wouldn’t have called you out,” Dom says in response to my earlier comment. “I don’t see this as a competition.”
“Hmm” is all I give him back. Of course he doesn’t.
He sees this as a responsibility. That’s how Dom views everything in life. A series of tasks to successfully check off his never-ending to-do list.
How did divorce end up on there?
I spent the whole car ride pondering it and still couldn’t come up with an answer. My brain could not put “Dom” and “divorce” into the same sentence and make it make sense. He’s too much of a fixer to let something as monumental as his relationship break. The Dom I knew would do everything in his power to find the solution to whatever marital problems arose.
Maybe he’s not the Dom I knew anymore.
Unlikely. Today has shown me he’s still the overbearing rule follower he always has been.
Then why did he get divorced?
The thought won’t leave me alone, and the gin loosens my tongue.
“So, you and Rosaline are calling it quits.”
Not the smoothest topic change, but I doubt Dom expects much from me.
“Yes.” The single word answer is all he offers, choosing instead to sip his first glass of beer and stare at the colorful bottles arranged behind the bartender.
“She get tired of you refusing to let her peg you because you already have a stick up your ass?”
Dom chokes on his swallow of beer and pounds a fist on the bar top as he struggles to get the liquid down his throat rather than his lungs. “Maddie!” He gasps finally.
“What?” I hide an evil grin behind the rim of my gin and tonic. “I was just asking a question.”
He growls something under his breath that sounds a lot like a curse, and I’m proud of my ability to get Dom to use irresponsible language.
That’s what he called it growing up. Irresponsible language.
Dom was always calling Josh and me out whenever we cursed in front of the twins, saying he didn’t want them to learn irresponsible language. Josh would laugh, I would apologize, and when Dom turned his back, we would silently mouth swear words at each other while Adam and Carter watched and giggled.
Rosaline never got a reprimand, because she never used expletives.
Once the red flush of almost choking to death on an IPA clears from Dom’s cheeks, he turns on his stool to face me. His legs are so long that his knees bump into my seat, making me wobble and spill gin on my hand.
“Sorry.” He doesn’t sound sorry.
I scowl at him and lick the alcohol off my skin, not about to waste the substance that’s going to numb my hurt for the night.
His eyes track the movement of my tongue, probably judging me for my cavewoman behavior when there’s a napkin at my elbow. But that bad boy is going in my bra once I finish this drink.
“Tell me, then.” I lean forward, putting the spotlight back on Dom and his screwups. “Why are the perfect Perrys parting ways?” To aggravate him, I make sure to pop my p ’s on the alliteration.
Dom studies me as he takes another—careful—sip of his drink. Once he’s swallowed, the man finally responds.
“Sometimes something big happens. And it makes you look at your life. And you realize you’ve been living it wrong,” he says, holding my eyes. “That you let something go on longer than it should have.”
“Wait. Wait wait wait.” I wave a hand in front of his annoying face, trying to get his intense gaze to focus elsewhere. “You’re telling me you got divorced when Josh died ? Like, last week, you signed the papers?”
Dom shakes his head slowly. “We signed them months ago. His diagnosis was the big thing. That’s what had us realizing it needed to happen.”
My mind absorbs this information about as well as my underwear sopped up seawater. I take it in but have trouble grasping it.
I wave at the bartender until the guy pockets his phone and notices me pointing to my empty glass and holding up two fingers. Once I know more gin is on the way, I let myself refocus on Dom’s confession.
“You’re telling me it wasn’t some big betrayal? You two just decided, ‘Eh, not working for us anymore’?” I keep my voice careful on the question, making sure I don’t display any particular emotion preemptively. Before I even know what I’m feeling.
“Something like that.” Dom lifts a single massive shoulder, then lets it drop before picking up his beer for a deep pull.
So casual. So easy, the way he shrugs off a years-long relationship. A relationship that devastated nineteen-year-old me and left a shadow of self-disgust that lingers to this day.
“The end of an era,” I mutter, not mournful in the least.
How can I be when the largest stain on that era was me?
A single night when Dominic Perry felt so grateful—or maybe so bad—for little, desperate Maddie Sanderson that he gave her a mind-melting orgasm. My first orgasm. A sexual experience that altered my universe and was apparently so unappealing, Dom felt the need to propose to a different woman the next day.
The ultimate pity finger bang.
Was it so bad that I drove him into a loveless marriage?
The bartender sets my two G&Ts in front of me, and I immediately down the first, then reach for the next one.
Dom’s only response is to drink more of his beer. The last of it, in fact.
I expect him to push the one I’d foisted on him aside and request a water. That’s what a responsible person would do, knowing after this we need to drive however many hours back to Pennsylvania.
Instead, Dom scoops up the IPA I barely touched and takes a swig. An evil urge has me raising my hand for the bartender to return.
Looks like I’m getting drunk with Dominic Perry.