Chapter Nineteen Amanda
Chapter Nineteen
Amanda
I don’t think you’re an asshole,” Dominic said to her as she relayed the story to him of what had transpired with Clayton and Mrs. Crawford. “It just sounds like a really hard situation. To be frank, Mrs. Crawford seems a little insensitive. I’ll never understand how people can play with other people’s lives like that just because they have money.”
“I get how it might sound like that,” Amanda replied, reaching forward to the platter of naan bread between them on the restaurant table. She grabbed a piece and ripped it in half before taking a bite. This was already her third piece, but it was delicious. She waited to swallow before she completed her thought. “But Mrs. Crawford really does have her heart in the right place. I know she was just trying her best to be helpful and make sure everyone gets what they want out of the situation—including herself.”
“‘Including herself’ being the key words,” he replied, scooping up the other half of the naan bread she hadn’t taken. “You asked her to wait and let you handle it, but she didn’t.”
“Yeah,” Amanda said with a sigh. “It definitely could have happened a lot smoother.”
He nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“But at least that whole thing brought me here,” she continued. “I would never have asked you out if not for that whole experience.”
Dominic lifted one brow. “You’re going to have to walk me through that one.”
“I hadn’t expected him to be hurt. I hadn’t expected him to care about me in the equation—just about the work I was taking away from him,” she explained. “But he was really hurt.”
“Clayton?” he clarified. “How do you know?”
Amanda swallowed another bite and then took a swig of the glass of red wine in front of her. “I mean, the look on his face in that moment said it all, but his follow-up email with continued offers to help me really made it hit home. I thought he was just saying that to be nice at first, like because Mrs. Crawford was there, and he wanted to save face. But now I think he actually means it.”
Dominic frowned. “How long have you two known each other?”
“Maybe eight or nine years? Since right before he met Adam.” Amanda had actually been at their wedding a few years after that, but he’d also invited other people at the firm. “I didn’t meet him at the firm at first. We actually met when we were both volunteering at the Heart Lake High career fair. He was there talking about his firm and design work, of course.”
“Were you, too?” Dominic asked.
She shook her head. “No, I was there with my mom. She works in hotel management and concierge. I was helping her present to the students about the hospitality world. She would float me different small design jobs at her hotel for a while before I found something more full-time with Clayton. Before him, I was doing freelance here and there with design work after undergrad, but I was mostly working in events.”
“Oh, wow. I guess that makes sense, given you doing the Heart Lake Boat Parade and all.”
The waiter came and delivered both of their main courses at that moment, so they paused the conversation to take a few bites.
“I’m good at event management,” she told him finally. “But it was never my passion. It just paid the bills. Getting the job with Clayton was a big break for me—finally in the field I wanted to work in.”
“Sounds like he really took a chance on you,” Dominic replied. “But it also sounds like you’ve been working hard toward this for a long time. You can’t give Clayton all the credit for that.”
“Maybe,” she agreed, but the feeling of guilt was still alive and well inside her. She knew her talent was valid, and her success was based on that, but she also now knew that she had overlooked Clayton and his support in the process. “But enough about my shitty job situation. This is supposed to be a date, not me complaining for an hour.”
Dominic laughed and waved his hand. “No. Don’t apologize. I love hearing about your job and the people in your life. Outside of you summarizing your dates recently, I don’t know as much about you as I would like to.”
She hadn’t really considered that before, but he wasn’t wrong. He had shared with her a lot about himself and his history, and she soaked all that in like a sponge. She loved learning about him, and yet, she hadn’t returned the favor as often or nearly as deep. He was a good guy, and he’d probably understand her lack of sex drive and be kind about it, but really… it wasn’t exactly a selling point, and she didn’t want to see a polite expression on his face as he pulled away.
“Well, what do you want to know?” she asked. “I’ll give you a one-night free pass to ask anything you want.”
“One night?” he asked, raising one brow again. God, the way his entire face moved with his smile was exhilarating. She’d never met a man who so easily wore his emotions on his face. Plus, it was such a handsome face to look at. “I’m going to need more than one night of questions, Amanda.”
She grinned, a warmth spreading across her belly at his words. “Let’s start with one, and then we’ll see where it goes from there.”
“It’s going to go to night two, and then to night three, and then maybe even night four,” he replied, leaning forward against the table now. He placed his fork down and pressed his elbows down on the tabletop, focusing his gaze on her. “I’m having a good time, Amanda.”
“I am, too,” she admitted, her voice a little quieter.
“So, first question,” he continued. “Why do you love sunflowers so goddamn much?”
She burst out laughing, tilting her head back at the unexpectedness of that question. “Jesus, you really can’t get over the sunflowers, can you?”
“You brought them into my house,” he reminded her. “It’s like a weed spreading from next door and onto my kitchen counter.”
“There are few environments that sunflowers can’t grow in,” she finally explained. “They are a very resilient flower—bad weather, terrible soil, whatever. They can still survive when planted in bad circumstances, and they do it by turning toward the sun. Even if everything around them is falling apart, they still turn toward the sun, and they survive. They thrive.”
He was quiet for a moment, then exhaled loudly. “Shit. That’s actually really cool. I didn’t know that.”
“We can have harsh winters here in Michigan,” she continued. “But the sunflowers survive, and they come back stronger than ever.”
“Sounds symbolic,” he replied.
“It is,” she agreed. “I like to think of them like a symbol for myself. No matter where I’m planted, or what I’ve been planted around, I know that I can turn toward the positive and find a way to survive.”
He took another bite of his food, surveying her as she did the same.
“I guess that leads me to my second question,” he said after swallowing.
She was ready and actually felt some excitement about opening up like this, even if it was just about flowers so far. It was still very meaningful to her. “Shoot.”
He kept his eyes on her, and she felt a shiver run down her spine that felt both titillating and unnerving. “What was your worst day?”
The day came to her mind immediately, but it wasn’t a story she’d shared with anyone. Her mother knew about it because she’d been there, but that’s where it ended. She placed her fork down on the tabletop as well and tried to steady her heartbeat because she could hear the rush of blood in her ears.
“If it’s too much to ask, you don’t have to answer,” Dominic added quietly.
“No, it’s not too much to ask.” Plus, she’d said she wanted to be more open and vulnerable, and this was the perfect opportunity to prove to herself that she could—and that she wanted to with him. “It’s just not a story I’ve told before. I guess I’m realizing more and more lately how much I hold back from people in my life.”
She took a deep breath and then lifted her gaze to look at him. “I was honestly relieved when my parents got divorced. I was about ten at that point, and they’d been fighting since before I could remember. Every day, sniping back and forth or full-blown shouting and screaming matches. I’d learned to tune it out as best I could, but it was jarring and scary and I still think that led to a lot of my anxiety and struggles calming my nervous system to this day.”
Dominic grimaced. “That sounds really difficult to be around.”
“It was,” she agreed. “So like I said, the divorce was a relief. Things were suddenly quieter. My mom was actually happier in her day-to-day life in a way I hadn’t seen before. She had all this space and freedom, and she engaged with me in new ways we never had before.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
Amanda loved that he seemed truly interested in her story and was actively engaged. “With my dad out of the house and still helping with child support, she didn’t work as much as she had been before. I think she’d worked so much before because she just wanted to be away from him as much as possible, but that also meant she was away from me. After the divorce, there was this brief period of about a year where we actually spent a lot more time together.”
That hadn’t lasted, though, and she swallowed hard as she thought about it.
“My father found someone new almost immediately,” she continued. “My stepmother had kids already, and then she got pregnant, and my dad stopped paying child support. He also stopped showing up for visitation. She tried to take him to court, but I don’t really know what happened. All I know is that the money stopped coming in, so she had to go back to working overtime hours again.”
“Meaning less time with you,” Dominic finished her thought. “Shit. That sucks. I’m so sorry. I can understand why that would be your worst day.”
“No, the court date wasn’t it,” she replied, shaking her head. “It was actually the talent show at school when I was twelve.”
He looked surprised as he picked up his fork and took another bite of his food. “The talent show?”
“Yeah, every year the school has a talent show, and any student can sign up to be in it. I hadn’t gotten to see my dad very often that year, which, as a kid, I really thought was my fault. I thought maybe I wasn’t being who he wanted me to be, or I was boring him, or… I don’t even know what my kid brain conjured up back then.” Amanda had read multiple self-help books and listened to a few podcasts by psychologists at this point to realize that that was a normal thing for children to think, and that it wasn’t her fault. But the feeling still sat deep in her gut. “So I made this plan that I was going to play his favorite song on the guitar for the talent show. He was the one to teach me to play the guitar. He was the absolute best at it, and he always wanted me to learn. I never put a lot of effort into it until then, but I was determined to learn how to play it finally.”
“What song?” he asked.
“‘Blackbird.’ The Beatles.” It was still her favorite song to this day, even though it was kind of a sad song but in a hopeful, gentle sort of way. “It took me two months to learn all the notes, but I can still play it really well.”
“That must have meant a lot to your dad,” Dominic said.
She shrugged, looking down at her plate and trying to breathe through the lump forming in her throat. “I don’t know if it would have or not. He never showed up. I never actually heard from him again.”
Dominic’s eyes widened. “What?”
“My mother told me that she found out he’d moved with his new family. Somewhere on the West Coast, but she wasn’t sure where.” She remembered the phone call where she’d told her father about the talent show, and how he’d promised to come. Now, looking back on it, she wasn’t sure he’d even been listening. “I got on that stage, and I looked for him in the audience, but he wasn’t there. I still played it—came in third place. But I never heard from him again.”
“Was your mom there?” he asked after letting a quiet moment pass between them. “Did she hear you play?”
Amanda shook her head. “No. She thought he was going to be there. They didn’t ever go to the same things because they couldn’t stand to be around each other. So she’d picked up a shift at work.”
She almost felt foolish talking about something as benign as a school talent show. She knew full well that there were people out there who’d experienced so much worse, but she was slowly trying to learn to stop comparing her experiences to others. She wanted to believe her feelings were valid, even if that felt like a foreign concept.
“That sounds like a really horrible day,” Dominic confirmed. “I’m so sorry. And screw your dad. What an absolute idiot to miss out on getting to know you.”
That brought a small smile to her lips. “Thanks. I keep trying to tell myself that. It’s also why Rosie and Nola keep pushing for me to go to therapy. I’m pretty sure they think I don’t date because I have daddy issues.”
“Who doesn’t have daddy issues, though?” Dominic joked, and she could tell he was trying to lighten the conversation a bit more. “I know I do. My therapist said it’s why I put so much emphasis on baseball and success in sports. Like I was trying to prove my worth to this man who I didn’t even know.”
“I think it’s the opposite for me in some ways,” she replied, pondering the idea as she was talking. “It’s like I refuse to prove my worth to anyone. I demand independence to an extreme, you know? So much so that I am now in a place where I’ve forgotten I need anyone at all.”
He seemed to understand what she was saying as he nodded and finished the last few bites of food on his plate. Finally, he put his fork down on the empty plate and wiped at his mouth with the napkin. “Thanks for sharing that with me, Amanda. It means a lot to me that you’d trust me with that story.”
“Really fun first-date conversation, right?” she teased, stabbing her fork into the last few bites of her own meal.
“I might not be the serial dater that you’ve been this summer,” he teased back. “But I think that was actually perfect. I feel like I got to know you more tonight than I have all summer.”
She placed her fork down on the plate when she was done as well, and the waiter swooped by quickly to pick them up, as well as offer dessert. They both declined, and Dominic picked up the check without hesitation, even though she made the play of pretending to reach for her wallet.
When they exited the restaurant, it was already dark outside, and he guided her toward his car. They chatted about lighter topics on the car ride back, and Amanda was grateful for that. She hadn’t expected opening up to be so physically exhausting, but she honestly felt like she’d just run a marathon over their ninety-minute appetizer and main course.
Still, she didn’t regret it at all. In fact, she felt full in a way she never had before. Satiated with validation and connection.
“I know this is a little forward to ask on a first date,” Dominic began as he pulled the car into their shared driveway. “But do you want to come in?”
She absolutely wanted to come in, but she wasn’t sure if that’s all he was asking. “You mean like… for a drink?”
“Or more,” he offered. “No pressure, of course. Whatever you’re comfortable with. I just… I like being around you.”
There was that flutter in her chest again. “Okay,” she agreed. “I’ll come in, but only because I haven’t seen Tom in a while. She probably misses me.”
Dominic laughed as he steered the car toward his house and came to a stop out front. “I’ll take what I can get.”
She grinned and tried not to think of the fact that he quite literally might have to if this was actually going to become a thing between them.