Chapter Seventeen
Nicole
“You want something to drink?” Dom asks, turning to me as Marcus and his sister slip away to another group. He squeezes my hand, which he’s been holding all evening, and my heart flip-flops a few times over. “Well?”
“Yes, please,” I chirp, and let him lead me to the bar, where one of the event staffers in a Comets-branded golf shirt is mixing elaborate cocktails. “I’ll have … whatever you’re having,” I say to Dom, and the bartender chuckles.
“Two sodas,” Dom tells him, and the bartender cracks a grin. “We got practice at eight.” He turns to me as if this explains all life choices, which, for Dom, I guess maybe it does.
We take our sodas and turn to survey the lounge, which is done up with little Comets flags and a catering spread that could feed an entire high school. The music is fun but not overly loud, and the lighting soft enough to make the atmosphere welcoming.
Dom nudges me. “Balcony? We can check out the city lights or whatever you people here think is picturesque.”
I peer up at him and laugh. “Absolutely, let’s go be cliche.”
However, before we make it to the double glass doors, one of the other basketball players and his girl steps in front of us. I can’t remember the player’s name, but the look on Dom’s face is complex enough that I can’t tell if he’s a fan.
“You played like a champ today.” The guy, a blond who looks younger than me, sticks out his hand to Dom.
“Thanks.” Dom shakes his hand, but his voice is flat.
I smile at the woman. She’s tall, leggy, with jet black hair and fake lashes.
She smiles back at me, and then her face flashes with recognition.
“Oh my … Nicole Farrarah,” she gasps, and for a moment, I’m not sure if this is good or catastrophic.
“I knew I totally recognized you! You were the Glow Girl creator, right?”
I freeze. This is not the context I want to be recognized in.
Not in front of Dom.
“Yeah.” I clear my throat, trying to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “That was my startup. For a bit. It didn’t… Um… It obviously was just a starting point.”
The woman gives me a weird smile and then turns to the guy she’s with. “Babe, Nicole was huge on TikTok for, like, three months.” She beams at me, her smile edged with something not entirely nice. “Didn’t you do a face cream that went viral?”
I nod, already feeling heat crawl up my cheeks. “Yeah, for a second. Then it went less viral and more like … bacteria.” I try to land the joke, but only Dom chuckles.
The woman leans in, placing a hand on my free forearm. “Wasn’t that the one where the face cream smelled like rotten eggs?”
Before I can answer, the other teammate jumps in. “Oh man! My sister bought that stuff,” he says, laughing, “Said it was like smearing rancid butter on her face.”
I want to die. I want to melt into the floor.
I want to time travel back to the moment I decided to make Glow Girl a thing and, instead, take up a quiet life in a cave with Cocoa.
But instead, I just smile, the kind of smile that makes your jaw ache for days.
“Yeah, that was it. We got it reformulated, but the memes were unstoppable by then. It just wasn’t meant to be. ”
The woman nods, a glimmer of what I think might be actual pity in her eyes. “That’s so LA, though. Fail hard, fail fast, make a comeback. Are you working on something now?”
I hesitate. There’s a thousand ways to play this, but only one that lets me leave this conversation with any dignity. “Maybe,” I say. “Still working on the concept.”
“Good for you,” she says, but it comes out laced with even more pity.
“Anyway,” Dom cuts in, his voice an octave deeper than normal. “I hope the next game goes as well.”
“Yeah, for sure,” the guy replies, and Dom suddenly retreats, tugging me away from the glass doors to the balcony.
“What are we doing?” I ask, looking up at him, and then back toward all the people, some of whom are staring at us. I try to nod, but my chest’s gone all tight.
“Wanna get out of here?”
“Yes,” I breathe. “But also, this is totally your night.” I can’t hide the guilt in my voice. “I don’t want to ruin it for you just because I’m kind of a viral failure.”
“Well, first of all—” Dom leans down, bopping me on the nose—”I don’t think you’re a failure. And secondly, who cares about the internet, anyway? It might be the worst invention ever.”
“Okay.” I sigh, glancing back over at a couple of people near us. “That’s definitely not a reason to leave.”
“You’re right.” Dom nods, straightening. “The reason to leave is that I absolutely hate afterparties and only came tonight so I could torture you.”
I can’t help but smile. “You’re flattering.”
“I know.” He smirks and then nods to the exit. “I’ve always wanted to take a walk on the beach at night.”
“Okay, fine,” I relent, secretly more than happy to.
He grins back at me and then grabs the door to exit. As he does, I hear something behind us, barely catching fragments of the conversation.
“…they really like Neelson.”
“Sure. But it’s early. Nobody’s untouchable.”
“Especially not in LA.”
The words prick at the back of my neck. I strain to hear more, but Dom is already pulling me out of the party, dragging me down the hallway to the exit.
“Did you drive?” Dom’s question brings me back to the moment, and I shake my head.
“I rode with my dad. I figured you could get me home.” I give him a smile as he guides me to the parking garage for the players.
However, a knot of worry stays deep in my chest.
It’s probably just the rotten egg and rancid butter jokes.
The thought dissipates as we make it to his truck, and I raise my brows as I take in the lifted frame and massive tires. “Wow, okay. You really are from Texas.”
“Told ya.” He reaches for the door handle with easy confidence, dark jeans stretching over long legs, a fitted black shirt pulling across broad shoulders. He looks achingly handsome in a way that feels unfair.
He’s the epitome of what makes most girls drool.
Well, or at least me.
Dom drives us to the beach in comfortable silence, his tall frame relaxed behind the wheel, one hand steady on the leather, the other occasionally reaching over to rest on mine.
I watch the city lights blur past my window, still processing how quickly the night has shifted from humiliation to … whatever this is. Anticipation? Hope?
I’m not sure, but I do know that with each passing mile between us and that party, I feel more like myself again. The version that doesn’t have to perform.
By the time we pull into a small parking lot overlooking a stretch of dark beach and get out of the car, the embarrassment has mostly faded. The path to the beach is paved with uneven stones and lit only by tiny solar lamps and the moon.
“It’s breathtaking,” I say.
Dom looks at me rather than the view. “Yeah, it is.”
I feel heat creep into my cheeks, grateful for the darkness that hides my blush. The sand shifts beneath my feet, and I suddenly realize how impractical my heels are for this impromptu beach excursion.
“One sec,” I say, bending down to unbuckle the straps. I slip them off one by one, instantly shrinking by several inches. “Much better.”
“You’re significantly shorter without those.” He grins, taking my shoes from me and holding them dangling from two fingers. “But I can still see over your head either way.”
“That’s because you’re basically a tree,” I retort, though secretly I love how tall he is, how his six-foot-five presence feels like a shelter.
Dom removes his own shoes and immediately sinks an inch into the sand. “Not really used to this,” he admits.
I snort.
“But you played in Alabama?”
“About an hour from the Gulf, yeah.”
My feet sink deeper into the sand. “How is it possible that you lived near the Gulf Coast and never went to the beach?”
Dom shrugs, his massive shoulders rising and falling in the moonlight. “Basketball,” he says simply, as if that explains everything.
And I suppose, for him, it does.
We begin walking along the shoreline, his stride longer than mine, close enough to the water that occasionally a wave reaches out to kiss our feet.
The sand is cool and damp, compacted enough to easily walk on.
I can’t help but notice how Dom walks slightly between me and the ocean, as if unconsciously protecting me from the waves.
“So, I have a question,” I say after we’ve walked a few minutes in comfortable silence.
“Shoot.”
“Did you always know you wanted to play basketball professionally?”
He nods. “For as long as I can remember.”
“So, does that mean basketball was basically your whole life growing up?”
“Pretty much,” he explains, falling into step beside me. “It was the first thing I was ever good at.”
I glance at him.
“I was tall early,” he continues, gaze drifting toward the water. “Awkward. Quiet. Didn’t really fit anywhere. But when I picked up a ball, things made sense. People paid attention—not to how tall I was, or how quiet—but to what I could do.”
“But did you ever just want to be a kid?” I ask gently. “Have fun?”
“Basketball was fun for me,” he says. “It still is.” A small smile tugs at his mouth.
“It gave me structure. Direction. Something I could build toward.” He pauses.
“My brother used to give me a hard time about it. He’d come back from weekend trips with friends all sunburned and full of stories, and I’d be in the driveway, still shooting hoops. ”
We walk a bit further, the waves filling the quiet. I’m struck by how different our childhoods must have been. While I was dabbling in a dozen different hobbies, never committing to any, Dom was singularly focused on one thing and holding on.
“Was it worth it?” I ask softly.
Dom takes his time answering, his eyes on the horizon. “Yes,” he finally says. “It got me here.” Then, quieter: “But it did cost me some normal life stuff.” He glances at me, the corner of his mouth lifting. “Like midnight beach walks.”