Chapter 32
Although I know music is still playing throughout the tent, all I can hear is a dull roaring in my ears. Daryl’s eyes are still jumping back and forth between me and Dominic, and I have no doubt we look completely guilty.
Because we are. We are guilty. We were about to kiss. And somehow it feels wrong.
The realization makes me sick, a deep, writhing, horrified sensation. Seeing our parents together, hiding from them, lying—it all feels so gross.
“Kids,” Daryl says slowly, and next to him, my mother teeters. It’s enough to divert Daryl’s attention; he looks over at her and sighs, removing the half-empty flute of champagne from her hand.
I take the opportunity to put a little more distance between myself and Dom.
“Reese, darling,” Alvina says. She waves a hand at me and Dominic, her bracelet catching the light. “Are you two”—she hiccups—“are you getting along?”
“We get along,” I say quietly. I can’t look at Dom.
With a distracted expression, my mother nods.
“Good,” she says. “Good.” Then she looks at Daryl, her face falling into something more real.
It’s painful to see, a mixture of brokenness and hope.
“We’ll get along, Daryl, darling, and they’ll get along.
” She stumbles over her words as she goes on, “And we’ll live happily. See?”
I’m not sure Daryl does see. And judging by the tremor in Alvina’s voice—a tremor I don’t think is caused by alcohol—she’s not sure, either.
“Kids?” Daryl says, tactfully not responding to my mother’s inebriated words. “What’s—uh,” he says, still looking confused, but determined, too.
I think he’s deciding how best to ask his son and his girlfriend’s daughter if they were kissing.
“We were dancing,” Dom says, and his voice is much clearer than mine would be if I tried to say something. It’s brisk, matter-of-fact. “We can dance, can’t we?”
Alvina nods in time with the new song playing over the speakers, lost to the conversation now, but Daryl considers us with serious eyes.
“Of course you can dance,” he says after a second of silence. Then his expression twists in concern as my mother loses a bit of her footing. “Careful—”
And I step forward without thinking. “I’ll get her,” I say to Daryl, my heart sinking. “Around the waist with her arm over your shoulder works best.” Then I look at Alvina and sigh. “Come on.”
I reach for her, but to my surprise, Daryl stops me.
“No,” he says firmly—he even pulls Alvina closer to his side, tightening his arm around her shoulder.
“I’ll do it.” He pauses, and then, maybe because he sees my expression, he explains, “This isn’t your job, Reese.
” His voice is gentler now, and filled with awful, humiliating understanding—the kind that says I see what you’ve been living with, even though you’ve tried to hide it.
I swallow and look away as shame dances over my skin. Shame I shouldn’t feel, but it’s made itself comfortable anyway.
“Well, get home safe, kids,” Daryl says with a nod to both of us. “I’m going to take Alvina back to her house.”
When I look in surprise at Dominic, he’s looking at me, too. Our brows have both jumped, but Daryl doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t ask why we were dancing or why we were so close. He just leads my mother away, through the dancing couples and then out of the tent.
We watch him go and then turn back to each other.
“Did he not—?” I begin, my voice dropping away when I run into the sticky business of actually talking about what happened.
“Did he not see?” Dom says for me. He rubs his chin, his gaze jumping back to where Daryl and Alvina left the reception. “I don’t know,” he admits then. “I wasn’t—I didn’t realize they were there.”
His neck flushes red at this, a slow turn of color I barely see, but I can feel the same heat creeping over me.
“So,” I say, barely audible over the music and the swell of people around us.
Dom eyes me, his expression unreadable. “So,” he says with a slow nod. “Should we call that…?” He trails off, waiting for me to fill in the blank.
“A fluke,” I say in a strained voice. It’s a big decision to make in such a small space of time, and I’m not totally sure about my answer. “A momentary lapse in judgment.”
He swallows and then jerks his chin toward the opening of the tent. “Agreed.” He pauses and then adds, “Well, I’m going to go.”
“What?” I say, blinking at him.
But he nods again. He digs in his pocket for a minute and pulls out his keys, pressing them into my hand without meeting my gaze.
I try to protest. “But you’ll—”
“I need some fresh air,” he says, and despite how well I know him, I still can’t interpret the blankness of his features. The splotchy red rising in his neck has reached the tips of his ears; if I didn’t know he’s sober, I’d think him drunk.
Dom doesn’t drink. Neither of us do. But some sort of spell captured us earlier, and now, it seems, he’s coming down. He turns on his heel and strides off, and it’s not ten seconds before he’s gone.
I look down at the keys clutched in my sweaty hands—gross, but I’m feeling too warm—and I sigh, feeling stupid and horrible for reasons I don’t fully understand.
What did Daryl see? I don’t think my mother saw anything, because she’s not tactful enough to stay quiet. Even without her, though, my throat is tying knots, and the dress that felt so beautiful earlier now feels suffocating.
My heart is numb as I drive back to Dom’s, the interior of my shed blurry as I change into pajamas, and the swish of my dress defeated as I shove it into the trash can in the back of the shop.
I knock on Dominic’s front door at ten the next morning. He opens it with a confused expression, probably because I’ve never knocked at the front before. He looks awake enough, but he’s not dressed in his work clothes yet—just jeans and a t-shirt.
Before he can speak, I hold up the feather necklace. His hand jumps automatically to his neck—which, of course, he finds empty.
“Do you want this back?” I say, sounding very calm and very collected and not at all like we almost kissed last night. “Or should I keep it?”
He grabs the dangling necklace, snatching it away with a protective look. Then he fastens it around his neck, with the easy air of having done it many times before.
It is approximately then that the awkwardness sets in.
He stares at me—or, more specifically, at my forehead. I stare at him while he stares at my forehead.
There’s not another pimple patch, is there? But no, I’m positive there’s not. This is good, old-fashioned abashment.
The seconds stretch long and uncomfortable as the image of last night plays vibrant in my mind, in great detail with slow motion and technicolor.
We almost kissed. There is no way around it. Our lips almost touched in a very romantic way. And he said—he implied—
My heart begins to beat faster as worry floods through my veins, concern over losing the tentative relationship we’ve reforged. I almost kissed this man, and now I am staring at him, and I don’t know what to do—
“I’m sorry!”
The words explode from inside of me, from deep in my stomach, up my throat, and to my lips. I think they might echo up and down the tree-lined street. But the awkwardness is horrible, the cost not worth the gain. “I’m so sorry—”
“No,” he says quickly. His shoulders slump, some of the uncomfortable tension disappearing from his frame.
He’s shaking his head vigorously as he goes on, “Don’t be sorry.
It was—I’m sorry, too.” He pauses here, stills and then rubs the back of his neck, his eyes darting back and forth, unsure where to land.
“We just got caught up. The song and dancing and everything. That’s all. Don’t worry about it.”
I take a deep breath. “And what you said?”
His look of casual confusion is not at all convincing.
“You said you wanted to say yes.”
“Oh.” He shifts his weight as though trying to find a more comfortable position, finally leaning against the door frame.
It’s usually an easy pose, lounging, but right now he looks like a stone statue propped against an unsteady wall, ready to crumble the second it teeters over.
“That. I—” Clearing his throat, he goes on, “I shouldn’t have said anything. It was—back then.”
His eyes fix on a spot above my shoulder as he takes a fortifying breath, and I wait for him to continue.
Finally he does. “Back then. When you wanted to get married.”
My heart stops, but his words don’t.
“For a second, I wanted to give in,” he says, and he sighs into something more real. “Even though it wasn’t a good idea…I wanted that.” His shoulders twitch. “Back then.”
And he’s right; he really shouldn’t have said anything.
The necklace now resting against his chest taunts me with the words he spoke before—I know it doesn’t mean anything.
But if it didn’t mean anything, why did it feel so meaningful? Why do I feel like a rubber band, stretched taut until it’s going to break?
One step in the wrong direction, and I feel like I’m going to snap. I don’t even know what kind of snapping it will be—only that it will happen.
“Are we sure that’s all it was?” I sound like someone is strangling me from behind; the words gurgle as they issue from my mouth. But the question needs to be asked. I refuse to leave anything unspoken. Not this time.
It’s this, finally, that pulls Dom’s gaze to mine. If possible, his shoulders slump further, and he sighs. “I don’t know,” he admits, running his hand through his hair.
I nod, sensing the honesty in his words—that he’s truly as torn as I am.
It’s enough for now.
“All right,” I say. “Well, in the meantime…we’re good?”
“Yeah, of course.” He clears his throat. “Still up for keeping an eye on our parents on Monday? In Burlington?”
I nod. “Let’s do it.” I pause, thinking, and then go on, “How fancy is this place?”
“No t-shirts, I think,” he says, looking down at his own tee. “It’s a French restaurant—”
“Alvina loves fancy foreign food,” I say with a grimace. “She thinks it’s sophisticated. Well done, Daryl.”
Dom’s lips twitch with a huff of laughter. “Well, it’s not black tie or anything. I’ll probably wear what I wore last night—”
He breaks off, but I am a champion, so I soldier through.
“I’ll see what I’ve got,” I say as though my green dress is not buried in a trash can.
I should probably dig that back out; I’m more clearheaded this morning than I was last night, and I can admit I’ll probably want to wear it again.
Then I thumb over my shoulder. “Welp,” I say. “Uh. Pumpkin patch.”
I guess I am now a cavewoman, reduced to grunted words instead of those pesky, newfangled, more-evolved full sentences.
So without waiting for his response, I and my cavewoman self turn and head toward the driveway, around the back of the house and to my shed. Every step I take feels like an incremental stretch of the rubber band inside me, the tension that keeps growing.
But Neanderthal or not, I do need to go to work. Those pumpkins aren’t going to patch themselves, and although my weekday hours are now reduced, there are still things to get done.
The day passes in a haze of dirt and straw and leaves.
I work extra hard, hoping to tire myself out, with the result being that I’m dirtier than usual upon returning to my makeshift home.
There’s dust under my fingernails and brown smudges on my overalls.
Dominic pulls into the driveway just as I’m about to enter the shed; I make eye contact with him, walk right into the door I’m trying to open, and linger just long enough to see him wince in concern before running inside.
I wait until he leaves again before sneaking up to his house to shower.
Saturday is spent at the pumpkin patch, and by the time Monday rolls around, I’m a balloon so full of air that I’m about to pop. I have two competing desires at war in my mind:
Hunt down Dominic and tell him every thought I’ve ever had, and
Hide from Dominic and never talk to him about anything ever again.
Neither of these feel smart or even realistic. So I’m hovering in the liminal space between, and I’d say the inner tension is one of the most uncomfortable things I’ve ever experienced—clocking in below nausea but above a UTI.
Our parents are going to dinner at six, so Dom and I start driving at five-thirty that evening.
We can arrive a bit after they do and find a seat strategically out of sight.
Dom has on what he wore to the wedding—WHEN WE ALMOST KISSED AND THEN TRIED TO ACT NORMAL ABOUT IT—but I’ve chosen a loose dress I grabbed from my closet at Nathan’s.
Alvina was there when I dropped by, humming to herself and asking no questions about the night of the reception.
Small mercies.
Dominic and I greet each other a bit too casually before setting out. There’s a stiff breeze in the air that pushes at my back as though trying to move me closer to Dom, but I leave suitable space between us when we meet on the driveway.
It’s a relief when we get in the truck. He turns on the music immediately, and although it’s better than total silence, it doesn’t quite banish the living, breathing memories seated smack-dab between us.
They’re crouched on the center console, looking back and forth to see which one of us will crack first, and every time a love song plays, they cackle.
I want to scream. I want to kiss Dominic.
I do neither of these things. I keep my hands in my lap and my face turned to the window, paying no attention to the autumn scenery as it zooms by. Honestly, Bigfoot could be running alongside the truck and I wouldn’t notice.
What I can tell you is that Dom clears his throat three times over the thirty-minute drive, and that seven songs play, and that five of them are love songs.
I’m nervous-sweating so much that I feel sticky; when I roll down the window, Dominic doesn’t say anything.
He pulls into the parking lot of the restaurant—medium-sized but understated with immaculate landscaping.
No pumpkin patches here.
My legs are shaky when I basically flop out of the truck, but a few deep breaths of crisp evening air help enormously. Strangely, it also helps that when Dom rounds the front of the truck to join me, he points at a car across the lot.
“There,” he says quietly, adjusting his sleeves. “That’s my dad’s car.”
I turn and look at the little sedan, some of my nerves falling away.
We’re here with a purpose.
“All right,” I say after taking another deep breath. Smoothing my hands down my dress, I ask, “How do I look?”
“Beautiful,” he responds, so immediately that I’m caught off guard. “Always beautiful.” Then he tilts his head at me. “Ready?”
I nod firmly and resist the urge to fan my face. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”