17. Dominic
Dominic
I’ve walked into rooms to negotiate nine figures of other people’s money with a lower pulse than I have pulling onto my parents’ street with Jenna Pemberton in my passenger seat.
The street does what it’s done my whole life—big trees, old stone walls, the long hedges of people who pay other people to be private—and the closer we get, the more cars stack up along the shoulder like a valet line nobody organized.
Tío Rafael’s truck with the landscaping logo.
My cousin Mateo’s Audi with the parking tickets he collects like stamps.
A minivan I don’t recognize, which means somebody had another baby and I owe somebody a gift.
“Dominic.” Jenna is watching the cars accumulate with the expression she uses on hostile term sheets. “How many people are in this house?”
“It’s Sunday,” I say, which is the only honest answer.
I pull up behind my father’s Mercedes and cut the engine, and then I don’t move, because there’s one more thing, and I want to do it right, and I have rehearsed it multiple times in my head since the bridge and hated every version.
Her brow furrows. “What?”
“My brother,” I say. “Dustin. Before we go in, there’s something you need to know.”
“OK.”
“Dustin has Down syndrome. He’s three years older than me. He lives at Round Hill House about ten minutes from here—his own apartment, his own job, his own extremely full social calendar. He will almost certainly be the best-dressed man at dinner.”
“OK,” she says. Level. Waiting.
“I’m overprotective. Dustin will tell you that himself, probably within five minutes.
Logan’s the only one of the guys who’s spent real time with him, mostly because Dusty claimed him as family years ago and Logan never stood a chance.
But the important part is: don’t be careful with him.
That’s the whole speech. Everybody meets Dustin and goes soft and slow and gentle, like he’s a kid, and he hates it.
He has trouble with plenty of things—money, directions, my mother’s lasagna timeline.
People aren’t one of them. He reads people faster than I do, and if you talk to him in a kindergarten voice, he’ll tell everyone.
With impressions. It happened to one of my cousin Mateo’s girlfriends a few years back, and she is no longer with us.
But the impression is still in the rotation at Christmas. ”
Jenna blinks. Something moves through her face that I can’t read all the way, and then the corner of her mouth comes up, slow.
“So treat him like I treat you.”
“God, no. Meaner than that. The guy’s a total asshole.”
“You must get along great then,” she says, and gets out of the car.
The front door is unlocked, because it hasn’t been locked on a Sunday in living memory, and the moment we push inside, the noise hits all at once.
Marc Anthony fighting the Yankees game for airspace.
Dominoes going down on the sunroom table like small-arms fire.
Some tía shouting a question from the kitchen and three people answering wrong.
The smell of my mother’s garlic and my father’s pork and forty years of Sundays soaked into the plaster.
Both sides of the family have turned up in force—my father’s Cuban relatives, my mother’s Puerto Rican ones, plus enough spouses and honorary cousins that trying to sort the room by island would cause a diplomatic incident.
Jenna stops dead beside me. Her hand tightens on mine. Spine straightening, shoulders squared—preparing for impact.
I lean down, mouth close to her ear. “You’re safe here, sweetheart.”
She gives me a look that says she’s fighting the urge to bolt, but she doesn’t let go of my hand, not even as we’re nearly trampled in the entryway by small cousins in various states of stickiness and noise.
My mother appears immediately from the side hallway, lips pressed into a determined line, and in one swift, practiced motion, she wipes a chocolate streak off a small child’s face, then zeroes in on us.
Correction: on Jenna.
“Nicky,” she says, looking up at me, expectant.
“Ma, this is Jenna,” I say, and her eyes narrow to an evaluative squint that is both surgical and entirely my mother. I watch Jenna, the most composed woman I’ve ever met, steel herself for the onslaught.
“Hija,” my mother says, drawing her into an embrace that is, by every available metric, an abduction.
“You are so much prettier in person. Pictures do nothing.” She releases Jenna just as abruptly, hands on her upper arms, inspecting her like produce.
“So tall too. You make such a beautiful couple.”
Jenna smiles warmly. “Thank you, ma’am. I see where Dom gets his atmospheric pressure.”
My mother laughs loudly, the sound as abrupt and unfiltered as everything else about her. “Dominic, you finally found a woman who will put you in your place.”
Tía Marisol appears from the sunroom in a turquoise sweater, gold bangles, and an excited bustle.
“There you are.” She smacks my arm, kisses both my cheeks, then turns to Jenna and lights up. “Ay, Dios mío. Look at you.”
Jenna blinks.
Which is the only warning before my aunt has both her hands.
“You must be Jenna. Nicky told us you were tall, but he didn’t say elegant. Typical man. No useful details.”
“I—thank you.”
“She speaks nicely too,” Tía Marisol calls over her shoulder. “Helena! She speaks so nicely!”
“I’m standing right here, Marisol,” my mom says under her breath.
“Well, stand closer! Look at this beautiful woman your son brought home.” Tía Marisol cups a hand around her mouth. “Everyone come and meet Dominic’s girl!”
“Deep breath,” I murmur close to Jenna’s ear.
She gives me a look, but it’s too late. Luz appears next, holding a phone with three dress photos open and the urgent expression of a woman in bridal crisis.
“Jenna, quick. Navy satin, green chiffon, or the rust thing my mother says is chic but I think makes me look like an autumn throw pillow?”
Jenna looks at me.
I slide an arm around her waist and squeeze. You got this.
“Ah . . . green chiffon,” Jenna says.
Luz gasps. “Exactly. Thank you.”
Somebody puts a beer in Jenna’s hand. She looks down at it like she’s been served an unexploded device. Then she sips from the bottle and gives me a look over the rim.
“I am not emotionally prepared for this,” she whispers in flawless Japanese.
Luz is already on to the next cousin, jurying dress options down the hall, and Tía Marisol has moved into the kitchen narrating Jenna as if she’s a program on PBS.
My father comes out of the kitchen then, apron tied over his shirt, arms already open, bellowing “?Mija!” like Jenna is returning from a war.
She tries to lean in closer to me, like I’m somehow going to protect her from all this attention. My father grips her shoulders, kisses both her cheeks, then looks her up and down with theatrical grief.
“Too beautiful for him,” he announces.
The hallway erupts in agreement.
“Thank you,” Jenna says, faintly pink now. “You have a lovely home.”
My father clutches his chest. “Polite too. Helena! Nicky brought home a woman with manners. We should make a plaque.”
“Don’t scare her,” my mother says.
“I am welcoming her.”
“You’re all shouting.”
“I welcome loudly.”
Jenna turns her face slightly toward me. “This explains so much.”
“I’m a restrained version.”
“You are not.”
“I am in this house.”
My mother steps in and takes her by the arm. “Ignore half of what my husband says. Actually, ignore half of what my son says too.”
“Excellent policy,” Jenna says, recovering.
My mother smiles. Slow. Warm.
Then she pulls Jenna toward the kitchen. “Come. You can help me stop Esteban from ruining the pork.”
Jenna shoves the bottle of beer at me to take. “I don’t know anything about pork.”
“You know Nicky,” my mother says. “Same principle. Too much attention makes it difficult.”
Jenna looks back at me, eyes wide enough to count as distress.
I grin.
She mouths, I hate you.
I lift the beer in salute. “I know.”
And that’s it. The house takes her, absorbs her into its energy.
Tía Marisol asking where Jenna buys her coats. Luz explaining the bridesmaid situation in a level of detail usually reserved for federal indictments. Abuela Carmen lifting one hand from the dominoes table, assessing Jenna over her glasses, then nodding once like she has decided not to sell.
Mateo’s toddler attaches himself to Jenna’s leg for reasons known only to toddlers and the deeply doomed. Jenna looks down, startled, then pats his head with a stiff, flat hand.
The toddler accepts this as a binding contract.
Within ten minutes, she’s been given a plate of food, a napkin, a replacement drink, and more names than one person can possibly remember. Jenna glances at me with such cold murder I cough into my fist to hide the laugh.
She’s terrified.
She’s doing great.
I love her so much it’s starting to interfere with basic organ function.
Dustin comes downstairs right as Jenna is mid-sip of what looks like a lethal dose of sangria. He’s got on his blue Napoleon Dynamite “Vote for Pedro” tee with pressed chinos and, for some reason, a mint-green bowtie. Dustin has never cared about dress codes except to violate them with intent.
He pivots at the bottom of the stairs and stops, scanning the room. The second he sees me, the smile goes wide and he lifts both arms. “Nicky!”
I’m suddenly six years old and running after the ice cream truck again. It only ever happens with him.
“Dusty!” I fire back, navigating a maze of occupied chairs and stray shoes to get to him. He gets me in a one-armed bear hug and crushes me. “Looking sharp, bud.”
He points at the bowtie. “For your lady friend,” he says, not denying it a bit. “Wanted to make a good impression.”
“She’s important to me, Dustin. Don’t play your usual games and embarrass her. Please.”
His grin goes sly. “Everyone gets the Dusty treatment, Dominic. No exceptions.”
God help me.
“She’s way out of your league, by the way,” he continues, leaning in. “Maybe I should show her who the best Cruz brother is.” He waggles his brows and straightens his bowtie.