Chapter 16 Briar
Briar
“Someone looks a bit extra glowy today.”
Trina’s appraisal includes about a thousand insinuated questions as to why I’ve been literally singing to the animals all day.
I’ve usually got a bit of the Snow White thing going on, with animals flocking to me like .
. . well, animals. But, even by my standards, today has been unique.
Our grumpy old koala, who growls at everyone, even came right to me for his morning checkup before going out to his exhibit space.
“Must be my new face cream,” I reply, though we both know I’m a wash-n-go girl and the only thing on my skin is sunscreen.
“Yeah, cream de Dominic.” She grins like that’s the funniest thing she’s ever said and then cups her ear. “Tell me all about it. Don’t leave out a single. Filthy. Dirty. Detail.”
“Trina!” I scold. I look around to make sure nobody heard her, though we’re the only people in the kitchen, her chopping carrots and me pulling lettuce leaves apart for the morning food prep. We’ve got dozens of animals to feed and not a lot of time to do it. “It’s not like that. We’re—”
She interrupts to declare, “If you say friends one more time, I’m going to lecture you about the birds and the bees. And I’m not talking about pollination.” She gives me a warning glare, signaling that she’ll do it if necessary.
I press my lips into a thin line, trying to hide it, but a smile breaks through my resolve and steals across my face. “We kissed.”
“Aaand . . .” she prompts.
Wind knocked out of my sails by her lackluster reaction, I blink. “And that’s it. We kissed.” A bit more reluctantly, I admit, “Well, I was straddling him when we were doing it, but all we did was kiss.”
All we did? Kissing Dominic felt like a huge leap into the unknown, one that has me confused, sexually frustrated, and giddy.
I swear my lips have been tingling all day, like they remember what Dominic’s mouth pressing against mine felt like, and all the while, the hard ridge I felt pressing against my core growing thicker and larger.
And him saying he was on edge just from me sitting on him?
I was at first shocked by his admission .
. . and then, flattered? Maybe that’s an odd thing to feel about his response to me, but I’ve never been the sexy vixen that makes men go wild.
It felt strangely powerful to be that with Dominic.
“Ooh, girl! Look at that blush. That’s not a ‘we kissed’ pink. That look is more ‘I want that man to lick me from head to toe and then have his babies.’” She makes a smacking noise as her tongue appears and disappears.
“It is not!” I hiss. But I press my cold fingers to my cheeks, trying to cool myself off because I am suddenly feeling a bit overheated. “I’m not having any more kids.”
“It’s an expression, Briar. I don’t mean literally. Unless you mean it literally?” Her brows climb up her forehead and she tilts her head in question.
“Not that. It’s just that . . . I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about the kiss.” That’s true, but what I’m really trying to figure out is . . . “Do you think a man like Dominic could actually like someone like me?”
I slept for approximately zero hours after Dominic left last night.
But while I tossed and turned, I kept coming back to one thing .
. . Why in the world would Dominic, an objectively gorgeous, smart, kind, sexy man, want to hang out with a weird, broken single mom?
He says he wants friends, but I’m pretty sure he could find quite a few of those that wouldn’t come with a kid and the constant, faint smell of fur, not to mention the strange obsession with animal trivia that has never once come in handy for anything beyond a game of twenty questions.
Trina narrows her eyes, staring at me like she’s trying to choose her next words carefully. “Someone like what exactly?”
I sigh, dropping my eyes to the lettuce in my hands and ripping it a little more roughly. My nails are short and scrubbed clean, though the faint crescent scratches on my wrist are a leftover from Caprice this morning, our first interaction since her baby was born.
“You know . . . just a regular woman. A mom.” I swallow as the reality of my life and Dominic’s comes into clearer focus.
“I’m not one of those pretty girls who’s into makeup and clothes and all that stuff.
Once upon a time maybe, but now? I’m just not.
” I shake my head woefully, not exactly regretting my beauty product–free bathroom cabinet and lack of designer clothes, but for the first time, feeling like it’s odd compared to most women.
Or at least compared to the puck bunnies Dominic is probably used to.
Trina comes over and turns me to face her. Looking into my eyes, she asks, “You’re gorgeous, Briar. Now where’s this coming from?”
I shrug, but slowly say, “I’ve seen the women that flock to the players, and the women they choose to . . . ahem . . . see.”
“Sleep with,” Trina corrects. “Or fuck, if we’re being perfectly blunt.”
“Yeah. And I’m not remotely like that. I don’t flirt and have casual sex and date.” That’s putting it mildly. I’m not a man-hater exactly, but I’m a man-don’t-need-er since, in my experience, they come with more problems than I have time for.
But what if I want him? The idea is foreign. Want . . . a man?
“You could, if you wanted to.” Trina’s suggestion is casual as can be, as if she’s not reading my mind.
My insecurities spill forth, unbidden and unfiltered.
“I’ve spent years putting everyone else first, existing on the half-eaten sandwiches that Harley leaves behind on his plate, and making do so he can have what he needs.
I’m the type of woman who carries bandages on my person at any given time, in case someone has a boo-boo, for God’s sakes, not the type who dates a professional athlete.
” There’s a multitude of reasons for that beyond my lack of self-prioritization and cute wardrobe, but I don’t go into that. Trina knows.
“So? Maybe Dominic likes that you’re caring and well prepared. Like a Girl Scout!” she exclaims, trying to make it sound like a desirable trait.
“And if that’s not enough, I’ve got so much baggage in my head and heart that I need a dump truck to help haul it.”
“Dominic seems pretty capable of carrying some of that,” she offers, flexing her biceps to remind me of Dominic’s strong arms. “And who doesn’t have a history?” Trina rolls her eyes dismissively, as though all my arguments are ridiculous. “Goodness knows I did and Frank didn’t seem to mind.”
Frank is Trina’s husband. They met at the gas station where she was a clerk when he stopped to fill up his semitruck.
He proposed within literal hours of their first conversation despite her previous stint in jail and one year of sobriety at the time, and oddly enough, she’d been game, climbing into his rig and into his heart that very day.
Their meet-cute is more like a meet-crazy.
Of course, that was twenty-five years ago, so I’m not sure her advice is particularly timely. Or trustworthy.
“But—”
This time, Trina doesn’t let me argue. She cuts me off. “Enough. Quit with the pity party.”
That brings me up short. I do not throw pity parties, not even with confetti and streamers. Though that does sound on-brand given I’m the sort that makes life fun, even when it’s swirling down the toilet drain. “I—”
Trina’s not done reading me the riot act, though, and holds up a hand.
“And stop with the ‘not enough’ or ‘too much’ bullshit. I know you, and know how awesome you are. What’s more, you know it too.
Yeah, so what if Dominic’s some famous athlete and you’re a regular mortal?
You deserve some fun too. Some carefree happiness.
” She dips her chin, daring me to disagree with her when she adds, “And some diiiiiiiick.”
I don’t know about “deserve,” but wanting some fun (and yes . . . sex) is definitely true. Still . . .
“Okay, not arguing with the rest of it, but what if he goes back home after the season?”
It’s a ridiculous concern. She’s suggesting casual fun and I’ve gone straight to the far end of the realm of possibilities, skipping over steps two through two hundred, and roughly a hundred hockey games including playoffs.
But that’s what mothers do, plan for any and every eventuality just in case, and in a way, I think that’s what I’m most scared of.
What if I break my own rules for Dominic and it ends up backfiring the way I’ve always feared it would?
He’s not only a man, which in my mind translates to manipulative and self-serving, he’s a hockey player, which means he’s a leaver.
It took me a long time to be okay on my own, and I don’t know if I can go through that process again, which I inevitably will have to do with a man like Dominic.
It’ll be worse when Dominic is gone because he’s already set the bar infinitely higher than Dad or Tyler ever did.
The whisper in my mind echoes through my heart. The truth is, I already like Dominic more than I should.
“What if you get hit by a bus tomorrow? Or the sky falls, Chicken Little?” Trina counters.
“You’ve got to live. Every single day is a gift.
Use them. Use him.” She clamps her hands on my shoulders, nearly hitting me with a carrot in the process.
“Maybe you have some fun for a while. Or maybe you fall in love and see what happens. Or maybe a million other things.”
“That’s terrifying,” I admit. I’m not sure which is worse, the idea of having a casual fling with Dominic and then going back to my humdrum life when he moves on, or letting myself take that big leap and falling into a void of nothingness when he’s gone.
On the other hand, I could just . . . not.
Stay alone, keep my heart protected, and stay steady for Harley.
That definitely sounds like the safer option and I like safe. It settles my scarred soul.
“You think this is what I thought my life would end up like?” Shaking her head, Trina says, “No way. Hell no. I thought I’d end up dead before twenty-five, and there was a better than fifty-fifty chance that’s exactly how it was gonna play out.
But look at me now. My son is about to be twenty-five years old himself, and that’s some wild shit.
Comparatively, this thing with you and Dominic seems pretty normal.
Pretty girl, hot guy, meet at a bar and end up falling in love. There’s like a million songs about it.”
She makes it sound reasonable. She makes it sound possible. She makes this little hope inside my heart start to glow a bit brighter.
“You really don’t think this is crazy?”
“I think you’d be crazy if you let this opportunity pass you by,” she sasses.
More earnestly, she says, “Don’t let the life you had or the one you have keep you from discovering a completely new and unexpected one that might be everything you’ve ever dreamed of.
I could’ve stayed stuck in my addiction and been six feet under years ago.
I could’ve told Frank no when he asked me for a cigarette, and I’d still be working at that gas station.
But I risked it all . . . on me, on him, and on us.
And look at me now.” Her smile is bracketed by lines that show the hard life she lived in her younger days as well as the easy one she’s enjoyed since then.
“You do look great,” I tell her honestly. “Happy, which is what matters.”
“Exactly.” She peers at me like she’s reading my mind. “What else is holding you back? Hit me with it.” She waves her hand in a gimme motion.
“I’m scared.” The confession is ripped from my soul, a weakness I’d rather not have at all, but definitely don’t want to admit.
“Of what?”
“Everything.” I sigh. “Myself, him, Tyler. All of it. Of getting my heart broken again.”
Trina presses her lips together, disappointment written in the smoker’s lines around her mouth. “You survived,” she says. Then she repeats it. “You survived.”
I shake my head because she makes it sound like I went through something awful with Tyler, and while yes, he messed up my head, it wasn’t that bad. It could’ve been worse. I’ve always been thankful it wasn’t because getting out of the crap he put me through was hard enough.
“You didn’t deserve any of Tyler’s bullshittery, but you survived,” she says again, not letting me step away from that.
“And since then, you’ve done well for yourself, living in the ‘after’ of everything, the pocket of time where you shut down, protect yourself, and try to process what you’ve been through.
” She dips down, forcing me to meet her eyes.
“It’s time to leave that mental fortress, babe.
It’s time to live. Not in the after, just in your life.
Taking a chance on Dominic is gonna bring up all that hurt, like bubbles in your belly that make you feel like it’s all happening again even though it’s not.
You’ve got to push past that fear. Your life is on the other side of the reflexive panic.
Maybe with Dominic, maybe with someone else, maybe just on your own, but the risk is worth it. For your own growth.”
I stare at the lettuce in my hands, letting her words soak into my brain. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to listen to her, much less to actually do what she’s suggesting. Finally I ask, “How’d you get to be so smart?”
She huffs out a humorless laugh. “Therapy. Loads of it in rehab. It was actually really helpful then, and sometimes, it comes back to me when I need it.”
Trina is quiet, letting me process, waiting to see what other roadblocks I can come up with to stop what’s inevitable. Because the truth is, I do want to try with Dominic. As fear-filled as I am, I think I’m at a point to at least one pinkie-toe, baby step try.
“You’re right. I’m gonna go for it. I’m gonna do it.” I’m not sure who said that, but given the way Trina is staring open-mouthed at me, I think it was . . . me?
“Do him, you mean,” she teases, instantly lightening the mood from the heaviness of our conversation so I don’t fall back into the abyss that’s always there, ready to take me into the dark.
“Trina!”
“What? I’m old, not dead.”
“You are neither of those things.” I lean her way, resting my head on her shoulder for a moment. “Thank you.”
“Aww, any time, girl. Just remember, I want the whole story. Every dirty detail.”
I don’t have to look at her to know she’s grinning. The funny thing is, so am I.