6. Dominic
SIX
Dominic
The four of us slink out of the kitchen as if my shame is equally distributed amongst all of us, bumbling back out to the cars like a bunch of students who just got their asses handed to them by their teacher. Which, I guess, is kind of what happened. I grab Lina’s suitcase out of their car, and wordlessly, we walk further down the driveway and up the external staircase into our marital home, the guest house. The steps groan in that way that old, solid wood groans, as if the house can’t believe this shit, either.
We pause in the foyer, mildly horrified yet pleasantly surprised at what greets us. The apartment is longer than it is wide, all crafted of the same warm, golden wood from the main house. The front door opens into a huge open space that holds the kitchen, dining room, and living room, the wall facing the ocean almost entirely made of windows. Further down, a hallway extends to the end of the house, and I can see that all the rooms are all on the ocean side. I’d bet all those walls are windows, too. I look past the ocean windows to see a narrow patio that seems to extend the entire length of the house.
If I were to guess, the whole thing is just a bit bigger than Frankie and my apartment in Brooklyn.
It is the perfect sized house for a little family of three.
I look down at Lina and jump, because she’s looking at me very seriously.
“Is this okay?” she asks with quiet concern.
I rub my eyes, still not quite sure what’s happening or how I ended up here. “I mean, I guess there are way worse things than relaxing in a gorgeous multi-million dollar beachfront home with a beautiful woman,” is what leaves my mouth, and I immediately feel my face get hot.
But she laughs, and it’s a warm, tinkling sound that settles my nerves and makes her face ridiculously more beautiful. “Thank you,” she says graciously, with that totally unbothered shit-eating grin from yesterday, “but I meant about Frankie sleeping apart from you.”
Fucking obviously, Dom . “Oh,” I say brilliantly. “I… I don’t know,” I answer honestly, because her big brown eyes pull it from me, and I remember that much of this woman’s job is to talk to the neurotic parents of young children. “I guess I’ll have to see. Right now, I kind of feel like crawling out of my skin. She’s never been apart from me,” I say lamely.
“I think it’s probably harder on you than it is for her,” she says patiently, without judgement.
I let out a breath. “You’re probably right. Still doesn’t make me feel good.”
“Well, I can distract you if you’re feeling too stressed about it,” she says, eyes gleaming.
I choke on some saliva.
She laughs again, but it’s little alarmed this time. “I mean, not like that. Or, yes, like that, if you wanted,” and this goes in one ear and straight to my dick. Her eyes grow wide, as if she didn’t mean to say it. “Disregard that last statement. But what I’m really trying to say is I’m trying to relax, too.”
She walks away from me, which is both a very good thing and a very bad thing because maybe she won’t be able to see my half-hard cock from far away, but now I can watch her ass and I get even harder. I adjust just seconds before she drapes herself across the couch.
“The last few months… or the last two years, I guess,” she says, with a slight cringe, “have… required a lot from me. I told myself I’d spend this summer crafting New and Improved Real Life Lina,” she tells me, as if I know what the hell she’s talking about, “and I failed. All I wanted to try to do was to grow tomatoes and take an edible and watch television and learn to knit, but instead I worked and then worked some more and then I went home and took care of my mom.”
I nod, because I am on the same fucking page.
“The worst part is that my mom is probably fine and doesn’t need any help. I just need to do it, for some reason. It’s just who I am. But anyway, long story short, the only thing I’m working my ass off on this week is crafting New and Improved Real Life Lina. I’m going to be fun and spontaneous and also lazy and maybe a mild drug user. And it sounds like you need to do something similar. And that’s what I meant by distracting you. We can do it together,” she says with finality.
I am a bit disappointed by that, before shaking my head and reminding myself that the most effective form of birth control just turned five years old this past June. So, I nod again. “A distraction would be nice, then,” I answer, walking to sit on a bar stool in the kitchen because sitting on the couch will put me too close to her ass. “Tita Gloria was right. I haven’t had a vacation in over five years. Since Frankie. We’ve been at each other’s throats lately. I think we both need a break.”
“You don’t have any help?” she asks me quietly.
I shrug, hackles rising. “I don’t need any help.”
“Everyone needs help.”
“Says the self-proclaimed workaholic who spends her free time taking care of everyone but herself.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Are you any different?”
“No, but at least I know and accept this about myself.”
“I have too,” she points out. “That’s why I’m doing something about it. What are you doing about it?”
“I went on vacation.” I scratch my head. “Are we fighting right now?”
Her face breaks into that smile again, like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. “I’m Dominican. It’s not fighting until a chancleta goes flying.”
I laugh. “Same for Filipinos. Except we call it tsinelas , and it’s used as more of a handheld weapon.”
“Actually, us too. Dual purpose,” she says, eyes sparkling. “So we’re not fighting. We’re coming to a mutual agreement that we will help one another relax.”
I do not think about the undertones of this statement. “Deal.”
I watch her eyes trace every inch of my body. I do not think about how much I like her eyes on me.
“I’m gonna put on my bathing suit, and then let’s go down to the beach?” she says suddenly, standing up and walking back to her suitcase. She drags it down the hallway.
This is truly insane. Am I really about to share this relaxing beachfront guest house with the most beautiful woman I’ve seen in a very long time? Just the two of us? Only the two of us? “Oh my god,” I hear.
“What’s up?” I call down.
“You gotta see this.”
I walk down the hallway towards the first room on the right, where she stands in the doorway. “Whoa,” I say.
I’m smacked in the face with the ocean. That is, the insane ocean view through the far wall that is almost entirely glass window. There’s a door, also glass, that opens to a narrow patio just outside, holding a cozy-looking lounge chair. The bed is on the opposite wall in the middle of the room, facing out towards the ocean wall. There’s a fireplace in the corner of the room, and everything is either that warm wood or drapey-looking white fabrics. The whole room feels airy and open, with the colors and light blending together with the sparkling blue of the ocean.
“Do you care which room I take?” she says, after a few seconds. I jolt, and realize I’m standing just inches behind her, so close I can almost feel the warmth of her body. I take a large step back. “They both look the same,” she finishes.
“Nope.”
“I’ll stay here then,” she says, smiling up at me.
I turn on my heel and walk back out to find the other room, praying we don’t share a wall.
We do.
* * *
I change my shorts and look out the ocean window, seeing Frankie running down towards the beach from the main house. Gloria and Ollie follow close behind her, and I feel a pang, a pull almost, to be closer to my daughter, to not have her so far.
“Frankie’s out by the beach,” I yell on the way out of my room. “I’m gonna head down there.”
The door to her room swings open. “Chasing after your daughter isn’t relaxing, Dominic,” she probably says, but I do not hear her, because all I hear is her bikini-clad tits screaming, “ Look at me! ”
You absolutely cannot have a pair of tits keep you from your daughter, Dom , I think, and this makes it easier to keep my eyes towards the front door and my feet moving towards it. “I’m going to relax out on the beach. With Frankie,” I manage, pulling the door open.
“One sec,” she implores, her voice much closer than I expected. “I’m coming. Do you think we need shoes?”
“I don’t think so,” I say, now out the front door and peeking down. “It looks like it’s either paved or grass before we get to the sand.” I walk down the stairs, hearing her shut the front door behind her.
“This isn’t a very relaxing pace you’re setting,” she huffs from beside me.
“But look at this very relaxing view.” We walk down a path surrounded by a massive, neatly manicured lawn, bordered by low stone walls, hedges, and colorful flower beds. There’s a slight incline down as the path curves around the back of the main house. We pass the patio area, covered by squishy looking lounge chairs and a massive dining table and an expensive-looking built in grill.
I really do feel my shoulders relax and lose some of their tension when the sound of the ocean becomes more pronounced. We follow the path further down, finding a little stone staircase leading through a break in the greenery. We descend, surrounded by wild dunes, and the vegetation thins out and the beach emerges, with the vast expanse of the ocean just beyond.
It’s the perfect day, not a cloud in the sky, the slight humidity cut by the breeze.
“Daddy!” A soggy Frankie leaps into my torso, soaking into my t-shirt. “Are you coming swimming?” I hold her in my arms and smell her hair as if I haven’t seen her in weeks.
“Did you put on sunscreen yet?” I ask her, searching her body for white streaks, frowning when I don’t see any.
“Yes,” she says, nodding vigorously.
“No,” Tita Gloria and Oliver chime in from behind her.
“I brought my spray sunscreen down, Frankie,” Lina chimes in from behind me. “Let’s dry you off and spray you down. It’ll be super fast. I promise.”
“Spray sunscreen isn’t as effective as the cream kind,” I mutter.
Both Lina and Frankie roll their eyes at me in a twisted sort of synchronization. “It’s fifty SPF, Dominic,” Lina assures me. “I’ll make sure to load it on.”
I walk over to a towel dumped unceremoniously into the sand and start drying a wriggling Frankie off. I hold my hand for Lina’s sunscreen and read the label after she gives it to me. “I think I’m just going to run up to your room and grab the sunscreen you packed, Frankie. Can you stay put for a sec?”
“Okay,” Frankie says, already turning around and heading straight for the water.
“Hold up, little lady,” Lina says. She rips the spray from my hand and holds it up to my daughter. “You’re gonna sit here and let me spray you, and then I’m going to set a timer for fifteen minutes before you’re allowed back in the water. AND—” she gets louder, grabbing Frankie’s attention when she senses it’s waning, “—I’m going to teach you how to make a drip castle in those fifteen minutes. Okay?” Lina starts spraying Frankie with one hand while setting a timer for fifteen minutes on her phone in her other hand, not bothering to wait for a response.
“What’s a drip castle?” Frankie asks, intrigued.
“I’m about to show you. Right after I finish spraying. But we’re gonna need dad’s help.” She glances at me. “Can you fill that bucket up with some water?”
I do so because Lina doesn’t seem to leave much room for negotiation, and I watch as she handles my daughter with a confidence and calm I may try to project but truly never feel.
“Pick your battles,” Lina tells me later, kindly, without sounding like a know-it-all. “And don’t pick all of them. By the time you ran back for her sunscreen and came back and tried to rub her down and made her wait another fifteen minutes, she would have lost it.”
“Thank you,” I say, genuinely. I play with the sand under my legs, rubbing it between my fingers, as we sit side by side watching Frankie jump in the waves with Ollie and Georgia. “I keep forgetting that you guys are all kid experts. But I don’t want you to feel like you have to work this week. We’re relaxing, remember?”
She’s silent for a second, so I look over. Something crosses her face, a flash of something, maybe surprise, to what I’m not sure, but it’s gone so fast I could have imagined it. “I miss working with kids,” she says after a moment of watching Frankie. “Most of my job is dealing with adults now. Staff, parents, district officials. Kids aren’t work to me. So don’t worry about it. I’m sure Oliver and Georgia and your aunt and uncle feel the same.”
“Adults do kind of suck,” I agree. “But kids are so much fucking work.”
“Not to me, not like this. Not when you’re hanging out on the beach building sandcastles.”
I hum. “You haven’t seen Frankie throw a tantrum yet.”
“At least I know that she can’t help it. Kids don’t have a handle on their big emotions. Makes it easier, more palatable to deal with, knowing that they don’t know how to grapple with all the feelings they’re feeling, that it’s up to adults to teach them how to do it. It’s a skill they have to learn.”
“Whereas adults should presumably already have that skill.”
“And it sucks extra when they don’t,” she agrees.
I’ve always felt this way while raising Frankie, but hearing a professional articulate it so calmly and eloquently, putting words to my feelings, makes it extremely validating.
“But what I’m trying to stop doing this week is working on principal stuff,” she continues. “I’m an assistant principal. I should have summers off.”
“And you’re not getting paid the principal salary, I assume?”
She shrugs.
“And you’ve been doing this for how long? Since Courtney Thomas was removed?”
She shrugs again.
I read in her face, in the tilt of her shoulders, that it’s likely been longer than that. I nod, and we sit and watch Frankie swim.
“Thanks for not pushing,” she says quietly. “I’m working on it.”
“I can tell.”
* * *
Should I get a vacation home? I’m thinking to myself, as I use the built-in grill on the patio outside the main house. We could probably get a small one on a beach somewhere, or maybe on a lake in the Catskills or something. Probably inland, since the coasts could be gone in five to ten years, according to the scientists in my energy startup. But this is really fucking nice. Frankie and I could go up on weekends and do more of this relaxing thing we’re trying out.
I have more money than I know what to do with at this point. My retirement fund is looking good, Frankie’s college fund is filled up. Maybe I should start buying some real estate for us.
“Oh, wow. Hey,” Lina says from behind me. I swing around, only to see that same look from earlier on her face, surprise or discerning skepticism, maybe, as she walks up the path from the guest house to the patio.
I look down at myself, making sure my ass isn’t hanging out or something. Everything looks okay. “Hey.”
“I didn’t realize we were starting dinner so early. Sorry I took so long. Washing my hair is a whole thing,” she says, pointing to the mane of glorious curls on her head. “I’ll run in and see what else I can help with.”
“Don’t worry about it. I think we’re all set. Just burgers and salad tonight. Keeping it easy for the first night,” I say, flipping said burgers one last time.
She’s still staring at me with that look in her eyes. “‘Kay,” she finally says. “Can I get you something, chef?”
“I’m good. Really.”
She shrugs and walks into the house.
I turn and start melting cheese. By the time the burgers are off the grill and the buns are on, I hear the back door open and close, and Lina is striding back towards me with two wine glasses in hand.
“They kicked me out of the kitchen and told me to bring this to you,” she says. I take it from her and clink our glasses together.
She takes a seat in one of the lounge chairs by the grill, sipping on her wine, watching the ocean beyond.
The wine is delicious, a rosé so crisp and dry it nearly tears my face off. I love it, and this is really fucking nice . On the beach at night, barefoot and in a t-shirt, sipping wine, grilling at a multi-million dollar home, with the noise of the surf breaking a soundtrack to the evening, a gorgeous woman sitting a few feet away from me, my daughter and family safe and sound inside.
“This is really fucking nice,” Lina says so quietly, in a voice that makes me want to hold her hand.
“We get a full week of this,” I agree, as quietly as her.
Frankie takes this opportunity to burst outside holding a teetering stack of plates. Real ones. I move into action, but Lina beats me to it. She grabs the top half of the pile, leaving Frankie the bottom, and together they set the massive dining table out on the patio.
“What do you want to do this week, Frankie?” Lina asks.
“I wanna swim every day. And I wanna walk on the beach. And now I wanna make drip castles,” she tells Lina. One of her pigtails has somehow gotten dislodged in the three and a half seconds she’s been outside and now droops sadly. Lina notices this and retightens it after placing her last plate down. I ignore the fuzzy feeling that’s taken a hold of my chest. “I wanna read all the books I brought and finish my World War II book. And then Daddy and I looked online at things to do in Westerly, and there’s a Pirate Plunder and a water park nearby.”
The rest of the Flores family strolls outside, Tita Gloria holding a huge salad bowl, Uncle Ben holding a huge tray of oysters.
“We’d be happy to take you there, Frankie,” Uncle Ben adds on.
“I want to come to the water park,” Georgia says. “But what’s a Pirate Plunder?”
“It’s a pirate adventure. There are pirate ships and sea monsters and treasure and maps,” Frankie says confidently, but not quite answering the question, thrilled to be surrounded by so many people who are at her beck and call. “I also wanna do a new thing, Daddy.”
“What’s that?”
“I wanna play hide and seek because this is a big house with lots of rooms and places to hide and there are lots of people here that can hide.”
“That’s actually a great idea,” I tell her.
“Super fun,” Lina agrees.
We sit and start serving ourselves, passing plates and platters around.
“What do you want to do this week, Tita Lina?” Frankie asks, and I glow with some sort of internal parental pride, that she remembered her manners and who originally asked her the question.
“I want to relax,” Lina says. “I want to have fun. I don’t want to work too much.” She glances at me with a smile, like we share a secret. “Just like your dad.”
“I still have to work, but I do want to relax and have fun,” I tell Frankie, wanting to be upfront so she can manage her expectations.
“I promised him I’d help him,” Lina said with a wink, and the hair at the back of my neck stands up.
“Lina,” Oliver chimes in. “I think you should leave the work for Superintendent Daniels this week. He should really be the one filling in for a missing principal.”
“Then it won’t get done,” Lina fires back. “Or it’ll be done wrong or poorly. No PS 2 student will be coloring with a non-Crayola crayon, thank you very much.”
Everyone at the table winces.
I, too, am familiar with the horror of a non-Crayola crayon, after attempting to help Frankie color with a brand that rhymes with ‘Shmose Shart.’ I cringe, remembering the waxy streakiness.
“Listen, Ollie ,” Lina continues. “I promise to do as little as possible. But there are some things that I need to do myself. I can’t trust anyone else to do it, much less the supe.”
Lina sounds familiar. Lina sounds like me. Are we soulmates?
Or the absolute worst fucking possible combination of people ever?
“Anyway, this conversation is about Frankie,” Lina reminds us. “Anything else you wanna do, girl?”
Frankie looks up at the ceiling, thinking about it. “I’m just excited to hang out with everyone and not just my dad.”
“Ouch, Frankie. Jeez.” That actually stings.
Tita Gloria stares at me with an I told you so look on her face.
Lina gives me a look filled with sympathy.
I look away. Maybe the worst combination of people ever.