10. Dominic
TEN
Dominic
The next morning after breakfast, Frankie and I are standing in front of the mirror of the bathroom in the main house, next to the kitchen, when she suddenly stops humming Ashanti. “Can you do my hair like Tita Lina?” she asks me.
My fingers are currently straining to hold tension in her hair for the French braid pigtails she originally asked for. “You don’t want pigtails?” I ask, voice muffled, as my teeth are currently clenched around two hair elastics.
“No, thanks,” she says.
I drop my hands and take the hair ties out of my mouth. “Tita Lina usually wears her hair down,” I tell her, hating myself for knowing this. I comb out Frankie’s silky, straight hair with my fingers.
“I hate it,” she tells me, after looking at hair in the mirror. “It looks nothing like Tita’s.”
“It’s not going to look quite like hers,” I tell her gently, as if I am approaching an angry bear, bracing myself for the impending attack. “Your hair is straight, and Lina’s is curly.”
Frankie turns beet red as she takes a deep breath, chest rumbling like the earth before a volcano explodes, prepared to let out an ear-piercing explosion.
“Frank—”
“Hey, girl!” Lina’s head pops through the open door of the bathroom.
The room fills with a whoosh ing sound as Frankie deflates like a balloon and I let out the breath I was holding onto for dear life.
“I was thinking of braiding my hair today,” Lina quickly tells Frankie. “Tita Georgia, too. I wanted to ask you if we could all have matching braids today.”
Frankie, thrilled to be included in their girl band, forgets about her tantrum. “Okay! My dad does the best braids. Do you want him to do yours, too?”
Lina’s eyes dart to me, and a part of me hopes she says yes, because I’ve been dying to grip those curls in my hands since I first saw her at Ollie’s party.
“As much as I’d love that,” Lina tells us, “I can do it myself. I’m good.” Her eyes dart to me. “I don’t think your dad wants to cross that line,” she says quietly, and this is for my ears only.
I stop myself from blurting out I can do it!
Look at your daughter. She needs you, and she only gets one of you, so you have to fill the role of two functioning parents. Which leaves no room for doing Lina’s hair or dragging my mouth across the soft skin of her stomach like I’ve wanted to do all week, despite the line drawn in the sand. That was the right decision, Dom, telling her that you can’t get involved , but instead of patting myself on the back, I’ve felt like slapping myself upside the head. Especially after each time she displays Frankie-Whisperer tendencies or organizes an entire Pirate Plunder for thirty people in under five minutes or wears another fucking crop top or when her shorts ride up her ass when she hops down from a chair.
“Okay. Are you doing one braid or two braids?” Frankie asks, oblivious.
“One,” Lina says confidently, unknowingly saving my wrists from carpal tunnel.
“French or regular?”
“Regular,” Lina answers, and I could kiss her.
* * *
Later on, work really slows down after dealing with the issue with my FinTech company.
Several customers had been reporting issues with failed transactions on the platform. An integration with one of our third-party payment processors had broken down, causing payments to hang in limbo.
After a few hours with my Head of Operations and her team and the third-party provider, we figured we needed to reset the API connection and… you know what, it doesn’t matter. We figured it out, the integration was back online, and transactions were flowing smoothly again.
I don’t have any other meetings or calls scheduled for the day, and barring any major emergency, I’m free.
I meander down the path towards the main house to see what I can scrounge up for a late lunch, surprised when I walk through the back door and see all the adults lounging in the kitchen.
“Where’s Frankie?” I ask the room.
“She’s drawing pictures of tanks in the living room,” Lina supplies.
I go to peruse the food sitting on the counter, when Tita Gloria hip checks me away and starts making me a plate herself.
“How’s work?” Oliver asks.
“It’s okay. I think it’s slowed down for the day, actually.”
“Well, this is great timing, then,” Georgia says cheerfully. “Me and Oliver and Lina were all just considering taking an edible, so you should join us.”
“We’re edible people now,” Lina tells me.
“Actually, I had one an hour ago,” Georgia grins.
“What the hell?” Oliver asks with mild outrage. “Why wouldn’t you just say that then? You were just ‘considering’ taking one with us for the last five minutes. And why wouldn’t you wait for me?”
Georgia rolls her eyes. “It’s just an edible, Oliver; it’s not like we’re dropping acid and embarking on a twelve hour psychedelic journey together. And besides, I was ‘considering’ taking another one.”
“Fine.” Oliver digs a tin of what looks like candy out of his pocket, opens it, and pops one in.
When was the last time I smoked weed? Definitely before Frankie was born. Do they even still call it weed? Does it have a new name? I’m having a heart attack just thinking about it.
“I’m having a heart attack just thinking about it,” I repeat, this time out loud. “My five-year-old daughter is here. Who’s going to take care of Frankie? What if there’s an emergency? It can significantly impair decision-making, reaction time, judgment. Or increase the risk of accidents, or?—”
“I don’t know why I ever thought you could be in a gang,” Lina mutters.
“Christ, Dom, I don’t remember you ever being this neurotic. You’re like a walking D.A.R.E. commercial,” Oliver tells me.
“And like those commercials, it’s making me want to do it more,” Georgia says. She slides the tin out of Ollie’s pocket and pops another in her mouth.
“ I’m neurotic?” I shoot back at Oliver. “ You wouldn’t smoke with me before class in high school because you were afraid you would forget your locker combination and not be able to get your textbooks!”
Georgia cackles, smacking Oliver on the arm. “Nerd.”
“Ben and I are going to take care of Frankie today,” Tita Gloria cuts in. “Do whatever you want. Bahala ka sa buhay mo . ”
“And how do you know what an edible is, Tita?” I ask her. “What if it makes us all crazy and want to call the ambulance on ourselves?” Which is something I seriously considered doing after a few too many brownies in college. I don’t feel anything, I’m taking more , and all that.
“ Tsk ,” she clicks her tongue. “Please. I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“I take them for my arthritis,” Tito Ben offers.
“And the worst that happens is he sits on the couch for too long or eats too much candy or laughs too hard at my jokes or…” she waggles her eyebrows and thrusts her hips a little, “you know. Gets a little handsy.”
Oliver and I both dry heave.
Oliver takes deep, cleansing breaths. “Anyway, it’s not like it was when we were younger, Dom. We used to?—”
“You didn’t used to do shit?—”
“—edibles were a crap shoot back then. Someone would hand you a brownie and it could have nothing or twenty times the normal dosage. It’s legal and regulated and properly labeled now, so you know exactly how much you’re getting.”
“How strong are those?” I ask Georgia.
“Not that strong,” she answers.
“Not that strong for you or not that strong for me?”
“Strong enough for you to have fun but not want to call the ambulance on yourself.”
Lina raises her hand.
I sigh. “Yes?”
“Let’s do it together. We promised each other we’d relax. And we’ll do just a little bit. Will you be an edible person with me today? Can we be New and Improved Real Life Lina and Dom?” she implores, feline eyes wide, her soft hand shaking my forearm. “Please?”
I look towards the living room, where Frankie sits.
“This will be good for us, Dom. Fun. Remember the patio?” Lina tells me quietly, like it’s a secret between the two of us, squeezing my hand.
I blow out a breath. “Fuck it,” I say, holding my hand out to Oliver, but Georgia is already there like a magical drug fairy and sliding something surprisingly gummy into my palm.
“Cheers,” Lina smiles, and we touch them together and pop them in.
It tastes like a Sour Patch Kid and not like the rotting cardboard of a college dorm brownie. “Ollie, could you please go lock that in your room?” I ask him. “Where Frankie will never find it?”
The elementary school principal, responsible for the safety of five hundred children ages four to ten, nods, eyes softening. “Of course.”
“I’m not having fun yet,” I inform Lina, who grins at me.
* * *
An hour or seventeen later, Oliver, Georgia, Lina, Frankie, and I are sitting on the beach, on the wet part (What’s that part called again? The shore? Does the wet part even have a name? If so, what’s the dry part called?) surrounded by dozens of carefully constructed drip castles and spinning a tale of a vast, hidden kingdom beneath the sand. Known as Dripmoor.
“These aren’t castles,” Georgia says seriously. “These are magical fortresses.”
“And each is ruled by different factions of ancient, sea-dwelling creatures…” Oliver adds.
“Known as the Dripkin. A secret society of beings who can…” Lina trails off.
“Manipulate water,” I provide.
“And time,” Lina adds on.
Frankie is highly tickled by this oceanic urban fantasy. And frankly, judging by the look on everyone’s faces, so is everyone else.
“Each fortress holds immense power over an element—one controls the tides, another controls the moon’s pull, and yet another governs the whispers of forgotten ocean spirits,” Lina tells Frankie in a spooky voice.
“Don’t scare my daughter,” I tell her, the hair on my arms rising.
“I’m not scared—you’re scared,” Frankie huffs at me.
“Lina is pretty scary,” I admit.
“Hey!”
“But you, Frankie, are the Seeker in this tale,” I continue. “You’re the only human with the ability to enter Dripmoor through a hidden portal beneath the largest drip castle. This one that I’m building right now.” I grab another wet clump of sand and drip it onto the top. “This is like, the most satisfying feeling on my fingers.”
“It really is,” Georgia agrees.
“I feel like I can hear the sand plopping,” Oliver contributes. “I like the sound it makes.”
“That makes no sense,” I tell him.
“Neither does the giant, gaping pothole in your Dripmoor story,” Lina fires back.
“Pothole? Dripmoor can’t have potholes. The constant wave erosion makes it impossible,” I inform her.
“Plot hole,” she clarifies.
“What plot hole? The plot is ironclad.” I am indignant.
“Why is Dripmoor beneath the sand, when the fortresses are above the sand?” Lina frowns.
“So they can be affected by the moon’s pull,” Oliver jumps in to defend my honor as a story teller with an even more nonsensical answer.
“How can this one control the tides and that one control the moon’s pull?” Lina demands to know.
“I don’t know! You’re the one who came up with that story element!”
“The Seeker is on a quest to unite the Dripkin factions to stop a terrible curse that’s rising from the deep,” Georgia cuts in, “threatening to flood the human world with eternal high tide.”
“I feel like I’m high just watching them,” I think I hear Tito Ben say to Tita Gloria.
I look over at them, and they are perched up on beach chairs a few feet away. I look at the five of us, ranging in age from five to forty, hunched over like gremlins in the midst of dozens of phallic towers of sand. I lose it.
Lina looks at me and dissolves into giggles.
“It looks like you two are babysitting all of us,” I tell Tita Gloria and Tito Ben in between gasps, because I seem to have lost control of my lungs.
“We are, technically,” Tita Gloria responds.
Everyone looks around and digests this and also dissolves into giggles.
Frankie is fucking loving this and jumps her sandy body into my lap. I squeeze her tight. “Am I squeezing your eyeballs out of your head?” I ask her.
She lets out a high-pitched squeal, like a teakettle.
“I have an amazing idea,” Lina says, eyes sparkling at me and Frankie. Her entire being seems to be in hi-def (high def, ha), her skin glowing bronze and her orange bikini vibrant, and it feels almost like having a religious experience, a mirage in the desert, a goddess appearing amongst us mere mortals. “Wanna play hide and seek?”
Everyone yells some variation of an affirmative response.
“Rinse off before you go in the house,” Tita Gloria commands.
* * *
This is how I find myself in the pitch-black closet under the stairs, behind a bunch of coats and sitting atop dozens of sneakers and what might be a broom or a vacuum cleaner digging into my back. Frankie will never find me. This spot is unfindable. I shall prevail.
The door swings open, blinding me momentarily, until my eyes adjust and I see a pretty pair of tanned feet with red painted toenails just past the coats.
“What the fuck, Lina,” I hiss, “you’re giving me away.”
I’m greeted by the rustling of a bag of potato chips, then, “Dom?”
“Get in or get out!”
The door slams shut, blanketing me in darkness, but the potato chip bag sound is closer than ever. I sniff the air, feeling like a predator whose smell is heightened.
“Salt and vinegar?”
She munches. “Yes.”
“Get down here. Behind the coats.”
What happens next is an all out assault on the senses.
The smell of salt and vinegar chips and coat closet mustiness and whatever Lina’s coconut heaven shampoo or soap or lotion is.
The sounds of hangers tinkling, fabrics rustling, chip bag crinkling.
The pain of getting a coat button in my eye, a zipper hitting my tooth.
The pleasure of the soft silk of Lina’s skin on mine, when her barely covered body topples onto my shirtless one.
Supple. Lush. Velvet. Succulent. Juicy . My brain becomes a thesaurus for the sensation that now surrounds me and leaves no room for any other words.
She finally stops moving. The pillowy flesh of her ass on my lap, her back on my chest, her creamy thighs on my legs. My hand on her stomach.
“Holy fucking shit,” I manage.
“Am I crushing you?”
“It is as soft as it looks,” I whisper, dragging my hands back and forth over the expanse, dipping my finger in her belly button.
“I feel like this is crossing the line.”
Fuck . I snatch my hand back and shove it under a bunch of shoes. “Sorry.”
“No,” she whispers. “Please don’t stop.”
My fingers twitch on their own accord, then land on her stomach again. Someone moans. It might be me. “Is this even your real skin?!”
“No, this is my fake skin.”
I circle around her belly button. Once. Twice. Her head falls back onto my shoulder. I’m hard as fuck and she knows it, based on the way she wiggles against me, the quiet whimper rumbling from her throat. My nose goes into her hair, rubs against her ear. I grip the flesh at her waist, wondering if I’ve ever felt anything so soft. Then I clear the area next to me of shoes and gently shift her down and away.
She takes a deep breath, blows it out.
Lina breaks the silence. “Everything is so loud.”
“You’re telling me,” I mutter.
We hear the pitter patter of tiny feet running around the hallway. A shriek. A “gotcha!”
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I blurt into the pitch-black darkness.
“Like what?”
“Like you want to eat me alive,” I clarify.
“I told you. I do.”
She really does. I can see it in the way she looks at me. Like she could devour me whole. “I think I’d be too sinewy,” I say.
“There’s only one way to find out.”
I shift, adjust myself. Move a shoe out of my ass. “I think we determined that would be a bad idea.”
“I didn’t determine shit. Actually, that’s not true. I determined that I want to suck your dick.”
There’s a heavy pause. It weighs seven tons.
Then a small, “Whoops,” from Lina.
Wow . “It might mean more than that to me,” I tell her after several more moments.
She sighs. “It doesn’t have to. But me too,” she admits after a while. “And that might be a bad thing for right now.”
“He’s mad at me about it, though,” I say, to make us all feel better.
“Who? Your dick?”
“Yep.”
“Tell him he’s missing out.”
“He knows.”
I play with the shoelaces of a shoe I find under my hand. “I feel like we’ve been in here for forty-seven minutes.”
“I was going to say seven.”
“Can I have some chips?”
She passes them over to me, and I take a handful. Someone moans again. It might be me.
“These are fucking fantastic.”
“Right?!”
“It’s worth it to splurge on the good kind. Kettle cooked. Not the flimsy ones that crumble into nothing.”
“Those are good too, but in a different way.”
“Hmm… true. Sometimes. Like in sandwiches.” I take another handful. “You know what I would love right now?”
“To fuck me with no strings attached?”
I look over in her general direction. “You might be the horniest person I’ve ever met.”
“I can hear you clutching your pearls.”
“But I think I’d want strings attached. That’s the problem. I think I’ve moved past the one-night stand stage of my life. The product of my last one just turned five in June. But I also don’t know that I’d have any real time or energy to dedicate to strings attached. It all has to go to Frankie. It wouldn’t be fair to either of you.” The more and more I think or say this, however, the less and less true it seems to become.
“Me.”
“You.”
She digests this.
“But I digress. What I really want is a really foamy, cold beer.”
“In a plastic cup,” she agrees, voice dreamy.
Frankie opens the door to the closet. “You aren’t even trying anymore,” she tells us in a grumpy voice, and I realize Lina and I have been chatting at a regular volume in a dark closet like two totally normal adults.
“I honestly forgot we were playing hide and seek,” I whisper to Lina on our climb out of the closet.
“Worst game of Seven Minutes in Heaven ever,” she grumbles.
“Forty-Seven Minutes in Heaven.”
* * *
“Where can we get a cold, foamy beer?” I demand of Oliver.
“In a plastic cup,” Lina makes sure to add on.
“There’s a bar a bit of a walk down the beach,” he says. “We could all go there for dinner and a foamy beer in a plastic cup.”
“Do they have oysters?” Georgia asks, her eyes almost basically closed.
“Yes.”
“Do they have really crusty bread?” Lina wants to know.
“Uh…”
“How about grapes?”
“There are grapes in the fridge, Daddy.”
“It’s so far,” I whisper.
“It’s closer than the bar,” Oliver says unhelpfully.
“Okay,” I declare, making the decision. I don’t run several companies for nothin’. “Let’s all walk down to the bar, but stop at the fridge for grapes on the way there.”
“I think Ben and I are going to stay here,” Tita Gloria chimes in. “I don’t think Ben’s arthritis will agree with a walk down the beach. But we can keep Frankie here and feed her dinner and watch Moana ?”
Frankie screams. “ Yes! Please Daddy, I don’t want to go to a bar .”
“You guys go,” Tito Ben says. “Have an adult night out.”
My brain scrambles because I’m trying so hard to remember the last time I had an adult night out, and I genuinely can’t remember. A bar? For fun? And not an elementary school related social event? I look at my tiny Frankie, who is looking at me angrily, like she already expects me to say no.
But then I look at Lina, who is looking at me with those golden honey eyes, a tempting mix of dirty hunger and self-indulgent yet potentially responsible choices.
“Let’s go,” I tell her. “But let’s stop at the fridge for grapes first.”
* * *
When was the last time I felt like this? Carefree, giggles like bubbles rising to the water’s surface, ready to pop out at the slightest provocation, like when Ollie trips over a piece of driftwood or when a kite nosedives into the sand or when Lina manages to throw a grape into my mouth while we’re both jogging forward. The cool breeze of a beach at sunset, the salty tang of the ocean. Young, without the debilitating restless energy and pressure that comes with adulthood and parenthood.
A cool and confident woman walking next to me, her long curly hair occasionally blown by the wind into the skin of my arm. The both of us in ratty clothing but that’s by choice, because it’s soft and comfortable and we are in Relax Mode and not because we’re twenty-two and hustling and can’t afford new clothes.
“How are we doing at crafting New and Improved Real Life Lina?” I ask the beach siren beside me.
“I only worked for an hour today. I took an edible, and I left my phone back at the house. On purpose. I’d say I’m doing amazing.”
“You have to stop working this week,” I tell her.
“I can’t help it. I have to.”
“The school won’t collapse if you don’t order books.”
“It will, actually, because then no one will order them, and then all the teachers and the kids, including yours, mind you, would be fucked in September.”
I wince. “Sorry. You’re right. That was an annoying thing for me to say. I just don’t want you to overextend yourself, especially if you’re not getting paid for it.”
“Look who’s talking. Besides, what does it matter to you?”
“What do you mean?”
“That sounded like something a boyfriend would say. Are you saying you care about me?”
“I can still care about you without being your boyfriend. I’ve known you for less than a week. Plenty of time to learn to care for someone.”
She cackles. “You’re sassy when you’re high.”
“I learn from the best.”
“You’ve only known me for less than a week.”
“Plenty of time,” I reply, and am I flirting right now?! After drawing another metaphorical line in Forty-Seven Minutes in Heaven?
If I’m being totally honest with myself, which turns out is incredibly easy to do while you’re high, I really like this woman. Not only do I like that she’s really good with Frankie, but I like that she’s dependable and works her ass off. I like that she gives a shit . I like that she can swing from kind and calm and cool to ferocious and spicy and a little bratty. Not to mention the whole Eighth Wonder of the World thing. She’s breathtakingly gorgeous, in her crop top and her shorts and bare feet and wild hair and cat eyes.
“You look like a beach siren,” I tell her, and I am definitely flirting.
“My ancestors would be pleased with that assessment.”
“Dominican, you said?”
“Mmm.”
“We’re both island people.”
“Watered down a bit. I’m third generation. I can’t even speak Spanish.”
I shrug. “I’m first generation, and I can’t speak Tagalog. My parents wanted me fully assimilated. I can understand it fluently, though. Ollie speaks better Tagalog than I do, and he’s not even one hundred percent Filipino.”
“What are you talking about back there?” Ollie spins around, Georgia hanging on his back like a monkey. “I heard my name.”
“How your mom taught you to speak Tagalog, and my parents didn’t.”
Oliver looks between me and Lina and smiles, turning around again. “ Hindi siya katulad ni Viv o nanay ni Francine. Gawin mo na .”
“What did he say?”
I stare at the back of his head. “The bar we’re going to has really crusty bread.”