6. Show Me How To Worship
Show Me How To Worship
Time blurs under the weight of busy clinics, charts stacked too high, surgeries to schedule, a hundred small disasters demanding triage.
But lately, there’s one thing that slows everything down.
One pause that lets me breathe. The daily texts and nightly phone calls with Dominik.
I pretend not to notice the heat in my cheeks when he calls me beautiful.
I swallow the sigh that always wants to escape when we hang up, the silence afterward too loud.
I’ve built my life on pragmatism. I won't abandon it easily.
Even when his voice makes me feel a little weak, even when I catch myself waiting for my phone to light up.
Besides, he is, by every reasonable metric, safe.
Financially secure, a foreman, a father.
Decent in the truest, quietest sense of the word.
Being with him feels reliable, solid as poured concrete, as the materials he handles every day.
And still, beneath all that steadiness, there’s something charged.
Something just under the surface. Dangerous because it asks me to want more than I planned to.
I’ve started to convince myself that I’m not nervous about our date at all.
The one he talked me into with his unending persistence.
Until, finally it’s Sunday. The first date I’ve had in years.
I’m sweating bullets, even if this is just dinner.
Just food. Just Dominik’s parents, people from the community I've known all my life.
By the time I pull into his parents’ driveway, my stomach is already in knots.
Sunday dinner, what was I thinking? I could’ve said no, could’ve claimed the clinic needed me, could’ve faked a deadly flu.
Instead, here I am, clutching a bottle of wine like it’s a weapon and rehearsing excuses in case I need to make an early escape.
The front door swings open before I even knock.
Dominik stands there in a black shirt and slacks, the top button undone, sleeves rolled up just enough to make me stare. My mouth betrays me.
“You look like you’re about to go to Easter Mass.”
His mouth curves slow and wicked. “Well, it is kind of like that.” Then he leans in close, his breath warm at my ear. “If you’re God… show me how to worship.”
Heat floods me so fast I nearly choke. My brain short-circuits, body screaming danger, danger, but before I can combust, salvation arrives in the form of a five-year-old missile.
“Auntie Kasia!” Zosia shrieks, barreling into my legs. I stagger, clutching her tiny body to steady myself, whispering a silent thank god for the distraction.
The dining room looks like it’s feeding a battalion: zrazy piled high, stuffed cabbage steaming, potato pancakes glistening in butter, two different soups, three different roasts.
“Bo?e…” I murmur, staring at the spread.
Dominik slides into the chair beside me, smirk tugging his mouth. “Told you it was like Easter Mass.”
I swat his arm with my napkin, but he just laughs, reaching across to rescue Zosia before she tips a bowl of beet soup into my lap.
Dinner is loud, frantic, overwhelming in the best way.
His mother peppers me with questions about the clinic, his father interrupts with stories about Dominik’s childhood, all of them embarrassing, all of them clearly rehearsed for maximum effect.
Zosia climbs into my lap halfway through the meal and stays there, happily spooning potatoes onto my plate, smearing gravy across my sleeve, and not one person bats an eye.
Zosia beams at me like I’m her favorite toy.
Dominik is quieter than usual, but every time I glance at him he’s watching me, eyes dark, unreadable.
By the time we finish, I’m stuffed and dizzy from the onslaught of attention.
I lean back, ready to beg off dessert, when Dominik stands.
He disappears into the other room and returns with a massive paper bag.
With a grin, he tips it upside down over the table.
Chocolate bars cascade across the wood in a ridiculous flood—Prince Polo, Wedel, Micha?ki, everything from my parents’ store.
“You didn’t,” I gasp.
“I did,” he says, utterly unrepentant. “Figured I owed it for the bars I tried to steal from you. Bought every single one. Your Tata looked at me like I’d lost my mind.”
I laugh, shaking my head. “I bet he did, that was years ago.” I manage between breaths.
“Then he started singing while I paid. I didn’t know it at first, but… I think it was that old song about a tango?”
My chest goes cold, then hot, then something I can’t name. “Was it… Ta ostatnia niedziela?”
He nods. “Yeah. That’s it.”
The words hollow me out. My dad’s song for Mama.
Does he see something here, between me and Dominik, that I’m too scared to admit?
I force a laugh, reaching for a piece of chocolate, but inside, the thought burns.
When the night winds down, I stand to go, thanking his parents as they fuss over me, pressing leftovers into my hands like I haven’t eaten in a week, along with a carrier bag full of chocolate.
Dominik walks me to the car, hands shoved into his pockets. At the car, he hesitates. I do too. For a second the world is just us, the dark gleam of his eyes, the way I’m suddenly aware of my blood supply and where it’s pumping to. If he leans in for a kiss, I know I won’t stop him.
But Zosia’s voice drifts from the doorway, “Tatu?!” and the moment fractures. He exhales, slow, almost a laugh.
“Drive safe, doktorka,” he says.
I nod, forcing my legs to move, sliding into the driver’s seat before I can think.
When I glance back, he’s still standing there, watching, until the taillights carry me away.
By the time I get home, the buzz of dinner is still humming in my chest. I’ve barely kicked off my shoes when my phone starts ringing.
“Made it home safe?” he asks the second I answer, his voice lower than usual, rougher.
“Clearly,” I say, dropping onto the couch. “What, did my Tata hire you as my security detail now?”
“Yes, he pays me in songs and chocolate.” We both laugh, then it goes still. The usual easy chatter between us stalls, replaced by something heavier. It settles into my bones, into the silence, and suddenly I know exactly what we’re both thinking.
His throat clears. “If I don’t get to… touch you soon, I don’t think I’ll have to worry about much. I’ll be dead in some stupid accident at work from the distraction. Then you’ll have to raise Zosia, it's only fair. Especially for killing me. You are, by the way… killing me.”
The nervous laugh bursts out of me, helpless, but my body betrays me at the heat of his words. It’s been years since I’ve even thought about anyone this way without it ending in Obelus. But now... I’m thinking of Dominik’s hands on me.
“Dominik...” His name escapes, meant to stop this, meant to anchor me, but the way it sounds, breathy, needy, only makes it worse.
Makes it sound like he’s already here, pressed against me.
I can feel us teetering on the edge of something.
His silence feels like he’s making a choice of where this call might go.
And then, knocking. Faint, high-pitched. “Tatu??”
Silence slices the line in two. He coughs, pulling himself back with notable effort. “Yes, Tatu? will be there in a second. I’ll read you your book.” Then, to me, “Sorry.”
I breathe out slowly, still burning. “Don’t be sorry. It’s attractive, actually. The way you care, that you’re always there for her.”
“Don’t talk like that,” he says, laughing, maybe even a little moved. “I have things to do. A ksi??niczka (princess) to read to and one to hang up on, even if I don’t want to.”
I laugh, softer now, aching in a way I haven’t in years. “Go. Read your book, ksi??? (prince).”
“Goodnight, ksi??niczka.”
The line clicks dead, but my skin still burns where his words touched me the way his hands wanted to.