Chapter 18
DOMINIC
The pint glass in my hand has a smudge near the rim, and no matter how roughly I run the rag over it, the smudge remains. What a perfect metaphor for the current state of my life. Is that a metaphor? Who the fuck knows.
The last forty-eight hours have not been easy.
They’ve made me long for the darkness from that first year as a zombie, in fact, because that’s exactly what I’ve become.
A mindless creature shrouded in darkness, unable to form coherent thoughts, staggering through my waking hours with a gaping chest wound where my heart should be.
She said she loved me, then that she didn’t trust me enough to live with me. I don’t know how to reconcile the two. It was my fault for asking her to move in so quickly after we said I love you, but I was just expressing how I felt, what I wanted to do. I was ready, and I thought she was too.
I should’ve known she’d bring up Gemma and the secrets I haven’t been willing to share. She was right, and it’s perfectly reasonable that she’d want me to tell her before allowing me to live with her and her daughter. I can’t begrudge her prioritizing Jules’s safety.
What I realized is that I wasn’t ready to look at the horizon and accept what was coming.
We were always going to end up here, in the place where we can’t move forward without her knowing about my past, and me knowing the second I reveal it, she’ll go running in the opposite direction.
Maybe I foolishly hoped she’d forget. That we could proceed without addressing it ever again.
“Boss!” I hear Riz shout from beside me.
“Are you okay?” He looks gravely concerned as he glances down at my hand.
“Oh, shit.” Without realizing, I squeezed the smudged glass so hard it shattered in my palm.
“The hell’s wrong with you, man?” Vyla pops up on my other side, crouching down to collect the shards around my feet.
“Sorry,” I reply in a flat tone. My hand is bleeding a bit, but I feel only numbness. “I’ll go wash up.”
I splash water on my face in the bathroom, pleased to see that the cuts on my hand have already stopped bleeding. My world feels like it’s crumbling, and I’m racing around the pile with scotch tape trying to put it back together.
How am I going to face her at the talent show?
She can say it’s not over all she wants, but whether it’s now or several months from now, she’s going to ask me about my past again, and I can either tell her and risk having to see her terrified reaction of me every time we cross paths for the rest of our lives, or not tell her, after which she’ll definitely dump me, and risk having to see her terrified reaction of me––based on whatever horrors she’s imagined––every time we cross paths for the rest of our lives.
Either way, I lose the girl of my dreams.
What I won’t do is bail on Jules. I already made a sign to hold up in the crowd during her performance. Maybe I can go and hide somewhere in the back. She’ll still spot me with the sign, but I won’t have to see Lindsay.
To make matters worse, as if that’s even possible, my rut is late. It’s never late. If it doesn’t show up by Saturday, I should probably call Dr. Yates and see if she needs to change my medication.
I was looking forward to being out of my mind for a couple of days in the hope that it would distract me from the heartache. At least the moving in discussion saved me from having to tell her about my monthly fuck frenzy. That’s something.
When I emerge from the bathroom, Vlad is blocking my path back to the bar. “Need a refill?” I ask.
“You look like shit, you know that?” His voice is scratchy, and his New England accent is thicker than maple syrup. He looks around the bar. “Where’s your lady? Haven’t seen her around.”
This ancient vampire has never, not once, asked me anything personal. Today, of all days, he wants to become buddies? “Yeah, she’s been busy.” It’s the best I can do.
He shakes his head. “She ain’t busy.”
I wait for him to keep talking, but when he continues to stare at me, I step around him and head back behind the bar.
He plops down in front of me with the same assessing glare. “Don’t be an idiot.”
“Is that supposed to be helpful advice?”
“It is if you can look at yourself in the mirror and acknowledge that you’re being an idiot.”
I sigh, impatient. “Would you like a refill?”
“Hey, don’t take that shit for granted, young man. Some of us”––he points to himself––“don’t have that luxury.”
It takes me a minute to realize he’s talking about being able to see his reflection in the mirror. Maybe it was his attempt at a joke, but either way, I know I look like shit, and I don’t appreciate him pointing it out. “So…refill?”
“Yeah, O negative,” he growls, adding quietly, “idiot.”
The rest of the day moves at the speed of molasses. I tell the others to take off early and that I’ll lock up for the night. They continue to look at me funny, but none will pass up the chance to skip out on closing tasks.
After the tables are cleaned, the floor is mopped, and the doors are locked, I step out into the frigid night, and hope frostbite takes me out before I make it to my trailer.
I’m pulling my keys out of my coat pocket when I hear the snapping of a branch behind me.
Before I get the chance to turn around, darkness swallows me whole.
Lindsay
What’s the point of love, exactly? I’d like for someone to explain it to me.
Because the whole, “it’s better having loved and lost than to have never loved at all,” quote makes absolutely no sense.
This, what I’m experiencing right now, this deep yawning chasm of heartache that feels like it’s never going to close…
this is worse. I don’t care how much fun the falling in love was.
How I felt like I was floating above the ground whenever Nic touched me, or how protected I felt inside his big arms. This is so much worse.
He said it wasn’t ending, but considering we haven’t spoken in days, I’m taking it as a period at the end of the sentence that was our relationship.
Jules keeps asking where he is, and since I all I can say is, “I don’t know, honey,” I think she’s starting to catch on.
When she asks if he’s coming to the talent show tonight, I say yes, because despite whatever’s going on with us, he promised her he’d be there, and I expect him to deliver on that promise.
I’m not sure what I’m hoping for when I take my seat in the audience an hour later. My eyes scan the crowd, but I don’t spot him. When the lights go down in the stuffy high school gymnasium, I cross my fingers that he’s about to sneak in and cheer from the back row.
Camilla sits down beside me, her husband and Hugo in tow, and gives my hand a comforting squeeze. She doesn’t ask where Nic is, because she knows he’s MIA. I told Natalie too. She said he’s been acting weird at work but hasn’t said anything about me.
Natalie’s working tonight, but I’m relieved to have at least one person to enjoy the show with.
When Jules and Rocío are called to the stage, Camilla and I hoot and holler at the top of our lungs. “Good Luck, Babe” by Chappell Roan echoes through the speakers, and the lights come up on our two angels. I forget about Nic entirely.
I know every move Jules makes before she makes it, and my hands mimic hers throughout the entire song.
Their moves are impressively fast and tight, but I remind myself that this is the TikTok generation, and they’ve been dancing for an audience since before I started growing hairs out of my chin.
When Chappell belts out, “I told you so,” the girls hold a cheeky pose that charms the crowd.
The performance ends with Rocío landing a backflip with her elbows on her knees, and Jules leaning her elbows on Rocío’s shoulders, both cheesing as cheers erupt. Camilla and I are on our feet screaming for them.
They don’t win the show, but they do get second place, which comes with two fifty-dollar gift cards to Tome Time bookstore. After the show ends, I hear them discussing the list of books they plan to buy, so clearly it was a victory.
When we get out to the parking lot, Camilla and Morty say their goodbyes, and the girls give each other one last death grip of a hug before reluctantly letting go. Once her dance partner is out of sight, I watch Jules scan the faces of the crowd still exiting the high school, and my stomach sinks.
“Where’s Dominic?” She turns to face me, her eyes wide with disbelief. “He didn’t come?”
I suck in a breath and promise myself to only do this once. That because of how good he’s been with Jules, he’s earned this one favor. “He wasn’t feeling well, pumpkin, so he couldn’t make it. He said to tell you he’d be cheering you on from bed, though.”
She looks disappointed but she buys the lie.
Maybe she’d be more upset if she weren’t so used to the men in her life letting her down. Welcome to the club, baby girl.
I plan on texting Nic tomorrow and letting him know I covered for him, but this was the first and last time. Him bailing on her helped me shake off some lingering sadness, too, because how dare he let my perfect girl down? The fucking audacity of that is ridiculous.
Any man I choose to move in with needs to show up for me and my daughter. That’s a line in the sand that I’m drawing today.
We get home and celebrate with some leftover bibimbap with kimchi and extra gochujang sauce, and ice cream sandwiches. I let her stay up as late as she wants, but once the adrenaline wears off, her eyes get heavy and she’s in bed by ten.
I settle into the couch with a glass of red wine and allow myself to accept what tonight really means. He didn’t show up for Jules; therefore, he didn’t show up for me. He didn’t come because he didn’t want to. Because this is over. It was ending while he was telling me it wasn’t.