Keep an eye out for your dad," my mom says. I stop in my tracks to listen if she has anything else to add. "I haven't heard of him the entire afternoon and I'm starting to worry." Her gaze meets mine in slight panic, but she softens her worry none the less, trying to keep my environment as calm as she possibly could.
Just like the therapist asked.
I see the therapist lingering in the corner of the room, pulling strings to control my mother. She does exactly what the therapist maneuvers.
"And dinner is almost ready, so don't be too long," Charlie tells behind me. Robotically.
I follow the pooch to the door. She jumps up and down frantically, whining and screaming at me as if I'm stepping on her foot.
The farm is just dead. There's no plant life, no animal life, no life. The trees are deceased and decaying, the earth is black. Even the sky represents funeral weather and it's scaring me.
Peyton's nails scratch over the porch tiles loudly, heading straight down the path. She doesn't even stop at her usual pee spot, she goes straight to the fields. The dog has been acting peculiar the entire afternoon, and it's starting to freak me out.
I follow her none the less, afraid she might get lost or turn herself into a barbed wire kebab. She leads me down the main driveway all the way to the valley of the farm, hustling between twigs and fruit dying on the earth.
Peyton doesn't stop scrambling until we reach a peculiar feature in one of the aisles between the trees, somewhere far off the radar. A man is lying on the ground, his hand clutched over his chest, balling the material of his shirt. His eyes are shut and his body completely limp.
I noticed some crusted blood on his forehead as well, even though he was lying on his back. His milky skin is branded painfully crimson, shadows of pale flesh kept beneath his clothing.
Peyton jumps onto the man, licking the hat straight off his head.
"Dad?" I gasp, fastening my pace into a jog.
My heart's beating in my ears, every worst fear coming true.
"Dad?" I ask again, dropping to my knees next to his limp body. He's unconscious, but his face is pale and his lips are smeared in pale glaucous. I touch his neck, but I feel nothing.
There's no rhythmic pulse. Not even the slightest twitch of his artery. I touch his skin to feel for heat, but my fingertips are met with those of a freezer.
A piece of meat.
He's dead.
"Hey, Ally," my mother shakes my shoulder in attempt to bring attention back to me.
A waiting room couch isn't really that comfortable, especially not when you spent an entire night trying to sleep on it. I stretch from my fetal position, propping my legs up on the arm rest.
"James Flynn," the doctor asks indefinitely, unsurely, lifting his eyes from a document. Even the doctor looks worried, his brows furrowed in confusion and his mouth twisted in thought.
"That'll be us," my mother says, standing up. She gestures to Charlie and Malarkey sitting side by side and the meats hanging out in the hall. Brody is here because he doesn't have anywhere else to go, since he's carpooling with Malarkey everywhere.
"You must be James' wife," he says.
She nods. "Florence," she introduces, shaking the doctor's hand. "That's our two daughters," she points to the sisters, tensely sitting on a sofa, bewildered eyes flashing all over the place. "And over there is our youngest." Her hand falls into my direction as I slowly rise from the sofa, resembling the movements [emotions and physique] of a zombie.
"Okay," he nods, "busy family, I see." I appreciate his attempt in humor, but it doesn't lighten the atmosphere.
"How's it with James?" My mother asks the gray haired doctor. He's nearly cloaked up in his white jacket and clean trousers the color of dirt.
"Um, not good," he admits, at least honestly. "He had another heart attack and it looked like he had two before he came in. We're not getting him stable, we intubated him and gave him adrenaline to keep his heart going." I see my mother gulp. "But there's hope. We're sending him to emergency surgery for a double bypass and a few stents. Some coronary arteries are blocked and caused damage, but it's not the widower. He's a very lucky man to still he alive, Florence."
"What caused this?" My mother's fragile voice asks. "There has to be an explanation."
"Has Mr Flynn been undergoing a lot of stress recently? Work related? Family related?"
"One of our daughters, a Marine, disappeared a few weeks back," she shrugs, "and recently his sister he hasn't been on clean ground with appeared out of nowhere and thieves are stealing the crop."
"If he recovers and goes to rehab, that all needs to dial down immediately. Stress is a killer."
I didn't plan to go out, but my mother insisted.
I wanted to go home and stay home, wrap myself up in a blanket and binge watch Will & Grace, but my mother doesn't want me to die in my room.
I knocked on the door as early as I stopped, so I won't chicken out and walk back to the hospital they transferred my dad to yesterday. Apparently they have a better cardiologist in Golden Beach than in Kendall, but all I want is for my dad to get better and come home.
I want him to laugh and eat and I don't want him to just lie there in a hospital bed, completely dependent on everyone else.
No matter how strong of a person you are, independency isn't fully achieved, because somewhere you're going to need help. My dad was completely independent since he was eighteen, since my grandfather passed away, and now he's dependent on these doctors and nurses to help him and make him better. I need my dad, but what does one expect if they are older than the normal parents? Fricken marathon athletes?
My mother is already swallowed whole by osteoporosis and my dad's health isn't half as good as we thought.
The front door swings open gingerly, wild hair and an oversized t-shirt enveloping the frame of the fragile boy the first things I see.
"Oh my god," he gasps, opening the door wider and stepping into a hug. "Alistair, where have you been?" He whispers, tangling his fingers in my hair.
"Hi," I whisper, just inhaling him. Dominic, himself, is like a handful of urbanol. He has this drastic effect on me where he makes my heart beat faster, but calms down my mind. I'm just so relieved at his embrace, the stress from my body extracted by his touch.
He lets go, grabbing my hand and leading me into his house. "Where have you been?" He repeats, squeezing my hand.
"Um," I hem, following him into the kitchen clumsily. "At the hospital."
"What—why?" He turns to me sharply, soaking me up with his hazel eyes empathetically.
"My dad..." I breathe to regain some sort of strength, but the lump in my throat is making me sound like an upset child. It's making in difficult to breathe. "He, eh, had a heart attack."
"Oh my god." His only reaction seems to be gasping in shock. "I'm so sorry," he wraps his arms around me again, squeezing my body so tightly to his, we could be one person.
"It's okay," I whisper, "he's not, but it's okay. No one could stop it."
"Your family doesn't deserve this."
"Dominic, Jacqueline's back."
His replies stop then and there with that single mention. It's bile on my tongue, acid burning through my skin. It's as if that single name sews shut my lips with thick threats, just because I never told a single person.
It's time I speak up.
He blinks, trying to process some sort of reply, but all he does, is push me into the TV room. I haven't been in his house enough times to remember where everything is, I didn't even know they had an informal TV room, because we only have one living space.
We settle in silence, the actors and the actresses on the screen mute, their lips moving but no sound eluding through the speakers. It's weird being here with no one else around, not even his family. Usually Demi would leach onto her brother or Casey would be here.
Shit, Casey's in for testing.
Dominic waits for me patiently, folding his hands over mine to take some of the weight off my shoulders. I'm going to tell him about Jacqueline and I'm going to tell him why I have an unnatural dependency on my parents. On Prue.
"When I turned eight," I start, swallowing the lump in my throat. "Jacqueline, my dad's half-sister, moved in with us. She had a different father and the same mother. She was the result of a church affair." I explain. Dominic rubs the pads of his thumbs over my knuckles. His touch isn't helping anymore, but it's making the story bearable.
"She had financial issues, because my grandparents stopped funding her. She screwed up, she was found guilty of shoplifting and sexual assault. Apparently it was a regular occurrence." Now that I think of it, what she did to me was never ironic. "My dad couldn't decline his little sister, I mean, she just got out of high school and she needed to go to college, so he put her in a college close to the farm. She had good grades and all."
"Cut through the bullshit," Dominic snaps, "I know you have an eye for detail, but I don't care about Jacqueline's encyclopedia page."
I couldn't help myself but laugh. It'a typical of him to say something as barren as the wood used for furniture. He's not scared to be blatant, and I love it.
"So she gave me candy, Skittles, to be precise, everyday, at about four p.m. The next day when I woke up, I didn't remember anything from the previous night. I couldn't remember what we had for dinner. I couldn't remember what homework I did. To this day, I barely remember anything from my eighth year alive. My mother took me to a child psychologist to investigate, because I was starting to forget things, like, how to count and what the alphabet was. Any basic education was beyond my understanding."
Dominic's eyes are wide, drinking in as much as he can of my story. I'm still telling a load of unnecessary detail, but it makes it better for myself. If I had to choose to sink into the sofa, I would've.
"The psychologist said it was part of the severe degree of dyslexia I had. My parents even put me in special classes to try to help my cognitive function, but nothing helped. One day, I woke up with flu-ish symptoms and skipped school."
"So this skipping school thing comes from way back?" He teases, giving me a cheeky smile. I shoot him with a glare, but I can't help the smile curl on my lips.
"No," I defend. He rolls his eyes, just tracing his fingers over my knuckles to extract the bad spirit.
I rest my head on the palms of my hands and he doesn't even think twice before he wraps an arm around me to steady my weight from falling over. My head is filled with helium and it's making me soar. Soon enough, the helium will evaporate and I will fall.
I'm always falling.
"So you skipped school," he says, "what next?"
"Jacqueline gave me a packet of Skittles again, but I didn't want to eat them. I put them in my pocket for later." The story is getting difficult again. My throat is swelling up and my lungs are turning to stone. Somewhere along the line I swallowed a bucket of oleum, burning straight through my intestines.
"She, eh, took me by my hand to her room, which was a room downstairs." I try to swallow, but my tongue doesn't even function properly anymore. My body is numb, dead beneath my power. "She locked the door and told me to sit on the bed, which I did. She told me that it's okay, that we'll be okay." I take a jagged breath to cool down my burning chest.
I hate this story.
"She told me that I'll be fine and that I'll find a good girl I'll marry one day. Even though I told her I wasn't going to marry, she carried on. She said she was going to show me what my wife's going to do one day."
His intake in breath is sharp, his torso shaking against mine. He squeezes me tighter, running his hand up and down my arm. "I was so confused. I didn't know why she did what she did and I knew it wasn't right. She said I was being annoying today, so she let me go early. She said I should go the bathroom immediately, but I went to my parents. Malarkey and Prue were there, in the kitchen while my parents cleaning up for dinner. I told them what Jacqueline did and I gave my mom the Skittles, but Malarkey laughed.
"She told my parents that I watched some kind of detective TV show with her and her friends where there was a serial molester. My mom started screaming on her, of course, completely ignoring the story I'd just told them.
"Prue was the only one who went after me and asked about it and asked if Jacqueline hurt me. Then she made the mistake of confronting Jacqueline at dinner and Jacqueline called me a liar. Prue screamed on her, calling her a liar and a bitch, then Jacqueline pulled the I saw you make out with another girl card, which caused my parents to fall head over heels into the argument. They didn't listen to what Prue was saying, they listened to Jacqueline.
"I didn't see Prue for weeks after that, because she ran away. My parents were on the brink of divorce. Jacqueline didn't even give candy anymore. She dragged a razor across my leg the first night after the fight and said I should remember that, because if I was going to tell anyone again, she'll cut up my..." I cover my face in discomfort, just bearing the memory of her vulgar warnings.
No healthy person will threaten to cut off another's genitals, because it's wrong on so many levels.
"And she put a cut in my leg, as high up my thigh as she possibly could every single day. Until Prue came back. She was coming to gather her things to join the army.
"When Jacqueline took me that night, Prue followed with a video camera and my mother on her tracks, because she was trying to pry her away from Jacqueline." I sigh. "It's not that my mother was supporting Jacqueline's actions, she just didn't want Jacqueline and Prue in the same room, because the two of them couldn't get along. At all."
Dominic's fingers trace up my arm. He's trying to be consoling, but I don't need consoling. I don't need any shape of comfort. What I need, is a bottle of vodka and maybe a tub of Haagen Dazs's finest.
"But Prue barged into the room none the less, immediately screaming for my parents to witness her sins. Jacqueline couldn't get away this time, because Prue caught everything on tape. My dad almost broke the door down, Jacqueline locked it to keep Prue out. She was drawing enough blood from my body to give me anemia. She kept her word: if someone would figure it out, she was going to snip-snip. And she wasn't shy, either, because I got over a hundred stitches.
"At least my dad kicked her out and got a restraining order and everything, but that didn't stop the nightmares that came after it."
"Holy shit," Dominic exhales heavily, twisting to face me. He cups my jaw, giving me the most empathetic look I've ever gotten. It's as if he's looking at Charlie building the chocolate factory out of deformed toothpaste caps.
"Don't look at me like that," I mutter, the words eluding my lips in sobs. I smother my breath in his chest, avoiding my succumb to weakness.
"Why not?" He asks, securing my body to his. His arms are strapped around my torso like a seatbelt, supplying me with warmth and comfort like a blanket. "Because the story I heard right now, helped me shape who you really are."
"And how would that help you?" I deadpan. The dampness catching on my cheeks are dried by the thin, absorbing material of his shirt.
"It helped me realize how much I love you."
I freeze, balling my fist around small boulders of material.
"You what?" I vomit up words I can't control, craning my head up at Dominic. His chin is rested on my head, slamming into my nose.
I ignore the pain, forcing some space between us so I can do the least to look him in the eye.
"I love you," he whispers, his voice ridden with hesitant fear. His eyes are shut tightly, his entire face lit up like the tip of a cigarette when a person takes a pull. I don't smoke, but sometimes, smoking can be the best simile.
Dominic is my cigarette. He's addictive, he's expensive and he's causing health issues. Being in love is like drinking on an empty stomach, it makes you buzz until your stomach doesn't play along and you're left with a killer hangover. Loving someone is like being a chainsmoker, each pull is soothing, but murderous.
"I love you," I echo, framing his jaw with my hands.
I soak up his features, his jaw, his freckles. I can't get used to his face, pale and gaunt. His cheeks are fallen deeply, fitting over his teeth snugly.
In the mess of tangled limbs and touching torsos, he steals a kiss. It's like white noise, every single emotions buttered over each other, forming deformed layers of omens.
I feel condescending with Dominic, expandable. We, us together, are an omitted part of the story, a secret no one needs to know. Our sweet caresses—where we aren't sunder, where we are one—are ours.
Love isn't what I expected from him so early, but I can't think of another person to have emotions as strong as this. I don't want to like another person the way I want him. I need Dominic.
There's a difference between want and need. If you want something, you're going to set it free. If it comes back to you, you need it.
"Lets have real promise rings," Dominic whispers, taking his lips from mine. He replaces the hot, soft skin with his thumb, tracing up and down my lip subconsciously. "And this time, we'll be serious about it."
"If you have rings in your jewelry box, then go get it."
Of course I was sarcastic, but Dominic scrambles out of my arms with no warnings and no consideration, using my body as a ladder before disappearing up the stairs quicker than antacids dissolve in water.
He leaves me all by my lonesome self with half of his saliva on my mouth [particularly the reason I don't really appreciate kissing, it's messier than a toddler eating a melting chocolate].
For a moment, I just lie on the sofa, swallowing me whole, with my eyes screwed shut tightly. I use the time by myself to develop a sense of comfort, because I may be spending a lot more time around here.
Dominic jumps over the sofa's backrest, slamming down next to me at a high velocity. The wave rockets me up to sit. He throws a box in front of me, giving me a cheeky, suppressed grin.
"If you're taking a ring on your finger," he starts, "your abused manicure should be redone." He grabs one of my hands, examining the chipped nail lacquer covering up my nails.
"Do you even know how to do this?" I ask, watching him examine my fingers thoughtfully. His eyes are narrowed, skipping between my hand and the box separating us.
"Maybe," he hems, "I watched Demi before, so I'm pretty sure."
"You've got to take the gray off first," I say, gesturing to the existing nail polish on my fingers. He flips open the box, rustling through the different colors before landing on a bottle of acetone and cotton wads. "Can I just—"
"No!" He berates, his voice stinging my eardrums. "I want to do it," his voice turns into a soft mumble.
"If that's what your heart desires," I give in, watching him soak the cotton wad in acetone and remove the remnants of gray stains.
"My heart desires to care and manicure your woman hands."
"I have muscular hands," I defend, pulling my hand away. Dominic wraps his fingers around my palm, pulling my hand. My weight stumbles over launching straight into Dominic.
"You're the least Herculean person I know," Dominic exhales, trying to push me off him, "but shit, My 600-lb. life true story."
"Fuck you." I slump my entire body, squishing him beneath me.
"The Butchinator is mean," Dominic announces like a sports commentator. "But yet the Domisaurus is meaner." He pokes his knife-like fingers into my side repeatedly, hammering down on all the ticklish spots over my torso. I jolt back to defend my manliness, but the girlish giggles lilting from my lips aren't helping in my favor.
"The Domisaurus is going down, because he's supposed to do the Butchinator's nails and he's not." I pin his hands down on his sides, straddling his hips between my knees.
"The Butchinator has weight and strength in his favor," he announces, with special sound effects, lashing his body and squirming, trying to get out from beneath me, but he can't.
"That's not his fault, because the Domisaurus is a skinny little infant."
"The Domisaurus calls the Butchinator a dick."
"He doesn't call him a dick, he only sucks his dick."
I regret saying that the second the words fill up my ears and Dominic smirks at me with malice. He throws me onto my back at my moment of my weakness, pinning me down with his weight before his hands trail down my shirt. I try to fight, but he unbuttons my pants pretty quickly before imitating vulgar sounds.
He looks back up at me, all his pearly whites on display. At least he doesn't do anything; it's just an uncomfortable mockery. I pepper kisses over Dominic's face as vengeance before sitting back to recover from the entire blow.
"How come I always tell my stories and you never tell yours?" I ask, watching Dominic recover from our wrestle session. He fixes his hair and clothes and wipes off his face as if I spit in it.
"My stories aren't interesting," he shrugs, gathering the nail polish we pushed over on the sofa. Bottled rainbows are sparsely scattered across the sofa, some glittered and some plain.
"Bullshit," I say, giving him back my hand so he can remove the rest of the nail polish from my fingers. "Tell me something from your childhood."
"I was born to an interracial relationship," he starts, "but their relationship crashed and burned two months after me and my sister's birth. Our biological mom left my dad, dumping us on him." He shrugs nonchalantly, as if it doesn't mean anything. He swops hands, cleaning the nail polish from the other hand. "We were really fat, but shook off the weight, so now we're flab. My dad said my sister and I do appear white because we got more of his appearance genetics, but when we were younger, you could see in our skin pigment that we're half Indian."
I didn't suspect an Indian gene in his body, but that explains the dark hair and dark eyes better.
"Who's the woman in the pictures?" I gesture to the staircase.
"That's Kim Kozlovsky," he says, "our stepmom. She's pretty cool. She basically raised us, tagging us along to Russia during summer for her tours."
"She's a Russian electropop star, right?"
"Just not Russian anymore," he smiles at the humor he finds on it. "Can I pick a color?"
"No blue, no gray and no black."
"Why not black?" He pouts at me.
"Because black makes me sad and I don't want to be sad right now."
"Then I'm going to pick a happy color," he concludes, browsing the options. He picks a little glass bottle filled up with white nail lacquer.
"You've got to paint on a base coat first," I inform, pointing at a bottle of clear lacquer.
"I think this is a two in—no wait, three in one," he reads the description on the bottle. "Easy for even the manliest mind to understand."
"Manliness is not defined by nail color and definitely not by muscles."
"Touché," he narrows his eyes at me.
"Let's play a game," I blurt, watching him try to wind open the bottle. I take it from his slippery fingers, twisting it open easily. I make him recoil in embarrassment, quite amusing. "Each nail you paint gets a question, then we both have to answer to. We'll make turns to answer so we can get to know each each other."
"Sounds promising," he admits, dipping the brush onto the white nail varnish. "I'll go first. What's your birth city?"
"Dallas," I answer.
"That explains a lot," he teases, suppressing his laughter. His focus unbreakably stuck to the white medallion shaping on my thumb. He paints my cuticle, but does a smacking job for his first time being the manicurist.
"Yours?"
"Los Angeles," he answers, completely in the zone.
I expected that with his dad being a rockstar and all. He dips the brush into the white liquid, continuing to the next nail.
"What is thou question, Butch?" He asks, drenching my nail in chalk white. It's a solid, well pigmented color, rare for one. I'm so used to salon-done nails that I forgot about painting my nails at home [which I used to do, to no surprise].
"You know that I have dyslexia. Is there any secret illness or health issue, be it mental or physical, you have that I have no idea of."
He lifts his shirt to reveal a small box hooked on his jeans. It's no bigger than a fist, feeding a small, translucent tube into his stomach. "I have type one diabetes. Funny enough I was the only twin affected with it."
"Holy shit," I reach to touch the machine with my free hand.
"Rad, right? This is an automatic insulin dispenser. It makes life so much better, it tests my blood sugar and injects me with insulin when I need it." The machine is small and heated with his own body temperature. There's a small green screen, reading 4.4 with other settings I can't understand. "And I had ADHD as a kid, it's still sort of a problem, but I'm sure you picked up on that. How 'bout you?"
"I have a bipolar tendency," I admit, shrugging, "it's not that I wanted to know it, but I tend to make really irrational decisions in the manic period, and I don't have nightmares, but in the depressive periods I have really horrible nightmares, but those are PTSD—"
"Alistair," he stops my rambling, tilting my face so I'd look at him. He keeps his fingers below my jaw, slowly wiping his thumb from my chin to the hinge of my jaw. "It's okay," he whispers. "Imperfections aren't supposed to be invisible."
He dips the brush in the color again, assaulting my next nail. "What's your favorite musician?"
"I have so many."
"Name a few, because I can't pick a favorite either."
"Troye Sivan, Halsey. Twenty One Pilots, Lights, The 1975, Linkin Park, I should probably stop now," I stop myself when Dominic starts laughing at the list. "Yours?"
"Don't know if you know them, but Motionless In White, Falling In Reverse, Otep, Arch Enemy, and Troye Sivan too."
"Who's your celeb man-crush?"
"Can I choose two?"
"Go for it, Scarlet."
"The Hemsworth brothers can fuck me any day." I can't help but laugh at his answer. "Yours?"
"Theo James."
"I thought you were going to say The Rock or something."
"No, I don't like that much muscle. It's gross."
"Yet you're the teenage version of him."
"And you're the female version of him."
"Fuck you, at least I'll be hot." He pouts at me broodingly. "What's a thing you can't live without?"
"It's not old, I got it a few months back, but it's an amulet Prue gave me before she left," my fingers wrap around the pale stone around my neck. "If it's not around my neck, I can't go through the day."
"That's actually adorable," he tuts, "I have this blanket from my biological mom I can't sleep without."
"So you have a blanky?"
"It's not a blanky," he defends, not winning with the dominant blush on his face. "Okay, I have a blanky and I'm super proud of having it."
"What's your favorite food?"
"I'll go for the cliché pizza."
"Anything with pasta and almonds."
"Sounds gnarly."
"Almonds are good, dumbass."
"What's your ultimate favorite movie?"
"I love those cliché nerd movies, but my favorite by far, is Armageddon. It's beautiful. Do I even need to ask yours?"
"Big Hero Six isn't actually my favorite movie. I actually really like The Perks of Being a Wallflower, because I relate quite well to Logan Lerman."
"Deep stuff," he replies, smudging the white paint all over the side of my finger. I try not to go into labor and yell on him [having my nails painted is something I'm very serious about, and at this moment, really concerned] but he cleans it up with his finger. "There are many drunk Alistair stories circling the school, but what's the most embarrassing one?"
"My entire party life is one big embarrassing moment," I snort sarcastically, "but my first alcohol party had to be the worst, or what I heard about it, I can't actually remember anything. Freshman year, last year, we went to one of Braxton's sister's parties, because at the time she was in senior year. The party was on a beach house not far from here and only popular kids went to the. There were vodka Jell-O shots."
"Oh shit," Dominic starts laughing, stopping his process of painting to save me from a horrible manicure.
"We haven't come to the shit yet," I warn. "Young Alistair didn't really drink any alcohol before that unless he took a sneaky sip of his dad's beer, so this was a must-do. After my second shot, things already got blurry, and when they dared me to drink more I forgot everything. When I got up that morning, I had the worst first hangover ever and the worst drunken fable from school.
"Apparently, yours truly had a total of nine Jell-O shots, and yours truly did the Harlem shake with his pants off in front of everyone. The next part I understood, was that Braxton and I were dared to go skinny dipping, so we undressed in front of everyone, free willy and all and ran into the ocean. The next morning I woke up in a floral cocktail dress on Braxton's couch." Dominic can't keep his laughter to himself anymore.
I frown at him as another moral sinks in to my mind, other than what a fucked up kid I used to be [not that it changed]. "Since that night, I never found my favorite pair of jeans ever again. I became a true party legend, none the less."
"Holy shit, I need to party with you more often."
"No, last time I got hit with a beer bottle and twenty seven stitches. I don't think you want to party with me."
"That was honestly bullshit, but that's karma coming back at you for hitting someone with a Finnish dictionary."
"What hidden talent do you have?" I change the subject as soon as a horizon was clear.
"Not to brag, but I'm a really good dancer. Took hip hop to shed the fat I had."
"I can't picture you as a fat."
"Fat shamer," he sticks his tongue out. "Your turn."
"I can beatbox."
"Show me," he says, skeptical.
"You'll see when we watch Pitch Perfect one day."
"Now I know what's on our movie list."
"Hey, don't skip a question!" I exclaim, watching him skip to the next nail.
"Okay, okay." He rolls his eyes, hemming at the thought of a question. "Show me something no one else ever saw of you."
"That's not a question."
"What is something of your body, excluding your mangina, that you've showed no one before? Question mark. Visuals are the only acceptable answer. Do you want marks for the answer too?"
I deadpan fake laughter at him, keeping my expression dead. Like his humor. I roll my eyes before digging with a dry hand in my jacket, taking out my spectacle case.
"You're not allowed to laugh," I say. I open the case, but Dominic jumps to take the glasses out immediately. I take the contact lens container out of the case, handing it to Dominic [sporting my thick rimmed glasses looking a lot cuter than I do in it]. I jab my fingers into my eyes, fishing for the contact lenses.
Dominic cringes audibly, gagging at my actions. I drop the contact lens in his pocket before closing it and opening the left side. The fishing for the contact lens commences, my actions repetitive. I drop the lens in the solution before closing it again.
"You're blind," Dominic says bluntly.
"Yes, but beyond the point," I say. I put the contact lenses a safe distance from us before scooting closer to Dominic until I basically sit on him.
"Oh," he whispers, awestruck.
"I have heterocromia. It means I have two different color eyes."
"Why would you hide it with medical color contacts?" He asks, grabbing my jaw and pulling me closer to examine. Lucky for him, everything I see is already blurry. I can't differ hair from any other dark object, because it all just looks like splashes of colors. A color palette that fell on the floor. "You have the most beautiful eyes," he whispers in awe. "Alistair." I can see that his jaw is dropped and his breaths are lodged in his lungs [my hands are on his chest to steady myself since he jerked me closer rudely].
"I got bullied a lot for it in elementary school," I shrug, "kids called me the runt or pavement special."
"I'm a pavement special," Dominic muses, giving me a reassuring smile.
"No, you're just well pigmented."
I receive a slap for my fib. "Fuck you, I'm fine," he turns back to the half closed nail polish. "Your eyes, I like the natural eyes a lot more than the contacts. It looks beautiful."
I blush at his comment, sliding right off me. I could never take a compliment without being sarcastic or self-conscious about myself. In this case I don't feel either, I feel empowered.
"Your turn. What do you hide from everyone?"
He closes his eyes tightly, knitting his fingers together. "As you see, I have many tattoos. The owl wasn't the first tattoo I got." He grabs his shirt by the neck, stretching his arms over his head to take off his shirt. He turns around, revealing a tattoo I've not even noticed before.
It's lyrics in a calligraphed font over his shoulder blade, each line neatly pinned down on skin.
You are far too fucking young
To let the weight of the world destroy you
It's a simple, black ink tattoo, not as extravagant as the owl spanned across his chest, but it carries so much meaning.
"Fourteen year old Dominic got that tattooed in a backstreet tattoo parlor, because his dad didn't want him to get any tattoos. When he saw it, my ass burnt for weeks. He beat the shit outa' me. I just got out of the grounding."
I touch the ink with my fingers, still looking so fresh on his pale skin. There is a warm feeling to his skin since he mentioned the interracial relationship, but that doesn't change anything. Or how much time he spends in the sun [not much].
His body stiffens beneath the pressure of my fingers, as if he didn't want me to touch it. My family isn't big on tattoos, I've always wanted to touch one, even though he has a huge, unfinished chest piece.
"It's your turn," he exhales breathlessly, as if each touch is extracting so much energy from him. He turns around, considering if he should put his shirt back on. He eventually settles to shrugging the shirt back on, his face hot [I could see it from the distance I tried to force].
He grabs the white nail polish again, continuing his original job. "Last question," he announces, finishing up my pinky nail.
"Would you be my boyfriend?"
He smears the white polish across the finger, his eyes violently indulging in my expression.
"Like, legit?"
"We're getting promise rings," I shrug, "you're supposed to date before you get them."
He corrects his mistake by cleaning up the mess on my finger, pondering. "I was so occupied to undo the wrong I did, I didn't even consider a good ol' date."
"Do you consider it now?"
"You're over your question limit," he teases, giving me a smirk. "And I'd love to go on a date with you, Butch. Would you go on a date with me?"
"Now that you said yes, I'll consider." His fist digs into my shoulder at the sarcastic reply. His hand slips down his jean pocket before pulling out two rings. One has a Batman sign engraved in it and another one a Superman sign.
"Oh my god," I gasp, admiring the rings. "This is so thoughtful."
He shrugs. "I thought it's be good if we had rings we liked." He puts the Batman ring in the palm of my hand before taking my left hand.
"Alistair Riley Flynn, I promise all my love and all my life to you, be it pathetic or be it good. I will hold you when it's though and I will celebrate with you when it's worth it. I won't eat the pizza alone and I'll share my candy, as long as you're not selfish or steal. I promise to never break your heart and I promise to build you up when someone knocked you down. I promise to never pick up a blunt or razor in your presence or not and I promise to answer your calls in the dead of night, as well as sing for you on your birthday. I promise to make you as much coffee as I can and help you no matter what."
He slides the ring over my ring finger, the fit snug and perfect. The black Superman sign glistens at me, showing me much more than a promise.
He's promising me everything, because he is my everything. I love the feeling of the ring on my finger.
"What's your middle name?" I ask, clasping the silver Batman ring between my fingers.
"Wow, you're getting serious in this relationship by learning the middle name," he teases, "but my middle name is, believe it or not, Cobain."
"Dominic Cobain Ryan," I hold the ring in front of his ring finger, steadying his hand in mine. "I promise that I'll take your hand and lead your out of the tunnel and I promise to drive to you at two a.m. if you call. I promise to take the meat off your plate if you get them and I promise to care for you when your insulin machine fucks up. I promise that I won't eat brunch alone and that I'll take you on long walks and beach picnics. I promise that I'll take you on many dates and that I'll protect you against everything bad in this world."
I slide the ring over his finger.
"Our love is now sealed, with witnesses Batman and Superman, with a kiss. You may kiss the nerd," Dominic teases, grabbing my shirt. He balls it up in his hands, jerking me closer. Our lips smash together, making it more official.
I couldn't feel less anticipation.
This was supposed to be the third final chapter, but I just feel like I can do much more with these characters and that there's too much tension for it all to end, so I'll stop being hasty and just think it out. I already know what'll happen exactly in the final and second to final chapter, but until then, I'm not exactly sure. I tend to write a lot, and if you're not into it, I'm sorry I'm wasting your time.
Want any specific features in the story? Speak now or forever hold your peace.