“Then what’s got you up here sleeping the day away?”
He rubbed crusties out of his eyes, then pulled his knees up to his chest. Memories of Trey and their time together made his chest ache. “I took my violin down there with me.”
Mom’s eyebrows lifted. “To the beach?”
“Yeah. I’m not sure why, but I did, and there was this club that had an open-mike night on Thursday. XYZ wasn’t booked for anything, so I signed up to play.”
“What did you play?”
He held her gaze, crazy proud to say the next words. “I played my violin, Mom. In front of at least a hundred people.”
Her wide smile was worth every single one of the painful butterflies he’d suffered while waiting to go on that night. “Baby, I am so damned proud of you. I know that wasn’t an easy decision. Was Lincoln with you?”
“No. I didn’t tell anyone. I needed to do it on my own.”
She pulled him into a warm hug, the big kind that only moms could really give. He hugged her back, because he needed this. It was why he’d come home. His mom always understood.
“I love you so much, Dominic, and I am so proud. You faced down one of your biggest nightmares when you got up on that stage.”
“I’m proud of me too.”
She leaned back, her wide brown eyes searching his face. “But that’s not what’s got you twisted up inside, is it? Something else happened.”
“I met someone.” He’d come out to his parents at fourteen, and in all of the years since, he’d never said any variation of those words before. He’d never had time for a boyfriend, and the first guy he really wanted now hated him.
Dom laid the entire story on her, sparing her the details of their sexual encounters, and focusing mostly on the music. On how easy it was to be with Trey, and how Trey made him feel good. Whole. Undamaged. Everything up through last night’s standoff in the green room, and Trey’s parting shots.
“Why does it feel like I got dumped on my ass, when we weren’t even a couple?” Dom asked.
“It sounds like you really connected with this boy. Those kinds of connections are rare.”
“Did you feel like that with Dad?”
“I did. We met at freshman orientation in college, and the first time I spoke to him I remember thinking this is a guy I could marry. I saw myself with him ten years down the road, with a family and a good life. Sure, there have been fights and disagreements, but if you love someone enough you overcome it.”
Dom didn’t love Trey. No one fell in love in twenty-four hours. But he had strong feelings for him, and those feelings were still there. He remembered every sound and every smell, every little detail about being with Trey.
“I hate that he’s mad at me,” Dom said. “But I made a fool out of myself, didn’t I? Pretending we had a chance when I knew all along it was going to fall apart.”
“That doesn’t make you a fool. It makes you human. You felt a connection to this boy, and you wanted to keep it alive.”
“Fat lot of good it did me.”
A slender shape bounced into his room and leapt onto the foot of the bed. Roxy knee-walked to the headboard and flopped around to sit next to him. “Good, you’re awake. I thought you were going to sleep all day like a vampire.”
“Had a late night.” He slung an arm across his sister’s shoulders. “What kind of trouble are you getting into?”
“Hey, my troublemaking days are behind me, pretty boy.”
“So you say.”
“Shut up.” She shoved him with no real strength behind it.
Roxy had been adopted into the family when she was ten, after bouncing around in a series of bad foster homes. His parents had seen her as a challenge, in a way. She cussed at everyone, in English and Spanish, she didn’t trust anyone, and she hit other kids at school. After she’d been kicked out of two public middle schools, his parents had put a then-twelve-year-old Roxy into aBeyond Scared Straight–style program, and after eight hours in a prison, she’d started turning it all around.
Now she was leaving home in August to study engineering at Florida State.
“How many broken hearts are you leaving behind?” Dom asked.
