Spending the afternoon with his parents and sisters helped settle the part of Dom that was still shaken up over Trey. They ate lunch outside, then moved into the dining room to play board games. Dom was about to lose everything on his next turn in Monopoly when his phone rang.
Trey.
“Sorry, I gotta take this.” Dom fled the kitchen for the backyard before answering. “Hey.”
“Hi. Is this a bad time?” Trey didn’t sound angry, at least. He kind of sounded . . . tired.
“Not at all. I’m glad you called.”
“I’m not really sure why I did.”
Ouch. “Trey, I am really sorry I didn’t tell you who I was with yesterday. I mean, I didn’t figure it out until you started talking about Fading Daze and Unbound, and then I was scared you’d kick me out if I said something, and I like you way too much for having just met you. I wanted to keep spending time with you.”
Trey let out an audible sigh. “I believe you. I’m glad that’s why, too. You didn’t seem like an intentionally malicious person, taking advantage so you could laugh about it with your friends later.”
“Never.” Dom’s temper rose. “I’m not that guy. None of my friends know about you and me.”
“Why not? Ashamed?”
“Fuck no. What we have is too special for them to try and pick apart.” Dom stared at the new blooms on his dad’s favorite white rosebush and thought of Trey’s daisy tattoo. “I don’t want us to be over.”
Trey was silent for a while, but he hadn’t hung up. Dom could hear faint music in the background. “I’m sorry I insulted you guys last night,” he finally said. “Well, mostly you.”
“You were angry, I get it.”
“I couldn’t sleep until I changed my sheets, because my bed smelled like you. Like us together.”
Dom squeezed the phone a little too tightly. “Really?”
“I don’t want to stop seeing you, Dom, but I don’t know how to make this work. You live a hundred miles from here, neither one of us has a car, and our bands hate each other.”
“We’ll figure it out.” Trey had said the magic words, and Dom would do anything to make it work. “Maybe we can’t do a lot together in person, but we can message and text and shit.”
Trey laughed. “I don’t think we know each other well enough to shit together.”
Dom realized what he’d said and started laughing too. “Asshole. You know what I meant.”
“Yeah, I did. You’re easy to mess with.” Fun and lightness was back in Trey’s voice.
“Mess all you want. I deserve it.”
“Probably, yeah. Just . . . please don’t lie to me again.”
“I promise.” Dom’s chest expanded, and he sucked in the first good breath he’d taken all day. “What about our bandmates?”
“It’s none of their business. I mean, obviously Dani knows we were together, but she thinks it’s over. No reason to tell her otherwise.”
“Agreed.” The idea of a secret relationship was oddly appealing. He liked having something that was completely, totally his. “I need to tell my parents, though. Trying to keep anything secret from them is like sneaking a rhino through a china shop. It never works.”
“Okay.”
“They’ll probably want to meet you.”
“I’ll probably disappoint them.”
“Never. I told my mom about us today, and she’ll love you just because you gave me a second chance.”
“You told your mother?”
