Dom liked his coffee in the form of a vanilla latte with extra whipped cream.
“Rough night?” Dad asked.
He shrugged as he sat across the kitchen table with his coffee. His dad had puffy dark spots under his eyes. “You too.”
“Yep. Bad night all around.” Dad sipped at his coffee. “Mom tells me you’re having some trouble with your boyfriend. Trey?”
Hearing his dad refer to his boyfriend made Dom smile. He’d never heard the word from him before. “Kind of. I was a dick to him last night, and he didn’t deserve it. He won’t answer my text or voice mail, and okay maybe his phone died or something, but it’s scaring me a little. He hates driving.”
“How so?”
Dom described the car accident that killed Trey’s best friend and his anxiety over being in a car for any period of time. His thoughts inevitably turned back to their first date and how adorably high-strung Trey was over Dom’s driving in traffic while distracted. “He came all the way up here for me, and I overreacted and told him to leave me alone.”
His dad studied him for a moment. “Why do you think you did that?”
“I didn’t want him to see me hurting. Telling him what happened dredged up a lot of old feelings, and my instinct was to drive him off and deal with it alone, even though he kept saying that couples worked through the hard stuff together. I didn’twant to hear him. But I don’t want him gone, I want him with me.”
“Dominic, you are a very emotional young man, and you always have been, even though you’ve done your damnedest to show otherwise. And you know how devastating it can be to ignore those emotions. They eat away at you until there’s nothing left.”
Dom swallowed hard. His dad didn’t usually read him like that, and it was both terrifying and kind of freeing. Neither of his parents had ever been stingy with their feelings, showering their kids with love, but growing up different from the other kids—first with being a half Filipino adopted by black parents, and then with the gay—had taught him to be tough and not crack. To let remarks roll right off his back and not let on that they left scorch marks on his skin. To pretend he didn’t give a damn, while he silently cared so much his chest ached with it every single day.
To let it all get so bad that the only way out was a pile of pills.
Never again.
“I fucked up, huh?” Dom said.
Instead of scolding him about the cussing, his dad pushed his chair away from the table and leaned back, hands folded over his stomach. “Son, you will fuck up from now until the grave, because you’re a human being just like the rest of us. No one is perfect. We all make mistakes. Your mom and I have had some pretty intense blowouts over the years.”
Dom started to protest that he’d never once seen his parents fight, but Dad held up a silencing hand.
“We kept it away from you kids as best we could. Zelda and I love each other very much, but we also have our faults. When we’re having issues, we deal with them. Never go to bed angry is a pretty cliché piece of advice, but that’s because it’s good advice. Now I’ve only just met Trey, and he seems like a very nice youngman. The fact that he faced a very big fear of his to come see you says a lot about his character and about his feelings for you, and I respect that. I also have a lot of respect for how far you’ve come with XYZ.”
Dom nearly sloshed hot coffee on himself. Even though they both knew his deadline was approaching, they hadn’t sat down and talked about XYZ’s big win at the regional competition, or next month’s trip to New York. “You are?”
His dad chuckled. “I suppose I deserve that. I was very hard on you when you chose not to go to college.”
Understatement of the decade. While they hadn’t had an epic fight over it, Dom had felt his dad’s disappointment over the road he’d chosen—music instead of a college degree. The disappointment had driven him to work harder, to be the best at what he and Lincoln did. They’d both had something to prove, to other people and to themselves.
“And now that you’re going to play at a national competition, I’ll tell you a secret,” Dad said.
Dom leaned forward, insanely curious now.
“Even when it didn’t seem like it, Dominic, I always believed in you. You have a gift for music like no one I’ve ever known, and it was a joy to watch you grow and develop that gift. You can play any instrument you set your mind to, but you were born to play the violin. And when you stopped playing”—dark emotions flashed briefly across Dad’s face—“when you stopped, I wanted to kill that son of a bitch for taking that gift away from you.”
Dom’s heart thundered in his chest, and a surge of love warmed his insides. He’d never heard his dad get so emotional about the assault. His mom had blamed herself, because she’d insisted Dom attend the private tutoring lessons. His dad had always been silently supportive, a rock to stand on when everything else had turned to quicksand.
He swallowed hard, eyes watering. “I found that gift again, Dad.”
“I know you did.” Dad pinched the bridge of his nose. “I watched you tiptoe around your potential. Saw how much you wanted it again, but it was like you were scared to reach as far as you had before. Giving you that four-year deadline wasn’t about proving anything to me. It was me pushing you to prove yourself to you. To strive to be everything I know you can be. And you did, and I am so proud of you, son.” He cleared his throat hard. “So proud I can hardly see straight some days, and that’s the truth.”
“Really?” Dom hated that his voice cracked. He never doubted his father loved him. He had, however, doubted his father’s faith in him. Everything he’d done for the last four years had been about restoring his dad’s faith, and he’d never actually lost it. As much as Dom wanted to be angry over the subterfuge, he couldn’t find any anger in himself.
All he had was love and respect.
“Really, really,” Dad said in a spot-on Donkey impersonation, a movie character Dom had been obsessed with as a child.
Dad stood and came around the table. He tugged Dom up and into a rare hug. Dom leaned into the embrace, so incredibly grateful for his parents and their unwavering faith in him. Even if he’d managed to push Trey away for good, with their support he knew he would be okay.
