“Okay, well, yeah, I guess that’s true,” he said, and I could practically feel him frowning at me through the phone. “But I’ve gotten through life by listening to my gut, and it’s been making a lot of noise lately.”
“Perhaps you should consider eating more,” I said as I went back to my list of contacts. “Or changing your diet.”
“Oh, God, not the terrible sense of humor. I really thought maybe that would have gone away after all this time.” He groaned. “You’re not funny, Lee, you never have been.”
“Never call me that when someone might hear you,” I told him with a scowl.
“Aww, what? Don’t like it? I mean, Matty used to think it was cute. Of course, she thought you were the cutest thingever...probably because she wasn’t in charge of raising you,” he said with a chuckle. “She used to say that shortening your name like that was a sign from the universe that you and I were tied to one another.”
“A nickname that just happens to be the same as your middle name is hardly an indicator of fate,” I muttered as I typed out a few messages to see what I would get back.
I used to call you that all the time too...and I also said something about how cute it was that your nickname and his middle name matched.
Yes, but Dom didn’t know that because back then, I thought the coincidence was weird rather than cute. Being friends with Dom had been both wonderful and a torment. Once I had managed to convince myself that if I just had a chance to be with him the way I really wanted, it would make things so much easier. It turned out I was completely wrong. Dom’s...dalliances with me were sporadic, and after we fooled around, he would inevitably retreat into our friendship without ever bringing up what we had done. It was a new kind of hell that I had been forced to find a way to make peace with, and right up until I left at seventeen, it was still torturous for me.
Looking back, I could forgive him for what felt like jerking me around. He was just as young as I was, already dealing with so much in his head, and he didn’t know how to deal with the feelings he was having. To his credit, he had never tried to deny what we were doing, but he had always seemed wary of the topic. Which was confusing and contradicting when he turned around and got into bed with me with an eagerness and enthusiasm you wouldn’t expect from someone uncomfortable with the idea of sleeping with another guy.
Wow, is this really the time for that? Not that I’m complaining, it’s cute that even after all these years and all the bullshit you’ve built up in your head, you still can’t helpyourself. You still want to think about what could have been, what was, and?—
I cut that sentence off. It was my fondness for him, my appreciation of him, and my respect for his determination to talk to me that kept me from blocking him out of my life…again. There was no way I was ever going to entertain the idea that there might be more than what we had right now waiting somewhere around the corner. I was not going to fall into the same trap my teenage self had, and I certainly wasn’t going to risk dragging Dom into my life even more than he already had.
Sure, sure, keep telling yourself that.
I was going to have to ignore the part of my brain that was giving me trouble, made easier by Dom speaking again. “You know, I keep thinking what sort of things about us have changed since the last time we knew each other.”
“And have you come to any conclusions?” I said as I turned to face the warehouse again, frowning for a reason I didn’t quite understand.
“Well, I keep thinking about something I heard. I don’t remember where, but I remember hearing someone say that the more things change, the more they stay the same. I assumed it was about life and people, because a lot of the people I knew back in the day are pretty much the same as they were then. And yeah, you and me haven’t been talking much because you’re still pulling that shit where you’re trying to put distance between us, that’s not going to work, by the way, I can be just as stubborn as you.”
“And there’s something that hasn’t changed,” I said, pulled away from my unknown sense of disquiet with a sudden, soft laugh. “We were always telling the other to stop being so stubborn, while never bothering to tone down our own stubbornness.”
“You know,” he said with a chuckle. “I used to try to keep score of when one of us managed to out-stubborn the other.”
“Oh? What was the tally by the time you finally gave up?”
“Oh shit, I gave that up a long time ago. I was like, what...fifteen or something when I finally decided to give it up. We kept going neck and neck for points, so I just figured it was...always going to be like that,” he said, settling into a soft voice that sent an unwanted pang of pain through my chest.
“Nothing lasts forever, Dom,” I said softly.
“Who are you telling? What was the thing Moira said once? Preaching to the converted? I know nothing lasts forever, and I know life isn’t fair,” he said crossly. “I don’t need you to tell me, and I definitely don’t need you to remind me either. Especially when you’re one of my lessons.”
There wasn’t much I could say to that. I was, after all, the one who had chosen to leave, and I had chosen the ugly way I’d left as well. Ever since, I had been torn between trying not to think about that memory and unable to stop myself. As if there was a war in my brain where one half wanted to move on, and the other insisted there was no escape from the pain, or from my own choices.
That’s called guilt, sweetheart.
As if I didn’t already know, as if I hadn’t spent God knew how much time trying to shake free the guilt but never quite managing. I’d told myself repeatedly that I’d been doing the right thing and it was necessary for us to move on with our lives. Especially Dom, it had been Dom more than anything that I’d worried about. He had always hated that I had started to do odd jobs for Augustine, always hated that I had chosen to let the man into my life, even if it was at first just learning about the man who was my father...and then to earn some extra money. Sorely needed money.
Not that Dom hadn’t offered to help, or to find some other means, because he had tried, tried, and tried over and over. His big heart and hard head refused to let him back down, and while he didn’t fight me every inch of the way, he fought enough for me never to forget that he would never relent. I knew now that those arguments from him were because he was afraid for me, not just because I could be hurt or killed, leaving my mother and him without me in their lives, but he had worried about my mental state by the end of however long I chose to work for Augustine.
Ultimately, though, it had been Dom’s stubbornness and fierce loyalty that had been the deciding factor. For all his insistence that following Augustine would lead to nowhere good, I knew the truth. If I had told Dom I was leaving to go to Seattle to work for Augustine rather than just the odd jobs I was doing, Dom would have thrown away everything, his entire future, and potentially his life, to follow me. Not just because he wouldn’t have wanted me to face the dangers on my own, that he would swear up and down he could protect me from, but also because he wouldn’t have wanted me to go to that ‘den of vipers and tigers’ alone. He would have wanted one friendly face there, someone I knew I could trust, and someone who might be able to keep me balanced so I wasn’t completely lost to the darkness that came with working with The Family.
It was an arrogant thing, to choose for someone else, but even if I felt regret, even if I felt guilt and shame for how I went about it, I would nevertrulyregret it. Dom wasn’t the most optimistic of people, nor was I, for that matter, but there was still a chance for his future to be brighter than he believed. All I could do at the time was tell myself that, in time, I would see whether I had been justified in making that choice for him.
And now?
Now I could see his life had gone on without me, that he had gone on to make a name for himself in a way his seventeen-year-old self would never have dreamed possible. Sure, he was going through a rough patch, but there were still so many possibilities waiting in his future, even now. Which made it worse that he was so determined to find a way back into my life, even if it was just the little bit I was allowing. Yes, he was a grown man, capable of thinking for himself and understanding so much more than his teenage self. However, if he was right and things stayed the same, then he could still be that stubborn idiot who might find it in himself to be at my side when it was better and safer for him to have as much distance as possible from me.
“Sorry,” I muttered because it was the only thing I could think to say. “I wasn’t trying to bring up old shit.”
