“Amazing.”
Dom climbs back into bed and snuggles into my side, angling the phone so both our faces are on the screen.
She launches into a thirteen-minute recap of her last twenty-four hours, thrilled at her first sleepover without Dad. Most of it Titanic-related, the rest snack-related, with one toilet-related emergency. It’s punctuated withhmms andwows andno ways andwill you unwrap your sweatshirt arms from your neckandplease stop choking yourself like thatfrom our side of the line.
“Are you still sick, Lina?” she asks me, suddenly becoming concerned. Her eyebrows furrow. She looks identical to Dom.
“I’m feeling a lot better now,” I tell her. “Thanks for letting me borrow your dad.”
She grins, easy to smile, like her father. “He’s a sick expert.” Dom’s eyes narrow at the oversimplification. She launches into story time. “One time, I had diarrhea?—”
“Okay,” both Dom and I cut in.
“We’re gonna go, Frankie,” Dom quickly adds. “I really miss you. Give Lola a hug for me, okay? I’ll see you tomorrow morning, probably.”
“I miss you too,” she screams.
“Love you,” he says.
“Love you, Daddy. Love you, Lina,” she says, then ends the call.
Those three words fill my body with warmth, and not fever warmth either.It’s happening, I say to myself. Dom senses this and emphasizes it with a kiss to my temple, holding me tightly, making sure the feeling stays in my body and doesn’t have a chance to escape.
* * *
I’m well enough to go back to work on Monday. At least, this is what I tell myself, as I work every day from seven to seven and only feel very exhausted instead of extremely exhausted. I feel like I have to make up for all the work I didn’t do this weekend. I’ll look at AP resumes… soon. Not right now, though, because maybe I’m a little overwhelmed. Because it seems like I have a family now, a kid. And even though my instincts might whisper that I should stop for a fucking second and think about it, that voice is drowned out—completely, entirely—by feelings. Bythatfeeling. So, yeah. Fuck those instincts.
TWENTY
Dominic
I’m feeling very,very twitchy when I pick Frankie up this week and Lina somehow looks even worse than she did last week.
It’s a mild worry, though, nothing compared to the sheer fucking panic I felt when I walked into Lina’s room on Friday evening. She hadn’t been answering her phone, so I decided to go over there early to make sure she was okay. She didn’t answer her buzzer, and that’s when I really started to lose it. I buzzed her mom on the first floor, trying to tame my facial features into something resembling calm and responsible and charming, and it apparently worked, because she handed me a key to Lina’s apartment, saying “I don’t think Lina’s home yet but you can wait for her upstairs because I’m busy watching K-drama.”
None of Lina’s lights were on. I walked into her bedroom and saw a lump under her comforter, lifted it up and saw a soggy-looking Lina curled up in a ball, still in her work clothes and shoes, pale and motionless, and that split second… Fuck. I swear it was one of the most intensely terrifying moments of my life, up there with the time I heard Frankie gasping for air in her sleep (RSV) or the time Frankie cracked her head on the sidewalk while trying to roller skate and passed out (concussion).
I was terrified like Lina was mine, like Lina belonged to me, just like Frankie does. Because she does, because she’s carved herself a fierce and bright and bold Lina-shaped spot in my heart, because I think I’m in love with her, and this scares me even more.
But even if a small part of me thinks that this is way too much, too fast, andwhat about Frankie?, all I need to do is remember the moments in which Lina has loudly and proudly let the two of us into her life and claimed Frankie as her own and forced me to become a happier, better dad.
So fine. I love Lina, yet I’m not sure I’m quite ready to verbally share that with her, because the space she’s carved for herself still feels a little funny, like something I still need to get used to, like wearing contacts after a lifetime of wearing glasses.
But I’m still going to show her loudly and proudly with my actions.
So I keep my mouth shut for now about her overworking herself and plan the most epic date night on Saturday (so she can dedicate Friday night to sleeping).
Meet me at the 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge at 5 on Saturday
what are you, rich????
I don’t answer that one.
should I show up naked underneath a trench coat
You can. But also bring an overnight bag and a hot outfit for a nice dinner and an event that will require a hot outfit
which vibrators
