As everybody started to leave, Dom turned to me. “I guess it’s just us then,” he said. “Come on. I’m starving.”
He always said he was hungry, but I didn’t argue. When we were training, I was too. We were burning so many calories that it was a never-ending task to come up with good, healthy meals. “Same. Meet you there.”
We took our own vehicles to the restaurant just up the street. It was a local place that my parents had taken my brothers and me to many times over the years. When we left the rink near dinner time and neither of my parents wanted to cook, it had become the default option due to its proximity. The food wasn’t fancy, but it had a special place in my heart because of that.
Dom and I walked in together and were greeted by a young woman at the hostess stand. “Table for two?” she asked.
“Please,” Dom said.
She picked up a couple of black menus with the restaurant’s name embossed on the front in gold lettering. After adding a smaller drink menu to the pile, she said, “Right this way.”
The hostess stood at the side of a small table near the side of the room. As Dom and I sat down, she placed the menus in front of each of the chairs. She said, “Your server is Megan. She’ll be with you in just a minute to take your drink orders.”
Dom and I murmured our thanks before she walked away. Once she was gone, Dom opened the menu and began scanning it with enthusiasm. “What are you thinking of having?”
“How am I supposed to know that already?” I asked. The owner changed the menu every season, so there were always different things to try. After a minute, I said, “I’m thinking the trout.”
Dom made a face. “That’s not very exciting.”
“Yeah, well, I’m trying to be good,” I said, looking back at the menu. One of the pastas sounded amazing, but I had been trying to show restraint. In March, I could loosen up a bit. “I’d rather have dessert than an unhealthy main meal. I thought you’d appreciate that, since you are kind of relying on me being at my best to win.”
He pressed his lips together. “Way to make me feel guilty for considering something bad,” he chided. I thought he was kidding… mostly. “Can we at least split the spinach artichoke dip?”
“You know I can’t say no to that,” I said. I placed my menu down in front of me not to be tempted any further. “Why did you want to come out tonight?”
Before he could answer, a woman with short brown hair and a tattooed left arm stopped at our table. She pulled a notebook out of her apron. “Hi, I’m Megan. I’ll be serving you tonight. Did you want to start with drinks, or have you decided on what you would like to order?”
“I think we’ve decided,” Dom said. He wasn’t kidding about being hungry.
When she’d left with the promise of bringing water, I folded my hands in front of me. “So, what made you want to get dinner?” I repeated.
“I thought it would be nice to spend time together, just us,” Dom said. “We haven’t gotten the chance since winning Nationals.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, brow furrowed. “We’ve been together for hours, five days a week.”
He shook his head. “Not like that. That’s work. We haven’t had a time when we aren’t focused on improving and feeling the pressure to be at our best. I wanted to do something fun, so we could celebrate our win and just chill. It’s been a while since we could do something like this.”
The last time we’d hung out for an entire evening, we’d hooked up and our skating had spiralled. We’d only talked things through after we’d had a bad short program. A couple of months before that, a night of eating and then going to the pub had ended with my jealous ex-boyfriend punching Dom in the face. “Things haven’t exactly ended well for us lately when we’ve been trying to hang out.”
“I thought they ended just fine,” Dom said with a cheeky grin. “The aftermath wasn’t great, but the night itself was.”
My cheeks burned. “We said we would not entertain that idea again.”
“I'm not saying that's how tonight should end. But we also realized that we had to be comfortable talking about things that already happened.”
I didn’t like the way my heart was pounding. Best to move on to something else. “The time before that, you got punched in the face. You can’t saythatnight ended well.”
“Of course I can,” Dom said, suddenly serious. “You got out of a terrible relationship. I don’t mind being the recipient of the violence in that situation.”
“You definitely earned brownie points from my family and friends when you did that,” I said. “Nobody really thinks that I could stand up for myself in a fight. I’d be outmatched even against another girl, so against a guy I would be in a tough spot.”
“That’s why I didn’t mind it,” Dom said. “He distrusted you because of me, anyway.”
Our server stopped by with two glasses of water then. “Your appetizer should be out shortly.”
“Sounds great,” I said. I waited for her to walk away before I continued. “I spent so long telling him he was being ridiculous and then… well, you know.”
Dom stirred the ice in his glass. “I think we both knew it was a bad decision, even if we weren’t willing to admit it to eachother. I had a hard enough time convincing myself not to say something earlier. I was so worried that it would end poorly that I told myself that anything I felt was just because we were always together.”
