Bad Boy Dom (16 page)

At the airport, I pulled out my phone and called Eric. I was waiting to board my flight to San Diego, and I was nervous that it would somehow be overbooked. After all, buying a ticket at the last minute is usually a horrible idea.

“Hello?”

“It’s me, Michelle,” I said, pacing around the flight gate. Other patrons glared at me, as if I was somehow disturbing them. “I’m at the airport.”

“Where are you jetting off to?” Eric asked, sounding amused.

“California. San Diego. I’m going to look at more schools there.”

“What? Baby girl, that’s not part of the plan!”

“The plan changed,” I said darkly. “We were all having dinner together and he just bolts up and says he’s going out to drink. I couldn’t take it anymore; I had to get out of there. Both my dad and Sandy think I have this horrible attitude problem and they don’t even know the truth!” Retelling the whole saga made me tear up again and I sniffled, determined not to cry in an airport full of strangers.

Eric made a sympathetic noise on the other line. “It’s for the best that you’re getting away,” he agreed. “But I’m bummed about not having you around!”

“Hey,” I said slowly, thinking out loud. “Why don’t you come with me and look? Dad gave me his credit card to travel and I have a ton of points, I can get you a ticket for maybe $50. We can share a hotel room and hang out together, don’t you think that would be fun?”

“How much time do I have?”

I frowned, checking my watch. “This flight leaves before you could get here, but I can get you on one leaving in two hours. Just text me when you land and grab a cab to the hotel.”

Eric paused and I crossed my fingers, desperate for him to say yes. “Okay,” he admitted. “I do need to get out of here, and I’m dying to see some cute boys on the beach.”

Inwardly, I cheered. “Yes! That’s awesome news, Eric. I’ll have them send you an e-ticket, just pack and head to the airport, okay?”

He agreed and we hung up. I bought him a ticket from the gate and sat back down, eager to be leaving. As upset as I was about the whole thing, I couldn’t deny that leaving was already making me feel better. I felt like an idiot and a jerk for not leaving sooner. I shouldn’t have subjected Dad and Sandy to that kind of behavior.
I’ll have to apologize somehow
, I thought.
And make sure they know that I won’t be able to come home for holidays.

It was exhausting to think about everything that had happened, and I couldn’t wait to be done with the ordeal. I was starting to think that even though I loved Dom, I’d have to get over him and move on. I mean, that’s what people did. It was ridiculous to think that my life was over because what was essentially an overblown crush from high school didn’t work out. I was still really young; I was only 24. My mom and my dad hadn’t even met until they were both almost 30, for heaven’s sake. Even though I wasn’t ready to start thinking about dating, I knew that at some point down the line, I would find the idea acceptable. Maybe even fun.

I remembered what it felt like to flirt with Seth, the night that I went with Dom to the gallery opening. He’d been so charming and sexy; it was still hard to believe everything that Dom had told me about him. Maybe Dom had lied, after all. That wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination; he’d been lying to me since almost the first day we met. Now that I was mad at him all over again, I started to think that his initial apology had been pretty fucking flimsy. After all, if he really loved me so damn much, how could he make himself stay away so easily?

The whole time, I’d been blaming myself because I didn’t feel attractive enough, or experienced enough for someone like Dom. But now I wondered if he’d been right all the time; if I was really too good for someone like him. I’d always put myself down because he never wanted me the way I was, but if I was being honest, I knew that a few guys had approached me. I’d always rejected them because they weren’t Dom, and I wasn’t going to settle for anyone less. But it was ridiculous to think that Dom was better than those guys just because of his looks. He just happened to be blessed with incredibly sexy genes. Despite my anger, thinking of the way Dom looked sent a rush of arousal through my body.

Damnit, Michelle! Pull yourself together! You’re a strong, independent woman now
.
You’re not a little kid
. It was easy to tell myself that, but I still didn’t know whether or not I believed it.

The flight attendant came over the gate’s loudspeaker and announced the boarding call for my row. Gripping my bag nervously, I shuffled along with the other passengers towards the crowded metal tube that would take us on board. None of them seemed to be distraught or unhappy in any way, and it really made me think of how other people saw me.
Does everyone know I’m miserable?
I wondered to myself, scratching my head. Eric had seemed to, but he was obviously going to be a special friend, the kind of friend that I seemingly never had.

Shaking my head to rid myself of the image of everyone else, I tried to concentrate on what lay ahead. The future, maybe in sunny California, maybe with a good friend to pal around with. It wasn’t implausible to imagine the two of us going on double dates with cute guys and hanging at local coffee shops. A thought of Dom entered my mind unbidden and I willed it away, closing my eyes furiously. His face lingered in my mind, looking haunted until it finally faded and disappeared. I may not have been sure about my future just yet, but Dom had to stay in my past.

--

I sat at the bar for hours, nursing whiskey after whiskey until I felt blackout drunk.

“I’m cutting you off, hon,” Amy said, leaning in to swipe my last glass out from under me. I slurred an ineffectual protest and tried to hold onto the glass, but she was stronger in her sobriety than I was in my drunkenness. Instead, I almost fell off my stool with the voracity of my swipe, and it took me a few minutes to right myself.

Amy stared at me, her eyes seemed to be all pupil and enormous. “Why don’t you go lie down in the back?” She suggested, gesturing towards the employee break room. “No one’s back there, and there’s a couch.”

Nodding in agreement, I picked myself up from the bar and slowly stumbled back towards the open door. The room was dark, but I saw the silhouette of a couch and collapsed onto it immediately. Somewhere in the recesses of my drunken mind, I registered that it smelled like cat piss and beer, but I was too fucked up to care.

Sleeping drunk never feels good, and I tossed and turned in a sweat for hours. It stayed quiet on the other side of the door; I guess Tuesday night isn’t a big night for drinking. Now that I thought about it, I couldn’t even remember why I’d gone out drinking in the first place. Foggily, I tried to call back the memory of the night before. I’d been having dinner with Archie and Mom and Michelle, and Mom and Archie had been blathering about something. I struggled to remember exactly what it was, combing through my hazy memories.
Oh, that’s right. She wants to paint Archie
. With shuddering clarity, my panic and upset from the previous night came rushing back in a flood. It was like a stab in the heart to hear my mom talk about Archie the way I felt about Michelle. And her idea about painting him only made me worried that I’d done the wrong thing by painting Michelle. She’d been so resistant to the idea and I’d assumed it was because she was self-conscious. But now I saw that it was a tremendously bad idea if I never wanted anyone to know how I truly felt about her.

My mom always says that you can see a person’s emotions and feelings in their art, even if they don’t want you to. She said it’s important to pay attention to mood while you’re creating, and I have to agree that finding the right mood is one of the most frustrating parts of being an artist. Sometimes I feel like I spend weeks waiting to come around before I can finish a piece, even if it’s only minor work that’s left to be done. It doesn’t make you great with deadlines, and it definitely doesn’t endear you to most clients. I was lucky that I’d worked with someone as cool as George, but even so I knew his patience had its limits. That was one of the reasons why he’d done that little demonstration with Desiree in our living room. I knew that it had horrified Michelle, but George was trying to tell me that even if the mood isn’t right, you still need to experiment. He’s always said that it’s important to get work done no matter what you’re feeling, and that’s a lot harder than it sounds.

My hungover brain flashed to the half-completed portrait of Michelle, hiding in my walk-in closet at home. I could never show it to anyone, I decided. Just like my feelings and love for her, it was going to have to stay hidden in the deepest recesses of my brain. It was incredibly irresponsible to think I could have gotten away with it; even someone looking at it for the first time and not knowing me or Michelle would be able to understand how much I loved her.

How much I love her,
I automatically corrected myself. A chill went through my body.

“I love her,” I said out loud, my voice scratchy and dry. Suddenly, the gravity of the situation hit me. No matter what I did, I’d always love her. And yes, our situation was completely fucked. But if I loved her, I couldn’t let her go. And since I did, I never could.

I woke up feeling cold and dazed. The rough fabric of whatever I was lying on scratched my cheek and I caught a scent of something stale and musty. It took me a few minutes to realize I’d passed out on the couch in the back room of the VFW. I could just see myself now, Domenic Thomas, the great young artist in an old man’s body.
Yeah, right
, I thought as I stood and stretched. It was freezing cold in the room and my joints ached. Traces of the alcohol from last night pounded through my head as I tried to remember what had happened. I vaguely remembered sitting down at the dinner table with Michelle, Archie, and Mom while we had dinner. Mom and Archie had been bantering about some of her new art plans, and Mom had told me that she was going to work on a series of paintings of Archie.

A bolt of pain flashed in my head and I sat back down in a daze.
And then I came down here and got shitfaced drunk because I didn’t want anyone to find out about my feelings for Michelle
. The rest of the evening was actually painful to remember, and I felt embarrassed and ashamed. There was a lump forming in my throat, and I was starting to think that I’d made a horrible mistake. Things between Michelle and I had already been tense since before Mom and Archie got home; what where they going to be like now?

I barely remembered the drive home. I kept the gas pedal stuck to the floor as I sped through the quiet town. Everyone was still asleep, and the sun was just barely peeking over the horizon. The feeling in my stomach didn’t get any better when I realized that Michelle’s car wasn’t in the driveway, and I practically ran into the house and up the stairs.

“Michelle?” I called out as I knocked on her bedroom door. There was no answer. “Michelle!” I yelled louder, pounding with my fists. At that moment, I knew she was gone. I kept beating on her door and calling her name as loudly as I could, but deep down, I knew.

“Domenic?” I heard Mom’s voice emerge from the master bedroom, sounding dazed and sleepy. “What’s going on out here?”

“Where’s Michelle?” I asked, staring straight ahead at the door. My mom sighed.

“She’s gone, honey.”

“What?” I turned around and glared at her, even though I knew the answer. “What the hell happened?”

Mom looked nervous and thin in her sheer nightie. She crossed her arms over her chest and hugged herself tightly. “She left right after you did,” she finally admitted. “She said she was going to look at other schools.”

“Oh,” I said. A slight bit of relief filtered into my body. “So she’ll be home tonight?”

Mom shook her head just as Archie came out of their bedroom, clad in a plaid robe. He wrinkled his forehead at me and protectively wrapped his arm around my mom. As I stepped back, a hot gust of body odor rose out of my shirt and I felt vaguely nauseous. I probably looked like an insane wreck; hungover and pounding on my new stepsister’s bedroom door.

“She’s not coming back,” Archie said when it became clear that my mom wasn’t going to say anything. “She’s in California.”

“Right,” I repeated. My voice sounded hollow and numb, and I felt a paralyzing shock of anguish push through my body. “Okay, then.”

“Are you okay, honey?” Mom asked, stepping away from Archie’s firm grip. “You don’t look so well.”

“Well, I stayed out all night drinking and now I come home to this,” I retorted, throwing my hands in the air. “You know what? Just forget it. Forget this happened.”

“Domenic.” Archie’s voice was a warning tone. “You want to tell me what’s going on? Did something happen with Michelle?”

“No,” I lied. “Nothing happened.”