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“Because you put us on an island together, and her bathroom flooded! That’s not going to happen at home!”
“None of that required you putting your penis in her, and you know it.”
Rae
“Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“Because this week was about you. Not me. And Brian was there, and he offered to let me stay with him, which meant I didn’t have to move to a totally different area or be a bother to anyone else.” Rae huffed. “You know, if the situations were reversed, you wouldn’t want to stress me out at my bachelorette party.”
Domi scowled at her because she knew she was right. And immediately changed tactics.
“So, who was the masked Dom? Was it Brian?”
“It was Brian; he just wasn’t masked.”
“And now you guys are going to go home and just go back to pretending you don’t feel anything for each other. Is that it?”
“Exactly, except we won’t be pretending,” she snapped, but her heart clenched a little even as she said the words. Okay, so she might be pretending not to have feelings for him a bit, but it would fade. It was just that island magic. It had made everything shiny and great. “We don’t go together. The only reason it was good this week was because we agreed on an end date. There was nothing to fight over, and he only had to go a week not being called Daddy, which I’m never going to call him, so there’s no reason to start something up that can’t end well.”
“Call him something else. You two act like ‘Daddy’ is the only thing in the world that you can call him.” Domi threw up her hands. “Call him ‘Papi’ if it matters that much. But you haven’t even suggested anything. You see one roadblock, and instead of trying to work around it, you just decide it’s not worth the work at all.”
“That’s not true! I just don’t think either of us should have to give up the things we want!” She said the words, but Domi’s accusation hit her in the gut. She and Domi didn’t usually argue, so it was making her stomach churn in an uncomfortable way.
“It’s called compromise. That’s what you do in a relationship. You have a fight about what you both want, then you find a compromise. Sometimes, you even get to do it without the fight, but a fight is not the end of the world. You are not always going to agree on everything, but you have to be willing to work through that!”
“You and I don’t fight,” Rae retorted.
“We are fighting right now.” Domi threw her hands up in the air. “I can’t with you.”
“We’re disagreeing. It’s different. And we’re not in a romantic relationship.” She looked back and forth between her friends. Though Iris and Avery had seemed content for Domi to be the interrogator, they were obviously invested in the conversation. “I just want what my parents have.”
“She thinks they never fight,” Domi told the other two.
“They don’t!”
“I think they just don’t do it in front of you. Or one of them is always getting their way, and the other one never gets what they want.” Domi shook her head. “But I think it’s the first thing.”
“I would know if they fought,” Rae insisted. “But they never needed to fight. Good relationships don’t. You and Mitch don’t.”
“Of course we do. I just don’t tell you about it because the moment I tell you I had a fight with a guy, you’re all ‘dump him, dump him,’ so I stopped telling you when I have a fight.”
Rae’s mouth dropped open. “What?” She… she’d had no idea.
Domi huffed, running her hand over her curls as if she would be able to smooth them back while the wind was whipping them around.
“Yeah. Domi told me not to tell you when Law and I had a fight, too, unless I wanted to hear a whole bunch about how I needed to break up with him,” Iris put in tentatively. “Which… I didn’t want to break up with him. I just needed to vent so I could get my anger out before we figured out our next steps.”
“I can’t talk to you about fights if I want you to support my relationships.” Domi didn’t sound so mad anymore. She sounded sad. “The moment I told you about a fight with one of my boyfriends, you never saw them the same way again. Everything they did, even if it was small, was just another reason to break up. It’s like you think relationships can’t work if everyone’s not getting along all the time, but it’s just not true.”
“I… I don’t think that. I’m sorry I made you feel like you can’t talk to me. I just… I want what my parents have. I don’t think everyone else has to want that.”
“Maybe not consciously, but you get super judgmental about couples who don’t act like your parents. So, it’s better to just not tell you about fights. I don’t want to hear about how I need to dump my fiancé, who I love, just because he and I were both cranky one day and took it out on each other. We got through it, and we were better for it. But you don’t do that. You just leave.”
“Well, I’m glad that works for you, but now you’re sounding kind of judgmental about what I want.” Rae crossed her arms over her chest. “Just because that works for you doesn’t mean it would work for me.”
“It definitely won’t if you’re not willing to try.”
Avery cleared her throat, finally speaking up and breaking up the argument. “I feel like we’ve gotten a little off-topic. So… you and Brian were just for this week, and that was it?”
