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“I want you to have my number.” Micah’s voice interrupts us and much to my disappointment, Dominic lets me go. I look to Micah to find him holding a card toward me. “Call me. Day or night. I’d like to know you, Stassia…” He looks Dominic over before looking at me. “I’d like a chance to start over.”
“I don’t need a father…” I shake my head, hearing how it sounds and not wanting Dominic to get offended. “I mean…I have one.”
“Well, maybe we can be friends?” He’s still holding the card out and I watch him lower it slightly as he notices I’m not reaching out to grab it.
Fire blazes in Dominic’s eyes as he snatches it from his hands. “You said your piece, now go. If she wants to contact you, she will.”
Micah shakes his head as he stares at the card still in my stepfather’s hand. “I am sorry for your loss, Stassia. Your mother was an amazing woman. I wish things had been different. Maybe in another life…” He looks at my grandparents and then Dominic before landing on me. “I hope to see you soon.”
“You’re almost eighteen, so I suppose I can’t stop you,” Dominic says as he hands me the card with Micah’s information.
It was the following day and I had just emerged from my room after a much needed fourteen hour sleep. I’d succumbed to exhaustion about halfway through the repast and left Dominic with all of my loud, overbearing, yet well-meaning family and his as my grandmother stroked my hair.
I look up at him and then down at the once pristine card that had now been folded in half and smelled like it had been soaked in gin. “I don’t…really know what I want.”
“You don’t have to make any decisions right now.” I notice he’s not dressed for the day, wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt that stretched tightly across his muscles and torso and I let my eyes feast on the visual for no more than a second before averting my gaze. “Do you want some coffee?” I nod, knowing the small source of comfort will at least snap me out of the groggy feeling. I sit down in one of the chairs and rest my head on the kitchen table as I hear him placing a cup in the Keurig. “You still tired?” he asks. “You want to go rest? I can bring your coffee up to you.”
My head snaps up at his kind offer. I’m not used to this side of Dominic.
Kind. Caring. Protective.
Well, he’s always been those things in his own way, but he usually goes about it very differently.
“Can we talk about the elephant in the room?”
He turns from where he’s preparing my coffee and stares at me. His blue eyes are curious and he cocks his head to the side as if to saywell, on with it.“Can…I stay? I mean, my grandparents live kind of far, and although I know you wouldn’t kick me out, I’ve got a month before my senior year is over and then I’ll be gone at the end of the summer.”
“I didn’t realize I’d given you any indication that I wanted you to leave.” He crosses his arms over his chest and the way they flex catches my attention. “Of course, you can stay, Stassia. I wasn’t sure if you wanted to go and stay with your grandparents. As far as that…” he nods towards the card in my hand, “I would prefer you not meet with him alone the first few times…at least not until he’s been cleared completely.”
“Do you not trust him?”
“I’m not sure, yet. He’s your father, Stassi, so I’m not going to say you can’t see him. I’m just…apprehensive. I would like to know more before I go sending you into something that could be dangerous. Your mother would never forgive me.” He grabs my coffee and some creamer from the fridge before moving through the kitchen towards me. He sets my favorite FRIENDS mug in front of me and the hazelnut creamer beside it before taking the adjacent chair at the table. “It would kill me to lose you too, Stassia…you’re…you’re all I have left.”
“Me?” I squeak. “You have your parents and your siblings, I’m notall…”
“You’re all I have left ofher,”he corrects.
I swallow, nodding slowly as his words sink in. “I’m skeptical about Micah too, Dominic. I’m not going to sneak off and meet up with some random stranger.”
“I thought you wanted to get to know your father.”
I shrug before taking a small sip of my coffee. “It’s different now that he’s right in front of me. Now that the opportunity is there. It was easy to fantasize when I didn’t know him. When he wasn’t in front of me full of potential lies and half assed apologies.”Maybe he wasn’t completely full of shit, but maybe my mother kept me away from him as I got older to protect me from the disappointment and rejection that inevitably comes when dealing with a fair-weather father.Hiding a few stray birthday cards that he sent over the years hardly makes my mother the villain in this story.
I chew on my lower lip and look up at him. “The only father I’ve ever known has never lied to me. At least that I know of.”
“Never.” He nods and the sincerity radiates from his blue orbs. I give Dominic a hard time but I know he loved my mother. This is just as hard on him as it is on me.
I look around the kitchen. She’d turned this house into a home and it feels unfathomable that I have to stay here without her. Like somehow, this isn’t a home anymore. “I can’t believe she’s gone.” My voice cracks and I take another sip of my coffee to try and clear the emotion from my throat.
As if he can hear my thoughts, Dominic speaks up. “Would you like to stay somewhere else tonight? Maybe Kate’s? Or I can get you a hotel room if you want? If it’s too hard to be here right now?”
“No…I…I don’t want to leave you here.”
“I’ll be okay, Stassia.” I hear his words, but his demeanor says something else entirely. Something calls out to me, and although I had no intentions of leaving in the first place, I shake my head.
“No, we’re in this together, Dominic.”
Days turn to weeks, and neither of us has returned to school. Since I’m a senior, my year ends in the middle of May, which means I’ve essentially missed the last of my high school career. Prom, the class picnic, yearbook photos, taking my claim as ‘Best Smile Class of 2019,’ I’ve missed all of it. Dominic is on leave for the remainder of the year, and although I’m not required to return, it’s my last week of school, and after being gone for nearly a month, I think seeing my friends will do me some good. I’m still planning to walk across the stage, and I need my cap and gown, although Kate told me more than once she’d pick it up for me. But I need some sort of normalcy.
