Page 41 of The Dominator

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When I climbed back in bed at almost one in the morning after a workout, a run, and three shots of scotch during an urgent meeting about a problem down in Mexico I found her asleep in my bed and fuck me, but she was wearing the shirt I wore earlier today.

I climbed in on the opposite side, deciding to test out my theory of whether she was just moving to the other side of the bed out of habit or not. She rolled toward me. I felt a pang of something, something that made me pull her to me and bury my nose in her hair. She let out a sound that was almost a purr and then nuzzled into my collar bone and wrapped her arms around me. It made my heart constrict when my eyes adjusted in the dark and I saw a peaceful little smile on her sleeping face.

I fell asleep wondering if she was dreaming about the guy from the ice cream shop, the guy that she wished I was. I knew she couldn’t be dreaming about the real me with that smile on her face and it left an empty, raw feeling deep in my gut. It was like I was consumed by guilt. This was foreign. I don’t think I’d ever felt guilty about anything in my life before meeting this girl.

5

He was still asleep when I woke up. His face was badly scored with long nail marks and his eye looked bruised. It was early, 5:20 am. I was tangled up with him, legs, arms, and for some reason, we were both on the opposite end of the bed, heads down at the foot and I was on the side he usually slept on. I rolled away, went to the bathroom, put his bathrobe on and went downstairs.

Sarah wasn’t up yet. I looked out the stained glass window panes that flanked the front door on both sides and saw a guy out there, sitting by the gate with a tall Starbucks cup in his hand, doing something on his phone. I also saw another guy out back when I looked out the kitchen window.

I filled the single cup brewer with water, made a coffee the way I liked it, and then explored some of the rooms whose doors were open on the main floor. An office with a big cherry wood desk, bookshelves, billiards table, and a good-sized conference table with a dozen chairs. A dining room with a table for twelve, humungous family room with big couches, a fireplace, the biggest TV I’d ever seen, also a laundry room with 2 stacked sets of metallic blue laundry machines. There was also a big, stocked pantry, two bathrooms, and a long hallway with a few closed doors. I had a feeling one was Sarah’s room, so I didn’t open any of them. At the end of that hallway I spotted the basement stairs. I decided to go down and see if I could find my belongings so I wouldn’t have to keep wearing Sarah’s clothes.

When my eyes opened, I could smell her. I smelled her on the pillow beside me, but she wasn’t here. After I’d gotten in bed on the wrong side and she curled into me, I further experimented. I woke up sometime in the night and got up to use the john, so when I got back in I climbed in at the bottom. She rolled down and curled into me down there, too. I’d wrapped my arms around her and held her tight to me. She burrowed in, letting out a little moan that gave me goosebumps and got me hard. I didn’t act on it, just held her.

Now I was awake, it was bright, and she wasn’t here. I got out of bed, pulled on a pair of track pants, went to the bathroom, then headed down to the kitchen. It was 7:45 and Sarah was frying something on the stove, something that didn’t smell like breakfast.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I’m making some freezer meals,” she said without looking up. Then she did look up and looked at me with shock.

“What?”

“Your face! It looks worse than last night.”

I felt the tenderness on my eye and lip and knew Tia’d given me a doozy of a shiner. I grabbed a silver pan off the counter, turned it over and caught my reflection on the back and sure enough, it looked worse. In addition to a black eye and a slightly fat lip I had nail marks streaked down my cheek, too. Great. We were expected at Pop’s for dinner today. Sarah’s face changed and I didn’t need to be a mind-reader to know she was thinking I deserved it.

“Where is she?” I asked, leaning out to see by the pool.

Sarah shook her head blankly. “She’s not up yet.”

“She’s what?” The look on my face made her blanch.

I practically flew to the front door and hollered for Marco and Nino and we soon figured out they hadn’t seen her. My blood was about to boil. “Where the fuck is she?”

In the basement, I found a huge man-cave room with another pool table, ping pong table, two old school arcade games, foosball, a pinball game, plus a home theater room with a sectional and those cool recliners with the cup holders and speakers in them. There was also a big poker table with the green felt, and a long fully-stocked bar, as well as a home gym with every piece of workout equipment I’d ever heard of plus a sauna and bathroom. There was also a big storage room lined with shelves. The storage room was empty except for my few boxes and garbage bags of clothes right inside the doorway. I opened the boxes and started going down memory lane.

Report cards, post cards, boxes of clothes, books, CDs. I slipped through a photo album that belonged to my mom. I felt an overwhelming surge of emotion for her.

I didn’t know who some of the people in the photos were. In the back there were a few loose photos that I’d seen before. I leafed through them and stopped at a Polaroid photo of my mother when she was younger, sitting with a young guy, both dressed up. They were holding hands. His face looked familiar.

I turned it over and saw Carlita + Tom Ferrano in blue ink. There was a heart drawn in red pen under the ink as well as dotting the i in Mom’s name.

Tommy’s father. What on Earth? Is that why he seemed familiar? Because I’ve seen this picture and his name on it over the years? It felt like something else was familiar, beyond the picture about him. I couldn’t put my finger on it.

I heard someone coming down the stairs. A man, maybe in his early to mid-30’s, rushed into the room, the man from the driveway this morning. He was a giant, had to be almost 7 feet tall, had a reddish goatee, a shaved head, had tattooed hands, and pretty much looked like a badass biker dressed in a suit. His facial expression was filled with relief.

He leaned on the door frame, as if catching his breath, pulled out his phone and dialed, then said, “She’s in the basement! Storage room. Yeah.”

I was sitting on the floor cross-legged in Tommy’s shirt, Tommy’s robe, with papers and piles of folded clothing around me. After what felt like a too-long awkward moment with the giant biker guy Tommy was behind him with eyes that were crazy-scary. Tommy was dressed in just a pair of track pants that sat low on his hips. He wore nothing else, but his crucifix necklace.

“Okay,” Tommy said, and the guy left.

I felt the overwhelming urge to turtle, to totally cower and that’s not me. He’s got me turned into a nervous wreck.

I was sure I was staring at him like a timid rabbit. I felt my chin start quivering. The anger seemed to drain from Tommy’s beat-up looking face (Fuck, I did that. Me!) and then he fell to his knees in front of me and let out a deep breath, looking me right in the eyes with tenderness.

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