Page 47 of Rat Park
Dominic looked at his still-open trunk before turning back questioningly towards Flor. “Did you just come by to say hi?”
“No, I wanna join you.”
“You sure you want to spend your first night back doing this? Aren’t your friends—”
“Don’t start. Let’s go, it’s cold,” Flor interrupted him, heading towards the passenger side of the car. Dominic shook his head, closing the trunk of his car and joining Flor inside as he slipped behind the wheel.
“How was the flight?” Dominic asked as he started the car and was treated to a rant about airplane smells and the cute toddler who had sat in the seat behind him.
Dominic let the comforting lull of Flor’s voice wash over him, watching the moving shadow of his gesturing hands from the corner of his eye. He had almost expected for something to be different. For Flor to have grown, for the mark of his new life to be in his eyes, causing them to flit more easily from him as he realised Dominic wasn’t all that interesting after all. Expected for their conversation to be a little stilted, as if it had to relearn itself. Instead, things were a slightly more electric version of how they had been, made more buoyant by seeing each other again after almost four months.
Dominic asked him about his classes, about the people he had met, about the clubs he had joined. These were all things Dominic had learnt about through text, but he wanted to hear them in Flor’s excited voice. Wanted to hear his laugh as he told Dominic about the prim and proper RA who turned out to be in a hair metal band, discovered in a shiny, pink spandex catsuit on the stage in a bar Flor had gone to. He listened to the dramatic whine as Flor told him about the way professors would always give them essays and tests during the same weeks. Flor imitated one of the lecturer’s voices, a Valium lilt to his cadence, and cackled about the girl she had befriended in the class, whom he had become fast friends with.
Dominic wasn’t part of the world Flor was discovering, but right then, in the capsule of the dark car, with Flor painting such vivid pictures with his voice, Dominic felt he could live those experiences with him—if only for a few minutes.
It was hard to forget Flor, and most of the girls they stopped to give food to recognised his cheeky smile and asked him about college. He had a new story for each of them, and they basked in the warmth he let off for a few minutes too.
Even after their long shift, Flor and Dominic hadn’t quite gotten enough of each other, and Dominic drove them towards their usual diner. The waitress greeted Flor with a wide, enthusiastic smile, knowing he had been off to college, before admonishing Dominic for not visiting them without Flor.
“Sorry,” Dominic said sheepishly. The waitress waved them off as they settled into a booth.
Flor looked over the rim of the decaf coffee they had just accepted, and Dominic braced himself for prying. He knew that look all too well.
“So…” Flor started. “I never really asked—do you keep in touch with your mom?”
Dominic sighed internally, but it was better to just let the conversation happen. “No.”
“Was she…like, what was she like? Growing up.”
Dominic didn’t talk about this stuff. He didn’t even like thinking about it. But Flor had a way of weakening locks he kept shut even from himself. “She was…young. She was a single mom, and…an addict. She had…she just wasn’t a mom. She had a kid and in her own way she just…some people have children and keep them because they have to, but their life is still just their own, in a way. She had her own issues,” Dominic said, voice flat, emotionless.
Flor looked at him for a moment. “Are you mad at her?”
Dominic paused, digging into himself. Sometimes his thoughts were mad. Memories of certain events would bubble to the surface, the humiliation of them, how they had all started him on a certain path. There was a bitter taste to them he couldn’t escape in the moment. But the actual emotion of anger was absent. Dominic was too tired. He didn’t have the energy to keep the resentment going.
“Not really. I mean, I don’t want to see her. Maybe it’d be different if she were in front of me. I don’t know. But…not really. It is what it is. Being angry would hurt me,” he confessed, aware it was an insight he probably wouldn’t be able to verbalise without having gone to therapy.
Flor nodded, looking pensive. Dominic tilted his head slightly, peering at him.
“What brought on these questions?”
Flor shrugged. “Just thinking about how I don’t really know much about your past.”
Dominic shook his head. “The less you know, the better.”
Flor looked at him, eyes clear and intense. “I want to, though. You…you’re like my best friend. Like…you believe in me. And I wanna, I dunno. Just. I know you don’t wanna talk about it, but if you did, you know I’d listen, right?”
Dominic felt surprise course through him at the easy way Flor called him his ‘best friend’, but he didn’t hesitate. He nodded. “Yeah. I know.”
For Dominic, it was an odd truth. To be sure that he could share even the things he didn’t want to with someone outside therapy. It was a comfort he hadn’t really known before meeting the Romeros. Not even with Mason.
Flor smiled at him quietly as Dominic smiled back.
They left the diner with Flor having taken up the mantle of conversationalist once again.
“Shit. I’ve been talking non-stop again. I’ve barely heard you say a word!” Flor said as Dominic pulled up to Flor’s house.
Dominic shrugged and Flor rolled his eyes good-naturedly, both of them aware Dominic preferred it that way.
