Page 31 of Rat Park
Dominic rolled his eyes and shut that line of conversation down with a stare. Flor had been doing that more and more lately, and Dominic refused to think of the seventeen-year-old in anything but a platonic way.
Flor laughed. “What did you wanna be when you were little?” he prodded.
“Nothing.”
“Come on, tell me,” Flor whined. “Rock star? Policeman?”
Dominic barked out a laugh. “Policeman?” He shook head.
“Sorry. Forgot you were fromthe hood.”
“Ok, you gotta stop saying it like that.”
“Come on. Really? You didn’t wanna beanything?”
“Not really. In that place, it just hurts to dream.” Dominic let it slip, looking down at his coffee to avoid Flor’s look. The was a slight pause.
“Still. You’ve gotta keep hope alive, right?”
“Maybe if you trust yourself to be better than where you came from,” Dominic replied flatly.
Flor fidgeted with his cup. “But you made it out, right?”
“Oh yeah. I’m almost finished with the police academy,” Dominic replied sarcastically, although without bite.
“Come on. That’s not…” Flor sighed. “You’re a good person.”
“There’s a lot of good people where I come from, Flor. They just…they’re trapped by circumstance.”
Flor looked down. Dominic sighed.
“I did want to be a sci-fi writer for a while, ok?” Dominic admitted.
Flor looked up instantly, eyes bright. “No way. Sci-fi?You?”
“Yeah. Not really into it anymore but I had a friend in high school, got me into it. We wanted to write shitty sci-fi TV series, you know?”
“Oh my God. Like,The Bloband stuff?”
“Yeah,Creature from the Lake, bullshit like that. Space, monsters…”
“Oh my God.” Flor laughed. “Where’s your friend now?”
Dominic ignored the twinge in his gut. “No idea. Bet he’s doing good, though.”
“Yeah, just like you,” Flor said, expression challenging. Dominic rolled his eyes a little.
“Yeah, all right.”
Flor grinned like he had won something.
Dominic had heard a million times that misery loves company, but with Flor, optimism was infectious. It was getting into his blood. Shaping him.
Dominic didn’t think to stop it.
**********
The months slipped by with little direction from Dominic, not that he would have known where to guide them even if he had tried. Working on not relapsing took enough effort on its own.
