Page 36 of Rat Park
Remembered feeling almost eager when a man caught his eye, a signal within their kind—how Dominic knew he’d be able to use his mouth and his hands to get something out of him, to dig deeper into his own hole.
This person he was now, who handed food out to the homeless, who pretended he didn’t have a mother even though he had abandoned her, who cooked with Esteban and laughed with Cat, who hadn’t really protested when his wolf teeth had been accepted as one of the sheep’s herd, wasn’t who he was. The truth of Dominic was what Sweep had seen, what he had done in his buried past. He was the person who thought of Flor late at night, of his smiles and his eyes and his long legs like a sick man who never learnt.
Maybe the scene with Sweep hadn’t been loud and momentous. But what Flor had seen was proof that Dominic had been lying, had been pretending. That he couldn’t be trusted.
Dominic stared ahead through the windshield. Distantly, Dominic was amazed his hands on the steering wheel weren’t shaking. He felt like he was buzzing, but not in his body. In a place deeper inside.
The car was completely silent, even the radio quiet and numb. He could feel Flor’s presence on the passenger side like a block of ice held just shy of his skin. Now Flor knew. He’d seen what Dominic really was, how he had been pretending all this time. The thought barely hurt. It simply felt like things finally were what they had always meant to be.
“Pull over,” Flor said. As quiet as his voice was, it still ripped through the numbness around Dominic for a moment. Dominic wanted to ask Flor to wait until he was safely home to get out of the car, but he understood Flor’s wish not to be around him for a moment longer.
As soon as Dominic saw a safe place to stop, he slowed and the parked the car, pressing it against a sidewalk, putting the hazards on.
Dominic watched the intermittent halo appear and disappear around the car. He wanted to ask if Flor had enough money for a cab, having none left to offer, but he couldn’t make his mouth work. He wasn’t sure what would happen if he talked.
He didn’t want to beg.
A hand suddenly wrapped around Dominic’s bicep. It was gentle, but it still made Dominic jump, stopping himself just in time from looking at Flor. There was a slight pause.
“Dominic,” Flor said softly. Dominic felt all his muscles tense up further.
“Yeah.”
Silence fell again. Even inside his head, everything was dead and still. There was nothing to do but wait for the blow.
He felt the hand on his arm release, but then it was threading its fingers through the hairs at the nape of his neck. This time, he couldn’t help but turn to look at Flor. In the shadow of the car, he could barely make out his expression, but then Flor was pulling him forwards gently. Dominic went, not knowing how to stop it, until his chest was pressed against his.
“What are you doing?” Dominic asked. The question came out as a whisper, not wanting to know what was coming next.
“I wanted a hug,” Flor said. Dominic frowned, but his arms came up anyway to wrap around him. The hold was awkward with the gear shift between them, but Flor was warm, the hand still at the nape of Dominic’s neck stroking him gently.
“It’s okay,” Flor said.
Dominic’s mind didn’t understand the words, but his body seemed to. It relaxed slightly, letting out the breath that had been pent up inside.
“It’s okay,” he repeated, and Dominic’s arms tightened around him instinctively. He couldn’t make himself let go.
Flor didn’t release him either. He didn’t let go or open the door or get out. He didn’t leave Dominic. It didn’t make sense, but Dominic didn’t know how to protest.
He hadn’t known his heart had been racing until it slowed down. He let himself breathe Flor in.
“It doesn’t matter where you’ve been, Dominic. You’re here now,” Flor said quietly.
Dominic twitched in his arms.
“Doesn’t matter to you, maybe,” he replied.
“You’re right. It doesn’t matter to me.”
Dominic let those words sink in. Let them be understood one by one and then all
together. No matter how he looked at them, they didn’t make sense. And yet he had nothing to say to that. He had nothing to say at all. He rested his forehead against Flor’s bony shoulder and closed his eyes.
Maybe that could be enough.
**********
“What did you think would happen,” Ian asked, looking at Dominic calmly in his therapy room, “if Flor, and the other people currently in your life, found out about the details of your past?”
