Page 51 of Cruel Promise
That’s fine. I’ll harass him about telling Dominique later. He can only push off the inevitable for so long.
Dominique would want to know, and I get the feeling that Deacon didn’t randomly choose to enroll at Suncrest U. He came here for him. And I’m pretty sure I’m the one who fucked all of his plans up. Damn. I didn’t think about it before now, but that has to be it, right? Deacon was going to tell him.
Their paths must have crossed over the summer because even freshman start the football season before the semester begins, but maybe he was taking his time. Working up to letting Dominique know, and then boom! Deacon runs into me.
And just like that, Dominique’s asshole switch is flipped and any chance Deacon had of getting on Dom’s good side is washed away.
“Fuck.” I mutter the curse under my breath. Urgh. I’m such an idiot. Now I really have to fix things between them.
Dominique is the least friendly person that I know. Aside from me and the guys, he doesn’t talk to anyone else. I’ve seen him stone-cold ignore people at parties who walk right up to him and say hello. Half the time he won’t even acknowledge them, which makes it awkward as hell if you’re around to see it. It can take a minute or two for people to realize that no matter what they say or how many times they repeat themselves, he’s not going to respond. Eventually, they get the hint, but it can take a while.
The other half of the time, he barks out an order togo the fuck away, and whoever it was that bothered him scurries off like a dog with their tail tucked between their legs. Saying Dominique’s social skills are lacking is the understatement of the year. I don’t know why he’s like that. He used to ignore me, too. When I was a kid. He and the guys would come over to our place to hangout with Aaron. They were in middle school and I was still in elementary, but I remember trying to talk to him. I showed him my new basketball and asked if he wanted to shoot some hoops and he just stared. It was as though he could see through me. Like I didn’t even exist.
I remember being so upset about it. Since then, I’ve gone out of my way to get under his skin. Anything to provoke a response and as I’ve gotten older,I’ve gotten really good at it. But Deacon doesn’t know what Dominique is like. All he knew was that he had a brother out there he didn’t know.
Was he excited when he got accepted to Suncrest U? When he joined the football team? And how disappointed was he when none of his plans went his way?
I wonder how many times he tried to strike up a conversation with Dom, and how many times it failed. That had to be rough. Picturing Dominique’s responses in my head, it’s no wonder Deacon won’t tell him the truth. I probably wouldn’t either.
FIFTEEN
DOMINIQUE
The week speeds past in a blur, not bothering to slow down when it hits the weekend before bulldozing into the next week. It’s Friday now.Fuck.Already? A quick look at my phone confirms. Not going to lie, I’m a little surprised to see I was right.
I rarely know what day of the week it is anymore. I’m still hitting PT at the ass crack of dawn before practice in the mornings. That runs until 9 a.m. most days. Sometimes 10 a.m.
Next week it won’t be as bad. I got the all clear on my shoulder, so I’m good to go. No need to take things easy on the field or in practice anymore.
About fucking time. I could’ve used those extra hours to catch up on sleep since as soon as practice lets out, I have just enough time for a shower and a bite to eat before my classes pick up in the afternoon. Throw in trying to babysit Aaron without letting him on to the fact that I’m keeping an eye on him, and any free time I might have is eliminated.
The guy’s been all over the place lately. Some days he’s so out of it he sleeps all day or binge watches TV for eight hours straight. And the other days he’s an ADHD kid who skipped his meds, pinging all over the place.
He has an official diagnosis and doesn’t medicate. Addict problems. What can you do?
Since he only takes classes part-time, his ADHD isn’t normally this recognizable, but the other day, he came home with something like twenty canvases, an easel, and five separate acrylic paint sets. Not five individual colors. Full on fucking collections of the entire rainbow. And something like twenty-five paint brushes, most of which are the same size and shape but came in a different color which meant he needed one of each.
In the years I’ve known him, he has never had a creative bone in his body. The guy can weld and that’s about it. But drawing or painting or anything like that, he’s never had an interest. Now, he does.
Which was fine until three hours of listening to music and painting his heart out went by and he abandoned all of his shit in our living room to reorganize every cabinet and drawer we have in the kitchen instead.
He spent two hours on that and was pretty fucking proud of himself afterwards. Again, fine. I’ll survive not knowing where the hell anything is. It’s whatever.
But it didn’t stop there. Aaron was so proud of his organizational skills, he decided to organize the entire fucking house, in the middle of the night no less.
The team weight trains in the evenings, giving me even less time or, trust me, I would have put a stop to this. But I didn’t know what that shithead was up to until the next morning when I showed up at 3 a.m. to find him wide awake, and all of our belongings strewn across the floor while heorganized.
It was a disaster.
The only upside is that he was so distracted he didn’t think to ask me where I’d been or why I was home so late. But that’s the one and only upside.
Two days later, our place is still a disaster. Aaron was hyper fixated for a few hours sorting through shit, only for his motivation to run dry around the time I got home. This guy kills me. I’m telling you, I do not know how I put up with this shit. If my hair turns gray in my twenties, it’ll be because of him.
I’m giving him the weekend while I’m away to get it figured out before calling a professional organizer and a maid to get it handled.
We have a housekeeper already, but she only comes once a month to deep clean the place. I’m a grown fucking adult. I can do my laundry and clean up after myself just fine, not that anyone would know that with what my place looks like right now. But I take care of my responsibilities.
And the only reason I have a housekeeper at all is because my parents fired Rhea for missing a few crumbs on the kitchen counter when she’d been working for them for nine years. I’ve spent more meaningful time with her than I have with my own parents, which is how I know she’s got kids and grandkids who rely on her income.
