Playing Along

by Louisa Keller

  “Smith, come on,” he said. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

  “I’m not making it hard, I’m just…just…”

  Dom took both of my hands between his own and squeezed them gently. He looked me right in the eye and smiled. He looked so damn fond, it almost broke my impenetrable heart.

  “Smith. You don’t do relationships. You don’t do anything other than one-night stands. I’m trying to respect that, so can you please stop making it so hard for me to do that?” he asked.

  “What do you mean you’re trying to respect that?” I asked, my stomach dropping.

  It almost sounded like Dom wanted…something more. I had been so busy convincing myself that I couldn’t do more than a casual fling, I hadn’t really paused to wonder what Dom actually wanted. What would he want in an ideal world?

  “I mean…I mean casual isn’t my default setting. So, this week has been amazing, but it’s also been challenging. Saying goodbye to you is something I’ve been dreading, Smith. I know it’s not going to phase you, and that’s fine. But I’m someone who tends to get attached, so it’s hard to leave. Even though I knew it was coming.”

  I gaped at Dom.

  “Did I ask too much of you?” I asked, my voice breaking.

  Dom smiled at me.

  “You didn’t ask too much. I would’ve told you if it was too much. Just because something is difficult doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile. I’m never going to forget the time we spent together this week, okay? It’s been incredible, and I could never regret it, even if this morning kind of sucks,” he said.

  “It does kinda suck,” I admitted.

  “I’m really glad you came into my life,” Dom said warmly.

  “Yeah, you too. Thanks for saving me from that crazy fan,” I said.

  “Anytime, my friend,” Dom said with a sad smile.

  Something inside of me broke at the word friend. I wanted to shout, that’s not right, you’re more than just my friend.

  But of course, I couldn’t. Because my career depended on keeping things casual. Because Dom lived in Seattle, and I lived in Chicago. Because he was sweet and kind and level-headed, and I was a hot fucking mess. Because I had asked him for casual, and he was working so goddamn hard to give me what I had asked for.

  “Are you going to disappear off the face of the earth?” I blurted out.

  “Um…no?”

  “It’s just…I know this week was just a casual, isolated thing,” I said.

  “It was,” Dom agreed.

  “But I…I want you in my life, Dom. I want to keep in touch,” I said.

  His grin could’ve lit up an entire stadium.

  “I want you in my life too,” he said, reaching out to lace our fingers together.

  “So…if I call you, you’ll pick up?” I asked.

  “I’ll pick up.”

  “Okay then.”

  We stared at each other for a moment, and then Dom pulled me in for one last kiss. It was every bit a goodbye kiss—full of longing and sorrow and need. I opened to him, moaning as he delved into my mouth. My arms came around his waist and held him tight against me.

  And then, all at once, he was gone. Pulling away, hoisting his backpack onto his back, heading out the door with one last longing glance over his shoulder.

  I sat down on the little twin-sized bed we had shared all week, and put my head in my hands. To my horror, tears pricked at my eyes. I missed Dom already, terribly. There was a unique kind of pain to his departure, something I had never felt before. It was as if someone had punched me in the gut—but emotionally. I didn’t want to pack up my things, didn’t want to eat, didn’t want to work.

  What I wanted, of course, was Dom.

  I probably would’ve spent the whole day just sitting there moping if Lola hadn’t knocked on the door.

  “Smith?” she called.

  My head jerked up.

  “Yeah?” I called back.

  “Can I come in for a sec?”

  I made my way over to the door, stepping over my various scattered possessions. Pulling the door open, I gestured for Lola to come in.

  “What’s up?” I asked, going for casual but landing somewhere near dejected.

  “I saw Dom on his way out. He mentioned you were still here and I thought you might want some company,” she said.

  “Oh…I mean…why would you think that?” I tried.

  She snorted. “I’ve seen the two of you falling for each other all week long. I figured you might be just a tiny bit upset when he hopped on a plane without you.”

  I shrugged, not meeting her eyes. “We both knew what the deal was when we started this thing. Besides, it was just casual. Nothing serious.”

  “Uh huh,” said Lola, unconvinced.

  “No, for real,” I insisted. “I don’t do serious.”

  “Right up until the day that you change your mind,” she said.

  I glared at her, but there was no heat in it.

  “You don’t know me,” I said gruffly, looking down at my feet. “I’m not the kind of guy who gets a happily-ever-after. I’m not looking for someone to sweep me off my feet, I’m looking for an endless string of one-night stands with a different guy in my bed every night.”

  “That sounds exhausting,” said Lola with a smile.

  “I mean…you’re not wrong.”

  “Don’t you want that happily-ever-after?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “I’ve worked hard to get to where I am. I care about slut culture, and I care about the work I do. It’s all tangled up together. And I really do love sleeping around.”

  “Okay,” said Lola gently. “But do you love sleeping around more than you love being with Dom?”

  That struck a chord.

  Because as soon as she said it, I knew the answer. I loved being with Dom so much more than I had ever loved sleeping around. It had only taken him a handful of days to worm his way into my heart, and now my entire world was spinning on its axis.

  “I can’t uproot my whole life,” I said miserably.

  “Yeah, okay, but what if you could?” Lola asked.

  “I can’t, so what’s the point?”

  “The point,” she said, “is that you actually can. It’ll be hard, that’s for sure. But you can do it if you really want to. So, go ahead and allow yourself to think about what that might look like.”

  It all came flooding into my mind. Dom and I flying out to visit each other; collaborating on videos; having phone sex; moving to live in the same place. Dom smiling at my jokes and splitting lunch with me and driving me fucking crazy in bed. The two of us building a life together, maybe even merging our YourTube accounts. We could work together, live together, love together. It wasn’t impossible, it was just really fucking hard. It would mean sacrifice and compromise and a whole lotta legwork.

  But maybe, my subconscious whispered, this is what you want.

  I looked up at Lola. “Do you force everyone you meet to have life-changing revelations, or am I just a special case?”

  She beamed at me. “A little of column a, a little of column b.”

  “Well, fuck you for making me do all this exhausting emotional labor,” I said cheerfully.

  “Fuck you for taking so damn long to get your head out of your ass. I feel like I’m doing damage control here,” she snarked.

  “You know,” I said thoughtfully, “I think you and I are going to have a very long friendship.”

  “You’re damn right we are,” Lola shot back. “I expect frequent updates on your long-distance seduction of Dom.”

  “Too bad you can’t come back to the states and help us get together,” I said.

  “I can help you get together from halfway across the world. Just keep texting me, kid. I’ll guide you through this.”

  “You’ve played matchmaker before?” I guessed.

  She rolled her eyes. “More times than you can count. I’m a genius with everyone’s love life but my own.”


  “You don’t have a sugar parent funding your rock’n’roll lifestyle?” I teased.

  “I have a string of ex-girlfriends who didn’t like it when I took off for months at a time to travel solo,” she corrected.

  “Idiots,” I scoffed. “They should’ve recognized they had a keeper. You need someone better than any of your exes. Someone who appreciates you.”

  “Sage advice coming from such an emotionally-stunted guy,” she said with a laugh.

  I shook my head. “I’m not emotionally stunted. I’m just…still learning how to be a happy person.”

  “Well, pro tip: hold onto the guy you can’t stop thinking about, okay?”

  “I’ll try my damn best,” I said solemnly.

  My apartment greeted me, when I arrived back in Chicago, with its bare furnishings and messy countertops. It was silent and empty, something I had always found comforting. But that morning I found the silence stifling.

  I had spent an entire week in Dom’s presence, and I was bereft without it.

  I missed his voice, his face, the feel of his skin beneath my hands. I ached with loneliness, bone-deep and brutal. More than anything in the world I wanted to bury my face in Dom’s chest, take in his lovely scent, the cadence of his breathing.

  But I was alone, utterly alone. The big city that had once made me feel so connected suddenly felt like it was cutting off my connections. There is something much more profoundly lonely about being alone in a big city, than being alone in a small town. I could’ve been in the largest metropolis in the world that night, and I still wouldn’t have been able to stave off the devastation of being without Dom.

  I began the painstaking process of unpacking my duffel but gave up after a few minutes. I looked listlessly around my bedroom, wishing I still had a cat to keep me company. My eyes landed on my phone, lying innocuously on the bed. I padded over to it and lay down, smiling at the familiarity of my pillows, the stupid dinosaur comforter I had found on sale right after I moved to Chicago. I unlocked my phone and found two things waiting for me: a text and a voicemail.

  I read the text first.

  >>LOLA: hey fucko, hope you made it home safely. let me know you got there alright!

  Laughing, I typed out a response.

  >>SMITH: made it home you hooligan, send my love to gay paris

  I took a deep breath before playing the voicemail. It was from Dom, his name sitting there innocuously in my mailbox. I wanted so badly to hear his voice, but at the same time…at the same time, I was afraid.

  With trembling fingers, I hit the play button.

  “Hi Smith, this is Dom Baker. Which you obviously know since I’m saved in your phone. Duh. I just wanted to let you know I got back to Seattle safely and I’m, uh, hoping you made it home as well. I…Smith, I had a really good time with you this week. I don’t know why I called, really, except that I felt like I needed you to know that. I’m kind of torn up about being away from you, actually, which is dumb since it was just a casual thing. But. Hmm…I’m rambling, I should go. I hope you’re well, and I miss you. A lot. Okay…yeah, bye.”

  It hit me like a shockwave radiating out from my chest.

  I had a really good time with you.

  I’m kind of torn up about being away from you.

  I miss you.

  I pressed play again, listening to the message for a second time. It wasn’t hard to imagine his face as he spoke those words, the way the emotions would spill out over his features even as he rambled on. I wished vehemently that I could see him, be with him in person.

  But all I had was a week’s worth of memories and a thirty-second voicemail.

  13

  Dom

  “Dooooooom!”

  Finley was shouting my name before I was even all the way through the front door. He bounded forward, wrapping his arms around me and then immediately scampering back into the house shouting for the others. I sighed, enjoying the familiarity of home.

  I made my way down the hall and into the living room, which was full of people. Porter and Carson were playing Mario Kart, both of them staring at the tv with serious expressions on their faces. Levi, Porter’s boyfriend, and Leo were passing a bong back and forth on the end of the couch. Finley was jumping around letting everyone know that I was home like an overgrown Labrador retriever.

  “Welcome back, man,” Leo said, smoke leaking from his lips as he spoke.

  “How was Paris?” Levi asked, patting the seat next to him. I moved to sit down and accepted the bong he handed to me, taking a big hit.

  “It was wild, man,” I said. “Just really beautiful and…I had an amazing time.”

  “I heard you met someone while you were there,” Levi said, nudging me affectionately. “Spill.”

  I liked Levi a lot. Unlike the rest of them, he hadn’t gone to Pettygrove University with me. He and Porter had met while Porter was driving the bus for Levi’s first major tour as the front man of a pop-punk trio. Despite the fact that he came from a completely different background than the rest of us, Levi had slid seamless into the group as soon as Porter brought him back to Seattle.

  “It was a whirlwind, man,” I said, smiling as I thought about Smith.

  “How so?”

  I told the whole story, starting with our ill-advised first kiss and ending with kissing goodbye in the hostel. Over the course of the tale, Porter and Carson put down their controllers and came over to listen. Finley balanced on the arm of the couch and casually tucked one leg behind his head while peppering me with questions about Smith. I recounted every little detail, flushing and tripping over my words as I remembered each romantic moment, every heated kiss.

  “God, it sounds like you really like him,” Leo said when I had finished.

  “Uh, yeah,” I admitted. “I like him…so much.”

  “So, what’s the plan?” Levi asked brightly.

  “The plan?” I repeated.

  “You know, the plan to win his heart,” Finley chimed in.

  “Oh,” I said. “That.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re giving up on him,” Carson said seriously.

  “I don’t think there’s much else I can do,” I said. “He doesn’t want a relationship, he lives across the country, I think we had our run and now it’s over.”

  Porter shook his head. “Are you listening to yourself, Dom? This guy lit up your world, and now you’re just going to give up on a future with him?”

  “This isn’t a fairytale,” I interjected. “He said he doesn’t want a relationship. I need to respect that.”

  “Maybe he’s just scared,” Porter suggested.

  “What could he possibly be scared of?” I asked, skeptical.

  “Commitment,” Levi suggested.

  “Change,” added Carson.

  “Rejection?” said Finley.

  I shook my head. “One thing’s for sure, he doesn’t have to worry about rejection. I’m crazy about him. I’ve never felt this way about anyone, which is crazy since we only just met.”

  “I knew I was going to fall in love with Porter the first time I spoke to him,” Levi said. “It doesn’t always take time to know something like that. Sometimes you just have a gut feeling. I suggest you honor that.”

  “He lives so far away,” I pointed out.

  “Levi went to Europe for a month right after we got together,” said Porter. “Distance is tough, but it’s not impossible.”

  “And how do you propose I bring this up to him?” I asked. “‘Hi Smith, I know you said you didn’t want to be with me, but I’ve decided we’re meant for each other. Wanna have a long-distance relationship even though you don’t know my middle name?’”

  Carson was biting his lip thoughtfully.

  “You have a point, that’s not really the sort of thing you do over the phone,” he said. “Maybe you should invite him to come visit. You could make another video—your fans are begging for it.”

  “And then you can romance him while he’s here,” Finley sa
id, winking at me.

  I sighed heavily. “What if this is just me being needy and pathetic and lonely? What if there’s no real spark between us, and I just annoy him by trying to keep in touch?”

  Leo started laughing. I turned to glare at him, but he just pulled me into a quick hug.

  “There’s no way he’s not hot for you,” he said through a smile.

  “What makes you say that?” I asked, afraid to get my hopes up.

  “Dom, listen to your story. Everything about it screams mutual attraction. He broke his one-night-only rule for you…for an entire week. He can call it casual all he wants, that was not a casual thing you both did,” said Leo.

  Porter grabbed the bong and took a hit, his words garbled by the smoke. “Any chance you’re projecting Harris onto Smith?”

  I scowled at him. “I really don’t think I am.”

  “Whenever you call yourself needy, I always think about Harris,” Porter continued. “He really did a number on you, convincing you that you were to blame for the issues in that relationship. The thing is, he was the one who wasn’t being fair.”

  “He strung you alone, dude,” said Leo. “We were all there. Well, except for Levi. We watched Harris convince you that you were the problem.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I have shit taste in guys,” I muttered. “Can we move on?”

  “Not until you admit that you’re not being needy,” Carson said gently.

  I grimaced. The notions that Harris had planted in me were rooted deep, and they were nasty. It was hard to untangle them from reality, and it was even harder to hear the people I loved most in the world pointing out how much I had let him ruin me.

  But.

  But there was a chance that they had a point. I wanted nothing more than to believe them, to see the truth in their words.

  “Alright, fine, there’s a chance that I’m not being needy,” I conceded. “There, are you happy now?”

  Levi laid a comforting hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry you have such a shitty ex, man. I think you deserve the chance to have a healthy relationship now. Don’t you think it might be worth seeing if Smith wants to treat you right?”