Page 60 of Blind Spot
“Watch out, Dom!” I screamed as he headed straight for me.
My body rocked with the impact of his car hitting mine. I steered out of the crash and drove quickly away from him. It took a lot of strength to maneuver the steering wheel and avoid the other cars in my path.
I hit a man and his little boy, and the kid screamed as the man steered away from me with a smirk. But not before he turned his car back in my direction, and both he and Dominic hit me at the same time from different angles.
Two teenage girls hit Dominic from the back, and they looked at each other and giggled. I could tell they had a crush on him from the time they first arrived at the center because they had been eyeing him and giggling every time they crossed paths with us.
I glanced at him and rolled my eyes as he gave me a big, cheesy grin. Steering away from him, I swung the car around andhit the man and his kid again before moving to two middle-aged women and hitting them from the rear.
It had been Dominic’s idea to get us out of the house for a day of games. We had come to Premier Event. The event center provided lots of entertainment, including bowling, billiards, bumper cars, and laser tag.
We had played laser tag for over an hour before I grew tired and needed to sit down. Dominic’s idea of resting was to climb into bumper cars and ram into each other. We had paid to play three different times, because each ride was only five minutes.
We climbed out of our cars when our time was up. Dominic took my hand in his and led me to the other side of the event center to our reserved table, where we grabbed a menu.
“Remember when we all used to come here as teenagers?”
“I remember when your parents used to bring us all here as kids, including some of the other neighborhood kids.”
He smiled and nodded. “Those were the good old days.”
Laughing, I replied, “You sound like an old man.”
He leaned back and rubbed his lower back and hip before he stated, “Man, I’m feeling all twenty-six of my years. After that ride, I feel like an old ass man.”
I laughed again and shook my head. “I need you to stay out of those bumper cars, sir, if they’re gonna have you feeling old at the ripe age of twenty-six.”
“Yeah. I ain’t gon’ have shit left for our kids by the time they get here. They’re gonna wanna play basketball, and my old ass will be hobbling out on a cane talking ’bout, ‘y’all, my arthur acting up today.’”
I couldn’t laugh if I wanted to, although what he said was funny. Dominic had stumped me. I had not heard him talk about wanting kids since we were kids. When we were in elementary school, he used to talk about what type of father he would be. But by the time our high school years arrived, those conversationsdisappeared. When I asked him about kids when we were twenty, he said that he was never having bad ass kids, because he knew karma would bite him in the ass for all he had done. So to hear him say that now blew my mind.
“Did you say kids?”
“Yeah. What’s wrong?”
I shook my head as I trained my gaze on the menu on the table.
“Nothing.”
“You don’t want my kids, Char?” he asked, reaching across the table to trail the pads of his fingers slowly up and down each of my fingers.
“Of course, I want your kids, Dom. But you always said that you didn’t want them. You said you were afraid of karma biting you in the ass.”
He smirked and then dragged his index finger down the curve of my cheek. “But if I have kids with you, that will be completely different.”
“How?”
“Everything inside of you is good and pure. They would have to have some of your light to balance out my rottenness, right? So the way I figure it, they won’t be all bad,” he explained with a shrug.
As timing would have it, a server showed up at our table at the moment, so that I couldn’t respond to his explanation. It was all good and well anyway, because I didn’t know what to say to that. He had blown me out of the water.
We glanced at the menu again, and I settled on a personal pan pizza, while he ordered a couple of calzones, and we both ordered sweet, iced tea to go with our meals. We folded the menus away and handed them to the server.
I rested my cheek in the palm of my hand as I stared at him.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You never cease to surprise me, Dominic. I’ve known you for eighteen years, and you always find a way to surprise me.”
