Page 50 of Hard Wired

Dominic: Totally where I’m going the minute I get out of here.

Sylvie: Are you a Space Mountain guy? No…Teacups.

Dominic: You already know me so well.

Sylvie: You’re not that hard to figure out.

Dominic: No? I’m disappointed in myself.

Sylvie: Why? You’d rather keep me guessing?

Dominic: If it keeps you interested, then yes. Are you? Interested?

Sylvie: I’m writing to you, aren’t I?

Dominic: And I’m still wondering why. I was afraid I’d lost any chance to see you again.

Sylvie: I keep going back and forth on that. Undecided.

Dominic: I’ve thought about you pretty much constantly since that day. How I wish we could finish what we’d started. Just putting that out there.

Sylvie: You’re always this up front?

Dominic: No. Most of what people say about me is probably true. I’m not a good person. Or honest, most of the time.

Sylvie: Is there a ‘but’ after that?

Dominic: But…you make me want to be better.

Sylvie: I don’t think you’re as dark and broody as you like people to think.

Dominic: Is that what I like people to think?

Sylvie: Seems that way to me.

Dominic: I’m more interested in what YOU think.

Sylvie: I think…maybe we could see each other again. If that’s something you want.

Dominic: I want. But what I want has rarely been the determinative factor in my life.

Sylvie: How dark and broody of you.

Dominic: If you come over again, what about your ground rules? We could collect more data without them. Just a thought.

No response.

* * *

Sylvie didn’t write backuntil the following day.

Tell me something you’ve never told anyone, she said.

He was on the couch in the music room. He thought carefully about his response, trying to anticipate what she hoped to hear. I watched two seniors have sex under the bleachers when I was a freshman. They didn’t know I was there.

Damn, she wrote. You had to go straight to the dirty talk.

He laughed. Not what you wanted? I just assumed.

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