[Aldo]
Over the next few weeks, my conflict grows at the same rate as my love for Dawn does. I spend my mornings and days hanging out with Andre, unless I’ve got a day off, then I go to Dawn’s.
Otherwise, every day is the same, as is every night. I head out for some family errand or some other reason and secretly meet Dawn.
We laugh and talk. We shop and dine out at restaurants. We have secret breakfasts and text each other constantly.
Andre thinks I’ve just got a string of women on the end of my finger and often jokes about it. I play along, because, for once, it grants me privacy from his wandering eyes.
And I grant him his privacy back.
I end up dropping the whole Russian thing. His mood has changed now that he’s working for Luca, and he doesn’t seem so secretive. He still hasn’t told me what went wrong up north other than a breakup.
but I sense it’s a tender wound. It still gnaws at him, and when he thinks I’m not looking, I see the stress still there. But all in all, he is happy.
We’re all happy.
Happy with our secrets.
Dawn is even better with Andre. The two of them meet with their mother often and have dinner.
Mom and dad are back from the Himalayans too, we had a huge dinner with dawn and Co, some nights ago.
Dawn wants to bring me to one of hers too, obviously not as a date. But then, the two of us have been wondering about our relationship more and more. I want to ask Dawn what’s going on. She wants to ask me too.
Except we both bring it up at the wrong times. Either our timing is off or the world’s timing is off. But we keep forging on and enjoying ourselves.
At Luca’s birthday party, we all have the great excuse of coming together in one car. It feels stupid, silly even to think of it as exciting, especially when Dawn has been in my car plenty of times and Andre too, but neither of us have ridden together since Andre picked us up from the airport.
More than that, it’s a dress up party, and we’re all looking like kids at Halloween. Thank goodness Ma declined, they were all invited but of course she and dad had something ‘special’ to do tonight.
I shake my head with a chuckle, a love like theirs was so hard to find these days.
The party is pumping when we arrive. It’s going to be a late one, and little Michael is being taken care of by his grandpa at his house.
Luca is dressed in a Hawaiian vampire costume, and Sophie is a Hawaiian mummy. They hug and shake our hands warmly.
“It shouldn’t work. It shouldn’t work, but it does,” Andre says, laughing and gesturing at them.
Luca and Sophie wave back at our outfits. “What about you?” Sophie says. “The Three Mouseketeers.”
Andre grins but rolls his eyes. “You can thank my sister for that one.”
“Thank you,” Dawn says sarcastically. “But it was easy. We had to tie all of us together somehow.”
“And we couldn’t have done that as Fred Flinstone and Barney?” Andre hugs Dawn around the side and laughs. “You would’ve been a great Dino.”
“The pet? Really?” Dawn cocks a hand on her hip and looks at him with mock disdain. “That’s telling of some Freudian problem.”
We all laugh and continue on into the party. Even the security guards are dressed up, and it looks like the best day at Disney World, a kid could dream of.
There’s more cartoon characters, more monsters, more everything, than I thought would even be possible to fit into the room. There’s a dragon strapped to the roof blowing smoke,
outside is a Tiki head breathing fire, and the drink fountain is shaped like a small statue of Luca peeing… It puts Micahels’ birthday party to shame.
Well, no, that’s not true. Nothing could top that night.
“I’m gonna get us some drinks,” Andre says, heading for the chicken serving drinks behind a bar that is built like a barn.
It’s just Dawn and I now, and I can sense the nerves between us. We’ve decided to tell Andre the truth…
“Are you sure?” I say to Dawn.
She nods. “One hundred percent. We both feel this way.”
I rub her shoulder. “I agree. I think it’ll just change everything. It’ll give us an opportunity to breathe.”
“And not sneak around.” Dawn squeezes my arm. “Ready?”
She grabs my hand in hers as we watch Andre threading along with drinks. He’s talking to people as he comes by and laughing away.
He’s completely transformed since returning. He’s so much more optimistic and open. He’s made friends really quickly.
We both watch this as he arrives back in front of us.
What are we doing?
“Alright, Mohito for the lady, and Mohita for the men.” Andre passes out the drinks.
“Is there even a difference?” I ask.
He laughs. “Nope. But if you want, I’ll make something up.”
We all take a sip of the fruity cocktails, and I let the alcohol soothe my worry. It’s loud now that the music has pumped up a few notches.
“I heard Luca brought the sound system from Hush,” he calls. “Pretty cool huh?”
Dawn and I nod. “Andre,” I begin.
Dawn claws my arm into restraint. “Andre, did you lock the car?”
Andre frowns. “Huh?”
“The car? Did you lock the car?”
“Why in the hell does that matter?” he says, looking for the point of Dawn’s question as a joke.
“Well, someone could steal it.”
“On Luca’s private property?”
“It could happen.”
Andre rolls his eyes and then gives Dawn the keys. “Be my guest then.”
I make eyes like, what the hell are you doing? Dawn nods for me to follow, and I make an excuse about getting food.
We come out onto the patio, where the barbecue is firing up. There’s a whole pig cooking over flames, and at least five other styles of meat are being served along with it.
They’ve also got an enormous buffet of catered food and are dressed up in outfits too. There’s a zombie brain of pasta meatballs, a freshly dug grave of meatloaf, and gray food-dyed potato mash.
A man is setting down a bacon wrapped mummy, while some of the security guards set into a pasta bake kids pool day gone wrong. But none of that compares to the cake sitting there in the shadows.
I can see a volcano and a few bottles of mentos and cola waiting…
“What was that?” I say, swinging around as we get battered by wafting food aromas. “I was gonna tell him.”
“I just panicked,” Dawn says, looking inside at the beginning of the dancefloor. “I saw how happy he was, and how chatty he’s been with everyone. What if we ruin that for him? What if it ruins everything for us?”
I splutter. “What?”