now
LOLLY & POP
I still go to meet Dom at Dolly’s after school, even though Ms. Novak told me he doesn’t need me. Some part of me wants to find out why he asked for my help with the paper in the first place, but mostly I’m just happy that he did. I want to pretend that he’s who I’m assigned to tutor instead of Layla, if only for a little while. Plus, if Sunday is any indication, Dom has the uncanny ability to make me feel better just by being himself.
The street is quiet save for the occasional jogger and small surges of noisy, busy people exiting the subway station on the corner. I ignore them all and look up at the sky, wondering what it might be like to live in a place with less light pollution—where I might be able to see dozens of constellations—stars worth defying, as Shakespeare wrote.
When Dom comes out of the restaurant, he’s wearing a dark peacoat and he’s wrapping a thick black scarf around his neck. He smiles at me and I can’t help but return the grin.
“So, where to?” I ask, taking a small step away from him. Dom takes a beanie out of his pocket and pulls it down over his ears.
“Jesus, it’s freezing,” he says. He looks over at me and then reaches out and tucks the tail of my scarf against the only bit of my neck that’s still visible. His hands smell sweet, like the soap from the diner bathroom, and they’re warm against my skin. But I still shiver at the contact.
“My place is just a few blocks away,” Dom says. “I live with my Lolly and Pop.”
I grin and quirk one of my eyebrows. We start walking, and I look at him out of the corner of my eye. “Your who and what?” I ask.
He coughs out a laugh and lifts his backpack higher onto his shoulders with his thumbs. Steam from our warm mouths fills the cold air between us, and I imagine it forming the shapes of his words. “I meant, I live with my grandparents.” He looks at me, and if his skin weren’t the rich brown of molasses cookies, I think I’d be able to see Dom blushing. “But, uh, yeah. Lolly and Pop. That’s what I call them.”
“Oh my God, Dom. That might be the cutest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Please,” I say. I press my hands together like I’m about to pray. “Please explain to me how this immeasurable cuteness came to be.”
It feels nice to be out of my own head. To be distracted by a beautiful boy on a beautiful night. Dom reaches into his pocket again, and this time he pulls out gloves. He nudges me with his elbow, and the streetlights make his face glow.
“Well, the short version of the story is that Lolly is what I call my grandmother. Her first name is Dolores, Dolly for short, and when I was a kid I couldn’t really say her name right.”
I nod and grin a little more while keeping my eyes on the ground, watching the steps we take in tandem. “Dolly of Dolly’s Diner fame,” I say. I hear a smile in his voice when he answers.
“Right. And I called my granddad Pop-Pop when I was little, and as I got older it shortened itself to just Pop or, you know, Pops.” He pauses. “You ever notice how language changes over time like that?”
It sounds like a rhetorical question, so I don’t say anything. But when Dom doesn’t continue, I glance away from the sidewalk and up at him. He’s looking at me like he’s waiting for me to speak up. So I nod.
“Yeah,” I say, because I think about language all the time. “Like, with my Granny Georgina. I always called her Gigi, which was her nickname for her whole life because it was short for Georgina. But it was also, ironically, the initials of my name for her: G.G. Words are kind of incredible that way. They have a mind of their own. But I guess the coolest thing about it is that by changing your language, you can change the way you experience the world. If that makes any sense.”
When I look over again, Dom’s still watching me. “It makes perfect sense, Shorty,” he says.
I hesitate, then continue before I overthink what to say. “Calling my grandmother Gigi made me feel more grown-up than I was, you know? And hearing you call your grandparents Lolly and Pop changed the way I saw you right away.”
“Wait,” he says. He touches my arm and stops walking. For the moment, there’s no one else on this part of the street. The whole block feels like it belongs to us. “How’d you see me before you knew about the Lolly-and-Pop thing?”
“You mean how did I see you literally five minutes ago?” I joke. He nods and he looks so serious. “Oh, I don’t know,” I say.
“You do!” he says, and then, softly: “Can you please tell me?”
The dark feels darker with the sound of Dom’s voice filling the space between us, making me crave more quiet evenings and cold nights like this one. The darkness makes me love living in a place where taking a short walk with a boy after a day full of stress and sadness can feel like magic.
“You’re Dominic Grey,” I say. “You’re…I don’t know. This new boy who was instantly popular. You’re a smartass and girls like you and you’re on the soccer team already. You have these haircuts and all the coolest shoes. And though I’ve seen you do magic, which I guess is pretty nerdy”—he laughs at this—“I never would have guessed you’d be so into cooking that you’d work for free in a diner kitchen or call your grandparents such cute things. I thought you’d be into, like, cars and rap music or something.”
He bites his lip. Then he nods. When he blinks, I can’t help but notice how curly his eyelashes are—they nearly double back to touch his eyelids. He says, “Romanticizing people is dangerous, Cleopatra.”
I squint at him. “Now I’m Cleopatra?” I ask. “Why can’t you just call me by my actual name?”
He shrugs. “Change your language to change how you experience the world, right? I’m gonna call you Cleopatra, if that’s cool with you. I wanna challenge you to experience the world a little differently. Maybe if I call you Cleopatra, instead of Shorty”—he grins, and I groan—“you’ll start to think a little bigger.”
I frown even though I kinda want to smile. “You’re weird, you know that?” I say, and I start walking again even though I don’t know where we’re going.
“No weirder than you,” he says as he follows me. “But you were right. I do like cars and rap music.”
I laugh.
“Where’s your Gigi now?” he asks a second later.
“She died a couple of years ago.”
“Oh. My bad.”
“It’s okay.”
We’re quiet for the next few minutes. It’s not exactly uncomfortable, but it’s strange to walk and only hear the sounds of the city. Barking dogs and distant sirens; car horns and wind-rustled leaves. Plastic bags and crumpled paper blow along the sidewalks like tumbleweed does in old westerns; two kids run past us squealing. I haven’t taken a walk with anyone since Layla and I stopped speaking, and between that and talking about Gigi, I feel the sadness descending again. But when I glance over at Dom, he has a look on his face that isn’t quite a frown but may be the beginnings of one.