“Just lots of milk,” I say.
“You got it, hun.” She nods. “I’ll bring some water in for you both too,” she says before disappearing again.
For a second, Dom and I just watch each other. I wonder if he’s going to ask me more about my parents, and I silently hope that he won’t. But he just kicks his feet up. He’s still holding the massive book, so he looks pretty silly.
“I didn’t know you were funny,” I say. I head over to sit beside him on the couch, and I scratch Stormy between her shoulder blades. Then I reach for a cookie. It’s gooey and warm, and the crystals of sugar sprinkled on top melt against my tongue.
Dom lowers the book a little, so all I can see are his dark eyes. Even so, I can still tell he’s smiling. “You don’t know most things about me, Cleopatra,” he says.
* * *
—
We relocate to Dom’s bedroom, which is on the second level of his grandparents’ beautiful house. Dom tells me that his grandmother always tries to get him to “entertain” in the den, but the room kind of gives him the creeps and he’s more comfortable upstairs. He tells his grandmother there’s better lighting, “which isn’t exactly a lie,” he assures me.
His walls are exposed brick and mostly bare, save for a few framed black-and-white photographs. All of his furniture is large and old, but stacked with things like comic books and half-finished Lego structures, film cameras and goofy oversized sunglasses. There are books everywhere. I walk over to look through his window.
“I think I wanna write about ambition,” Dom says. He sits down backward in a spinning desk chair and wraps his arms around the backrest like it’s a pillow.
I sit down in his window seat, which is piled with soft, sun-faded pillows. I don’t want to be caught staring at Dom’s biceps, so I make sure to look straight at his serious, brown eyes.
“Ambition,” I repeat as I reach for another one of the cookies we brought upstairs with us.
He nods. “I think Macbeth’s ambition is the main reason his life went so horribly wrong. It’s his fatal flaw.”
“But what about the prophecy?” I say, challenging him. “Maybe his fate was already sealed, so it didn’t matter that he was ambitious. It didn’t matter what he wanted. Regardless of the choices he made, maybe things would have ended up precisely the same way.”
I think about the party where Layla and I met Sloane and how, when I look back, it feels like that day set our unraveling in motion. The signs were all there. Our fate was sealed the second Sloane heard Layla sing.
“I don’t think so,” he says, slowly.
“But what about the stars?” I say. “What about how they ‘govern our conditions’?”
“What about our destinies not being in the stars, but in ourselves?” Dom asks, raising his eyebrows, and I don’t think I’ve ever before been out-Shakespeared by anyone but my dad. For a moment, I’m shocked to silence. Dom stands up and lights an incense stick, and a thin, fragrant wisp of smoke spins into the air. He sits down on his bed without looking away from the falling ash.
“Stars are just random balls of hydrogen and helium collapsing because of gravity. Most stars are dead by the time we see them anyway. It’s almost like looking at the past,” Dom says, turning to glance at me for a second. “Not the future. You’re staring at something that doesn’t even exist anymore. And all those people making wishes? It’s like they’re making a wish on a lie.”
I lean closer to the window, looking out and up into the sky. “They’re pretty little lies, though,” I say, thinking he’ll like the turn of phrase. I look back at him and smirk.
He gets up and walks over to open a door in the corner of his room that I assumed was a closet. He flips a switch, and a stairwell that leads farther up fills with honey-colored light.
“If you wanted to see stars,” Dom says a little devilishly, “you should have said so.”
PRETTY LITTLE LIES
Dom’s secret stairwell leads to a small rooftop deck strung with firefly lights and furnished with cute café tables and chairs like the ones in the diner. From up here, I can see what looks like miles of rooftops, plus the ever-darkening sky and Manhattan skyline. There’s ivy crawling up the brick walls that box us in and block the wind, so I feel warmer up here than I did on our walk home.
“I feel like I should suggest we work on your paper,” I say. I’m nervous he’ll say something about not really needing my help, that he’ll say something that reveals why he really asked me here tonight, but he doesn’t. I pull the sweatshirt he let me borrow a little tighter around my body. I look back at him. “You bring all the girls up here, don’t you?” I ask him.
Dom shrugs, but I see that he’s smiling. He takes a few steps away from me and walks over to the railing, and I can’t help but think about the party at Valeria’s where I first met him. We were on a roof then too. He looks out over the city, and I wish he’d take down the hood he flipped over his head before he pushed the door open. I want to see his profile. I want to see the newest design shaved into his bristly black hair.
“We can still talk about Macbeth outside, Cleo,” he says, and I think this might be the first time he’s ever said my name. I like the way it sounds in his voice. He turns around and pulls out a café chair. He motions for me to sit down, so I do and he follows.
“If you’re going to write about Macbeth’s ambition,” I say, “you have to mention the catalyst. I don’t think you can say he was a murderous madman driven only by ambition. I think you have to start with the fact that it was prophesied. You have to start where things started for him: with the witches.”
“I will,” Dom says. He nibbles his lip like he’s thinking, and I look up at the sky so he doesn’t feel rushed. “But do you really think the prophecy would have come true either way?” I nod, without turning to face him right away.
“Here’s what I think,” I say. “Maybe his actions were influenced by his ambition, but don’t you think fate takes our character into consideration? I mean, he was a soldier. If anything, he should have had more respect for life and duty and honor than the average guy. But he didn’t. And if he could be driven to do something so morally wrong so easily, the universe knew he had it in him all along.” I realize too late that it feels like a description of me and the stuff I did to Layla. I feel a sudden ache at the back of my throat, but I swallow hard and try to ignore it.
“I think Macbeth would have realized he wanted to be king. He would have told his cray-cray wife, and one way or another, the two of them would have figured out a way to make it happen.” I turn to face Dom, and he’s leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, watching me. “It was destined to end the way that it did.”