DOMINIC (Slater Brothers, #1) by L. A. Casey
This book is dedicated to my little sister - even though you're weird and drive me crazy 99.9% of the time, I wouldn't have been able to write Dominic and plot the rest of the books in the Slater Brothers series without our midnight brainstorming sessions. I love you, sis.
Reader's Note
Dominic is set in Ireland; most of the characters are Irish, and the Irish have a dialect that is completely different from any other dialect in the world. We tend to break words down when speaking and jumble them up; we're weird like that.
I want to make it clear that when you see an Irish character in Dominic say the word 'me' where 'my' should be, that is supposed to be written that way. Everything is 'me' here in Ireland and rarely 'my'. Here in Dublin, where the book is set, we also leave the out the letter G on most words when we speak, again, this is just another part of our dialect.
Spelling is also different here as well, for example, we spell the words 'colour' and 'favourite' with a U instead of without one. A good few foreign readers who read an ARC of Dominic thought these were typos and that's just not the case. If you happen to come across a word that you think might be spelt wrong, look it up, and you will see it is spelt different ways. The USA and Canada are the main countries with different spellings, so Americans and Canadians keep this note in mind while reading Dominic.
I just wanted to put this note in for readers who aren't familiar with Irish dialect, so you don't read a sentence and think, "WTF?"
I was late for school today, but it wasn't my fault; it was Branna's fault.
Branna was my older sister and became my legal guardian nine years ago when our parents died in a car accident. She was twenty-eight years old while I was pushing eighteen. She might be my guardian, but the girl was all sister when it came to pissing me off. She hogged the bathroom for twenty-five minutes this morning.
Twenty-five fucking minutes!
She was the sole reason I was fifteen minutes late for school and why I looked like shite. I was currently entering the school when the urge to 'fix' myself got the better of me. I paused mid-stride and then turned in the direction of the girl's bathroom. I wasn't one for constantly thinking about my appearance but I did want to be as put together as I could before I went to class.
When I got to the girl's bathroom, I did my business in the toilet and then went to the sink to wash my hands. When I was finished I looked up at the small mirror over the sink and frowned at my appearance. My bright green eyes looked tired, the bags under them proved me correct. I was a bit of a mess today. I didn't have time to do much more than French plait my hip length, chocolate brown hair to keep it under control, then put a few strokes of mascara on each set of long lashes, and brush my damn teeth. My chubby cheeks were red from wind burn, and my usually pale pink lips were a little chapped and puffy. I was pretty sure that if death was a person then that person would resemble me.
I stood up straight and moved to the full-length mirror in the bathroom to stare at myself. I sighed; I was so white I could give Casper a run for his money. I was Irish, and my skin repelled any sort of tanning. Natural tanning anyway. I was probably the only girl in school who didn't put on fake tan and wore makeup that actually matched my skin tone instead of trying to make myself appear darker than I was. Why try to be something I wasn't? I was pasty white with a splash of light freckles across my upper nose and under my eyes. Branna said they made me look adorable and that I should embrace it; so embracing my pasty whiteness and freckles was what I was doing.
I fixed my school skirt, pulled up my stockings, and adjusted my school jumper. I ran my hand over my uniform to smooth it out. I tilted my head to the left as I studied myself. I liked how I looked. I had big hips and a small waist; I didn't have a big bust, but I had something else that was huge. I turned to the side and rolled my eyes; if I could change one thing about my body it would be my arse. It was big, and more than a few times I have gotten crude comments about it. It made me mad because it messed with my need to be ignored.
I liked being practically invisible.