by Brandy Blake
There on a bench, with an ice cream in his hand, was Michael. Beside him was a cute, young girl with short, dark, wavy hair that reached her shoulders. She had big brown eyes, a button of a nose, and full lips that were smiling as she talked animatedly, gesturing with her hands. She looked to be in her later teens. Her form was slender, though there were well developed curves beneath her stylish clothes.
Raina stared for a long minute, not sure if she should approach them, but seeing the blissful grin on Michael’s face, she thought she might as well. She walked up to them and smiled warmly.
“Hello, Michael. What a nice surprise to see you here. I was walking along the Embarcadero, and I didn’t expect to run into anyone that I knew.”
She was trying to play it off a little more than she needed to, just because she wasn’t sure who the girl was, and she didn’t want to put Michael in an awkward situation.
When she saw the shock register on his face, she knew that it was too late. The surprise and worry in his eyes was fleeting, and she only caught a glimpse of it before he masked it with the same smile she had seen on his face the first day that they had met at the café. He was ‘on’. He was performing for her, ever the actor.
“Raina! What a surprise,” he said as if he wasn’t entirely sure it was a surprise.
He sighed with a hint of frustration as he looked from her toward the girl sitting next to him. He seemed to realize that he was going to have to introduce them.
“Raina, this is Joanna Fernandez. Jo, this is a friend of mine, Raina.” He stood up and the young girl stood up and grinned brightly at Raina, extending her hand.
“It’s nice to meet you, Raina,” she bubbled happily. Something about her reminded Raina of a very young Norah Jones.
“Thank you, it’s nice to meet you, too. Do you have some time to visit?” she asked, hoping to get to talk with Michael at least for a few minutes, and wondering wildly why he was sitting on a bench at the pier with such a young girl.
“Well, I-” he began, looking away from her uncomfortably, but Joanna stepped in.
“Yes, of course we do! We don’t have to be to my acting class until five, so we have tons of time. Do you want to visit here, or should we find a table or something?” she asked lightly, turning her head and looking around.
Michael sighed. “I think there are some tables right down that way,” he said, pointing further down the sidewalk.
She turned and he walked beside her as they began to head to the table, and Raina walked near them, her mind going at the speed of light, all of it questions and endless curiosity.
They sat down together and Raina, seeing that Michael was hesitant to spend time visiting with her, turned toward Joanna.
“So how do you know Michael?” she asked, knowing that it was probably the best way to get a direct and honest answer.
Joanna laughed and looked at Michael in surprise, and then turned her brown eyes toward Raina. Michael pursed his lips and grimaced.
“I live with him!” she answered as if it was something she might have already expected Raina to know.
Raina’s heart nearly jumped through her chest.
“You live with him?” she asked in surprise, her gaze shifting from the young girl over to Michael, who looked like an insect squirming miserably beneath a magnifying glass in the sunlight.
He took a deep breath and sighed, looking resigned.
Turning his face to Raina, he spoke in an even tone. His eyes were a solid shield, blocking whatever thoughts and emotions might be going on behind them.
“She’s… kind of my ward, I guess. She was in an acting group that I was leading, and we had a show one day. When the show was over, everyone cleaned up the space and I was heading out to the car with the last of the boxes and I saw her sitting there on a bench alone. It was much later than it should have been for her to be there.
“I asked her if everything was alright, and she said that she was stranded. Her brother was supposed to come pick her up and he had decided not to. She had no way home. So, I took her home. When I pulled up to where she lived, I was horrified. It was as ghetto a place as you could possibly imagine. It was awful. I couldn’t believe that it wasn’t condemned. I let her go that night, but I hated seeing her go into that home, and I decided to try to help her.
“I talked to her mother and asked if it would be alright if she lived with me, just so she would have somewhere safe and good to live. Her mother said she didn’t care, so I took Jo with me, and she’s been living with me ever since.” He finished what he was saying, and when he did, he looked like he wasn’t going to say anything more about it.
Raina did her best not to stare at him. She could scarcely believe what she had heard him say. “You took her in to live with you? Wow… that’s… that’s incredible. When was that?” she asked, trying to wrap her mind around the whole concept of it.
Joanna smiled happily. “Two years ago,” she said, as if it was the best thing that had ever happened to her.
“And how old are you now?” Raina asked, trying her best to keep an even tone.
“I’m seventeen now,” she answered.
“Do you… do you still talk with your mother and brother?” Raina asked, needing to understand every facet of the situation.
Joanna nodded. “Yeah, I do. I see them from time to time, but most of the time I’m busy working at a coffee shop, and I’m studying to get my GED. I missed a lot of school with my mom, and I was behind, but I’m catching up now. I should be ready to take it soon, but I’m a little nervous about it,” she admitted with a shy smile.
Michael sat there silently, watching Joanna and keeping his eyes averted from Raina. It was completely surreal to Raina that she had seen them, and that they were sitting there talking, and more than that, that she was hearing and discovering what they were telling her.
“Did you say that you’re going to an acting class?” Raina asked, her eyes intent on the young girl.
“Yes, I do that so that I can get better at it before I get to college. I want to take acting in college.” She sounded and looked completely determined.
“Well, I hope that it happens then,” Raina told her, her mind reeling from everything that she was learning. She couldn’t believe that Michael had never bothered to tell her that he had a young girl living with him.
“It’s going to happen.” Michael finally spoke. “I’m going to make sure that it happens.” He sounded even more determined than Joanna did.
She laughed at him. “If I’m his ward, he’s my warden. He takes care of everything for me!”
He gave her a lightly scolding look. “I’m not your warden. I’m just protective of you,” he said simply.
“You’re way more than just protective of me,” she replied with a smile, reaching her hand over and wrapping it around his thick muscled arm. She leaned close and rested her face on his shoulder, gazing adoringly up into his face.
He wrapped an arm around her and gave her a squeeze. “You’re right about that,” he answered solemnly.
Joanna picked her head up almost as if she was just remembering that Raina was there. She looked at her, leaving her hand wrapped around Michael’s arm. It seemed possessive to Raina.
“So, how did you and Michael meet?” she asked in return.
Michael cleared his throat and turned to smile at Joanna. “We met through work,” he answered simply, and Raina had the distinct impression that he wanted to leave it that way. She wondered momentarily if Joanna knew that Michael was an escort.
The girl shrugged and smiled again. “Oh, that’s cool,” she said breezily.
Michael reached his finger up and touched the end of Joanna’s nose, giving her a grin. She reached up and did the same to him, and Raina felt a tidal wave of awkwardness wash over her. She suddenly felt that she didn’t want to be there with them any longer, and all she could think about was leaving.
“I’m sorry about this, but I do have to get going. It’s later than I realiz
ed,” she said, and Michael and Joanna stopped looking at each other and both turned to look at her. Raina hadn’t felt like a third wheel in a long time. “I am glad that I got to meet you, Joanna, and I hope you do well with your studies. Good luck with those,” she said with a kind smile. She meant it.
Joanna stood up, and Michael stood up with her. She reached her small hand out to Raina, and shook Raina’s hand. Raina turned to look at Michael and gave him a smile and a nod.
“Well, you two have fun today.” She waved at them and walked away, all the while feeling as if everything inside of her was spinning in chaos.
He hadn’t looked upset, or sorrowful, or remorseful, or at all the way that he had looked when he had left her home. He looked happy and totally at ease, spending time with his young ward on the Embarcadero. He hadn’t texted her since he had left her home, looking miserable, and there he was with Joanna, looking as carefree and happy as if there wasn’t a thing wrong in the world. He hadn’t said that he would be in contact with her. He hadn’t said that he would see her. He hadn’t said anything at all.
Confusion, irritation, worry, disbelief, curiosity, and amazement all tangled themselves up in a big knot in Raina’s stomach, and she walked to work carrying the weight of it the whole way.
Willow took one look at her when she walked past her desk, and got up and followed Raina into her office.
“What is going on?” she asked in obvious concern.
Raina sat down and leaned her head back, closing her eyes and sighing. “I don’t know. I don’t know what in the hell is going on.”
“Well, why don’t you start with whatever put that look on your face?” Willow coaxed her.
Raina opened her eyes and looked at Willow. “I don’t think I can believe it myself, but here goes. I was walking on the Embarcadero today, and I happened to run into Michael. I haven’t heard from him since he left my house the other night. Like… not a word. Nothing. That’s so unlike him.”
Willow’s eyes grew wide. “You did? You saw him there? What was he doing?”
Raina’s face remained stoic. “He was taking his ward out for ice cream.” She could scarcely believe the words were coming out of her mouth.
Willow’s brow furrowed. “Ward? What... what ward?” she asked in utter confusion.
Raina leaned forward and closed her hands together on the top of her desk, leaning on her elbows slightly. “Michael has a seventeen year old girl living with him at his home. He’s had her living with him since she was fifteen. He took her out for ice cream today, and I ran into them and met her. He looked pretty miserable when he left my place last time I saw him, but he was happy as a clam when I found the two of them on the pier today.”
Willow’s mouth fell full open. “You’re kidding… he has a teenage girl living with him? Are they… how is that… What’s she doing living with him?” Willow asked, voicing several of the questions that had already run through Raina’s mind.
Raina raised her brows. “That’s exactly what I thought, when I met her. She’s a cute little thing. They are obviously very close. I guess she was living in a bad situation and he rescued her from it.”
“Prince Charming… rescuing the little princess…” Willow said quietly. “How was it with them?” she asked, looking as stunned as Raina still felt.
“They’re… close. They adore each other. Anyone could see it.” She sighed and rubbed her hand over her forehead. “Maybe it really is a good thing. He just never said a single word about her during the whole time we were talking and spending time together. Nothing. Not one word. You’d think that he might have mentioned having a sort of… daughter… living with him.”
Willow frowned thoughtfully. “Not if he was trying to keep his private life… private. You said he was pretty closed off about his personal life. I could understand that actually, in his profession… being a male escort, he probably doesn’t want his work to infringe at all on his home life. That makes sense. Right?”
Raina considered it carefully. “You know, you’re right. It might be a strange situation, but you’re right. If I was him, I wouldn’t want something like my escort job anywhere near my daughter figure… that does make perfect sense. I just wasn’t expecting it, and it’s the last thing I ever would have guessed about him. It’s pretty strange. I guess maybe I was looking at it the wrong way. Thanks, Willow. You have such a common sense way of looking at things, and it’s so helpful to me all of the time. I appreciate it.”
Willow grinned and stood up, giving Raina a kind smile. “I’m glad to help. I love my job, and I care a great deal about you.”
Raina smiled and waved Willow out of her office. She turned to her computer then and went to work, and she managed to focus on it so intently that she was startled when her phone went off shortly after five o’clock. It was a text notification.
She turned and looked at her phone, and her heart skipped a beat. She hoped with everything in her that it was Michael. She had missed their constant texting, and she was annoyed with herself that she had gotten so used to it so fast, but she had, and she wanted to hear from him more than anything. She had lost track of how many times a day she would look at her phone and see no message waiting, and set her phone back down in disappointment. She finally had to start setting her phone further away from herself, so that she wouldn’t reach for it every few minutes, and wish that she was hearing from him.
She picked it up and swiped the screen, and saw that she had gotten a message from Michael. Her heart swelled in her and she couldn’t hold back the grin on her face. Touching the message, she opened it and read it anxiously.
‘It was so good to see you today. I missed you.’
Her first reaction was irritation. He missed her. He didn’t have to miss her, all he had to do was text her, and the only reason they hadn’t been talking was because he had stopped their communication altogether.
She sighed in resignation. Maybe she was still reading too much into it, she thought. She wanted to wait to text him back, simply out of spite, to make him be the one who was waiting by his phone for a text, not knowing when it might come, but then she stopped herself. She wasn’t like that. She wasn’t like him, and she wasn’t going to make him wait as he had done to her.
She texted him back, and read it twice before she pressed send. ‘Good to see you, too. Missed you as well.’
Then she set her phone down at the corner of her desk and went right back to her work, though her attention was split between her monitor and the phone nearby, wondering if he was going to start texting her constantly like he had before he stayed the night at her house.
A few minutes later, she heard her phone buzz, and her heart began to beat swiftly as she smiled hopefully and reached for it. It was from Michael.
‘When am I going to get to see you again?’ he asked her. ‘I can’t stop thinking about you.’
She was surprised by his flirtatious words, especially after having seen him that day in such a cool and aloof mood, but then she realized that he was probably hiding his connection with her from Joanna. Everything about them was probably a secret hidden from the young girl.
She chewed on her lower lip for a moment and then sent a message to him. ‘I’m going to Boston on Friday, you could come with me for that trip if you want to.’
She hadn’t thought of him going at all, because she hadn’t heard from him and she didn’t know where they stood, but as he had begun texting her again, she felt that maybe she had over analyzed everything and that they were probably fine. He had told her several times that nothing was wrong. Maybe nothing really was wrong.
She set her phone down and tried to concentrate on her work before her, but with each passing moment, her eyes and her mind and her heart were turning toward the phone, rather than looking at what she was supposed to be working on.
He texted her back a few minutes later and she gasped and grinned when she read it. ‘Would love to go with you. Can’t wait to have time alone with you.’
She furrowed her brow then as she realized something. ‘Is Joanna going to be okay while you’re gone?’
She knew that it wasn’t her business, and obviously something had worked out for him before regarding him leaving town, because Joanna had been fine enough for him to leave town with her twice, but she wanted to ask, now that she knew about the girl.
He texted Raina back a couple of minutes later. ‘She’s fine. She stays with a friend of mine.’
Raina felt a kind of release in her, and some of the tension that she had felt began to ease up. He was taking care of a young girl, and he was working hard to do it. She realized that he was sacrificing time with Joanna to go out of town with her, and the knowledge touched her heart.