Missed: Rafael & Lisa

by Tess Thompson

  “I will. I promise,” Lisa said.

  “You can be careful with your heart and still have it be open,” Maggie said. “Not everyone’s screwed up.”

  Lisa smiled at Maggie and then Pepper. “I love you both so much. Don’t come out with me. I’ll see you in a few weeks.”

  They agreed, and Lisa walked away, resolved to be as brave her friends believed her to be.

  * * *

  Rafael and Jackson were chatting by a black sport-utility vehicle. They both turned as Lisa approached. Rafael rushed over to take her suitcases.

  “Let me get those from you,” Rafael said.

  She nodded, suddenly warm. Had her thaw begun? She stole a few glances at Rafael’s profile as he lifted her suitcases into the back of the vehicle. He had a strong jaw and a wide, full mouth. What would it be like to kiss that mouth?

  Do not go there. Pepper is right. He’s trouble, and you don’t need trouble.

  Then why did you agree to this?

  Jackson held the passenger door open, and she slid into the leather seat. Air-conditioning blasted her face as she fastened her seat belt. The vehicle was spotless and smelled of leather and Rafael.

  Lisa rolled down the window. “Thank you for putting up with me,” she said to Jackson.

  He smiled at her, his blue eyes as kind as any she’d ever known. “Having you here makes Maggie happy, and my only intent in life is to make her happy, so it’s a win for all of us.”

  Rafael got into the car and fastened his seat belt.

  “Tell Maggie I’ll text when we get to LA,” Lisa said. “And good luck on the tour. Please, keep her safe.”

  A jolt of worry flashed in Jackson’s eyes. “I’ll do my best.”

  “They’ll have tight security after what happened.” She said it as much for her own reassurance as his.

  “I hope so.” He tapped the top of the car. “Rafael, take good care of our little star.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Rafael turned to her. “You have everything?”

  “I’ve overpacked, as usual,” she said with a slight smile. “So, yes.”

  They waved goodbye to Jackson as Rafael backed up and out of the driveway. Minutes later, they were driving down the curvy country road toward the main part of town.

  “I never knew there were so many houses tucked away back here,” he said.

  Small talk. They were strangers, after all. What else were they to do, thrust into this awkward situation?

  “It’s a great place to raise children,” she said.

  “Stone’s going to build a house on Kyle’s property, so he’ll be their neighbor,” he said.

  Did she detect a melancholy tone? The pitch of his voice was low. He spoke without moving his mouth much. She’d noticed that before. Her former voice coach would have had a fit if he’d been her client. Not that everyone had to worry about their vocal tone or do mouth exercises every day. New York, you need New York, you know you need unique New York; she sells seashells by the seashore.

  She’d been in New York, and now she was by the seashore. Had all those exercises been a premonition?

  These thoughts flashed through her mind before she realized she hadn’t answered him. “Stone and Kyle are lucky. I’d love to have my twin close by.” David. A pang of worry nudged her. She hadn’t heard from him since the last call, even though she’d left multiple messages for him.

  “I’m an only child,” Rafael said. “One of the reasons I bought the building was to have a place for my mama.”

  “Living in the same building as my mom is my worst nightmare.”

  A look passed over his outrageously handsome face that she couldn’t decipher. Rafael Soto didn’t seem inclined to reveal his inner thoughts through speech or expression. Why did he have to smell so good? Why did he have to be so utterly manly? Even the way he drove with one muscular arm draped over the steering wheel was sexy.

  The city center of Cliffside Bay bustled today. Beachcombers and surfers strolled along the main street wearing sandals and flip-flops and as little clothing as possible. Californians weren’t much for covering up their bodies.

  They continued down the main street. Flowers spilled onto the sidewalk in front of the market. Outside The Oar, people sat under umbrellas enjoying lunch and beverages. Sophie’s long blond hair shone in the sun as she took an order from a table of tourists. Inside, Zane poured drinks for the patrons at the packed bar.

  Across the street, a ballet class of young girls twirled in front of the dance studio’s windows. “Did you know Maggie took dance from Miss Rita right there?”

  “Can’t say that I did, no.”

  “Of course, you wouldn’t. That was dumb of me to say.”

  He looked over at her with a frown. “Not dumb. You were sharing a story about someone you care about. How is that dumb?”

  She smiled, touched by his thoughtfulness. “When we lived in New York, Maggie told us all these stories about growing up here. When we came to visit, it was like we knew the whole town already.”

  “It’s a good place to live,” Rafael said. “I lucked into it. I moved here for the job with the Mullens and rented that apartment, figuring I’d never be able to afford anything here. Then fate intervened.”

  “Do you believe in fate?” she asked.

  “That’s a big question.”

  “That’s the kind I ask. It’s annoying to my mother. She’s always like, ‘Lisa, why can’t you be like other people?’”

  They stopped at the crosswalk in the middle of town to allow dozens of people to pass.

  She glanced over at the bookstore. Customers milled about looking at books or ordering ice cream from the adjacent old-fashioned soda fountain. She rolled down the window, hoping to catch a whiff of the scent of the popcorn they made in an old-fashioned machine like the one they had in the movie theater back home. When she was a kid, catching a movie with her brother was her favorite thing to do on a Saturday afternoon. Their town had one on the main street, a holdover from before there were theaters as big as a city block.

  Popcorn. The concert. Cheryl.

  Lisa spotted Mary, the bookstore’s owner, standing at the register, tallying up a large stack for a customer. Her husband, Lance, had their baby strapped to his back and chatted with a man near the front doors. Freckles, their dog and the bookstore’s mascot, sat on his haunches outside the front door, wagging his tail at anyone who passed by. A little girl in a pink sundress stopped to pet him. He grinned up at her and wagged his tail even harder.

  In an instant, a madman could take down half the town with an automatic rifle. She shut her eyes and took in a deep breath. Do not go there. Think of anything else but that.

  “You all right?” Rafael asked.

  She flinched, startled. “Yes. Fine. Why?”

  “You shivered.”

  “Did I?”

  “I can turn down the air,” he said.

  She hugged herself. “I’ve been cold since—I don’t even know what to call it—the concert—the incident?”

  “You don’t have to name it. I know what you mean,” he said.

  “All these people milling about, enjoying their summer.” She snapped her fingers. “Then, poof. Everything changes.”

  “It’ll get better. You won’t think of it every moment,” he said. “Give it some time.”

  With the pedestrians safely to the other side of the street, Rafael inched them forward. Traffic moved slowly as tourists searched for parking. Finally, they reached the edge of town, where the main street met the highway. Kyle’s resort was the last building in town. Valet attendants in bright blue shirts and khaki shorts welcomed guests and parked expensive cars. The resort was packed all summer, Lisa knew, because she’d seen Kyle and Violet at a party last week at Zane’s brewery. Last week. A lifetime ago. They’d all had dinner and danced until midnight. She’d felt as carefree and hopeful as the wildflowers that grew along the driveway of the brewery.

  She was no longer
a wildflower blowing in the breeze but a scared rabbit without her fur.

  They turned onto the two-lane highway that would take them into San Francisco. A few miles up the highway, they passed the driveway to the Mullen property.

  “Will they be all right without you?” she asked, as if they’d been speaking of them already.

  “Brody and Kara?”

  “Yes. I mean, three weeks is a long time.”

  “I have Michael, and we hired a temporary guy to take the day shifts.”

  “What about your cats?”

  “You know I have cats?” he asked.

  “Sure. Whiskers and Sylvester. I know a lot of things about you.”

  “They’ll be fine. They’re at my apartment. The guys are looking after them. Anyway, Kara wanted me to do this. They all did.”

  “They?”

  “You know, their whole gang.”

  “They’ve been good to Pepper and me. ‘Any friend of Maggie’s is a friend of theirs’ type of thing.”

  “Good people. Not as easy to find as they used to be.”

  “Is that true, or is it just that we grow more discerning as we age? Or has the world become so cruel that we’re adapting as a human race in order to survive?”

  “Another big question.” He smiled as the car started up the hill.

  Her ears plugged. She swallowed to clear them before answering. “Yes, there I go again.”

  “Is it that you can’t be like other people or that you don’t want to?”

  She looked out the window, thinking about his question. She’d always figured her mother was asking a rhetorical question, but maybe it had been a request?

  “Was that too big of a question?” He stared at the road, not at her, which was good because there were scary curves along this route.

  “No, not too big. I’ve never thought about it being an actual question from her. I always assumed she was asking in a rhetorical, irritated way, not like it was something I had control over. Maybe she thought it was a choice. I chose to be weird. Which would explain why she’s so mad at me.”

  “So the answer to my question is you can’t be like everyone else,” he said.

  They crested the hill, and the ocean appeared.

  “No, the answer is I choose to be myself. Which, apparently, is annoying to my mother.”

  “You’re not annoying.”

  She was annoying herself right now. Her mouth was on overdrive, spilling out narcissistic nonsense. “I don’t usually talk this much.” She winced at the apologetic squeak in her voice.

  “I like it. I don’t have to think of anything to say,” he said.

  She shifted her gaze to the window, determined to stop talking. They passed by stunning views of the ocean, a few more hairpin turns, brown hills, and sandstone cliffs. A swarm of birds flew into the yellow grasses and back up again. They drove through a town even smaller than Cliffside Bay. Long-haired, aging surfers sat outside a run-down grocery store that sold organic vegetables and fruit. The rest of the town consisted of a library no bigger than a trailer, a post office, and a few other nondescript buildings. Tourists taking photos from a viewpoint vista jostled for the best position.

  Her thoughts dwelled on her mother.

  When Lisa had returned to Iowa for plan B, as she and Maggie had called their exit from New York, she’d been immediately assaulted by her mother’s strong opinions. About everything. What Lisa had done wrong with her life. What Lisa should be doing with her life. What mistakes Lisa was bound to do again because she just couldn’t seem to learn her lessons the first time around.

  When Lisa had announced her wish to become an actress at the age of eighteen, her mother fought her. Warfare maneuvers included belittling. Honey, only narcissists go into acting. Creating self-doubt. There are thousands of girls prettier and more talented. Do you really want to waste your life on a futile dream? Scare tactics. You’ll die alone, having chosen a child’s dream over a man and a family.

  Plan B had been a terrible mistake. After being home a few months, she told her mother she was going out to California. Her agent in New York had connected her with Sasha. Maggie invited her and Pepper to stay with them as long as they liked.

  The arguments against California were swift and condemning. Her mother had said California was a crazy place, full of maniacs. They are everywhere, Mom. Even in Iowa.

  “You go home much?” Rafael’s voice startled her out of her reverie.

  “When I lived in New York, if I could afford it, I went home once a year at Christmas. That is, until I had the stupid idea of giving up my dream and moving back home to be with my family. I lasted three months.”

  “‘You can’t go home’ type of thing?”

  “Exactly. I’d been away too long. I forgot what my mother was like. I missed my friends and New York. I missed waking up every day and thinking: ‘Today could be the day everything changes for the better.’ Giving up on my dreams made me more miserable than any of my past failures.”

  “You decided to try LA instead of going back to New York?”

  “That’s correct.” In addition to the introduction to Sasha, she’d gotten a call from a classmate who was now a director. He wanted her for the role in Indigo Road. “I got the call that changed everything for the better. Indigo Road led to Raven.” Raven. Raven will change your life. Sasha had said that more than once.

  “And now you’re about to be famous,” he said. “You can’t call yourself a failure anymore.”

  She sighed and pressed just above her cleavage to ease the pressure inside her chest. No such luck. “Things never turn out exactly like you thought they would.”

  “How so?”

  “I’m a song-and-dance girl. It was supposed to be Broadway, not Hollywood.”

  “Oh, okay. Broadway, not Hollywood.” He said the words as if he were trying to memorize a fact for a test.

  God, his voice. It was like warm honey, sweet and soothing, even if he did talk so quietly, she felt the urge to lean closer to make sure she didn’t miss anything. Or was it to get a sniff of his scent?

  “I feel considerable ambivalence about the famous thing.” She picked at a piece of dry skin on her thumb. Sasha would have her polished, sprayed, and lacquered into a shiny doll the minute they arrived.

  “Isn’t that what actresses want?”

  “Some. Pepper does. She loves the spotlight, and it loves her. If she had her way, her image would be plastered on every billboard. Not all actresses are like that. Some are introverts, like me. I love the work itself, but the public persona stuff depletes my energy.”

  “What do you mean by the work itself?”

  “Being a vehicle for a great story’s the fun part. I love classes, too. Dance and vocal work, acting technique. I’m not the greatest dancer, but I can fake it pretty well.” She clenched her teeth together. Could she talk about herself more? Only narcissists become actors.

  Be quiet, Mom.

  “Maggie was the real dancer of the three of us.” She blurted this out without any thought to a segue. If he noticed, he was too polite to comment. Instead, and without hesitation, he came back with the perfect response.

  “Having trained with Miss Rita.” His gaze darted to her before returning to the road.

  “Right. And now she’s off in this new direction,” she said.

  “You talk about Maggie and Pepper a lot.”

  “Do I?”

  He nodded, his expression bland. Did he mean that as criticism?

  “They’re my best friends.” What was it to him if she talked about them a lot?

  “It’s obvious how much you love them.”

  “You sounded like it was a bad thing. That maybe I’m too attached to them?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  He didn’t have to. She knew, whether he believed it or not, that it was true. She relied on them too much to be all relationships to her: big sisters, friends, even substitute partners. “We used to be together all the time. Eve
rything’s different now.”

  “Two out of three are rising stars. Where does that leave Pepper?” he asked.

  She stared at him, surprised at his astuteness. “She’s a rising star, too.”

  He didn’t say anything, which irritated her. No one picked on her Pepper and got away with it. Not even the hot bodyguard.

  “She’ll have her chance,” Lisa said. “I’ll make sure of it. Besides my twin brother, Maggie and Pepper are the only people in the world who understand me.”

  “They don’t mind your big questions?” he asked.

  “No. They know I’m trying to make sense of the chaos.”

  “Have you been able to?”

  “Gosh, no. I wish.”

  “I didn’t peg you for such a deep thinker.”

  “What does that mean?” She turned in her seat to get a better look at him.

  “Nothing really.” A nervous twitch of one eyebrow told her he was worried he might have overstepped. His mother must have instilled good manners, which surprised her, given his hotness. Most gorgeous men didn’t need to be polite. They assumed they could get away with whatever they wanted and usually did. Everyone knew handsome guys didn’t need to be funny or smart to get more than their share of the pie.

  “Do I seem stupid?” she asked.

  He shifted in his seat, like a kid in shorts stuck to a plastic bench. “What I meant was, the way you look, a guy could get the impression you didn’t need to do much of anything but look pretty. Some women would rely on that and not develop much else.”

  “Pretty girls aren’t necessarily stupid,” she said, louder than she meant to. But seriously?

  A muscle in his cheek flexed. “I’m quite aware of that. I didn’t mean to sound insulting. I meant you’re pretty and smart and not afraid to show it. I’ve known a lot of women who were both. Some acted dumb when they were the smartest person in the room just because they thought men would like them better that way.”

  “Were you alive in 1950? Because I don’t know any women who would do that.”

  His loud, staccato laugh surprised her. “Settle down, feisty.”