by Selena Scott
Raph merged neatly onto a bigger road, but he was driving just a little too fast. “He asked you to be his girlfriend?”
“Oh.” Natalie thought back to the conversation. “Not really. No. He didn’t ask for anything. He just told me how he felt. He can’t stop thinking about me. He thinks he’s falling for me. He wants to do couple stuff with me.”
Raphael mumbled something that sounded weirdly like Stapler Paul can get in fucking line, but she knew that couldn’t be right and blamed it on her drunkenness.
“What did you say to him?”
Nat shrugged. “I had no idea what to say. Hence the getting drunk. I asked for time to process all of it, then I ate my bodyweight in pasta, then I stumbled out to the parking lot and called you.”
Raph seemed to relax a little and at the next red light, he reached across the car and held her hand, palm to palm. It was a friendly, comforting gesture and Nat found herself cradling their joined hands on her lap like they were a small animal she wanted to coddle.
“Are you petting me?” he asked after a minute.
“Maybs.”
“You are drunk.”
“I’m going to regret it in the morning.”
“Nah. We’ll get you some water and take a walk around the neighborhood. You’ll sober up and hydrate and be just fine.”
“Always taking care of me.”
“You do at least fifty percent of the care-taking around here.”
That was probably true. She looked out the window and was surprised when they pulled into his driveway. That hadn’t taken any time at all. She was scrabbling out of her side of the car when suddenly Raph was there, tossing her arm over his shoulder and practically carrying her up the walk.
“On second thought, maybe you are going to be hungover in the morning.”
“Told ya.”
“Either way, let’s make sure to get you hydrated.”
He planted her on his couch and came back a few minutes later with a tray that had ice water, iced tea, and hot tea. There was also a bag of pretzels that he commandeered for himself. She downed the ice water in one go and then picked up the hot tea to warm her fingers. She expected him to turn on the television but instead he just watched her. He reached down and picked up her cold toes and tucked them under his leg.
“What do you think you’re gonna do about Paul?” he asked, his voice carefully devoid of much emotion, as if he didn’t want his opinion to sway her too far in one direction or the other.
Nat shrugged and took a sip of her tea. “I don’t know. I liked him for so long, you know? I wore those grooves pretty deep. I think it would be pretty easy to fall back into it.”
Raph was completely silent.
“But something he said really bothered me.”
“Oh yeah?”
“He said that since he broke up with me, I’ve seemed different. More appealing, I think. That for some reason I’ve changed and it’s made him want me.”
Raphael looked at her for a minute, his expression frozen, as if he had to process her words one by one. By the time he looked away from her there was an expression of rage and disgust on his face.
“That asshole,” he muttered under his breath, one hand scraping down his face.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No,” she said, tugging at his arm to get him to look at her. “Come on. You can’t leave me hanging like that. Why did you call him an asshole?”
He looked conflicted like he wasn’t sure if he should say anything or not but she plucked at his sleeve until he relented.
“Sometimes men do this thing where they want what they can’t have. And it’s all they can think about and they get consumed by it. But it’s not real. He’s convinced himself that you’ve changed. That you’re somehow different than you were before, but really he just doesn’t get to have you on tap anymore and it makes him possessive.”
Nat leaned back. “And you think that’s what’s happening with Paul? You think he wants me because he can’t have me?”
“I… I think it’s possible.”
“Well. Well.” Natalie was suddenly so filled full of some pumping, heated emotion that she couldn’t stay sitting. Too far away from the coffee table or a side table, she shoved her hot tea into Raph’s hands and then got up, pacing around his living room. “Isn’t that just great? Isn’t that perfect? Isn’t that just the way these things always go?”
“Nat—”
“Of course he’d only want me when he couldn’t have me. Right? Because that’s the only time people want me. The same thing happened with my parents. It wasn’t until me and Kaya got the hell out of there that they showed even the slightest acknowledgement of our existence. And now it’s happening with Paul!”
She was dimly aware that that was only two examples, but still, both instances had been so painful that they seemed to establish a pattern that couldn’t be ignored.
“There’s more to me than just ‘unattainable’, Raph.”
“Of course there is, Nat.” He set the tea aside but he didn’t rise up. “I didn’t mean it that way. It wasn’t a criticism of you, or what you have to offer, it was of Paul and what a dumbass he is. You’re perfect, incredible, totally lovable in every sense of the word. Loving you is literally the easiest thing I’ve ever done. It’s like…” he scrubbed a hand through his hair, searching for words. “It’s like digesting food.”
“What?”
“Loving you is like digesting food. It’s something my body does without me telling it to. It just happens. It’s natural. Easy.”
Even as mad as she was, his words thawed her out a little. She dropped her hands from her hips and crossed them over her chest. “Well. That makes me feel good.”
“Oh.” He was surprised that she’d admitted that at a time of such heightened emotion. “Good.”
“But that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about love, Raph. We’re talking about wanting. And the fact that you think that Paul doesn’t actually want me.”
Raph dropped his head into his hand. “Natalie, I am positive that Paul actually wants you. I really am. Because who the fuck wouldn’t want you? I just also happen to think that Paul is a fucktard for not wanting you a year ago when he could have kept you from all this pain.”
She eyed him for another minute, letting her anger ebb away. She sighed and moved back around to the couch, plunking herself down. She was tired and still drunk and hadn’t ever been good at hanging on to anger anyways. She signaled for her tea and he handed it over. “I guess we’re in agreement on that point, then.”
She leaned her head on his shoulder and sipped her tea, spilling some on the sleeve of his T-shirt and smoothing away the beads of liquid with her fingertips.
“Do you really think that’s true? That men only want what they can’t have?”
“Sometimes,” he said after a long minute.
She sighed. “That didn’t even occur to me. I had a totally different theory.”
She finished her tea and he set the cup aside. Natalie curled on her side with her head in his lap, her face a few inches from his belly.
“What was your theory?”
She looked up at him and was momentarily a little startled by the level of tenderness with which he was looking back down at her. His hand stroked at her hair, his eyes soft, his temple leaned against his fist.
“Well, he said that I was different with him these last few weeks. More relaxed, confident, happier. And that’s why he wanted to be a couple with me. Which I thought was very ironic.”
“Ironic?”
“Yeah, because all those things, the relaxation, the confidence, the happiness, it’s all because of what you and I have been doing.”
Nothing overtly changed in Raphael’s expression, but she got the distinct impression that he’d utterly frozen in place.
“Sleeping with you, all the affection and fun and hotness, well
it’s made me more of who I want to be, I think.” She was starting to get tired and her sentences were making less sense. She couldn’t tell if she was freaking him out.
“You’re not freaking me out.”
“Did I say that out loud? I’m talking too much.”
“You really feel that way? That this thing between us is making you a better person? A happier person?”
She yawned. “Ask me again tomorrow.”
“Natalie.”
“Raph.”
She looked up at him.
He looked away, as if her eyes were too bright a light to peer into at that moment. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should talk about this tomorrow.”
“Good plan.” She yawned and stretched again and in just a few minutes found herself bundled up in one of his T-shirts and a pair of his socks and snuggled under his heavy comforter.
He slid in next to her. She woke up a few hours later to pee and was no longer drunk. She stumbled back to his bedroom and looked for a minute at him in the bed. His face was toward the opposite wall, but he had a hand thrown out in the place where she’d just been lying, like he’d been searching for her in his sleep.
He wants me so badly he looks for me in his sleep.
The thought came out of nowhere and startled her, sending a jolt of adrenaline through her system.
Men only want what they can’t have.
That was his voice in her head now.
She bit her lip and kept looking, trying for the life of her to see what was really there.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Natalie sat in her kitchen with her chin resting on the palm of one hand and her eyes glued to her sister. Kaya seemed to be in rare form today. Actually, she’d been in rare form for a few days.
She slammed the cabinet doors so hard they bounced back open, pancaked the empty cereal box into the recycling, tossed the brown sugar spoon across the kitchen into the sink with a resounding clang. When Kaya reached out for a banana, Natalie winced and got there first.
“Please, on behalf of the male species, let me peel this banana for you.” Even she couldn’t stand to watch the furious carnage her sister might make of it that morning.
Natalie peeled and sliced the banana into her sister’s cereal. “Are you ever going to tell me what’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing!” Kaya said in a high, angry voice. “There is absolutely nothing wrong with me. I’m a perfectly kind, normal, sweet, caring person, Natalie. Unlike some people who are rude dicks who can’t even bother to be polite to other people.”
Natalie’s eyebrows rose. “I assume we’re talking about one rude dick in particular?”
Kaya stirred her cereal with a witch’s concentration but didn’t respond.
“Can I wager a guess,” Natalie continued, “that this is the same rude dick who you’ve previously expressed feelings for?”
Natalie still had no idea who her sister might be crushing on, but then, Kaya had been fairly busy with her new work and Nat had been distracted by Raph for weeks.
Kaya frowned. “Used to have feelings for. Anything I used to feel has completely burned away in the heat of my fury.”
Kaya caught Nat’s eye and the sisters broke into laughter at Kaya’s dramatic phrasing.
“Really?” Nat asked. “This person’s rude dickery cured you of your interest in him?”
“Yup,” Kaya said, popping the p at the end of the word. “He was so rude to me. I can’t even believe how rude. And it just made me think, Kaya, how well do you even know this guy?”
“Not very well, I take it?”
“Apparently so. And I asked myself, what kind of person do you actually want to spend this sort of energy on? A kind person or a cruel person? So, yeah, I’m in the market for a kind person, because I’ve just permanently crossed a cruel person off my list.”
“Just like that, your feelings are gone?”
Kaya saddened a little bit, her presence growing just a touch heavier. “I mean, I’ll probably always have a touch of something for this person. But I’ve made up my mind. No more daydreaming about him. No more glances across the room. No more hoping. I’m not going to feed my feelings for him a second longer. He’s not worth it. He’s shown his true colors.”
Kaya finished her cereal with the vicious vigor of someone slamming the door on a confessional that had just severely lightened their load.
“Okay,” Kaya said, pointing her spoon at Nat. “Now tell me your secret.”
“What?” Nat squeaked.
“Out with it. I know you’re keeping a secret. You’re acting weird. Sneaking around at all hours, the place is spotless, you’re singing to yourself, and the other day, when I drove your car there was a SPICE GIRLS CD in the changer.”
Fully implicated, Nat went bright red. “That old thing has been in there for years.”
“Nat, Spice Up Your Life started playing the second I started the car. You only listen to that album when you’re, like, over the moon happy. I haven’t heard you listen to it since…” Kaya trailed off, trying to think of when. “Since we finally moved out of Mom and Dad’s.”
Nat’s smile grew. “That was a damn good day.”
She’d never forget it. It was Kaya’s eighteenth birthday and the two of them had barely bothered with packing boxes. They’d just waited for their parents to leave and packed armfuls of belongings into Nat’s car. It hadn’t taken long. Then, Nat had left a short note, explaining that they were fully on their own now and requesting some space for a while to be able to get their feet underneath them.
They’d screeched into the parking lot of this apartment building where Nat had signed a lease just three days earlier, and they were free. Finally free.
Kaya had still been in high school, and anyone else would have been suddenly inundated with what it meant to take someone to school and make them lunch and dinner and breakfast. But not Nat. Nat had already been doing that for Kaya for years.
It had taken a few weeks for their parents to reach out to them. And Nat hadn’t expected that to hurt a little. She was surprised to realize that the little girl who still lived in her heart had been hoping that her parents would be ringing off the hook, begging the girls to let them back into their lives. But that wasn’t the case. It had taken four weeks to the day after Kaya’s birthday for their mother to call. And even that had just been because she wanted to know if the girls had taken the good hair straightener when they’d left. They hadn’t. The conversation had ended and Nat hadn’t even bothered to tell Kaya it had happened.
A few weeks after that, her parents had started the inexplicable campaign to get their girls back. Nat still didn’t understand it, because it hadn’t seemed to be born of love. She fielded phone calls for weeks from her mother or her father, begging her to let them back into her and Kaya’s life. That had hurt more than the rejection had. It still hurt.
Just like Raph had said, they’d wanted only what they couldn’t have.
Nat had been smart and maintained that if her parents were serious about it, they’d still be serious about it in six months. After a few weeks, the mania died down and they no longer tried to get back into their daughters’ lives. At this point, they all spoke on the phone maybe three times a year, saw one another once a year. If that.
Nat might have understood, or even had sympathy for her folks if they’d been addicts. And sure, there’d been plenty of drugs and alcohol in their house. But as far as she could tell, they were just selfish people. Doing whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. Their mother was an occasional nail technician when she could get work and their father was the assistant manager at a carwash in town and had been for at least twenty years. Nat didn’t begrudge either of them the blue-collar nature of their work, because good work was good work. And she’d been more than relieved anytime they’d been able to put food on the table. She just begrudged them their lack of interest in their children. In Kaya in particular. They’d never been there for softball games or f
or graduations. The only reason they remembered Kaya’s birthday was because Nat made sure they did.
The truth was, they barely knew their daughters. And Nat just didn’t understand it. She thought she was pretty freaking awesome, and she knew just how incredible of a person Kaya was. How could any person just not care about the two of them?
Either way, they’d moved out and never looked back. They spent even more time at Elizabeth’s house than they had when they’d lived at their parents’ house and Elizabeth seemed overjoyed with it. She made placemats for the girls and went to the reuse store to help them stock their kitchens with everything they’d need. Natalie insisted that she didn't want Elizabeth buying stuff for them, but every few weeks, for a long time, whenever Raph or Seth came over, they sheepishly had hand towels in tow. Or a welcome mat. Or, at the very least, a casserole with instructions to bring the dish back clean whenever they were hungry, and she’d feed them dinner.
“You’re damn right it was,” Kaya responded, a sad little smile on her face. “But you’re not getting away so easily. What are you so happy about?”
Natalie stared directly down the barrel of the accusatory finger her sister was pointing at her and she knew she was found out. She groaned and dropped her head onto her forearms. Keeping this thing with Raph quiet was one thing. Keeping it a complete and total secret was another. They hadn’t agreed to out and out lie to their families. And it was getting to the point that in order to keep it quiet, she was going to have to lie to Kaya.
“Okay. Give me three seconds, all right?”
Kaya, looking intrigued with her chin resting on her hand and her eyebrows in her hair, nodded, watching as Nat just sort of slinked out of the room, pulling her phone from her hand and closing her bedroom door behind her.
“Hey, baby.” Raph answered her call between the first and second ring.
Her stomach flipped. He almost always called her baby when they were having sex, but lately he’d been using the term of endearment much more casually, almost as if he didn’t even notice doing it. She could hear a few dinging noises and then his car door slam and she knew he was probably just getting off of work.