Chapter Sixteen
chapter sixteen
RAFAEL
Bright flames are the only thing I can see.
Wood crackles from in front of me and I have to remind myself of the fact that I’m in my living room, lighting the fireplace to warm us up, not in Rosemary Cottage.
I look back to where May is seated on the couch with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders like it’s her life raft. After getting home, she changed into a matching oversized sweat set, but she couldn’t get warm enough after being out in the rain. Her eyes are glazed over as she looks into the flames in front of me.
“Sorry,” I say, recognizing the way they flicker every time the flames spark.
“I haven’t been around any fire since that night,” she laughs, but it’s humorless. “I haven’t even put the kettle on.”
“Is that how it happened?” I never knew. No one filled me in on the cause of the fire. Not that I was around the days after. I didn’t want to talk to anyone about that night, so I just avoided everyone.
She nods, not meeting my gaze. “I was so stupid.” She shakes her head.
“It was an accident. You were sick.”
“That’s not an excuse for lighting the whole place up.” I go to speak, but she interrupts me with her hand out. “Sorry, can we not talk about it?”
“Okay,” I nod before looking back to the fire. I don’t really know what I was going to say, anyway. I never do. I don’t know how to talk to May unless we’re bickering.
I guess that’s because I don’t actually know anything about her. All I know is that her favorite hobby is a tie between pissing me off and sex.
I say that, but I know it’s not true. That’s just what she allows me to see. Not that I’ve given her any reason to show me anything more. I don’t know if I want to know more. It almost scares me to think of what’s laying under her surface.
“I never said thank you.” I draw my gaze back to look at her, but she’s got her eyes closed. “For the fire, for…helping me. For saving me.”
I nod, not that she can see me. “Yeah.”
The flames dance in front of me. I’d almost think it was beautiful if I couldn’t hear May’s terrified voice in every crackle of wood.
I can’t believe a kettle on the stove caused all of that. It just proves how easily your life could change if you’re not careful. I don’t even want to think about what could’ve happened to May if I’d never turned up. Or even if I showed up ten minutes later. But my mind shows me, anyway.
I look away, not being able to stand it for another second, and my eyes land on the girl now peacefully sleeping on my couch. I always thought that she was so naive at twenty-five, so oblivious to how harsh this world could be, but that look in her eyes every time we talk about the fire reveals how worn she feels. Like she’s felt that kind of fear before, the kind that makes your legs want to give out. I can’t help but wonder what ever made her feel that way.
Her breathing is steady as she lays there, peace finally touching her features. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so relaxed in my presence. Her eyebrows are slightly curved instead of fiercely drawn together. Her lips rest together like cushions, and I notice how long her eyelashes are as they cast a shadow across the apples of her cheeks.
I stand up from where I’ve been kneeling by the fire and walk over to her. I can hear her short breaths as I look her over.
I grab the corner of the blanket and pull it up over her shoulders, making sure that she’s covered, before I switch off the lights and walk down the hall to my room. But when I get to the doorway, I can’t help but look back, noticing the backdrop of the flames behind the girl who nearly got swallowed up by them, and I walk back down the hall.
I drag the extra blanket she has draped over the back of my couch into my arms and lay it down in between the couch and the fireplace, creating a makeshift bed for the night. As much as I know May likes her space, there is no way I could close my door and sleep peacefully in my bed, knowing she was out here, so close to the flames. I know they’re contained, but my instincts tell me I shouldn’t leave her alone right now. So even though I am probably the last person she wants sleeping by her side, that’s what I’m going to do.
I wake up to the soft sound of the kettle brewing. It takes me a moment to catch my bearings, to remember why I’m lying on the hard concrete floor of my living room, to remember the way I didn’t want to let May sleep out here next to the fire by herself, and to remember the way that she told me a kettle is what set the fire in her cottage.
I wrestle with the blanket that is wound around my legs and sit up, cursing the hard floor as my back aches when I stand up.
I round the couch, rubbing my eyes, to see May standing there in the kitchen. Her hair is a mess. She’s pulled half of it up into a little bun at the back of her head, and she’s still wearing those sweats from last night.
Her gaze flicks up to meet mine. “Coffee?” She asks as if we are normal roommates who do this kind of shit all the time.
“Sure,” I say, playing along, not sure where this is going.
She was beyond pissed at me last night. I was pissed at myself. That apology was real. I should've never spoken to her like that. I was mad, finding her the way I did in my kitchen. But it’s no excuse. I was a dick. That’s why I'm so surprised to wake up to find her offering me a cup of coffee.
I pull out one of the stools from under the island and sit down, letting my head hang in my hands as my eyes adjust to the early morning light. Why did I design this place to have so many windows?
In my peripheral vision, I can see May opening multiple cupboards and drawers around her.
“Second drawer down on the left,” I say.
She flicks me a quick glance. “Thanks,” she says, opening the drawer before she stops in her tracks, looking perplexed as she peers into the drawer.
“What?”
“For a chef, you have really boring mugs.” She pulls two plain white mugs out of the drawer.
“What about being a chef means I have to have fancy ceramics?”
“I don’t know, I just thought you’d want to have nice crockery for your chef level food.”
“Coffee isn’t really chef-level food.” She glares over at me. “Why, what kind of special mugs do you have?” I say jokingly, but when I see the look on her face, I realize she’s serious.
A small smirk tugs the corner of her lip up before she schools her face back to neutrality. Or is it more like sadness? “Mugs are a form of self-expression,” she says.
“How is that?”
“Well, when I felt happy, for example, I’d pull out my llama mug. It always made me feel even better just looking at it. Or back at home, I always used to give Isla the Claude Monet mug I had, for obvious reasons.”
She talks with her hands, adding the expressions I’m missing, given that she’s looking down at the mugs in front of her.
“When I felt sad, or sick, I’d use my rain cloud mug. It had a kind of frowny face, and it made me feel like I wasn’t the only sad one out there.”
I never knew mugs could be so vital to one’s existence. Her eyebrows draw together.
“But anyway, they’re all gone now.” In the fire. “So I’ll have to make do with these.” She eyes my mugs like they’ve personally offended her, and I have to hold back a laugh, because this is not funny. Her precious mugs got lost in the flames. The flames that nearly took a lot more than those mugs.
She pulls out a packet from a cardboard box on the island that I hadn’t noticed was there.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Hot chocolate.”
“Can I have one of those too?”
She looks up at me, surprised. I can’t blame her. This isn’t our usual dynamic, not that we really have a usual dynamic anymore.
“Sure,” she says. “Do you have any mini marshmallows?”
“No.”
She shakes her head. “You’ll have to be okay with mediocre then, it’s not the same without the mini marshmallows.”
I huff a small laugh out of my nose. “I think I’ll manage.”
She looks up at me again. The expression on her face unreadable before she rips open two packets and tips the powder into the two boring mugs.
I watch her as she takes them over to where the kettle is sitting. Watch her as she picks it up, pouring the boiling water into the boring mugs. Watch her as she triple checks that the stovetop is turned off, even though it has been since I walked over here. She grabs a little spoon and stirs in the mixture before she carefully walks both mugs over to where I’m sitting and slowly slides one over to me.
“Thanks,” I say.
I almost think she’s about to smile, but she doesn’t.
“Sure,” she says quietly before taking a sip of hot chocolate.
I mirror her, taking a sip of mine, and we stay like this, in a rare moment of peace between us. It feels like we are speaking about everything that’s happened between us over the last few weeks without either of us even uttering a word. And when we’re done, I grab both of the boring mugs and put them in the dishwasher.
“I’m gonna go get ready for work.” She finally breaks the silence between us.
“Okay,” I say.
But she doesn’t move, not for a moment anyway. She stays there, almost like she wants this peace to last, even if it’s only for a second longer.
But then she goes, walking down the hall and shutting her door behind her. Leaving me in the silence, but for some reason, it feels less peaceful than it did before. And I don’t know what to do with that.