Chapter Twenty-Nine
chapter twenty-nine
MAY
I lie back on the rug that covers the wooden floors of Marina’s apartment, my head landing on the soft woven fabric as I let out a sigh.
“Here,” Marina hands me an ice cream and I immediately sit up. “You need something to cheer you up.”
“I don’t need cheering up,” I say before taking a bite of the ice cream.
Isla snuggles into the corner of the couch. “Yeah, you do, Debbie Downer.”
“Hey!” My voice is muffled with the ice cream filling my mouth.
She tilts her head at me. “Did you forget that every single thought you think is relayed on your face?”
I frown and chomp down on the ice cream.
“And for the last week, your face has been saying that you are confused as fuck about something. What we are all wondering is what that thing is?”
Marina sits down beside her, and they both look at me with that look they’ve perfected. The ‘ let’s interrogate her in a really soft and loving way so that she tells us what's going on ’ look.
A knock on the door sounds.
“Expecting anyone else?” I ask.
Marina shakes her head and makes her way to the door, pulling it open. “What are you doing here?”
Leo steps into her apartment with a bottle of wine. “I heard it’s girls’ night.”
She frowns at him. “That grants you an invitation, does it? Did you miss the main part of that sentence? Girls’ night.”
He waves her off. “I’m sick of playing scrabble with the ladies at the B you’ll be fine.”
“Uhhh,” Leo starts, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”
“What do you mean?” I ask. My heart skipping a beat.
He looks hesitant, like he’s rethinking if he should’ve just opened his mouth.
“This is where you make good on your offer,” Marina pins him with a glare.
He sighs. “He got clammy as a clam when we tried to ask him about you. ”
I frown at his shit attempt at a metaphor. “And what does that prove exactly?”
“Rafael, he…he’s not the one to usually keep his hookups under wraps. He doesn’t brag, that’s not what I’m saying. But the way he’s so tight-lipped about anything to do with you makes me think…okay, I don’t know what I think, but it’s something.”
Marina throws her hand up. “That was sooo helpful, Leo, thank you.”
“Also,” he says, cutting her a glare. “I’ve quite literally never seen him hold someone’s hand. But he held yours.”
In the club, when my instincts took over and I slipped my hand into his. He looked down at our hands like the feeling was foreign, but he didn’t let go. Not until he threw a punch that is.
“What do I do?” I ask.
“You told him no strings attached right?” Marina asks.
“Right.”
“Is he not respecting your boundaries?”
“No he is…I—” I throw my hands over my face. “I think I’m the one fucking with the boundaries. I’m the one who started the conversation that led to the phone sex. I’m the one who decided to open up to him and cry on his shoulder.”
“And why do you think that is?” Isla chimes in.
I glare at her. Knowing exactly why she’s choosing to speak up now. “I don’t know, maybe because he gave me a fucking earth-shattering orgasm!”
She raises her eyebrows at me.
“Sorry.” I pass the wine bottle to Marina. She gets up, grabbing herself a wine glass from her small kitchen and filling it.
Isla slides off the couch, folding her legs and pulling my hands into her lap. “It’s fine.”
“I just…I don’t know why, but I can’t separate him from the sex like I normally can. I don’t know how to fix it. This isn’t my style.”
Isla’s eyes glisten as she looks at me.
“It’s okay for the things that you think you want in your life to change,” Leo says, capturing all of our attention. “You can want something for yourself at a certain time of your life, and you can change your mind. Your priorities can switch a thousand times, it’s not always so black and white.”
Marina is the one who breaks the shocked silence between us all, as she sits back down with her glass of wine. “Is that why you left your job, because your priorities changed?”
He grabs the wine bottle from her. “Something like that, yeah.”
Isla’s gaze focuses back on me. “He’s right May, what you want can change, if you let it.”
“I don’t know if I want to let it.”
“I know,” she smiles softly. “But if you keep yourself guarded forever, you might never know what you’ve missed out on.”
I smile back at her, I don’t know if she’s right, but something tickles in the back of my brain at her words. Do I want to spend my whole life not knowing what it feels like? To be loved the way she is loved by Caio? Just because I’m scared of getting hurt?
Leo takes a sip of the wine. “So are we all still ignoring the fact that Isla’s brother and Marina used to fuck?”
Marina spits her wine across the room. “Oh my god.”
“Leo!” Isla scolds him.
He flinches away from her. “What? Considering how close you all are you really should talk about it. I’m surprised you’ve let the elephant sit between you for so long.”
Marina’s eyes flick to Isla’s. “We really don’t need to talk about it.”
Leo crosses his arms. “Yeah, you do.”
Now Marina’s looking at me. “I kind of agree with Leo.”
“You’re just trying to change the subject,” Isla says.
“It’s a good one to change it to though, isn’t it?” The two of them look at each other. Not saying a word.
“This is weird,” Leo says.
“I don’t know where to start!” Marina shrugs.
“Okay, okay,” Isla starts. “We don’t need to go into detail, like really, you can keep lots of it out, but I would really like to know what ever happened.”
Marina lies back on the floor like I did and lets out a deep breath. “Your brother—Miles…I—I met him in Sorrento when I was bartending there. He came into my bar and as soon as I saw him, I just had this…feeling.” She puts her hands over her heart and closes her eyes, like it might be easier to say this into the darkness. “I was drawn to him immediately, and as soon as we started talking, we just clicked, in so many ways. He was doing constant flights around Europe at the time, so I’d see him every couple of weeks. It feels like a fever dream looking back on it, but we saw each other for months. I’ve never felt the way I felt with Miles before, and he told me he felt the same. I thought that we both wanted the same thing, that we were going to figure it all out together…” she shakes her head against the floor. “But then he left. Like he always did, but this time he never came back.”
My eyes move to see Isla sitting against the couch, tears running down her eyes. “Why did he do that?” She asks, her voice watery.
“No idea. I didn’t see him again until your birthday.”
“Oh, I am so sorry.”
Marina sits up. “No! It’s fine, he’s your brother, and besides, you didn’t know.”
Isla crawls across the floor to wrap Marina in her arms.
Leo smiles from his spot on the couch. “See, isn’t that better?”
They both let out watery chuckles, and I smile, happy that they finally got to talk about it. Nothing is resolved, but it’s all out in the open, at least what Marina knows.
“Your turn May.”
I pin my gaze on him. “I think it’s time girls’ night goes back to being just girls.”
He chuckles, and hands the wine bottle back to me. “I hope you figure it out.”
I take a gigantic gulp of wine. “Me too.”
I don’t want to hurt Rafael. I don’t know how to do serious— how to be dependable and someone he could rely on. How am I supposed to just change what I want? The idea that has been branded into my skin. It’s the only thing I’ve ever known.
Being unattached is the one thing that has steered me through my life, and after Owen, it was the only thing that kept me afloat. Knowing I’d never give myself over to someone else ever again is the only thing that kept my head above the water. I am trying to cling to that idea. I’m hanging on by a thread, but I have a feeling that it’ll only take one pull on that thread from Rafael, and I’ll give it all up.