Our Secret Summer

Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13

“Mia started floating the idea of an open relationship about a year ago. In her defense, suddenly, non-monogamy was everywhere. Newspapers, socials, documentaries. Some of our friends were trying it. The zeitgeist was just totally right for it.” Raffo wished her glass of champagne would magically refill itself. “I wasn’t exactly thrilled by the idea and I resisted for a long time. Maybe because, somehow, I knew it wasn’t so much an open relationship she wanted. But that’s all hindsight, so I don’t really know.” Raffo scoffed, but it came out as a weird snort. “I’m giving away the punch line to the most dreadful joke ever already, but long story short, Mia left me for the first woman she hooked up with when we opened up our relationship. It was love at first sight, apparently. Her name’s Ophelia and she looks like a Scandinavian beach volleyball player. You know the type? Like she couldn’t be more the opposite of me.” The relative calm of the past few days crumbled as Raffo’s sadness surged to the surface, raw and familiar.

“The way I see it, for some reason, because it’s actually really unlike her, Mia didn’t have the guts to simply break up with me. She needed the ruse of an open relationship and she convinced me it was what we needed in our lives and… Argh, the whole thing just makes me so angry.” Raffo ignored the itching behind her eyes. “For all I know, she’d already met this Ophelia, but no one has been able to confirm that. Which doesn’t mean that she couldn’t have kept it a secret from everyone. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll never know. Either way, our break-up was not amicable in the least.” Raffo rubbed at her eyes, trying to hold back the first tear—she knew from experience that once she started to cry, it might be difficult to stop.

“If Mia didn’t love me anymore, yes, that would have still hurt like hell, but there are definitely far more honorable ways to break up with the person you’ve been with for ten years than to stage an open relationship.” Connor, who was friends with Mia too, had tried to convince Raffo that she was perhaps too paranoid about how things had gone down, and that Mia wasn’t that calculated, but Raffo didn’t believe him. She only believed what her own gut told her.

“That’s not a very funny punch line,” Dylan said.

“I know. My contributions to our conversation tonight have been really gloomy. Thank god for your two affairs with the ladies.” Raffo had very much enjoyed observing Dylan as she talked about Alex and Angie.

“That must have been very painful, Raffo. Break-ups always are.”

“Connor’s been so great. He put me up in his guest room, took care of me, rubbed my back while I cried and cried.” Raffo took a deep breath, hoping it would stave off the tears, but they were dangling from her lashes already. “It’s a whole mess back home. I have to find a new place to live. We have to sell our house. But I can’t talk to her right now. I just can’t. The sight of her just… makes me want to cry,” Raffo said, as the tears started spilling.

“Oh, Raffo.” Dylan was out of her chair in an instant, and crouched beside her. Her warm hand found Raffo’s back, her thumb tracing gentle circles against the nape of her neck. “Come here.” Dylan pulled her close and then Raffo was crying on Connor’s mother’s shoulder as well, after having already shed so many tears on her son’s shoulder. This family had caught more of her tears already than her own ever would.

Dylan’s hand moved to her hair. Raffo tried to steel herself somehow, tried to stop this endless, stupid flood of tears, but it seemed impossible. Because she still loved Mia, had loved her for so long, had loved their life together—and now it was all just gone.

So she cried on Dylan’s shoulder for a while longer, not caring who she was with. Her tears didn’t care, either way, they just streamed and streamed, until all moisture seemed to have flowed from Raffo’s body and she had nothing left to push through her tear ducts.

“I’m sorry. I’m really not a crybaby,” she whispered into Dylan’s wet hair. Yeah right. Although it was true. Raffo had barely cried since her mother had died, because nothing had ever come close to being that devastating again. Until this. She breathed in deeply and, reluctantly, pushed herself away from the comfort of Dylan’s body. “It’s like she broke something in me and now I can’t seem to stop crying.”

“She hurt you.” Dylan’s voice was a little unsteady as well. “Of course, it makes you cry.”

Raffo was exhausted and she fell back into her chair.

“Let me get you some water.” Dylan gave Raffo’s shoulder a quick squeeze before fetching some water.

If only, Raffo thought, as she gazed up at the stars, she could find a way to stop loving Mia. Mia hurting her hadn’t made the love stop—it was the other way around. It hurt so much because Raffo still loved Mia with all of her silly heart.

“Thanks.” Raffo took a few greedy gulps of water, as though needing to rehydrate—she probably did. “I always kind of felt I was punching above my weight with Mia, that she was out of my league. Not only because she’s drop dead gorgeous, which she is, but because of how she is. Everybody likes Mia. And she always had such faith in me. She believed in my painting long before I did. She was a really great girlfriend—until she wasn’t.”

Suddenly, all the talking and the crying took their toll, and Raffo could barely keep her eyes open. What a day it had been. From the elation of painting again to uncontrollable crying on Dylan’s shoulder.

“Let’s get you to bed,” Dylan said as though, on top of everything else, she could also read Raffo’s mind.

Raffo woke with her temples throbbing, not because she’d drunk too much champagne, but because of crying over Mia. Yesterday’s joyful energy had evaporated, leaving her muscles leaden and uncooperative. All she wanted to do was curl up under a blanket in the couch and watch something on TV that didn’t require any brain power to process.

For the first time since arriving, she regretted not having the house to herself—as Connor had promised her—so she could sulk in private. But then she remembered it was Dylan she was sharing the house with and a tiny flicker of energy coursed through her. Dylan was so easy to talk to, Raffo had told her everything. Dylan was also the subject of the painting she’d so enthusiastically embarked upon yesterday, but painting was out of the question today. She’d undo everything she’d accomplished the day before with the mood she was in today. With the freight train of grief crashing into her again and again, crushing her spirit—and her mojo.

Arriving here to meet Dylan had just been a temporary respite of dealing with her grief. Raffo knew a thing or two about dealing with grief, namely that the pain never fully went away, and that it could hit you all over again, with all its brutal force, when you least expected it. But Mia wasn’t dead. She was probably in bed with Ophelia right now. Nausea arrowed through Raffo at the thought.

To escape thinking about Mia doing to Ophelia what she used to do to Raffo in the morning—peppering featherlight kisses onto her neck until she was fully awake and smiling so widely her cheeks hurt—Raffo fled the bed.

She didn’t shower and just went downstairs unwashed, uncombed, and in the tank top and shorts she’d slept in.

Dylan was standing on the deck in her bikini, overlooking the lake. It was the perfect sight to replace the image in her brain of Mia and Ophelia. Raffo waited to see if Dylan would jump into the lake, but she didn’t. As if she felt Raffo’s eyes on her, she turned around and, through the window, shot Raffo one of her smiles.

Suddenly, Raffo didn’t mind sharing the house any longer. She inwardly chuckled at how fickle she was, but then Dylan walked into the kitchen in that barely there bikini and Raffo found herself fighting to keep her eyes on Dylan’s face—a battle she’d lost the day before.

“Morning.” Dylan walked all the way up to Raffo and put a hand against Raffo’s upper arm. “Did you get some sleep?”

Raffo could only nod. “Yeah. I was totally exhausted.”

“I can imagine. Coffee?”

“Were you about to go for a swim?” Raffo asked.

Dylan poured her a cup of coffee regardless of Raffo not answering her question.

“I was contemplating it, but then I heard noise upstairs and I figured you were awake. I wanted to see how you were feeling.”

“I feel exactly like someone who’s been dumped by her girlfriend of ten years would.” Raffo straightened her shoulders. “But I’m not that big a fan of self-pity, so I shall try to pull myself together.”

“You don’t have to do that on my account.”

You make me want to pull myself together though, Raffo thought.

“You’ve been through a lot.” Dylan handed Raffo a steaming mug of coffee.

“Thanks,” Raffo said, both for the sentiment and the coffee. “I won’t be painting today. There’s no point.”

“What would you like to do—if you want to do anything at all,” Dylan asked.

“For starters, I don’t want to keep you from your swim.”

“My swim can wait, Raffo. I just, um, wanted to?—”

Raffo’s phone buzzed, startling them both. She’d told most people she was going off-grid for a while. Her stomach tightened as she checked the screen.

“Oh, fuck. It’s Connor.” She glared at her phone as though it was a ticking time bomb. “Should I ignore it?”

“Damn. Um, I don’t know.” Dylan looked all flustered.

Raffo’s phone stopped ringing and then promptly started up again.

“He must have something really important to say. I’ll go into my room and call him back.”

Dylan nodded

Her phone chirping in her hand, Raffo hurried upstairs. Cell reception wasn’t nearly as bad as she and Dylan had been pretending. She called Connor back and he picked up after the first ring.

“I’m sorry for interrupting your me time, Raff,” Connor said. “But I figured you’d want to know this straightaway.”

Did Mia and Ophelia split up? Raffo’s heart started racing.

“Guess who’s going to have a show at the Dolores Flemming Gallery in Chicago this fall?”

“Who?” Raffo said stupidly, her mind still stuck on Mia.

“This incredible artist called Raffo Shah. Surely, you’ve heard of her,” Connor all but shouted down the line.

“What? No way. You got me into Dolores Flemming’s Gallery?”

“I sure did, babe. I sure did.”

Dolores Flemming’s prestigious Chicago galleries were kingmakers in the art scene—a single show could launch an artist’s career.

“To be honest,” Connor said, “and you might want to sit for this. She called me. Dolores Flemming wants you, Raff. How’s that?”

“That is amazing…” Raffo’s voice caught. After weeks of emotional blows, here was some purely good news.

“I’m not calling to put pressure on you,” Connor added quickly. “I just wanted you to know. We can absolutely put on a show without new work.”

“Thanks so much for letting me know, Con. I so appreciate this.”

“How are things in Big Bear? How are you holding up?”

“Good.” This was excruciating. Connor was her best friend. Raffo couldn’t lie to him, but she also couldn’t break Dylan’s confidence. “Better. I got my painting materials out yesterday.” She would also never be able to show Connor the painting she’d started on—and Connor saw every little doodle that she drew. “It’s early days, but still.”

“That’s so great. Ah, Raff. That makes me so happy.”

“Yeah.” Whereas Raffo never had an issue making conversation with Connor, she didn’t know what to say next because she didn’t want to say the wrong thing—she didn’t want to betray Dylan.

“The house is okay? Up to your standards?”

“The house is absolutely wonderful. Thank you for sending me here and, um, letting me use it.”

“It’s not my house. Thank my mom when she gets back from Europe.”

“You know what I mean.” Raffo’s hand got so clammy, she nearly dropped her phone.

“Sure. Look, I gotta go. I have a meeting.” Sweet mercy. Raffo was too tongue-tied under these circumstances to enjoy this chat with her friend. “Congratulations. You’re the bomb, Raffo. Love you.”

She rang off and took a breath. With the tension of pretending to be alone in the house, she hadn’t paid enough attention to the reason why Connor had called. Dolores Flemming was one of the most highly regarded gallerists in the country—and a very hot, power lesbian to boot—who could elevate an artist’s career to the very top. Raffo’s career was already on the up, but who knows where this might lead? Instinctively, the first thing she wanted to do was call Mia to share this wonderful news. Instead, she took another breath and rushed downstairs to do the next best thing. Share the news with Dylan.