Our Secret Summer

Chapter 22

CHAPTER 22

Dylan gazed at a picture of Raffo’s mother on her phone and it was like seeing a femme version of Raffo.

“You look so much like her,” Dylan said.

“Yeah.” Raffo still appeared a little distracted after her phone call with Connor, which was perfectly understandable, but Dylan had meant what she’d said—she had no choice. She had flipped the switch in her head.

The woman in the picture who had Raffo’s dark eyes and her raven-black hair and the same solemn, I’m-not-here-to-kid-around expression was dressed in a golden-yellow embroidered sari with sleeves hemmed in sky-blue silk, the fabric luminous against her skin. She wore an emerald silk scarf, dramatic hot-pink earrings that nearly brushed her shoulders, and a statement necklace studded with gemstones that caught the light in every color of the rainbow.

It was like looking at one of Raffo’s paintings. It shouldn’t work, yet it did—spectacularly. Also as with one of Raffo’s paintings, Dylan couldn’t look away.

“You don’t dress like her,” Dylan said after she managed to tear her gaze from that very illuminating picture.

“Nah. That’s not my style. I don’t wear dresses or skirts.”

Dylan remembered a question that had popped into her head not long after Raffo’s arrival, but she’d been afraid to ask then. Things were very different now.

“Do you identify as butch? Is that even still a thing?”

Raffo shrugged and Dylan could have so easily predicted her laconic response. It was so quintessentially—so irresistibly—Raffo.

“I don’t dress for the male gaze, because I couldn’t care less about it. I simply dress how I like.” A hint of defiance played at her lips. “It drove my mom crazy that I didn’t want to wear dresses, even when I was little. But I just didn’t. It didn’t feel like me. She got over it soon enough, unlike my dad.” Raffo rolled her eyes.

Dylan smiled, picturing a tiny Raffo, arms crossed, refusing to put on a dress. “I see your mother’s influence in how you use color in your paintings,” she said, deliberately steering away from any mention of Raffo’s father.

“I don’t have to dress like her to honor her. Her use of color is inside me.” Raffo still looked kind of deflated.

“Are you okay?” Dylan’s change of conversation hadn’t seemed to help a whole lot.

“I’m just wondering, again, if we should cut our stay short. If I should go home.”

Dylan shook her head feverishly because as soon as one of them went back to LA, it was all over.

“I love Connor more than anyone and I sure as hell don’t want to hurt him. And I won’t. I will have to fess up about hiding out here, but it will be fine. I’ll explain it to him, and he will understand.”

“Have you thought about what happens when we go back?” Raffo asked. “To us?”

“When we leave here,” Dylan admitted, her heart shrinking in her chest. “There will no longer be an ‘us’.”

“Exactly.” Raffo’s voice broke. “We’re going to have to pretend to someone we are super close to, and who knows us both really well, that none of this ever happened. I don’t know how I’m going to do that.”

On top of that, Dylan thought, they would no longer be able to see each other. Except, maybe, when Connor went to New York to—no, she had to stop this ridiculous train of thought.

“It will be hard but maybe not as hard as we imagine.” Christ. Dylan couldn’t seem to stop lying, even to herself. “Things will be different once we put some distance between us, and then time will do its thing, and we’ll be back living our ordinary lives, our idyllic bubble will have burst, and…” Dylan ran out of steam. Even though she had her former life waiting for her, she didn’t want to imagine going back.

“I’ll sleep on it, but…” Raffo’s pause made Dylan’s stomach twist itself in knots. “Instead of hopping on a call with Connor tomorrow and lying to my best friend’s face, I would like to text him that I’m coming home instead.”

“But you wanted to stay,” Dylan tried. “You needed to paint more before going back.”

“That was before Connor called and…” Raffo’s scoff cut through Dylan like a blade. “I’m beginning to think that this combination of the two of us together is making us lose our minds. We’re fooling ourselves into thinking there are no consequences to what we’re doing simply because we’re doing it here, in Big Bear, away from LA, which is some truly high-level irrational thinking.” She shook her head. “This is not me, Dylan. I don’t recognize the person talking on the phone with Connor earlier. I trust that guy with my life and I don’t want to break his trust in me.” She shrugged dramatically. “Although I already have. And so have you.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself.” Although it was complicated, Dylan meant it. She knew there were times when you had to be lenient with yourself and your principles—almost six decades of being alive, more than half of those as a mother, had taught her as much. But this was the kind of wisdom you couldn’t simply impart on someone younger, someone whose principles were still cut in stone, someone who hadn’t lived enough life yet to see that gray areas were where most of real life played out.

“Maybe,” was all Raffo replied. “But I can’t live with this ambivalence.”

“Sleep on it, please.” Dylan stretched out her hand. “With me.”

Raffo peered at Dylan’s hand through narrowed eyes. She swallowed hard. It took a few very long seconds before she, finally, took Dylan’s hand in hers.

“I propose a compromise,” Raffo said. She’d been waiting for Dylan to wake up and every minute she’d watched her sleep had made it more difficult to say this. She couldn’t afford to wait any longer.

“Good morning to you too.” Sleep had left creases on Dylan’s face, softening her features in a way that made Raffo’s chest tighten.

“Three days,” Raffo said, ignoring the seductive smile on Dylan’s face and how her blue eyes already sparkled so brightly just after waking up. “That’s my compromise.”

“Then you’re leaving?” Dylan scrunched her lips into a pout.

“Ideally, you would leave first so you can tell Connor that you didn’t go to Europe and we were here together all this time, but that’s probably too much to ask.” Raffo had tried to think through all scenarios, but none of them included telling Connor the full truth, so she would do what she had to do to minimize the hurt for everyone involved.

Dylan rolled onto her back and expelled a deep sigh. “I’ll do it. I won’t have you go back to LA and lie to Connor about me being here. That’s not fair. None of this has been fair on you. I just… wish we could have longer,” Dylan said to the ceiling.

“Me too, but—” The words died in her throat. There were no buts. Her painting of Dylan’s lake house would be finished tomorrow. One more day together. One final night. Then everything would end. Real life was beckoning. While frightening, it was also exhilarating. Because Raffo was not the same person that had arrived here a few weeks ago.

Mia had faded more each day, crowded out by everything else. Once Raffo got back, she’d have a million things to do, like find a new home, prepare for Chicago, reconnect with her friends, discover if her mojo would follow her to her old studio—or if she needed to find a new one. All the while trying not to tell Connor she’d slept with his mother.

It was a lot and quite a few things seemed impossible yet, as always in life, she’d just have to do it. Hardest of all would be to pretend Dylan barely existed in her life, that Dylan was anything more to her than Connor’s mother whom Raffo had spent some time with in Big Bear, but nothing more than that.

“This gives us three days to get our story straight,” Raffo said, watching Dylan’s profile. “When you tell him we were here together, he’ll assume we became friends—it’s the only explanation that makes sense for why I stayed.”

“We’ll just tell him that we got along but we need a break from each other after spending so much time together.”

“You make it sound so easy.” Raffo assumed her relationship with Connor was very different than the one he had with his mother. She and Connor shared information that you didn’t tell a parent, no matter how close you were. She also predicted that Connor would scrutinize her in a very different manner than his mom. With Dylan, he’d need to get over the fact that she lied about her whereabouts for so long first. Raffo, on the other hand, would probably need to answer a fair few questions about Dylan’s state of mind and exactly how worried Connor should be about her.

“Some things we will have to play by ear. We can’t rehearse a few lines and then repeat them to Con verbatim. That’s not going to work.”

Raffo cleared her throat. “Have you ever asked yourself whether it would be easier to just tell him the truth?”

“No.” Dylan’s voice was firm, but she kept staring at the ceiling. “It’s none of his business.”

“It is, though.”

“I get that it’s more difficult for you.” Dylan’s voice softened and she turned on her side. “You’re friends. It’s not the same.”

“Ordinarily, me sleeping with someone new would be huge news.” Raffo tucked a strand of golden hair behind Dylan’s ear. “I was already with Mia when I met Connor. He’s only ever known me with her.”

“I get that you’re worried, but it’s always better to assume things will work out.”

“You’re so philosophical about this. It baffles me sometimes.” Raffo curled an arm around Dylan’s waist, now that she still could.

“In the grand scheme of things, of our lives, this is just a tiny blip. When I look back on this summer, I’d rather remember the amazing time you and I had together than the money I lost or that I couldn’t tell my son about it.”

“Oh, god,” Raffo groaned.

“What?” Dylan painted on one of her sexy half-smiles.

“When you say things like that, I like you even more.” Raffo scooted closer. “And I don’t know what I’m going to do without you.”

“You’re going to Raffo-Shah the hell out of life.” Dylan pushed her nose into Raffo’s hair. “You have so much to look forward to.”

“I’m a verb now, am I?”

“You’re everything,” Dylan whispered, the words barely audible but striking Raffo’s heart like thunder.