Chapter 28
CHAPTER 28
“I just spoke to Raffo,” Connor said, barely through the door, his keys still dangling from his fingers. “She’s in a state. Mia turned up at her studio unannounced.”
Dylan’s heart nearly exploded out of her chest. “Is she okay?”
Connor shook his head dramatically. “No, I really don’t think so.” He kissed Dylan on the cheek and gave her a brief hug. “Apparently Mia broke up with her new girlfriend and, from what I gather, she’s already planting seeds to get back into Raffo’s good books.”
“What do you mean?” This was none of Dylan’s business—and yet.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Connor sighed. “All this lesbian drama. Us gays are supposed to be the dramatic ones, you know?” He sagged into his favorite chair by the kitchen window. “I asked if she wanted to have dinner with us, but she declined.”
Dylan grabbed onto the kitchen countertop.
“There’s something I just don’t get, Mom.” Connor toyed with his keys before putting them in his pocket. “You claim she helped you, and Raffo says you helped her with the whole Mia business while you were in Big Bear. You spent weeks together, just the two of you, up there by that lake, building campfires and singing ‘Kumbaya’ and whatnot, and then you come back, and what? You’re not friends? Did something happen? Did you have a fight near the end or something? Is that why you came back early?”
“No, darling, just—” I fell in love with her. “It was a bit much, I guess. Quite intense.” Dylan tried to sound casual but she had no idea if she was succeeding. “We both have so much to sort out now that we’re back.”
“So you didn’t fall out?” Connor looked her in the eye.
“No.” Dylan tried to hold his gaze, but it was impossible. She grabbed her iPad and thrust it into his hands. “My email won’t sync again. Can you work your magic, please?”
“Sure, Mom.” Connor just put the iPad in his lap. He rubbed his chin and sighed. “I worry about Raffo so much. I know she’ll be all right, but I would hate for Mia to get her claws back into her.”
Me too, Dylan thought.
“I was over the moon when Raffo told me she was painting again. Because it means she’s ready to transform the pain. Because that’s what she does. It’s what makes her work so special and what makes people respond to it in the way that they do. What attracts them to her paintings so irresistibly. On the canvas, she turns her pain into this incredibly colorful expression of joy that makes it impossible to look away. That’s her real talent. She’s so fucking special and I don’t want Mia to fuck her up all over again.”
Dylan couldn’t agree more. Connor was pretty fucking special too for saying that, and for seeing that in Raffo when he signed her to his gallery.
“Do you think I should talk to Mia or stay out of it?” Connor asked.
“Oh, darling, I don’t know.” Dylan could do so much better than that. “Raffo’s strong. Don’t underestimate her,” she tried again, and it was easy—a relief, even—to say these things about Raffo. “Of course, she’s going to be in shock when Mia shows up out of the blue like that, but she’ll regroup. She’ll find her genius again. It’s in her. I’ve seen it in action.”
“You watched her paint?” Connor’s eyebrows arched all the way up.
Dylan nodded while a lump grew in her throat. The evidence was on display in her bedroom, on the floor above right where Connor was sitting.
“Do you want a glass of wine?” Dylan asked, eager to change the subject.
“Nah. I’m driving. Just water, please.” Connor lit up Dylan’s iPad and went to work.
“Mom!” Dylan was in the pantry when she heard Connor cry out. “Mom?!”
“Where’s the fire?” Dylan joked as she exited the pantry.
Connor sat staring at her iPad with his mouth wide open.
“What’s wrong?” Dylan asked. Maybe she needed a new iPad—she’d probably asked Connor too many times to fix a silly issue for her.
“Why is there a picture of Raffo totally naked on your iPad?”
“What?” Dylan’s heart dropped all the way to the floor. “What are you talking about?”
Connor covered his eyes, as though a naked picture of Raffo was the worst thing he’d ever seen, and turned the screen toward Dylan.
And then there she was. On their last day in Big Bear, in that weird headspace of knowing what they had to do and clinging onto the last shreds of rebellion in their hearts, Raffo and Dylan had posed naked for each other. Raffo had instigated it, claiming she might need a nude picture of Dylan when her mojo disappeared again—and how could Dylan say no to that?
But Dylan had most certainly not transferred that photo to her iPad. How the hell did it get on there and, more importantly, what was she supposed to say to Connor? More lies or the truth? Dylan couldn’t lie anymore and she was certain, in every fiber of her being, and despite the inevitable fallout, that Raffo wouldn’t want her to lie either. She’d want for that picture to never have appeared on Dylan’s iPad screen, but that could no longer be undone.
Dylan took a breath, ignoring the hot shame burning her cheeks, and said, “I’m sorry. You were not supposed to see that.”
“Duh. What the hell, Mom?” Connor screwed his eyes shut. “But I can’t unsee it.”
“Look, we—” Dylan started, but she didn’t know how to say this, how to explain it to her son in a way that he could understand, let alone accept. “It must have synced from my phone. We took some pictures in Big Bear. It was?—”
“Nude pictures?” Connor threw the iPad on the table and started pacing. “Why?”
Dylan could spin a tale of Raffo needing them for inspiration, but it would all just be more lies. She’d lied enough to the person she loved most in the world—her son.
“Raffo and I, we, um, we had a thing at the lake house, but it’s all over now, so we don’t need to make a big song and dance about it, darling.” Yeah right. Connor was nothing if not a drama queen.
His eyes went wide. “What’s a ‘thing’?” He shook his head. “It better not be what I think a thing is.”
“An affair. A summer fling,” Dylan admitted and it felt horribly awkward but strangely relieving at the same time.
“Sex?” He said it as though it was the most disgusting word he’d ever uttered in his life. “You had sex with Raffo?” He looked as disgusted as he sounded. “That’s just not possible, Mom. I mean—” He shook his head vigorously, as though the harder he shook it, the more he could undo it all. “You’re, like… you’re my mom,” he croaked. “You can’t have an affair with my best friend. No. That didn’t happen. Please, tell me that didn’t actually happen.”
“Look, darling, what happened doesn’t matter. It’s over. It’s not a thing anymore. All that’s left of it is that picture.” And that painting in her bedroom and all the mad yearning in Dylan’s heart.
“Of course it matters. You slept with my best friend. For how long? Was it just once?”
“Con, please, calm down. Take a breath. You’re upset.”
“Of course I’m upset. Wouldn’t you be upset if you found out I slept with… I don’t know. Whoever your best male friend is.” He dropped his head in his hands.
“Yes, of course, but still. Please, sit.”
“With Pete,” Connor said, lifting his head. “Or with Carl.” He refused to take a seat, while continuing to name all of Dylan’s male friends and acquaintances. “Or Kevin. Ugh,” he said.
Dylan let him run out of steam. She’d have to call Raffo as soon as Connor left. If he was going to be railing like this to her, after what she’d already been through with Mia today, she needed a heads-up.
Connor finally sagged against the kitchen island, his elbows gliding along its smooth surface. “All this time, you’ve just been lying to me more. Both of you.” That was the real kicker. What hurt him the most. Two people he was meant to trust with his life had, again, kept something crucial from him.
“Darling, sometimes a lie is kinder than the truth. You didn’t want to know this.”
“But I do know,” he said on a sigh.
“It was just… comfort,” Dylan lied. “We were both hurt and depressed and… we were there. It was more a proximity thing than anything else.” Of all the lies she’d told, this one felt the worst—and the most untrue.
“I just can’t wrap my head around it, Mom. I just can’t.”
“That’s okay. You don’t have to.” Dylan could barely wrap her own head around it, and she’d been a part of it.
“Did you… seduce her? Take advantage of the vulnerable state Raffo was in?”
“No!” Dylan took great offense at that and she made sure Connor could hear it in her voice. “Of course not.”
“I just don’t get how this happened.” Connor inhaled sharply and took a long time expelling his breath.
“Sometimes, in life, things happen that you don’t get, or don’t want to have happened, or…” This was hardly the time for a life lesson, but Dylan was only trying, with the tiny amount of energy she had left after… everything.
“But it’s really over?” Connor fixed his gaze on Dylan. “You haven’t been carrying on behind my back all this time?” It was a fair enough question under the circumstances.
Dylan shook her head. “I haven’t seen Raffo, nor spoken to her, since I left Big Bear.”
“That’s why she didn’t want to come to dinner. That’s why you haven’t acted like the friends you claimed to have become at the lake house. But fuck, Mom, I never would have guessed this.”
“I know. It’s a lot. I’m sorry.” It felt odd to apologize for something she had enjoyed so much, but Connor deserved the apology. Unwanted, he stood in the middle of this whole mess. “For everything.” Dylan was still apologizing for keeping her financial embarrassment from him as well, making her feel like the worst mother in the world.
“Oh, Mom.” Connor just stood there, speechlessly processing the second bombshell Dylan had dropped on him. “Is there anything else, now that we’re getting into it?”
“No.” Except that Dylan couldn’t get Raffo out of her head, but she—wisely—didn’t share that information. “I promise.”
“What am I going to say to Raffo when I get home?” His eyes were pleading, as though he genuinely had no idea how to talk to his best friend any longer.
“Just give her a break if you can.” Dylan’s voice softened despite herself. “She’s been through so much.”
“Argh.” Connor pushed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “The most unseemly images are flashing through my brain.”
“I know this is not something you ever wanted to hear and that it’s shocking.” Dylan kept her voice steady, measured. She smoothed her hand over the kitchen towel, a nervous gesture she’d had since Connor was small. “But in the end, we were simply two consenting adults who liked each other.”
“A lot, apparently.” Connor’s jaw tightened.
“Raffo’s pretty amazing,” Dylan allowed herself to say—the full truth, for once.
“That she is.” Connor swallowed slowly, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “I get that you would be attracted to Raffo but, no offense, Mom, that it would be mutual?” He shook his head as though Raffo wanting to be with Dylan was the biggest head-scratcher he’d ever faced in his life.
It was hard not to be a little offended, but Connor was upset, so Dylan could hardly hold it against him.
“What I mean is that I just don’t see you that way. Since Dad, all you’ve ever been with are these mediocre middle-aged men and now… Raffo? Just like that?”
“You know I’m bi,” Dylan said, weakly, not protesting the characterization of her previous relationships.
“Intellectually, I do know that, but I’ve never seen you with a woman… and now suddenly my brain has to parse you and Raffo all over each other at the lake house. Maybe if it was anyone else, but not Raffo. She’s my best friend, Mom. No, she’s more than that. I won’t say she’s like a sister to me, coz, ew, gross, but we work very closely together. We tell each other everything… until now. I had no idea. She’s been back, living with me for three weeks, and I had no fucking clue.”
“I know. I’m sorry. We had to make the decision very early on that we would never willingly tell you. That we had to protect you from that.”
“Early on? Do you mean you were sleeping together all the time you were there? Raffo was in Big Bear for five weeks.”
“Not all the time,” Dylan said.
“And if I hadn’t seen that picture? You would have lied to me for the rest of my life?” He sounded more deflated than dramatic.
“It’s hard to say, darling.” Dylan resisted the urge to hug him—this was not a time for physical affection.
He heaved a sigh. “I don’t feel like going home and having this conversation all over again with Raffo.”
“You’re very welcome to stay here.”
“I don’t want that either. Besides, Raffo’s waiting for me. She has to process this Mia-business that went down today.” He nodded, as though he suddenly understood something. “She was hurting and you’re very caring and motherly. That does make sense to me. That it must have been comforting for Raffo in that respect.” He pulled a face again. Poor Connor. He wasn’t supposed to be thinking of scenes like that involving his own mother. “I think I’m going to go now.”
“Don’t be a stranger, you hear me?” Dylan did put a hand on her son’s shoulder now. “I’ll call you tomorrow to check in.”
“I love you, Mom, and I want you to be happy, but…” He took her hand in his. “Should I be worried about you? Clearly, you haven’t been yourself these past few months. Are you okay? Like, truly? No more lies. No more protecting me. I’m a big boy. I can take it.”
“Oh, Con.” Something inside Dylan crumbled. “I’m okay. I’m fine. I just made some not-so-good decisions, but you don’t have to worry about me.”
“The worst thing,” Connor said, his voice shaky, “is that I’m not sure I believe you. That I can believe you.”
Dylan deserved that, perhaps, but it still broke her heart into a million pieces.