Chapter 6
RAFE
San Francisco feels different when the fog rolls in. While LA is all glare and performance, light bouncing off glass and skin like the world is a stage, here the air softens the edges. Sound dulls, and the world feels smaller, closer, like it’s asking you to breathe slower.
It’s the only place where I can sometimes forget that people know my name.
I’m in the kitchen, chopping garlic while Rosa stands at the stove pretending she isn’t judging my knife skills.
“You’re going to lose a finger,” she says, not looking up from the pan.
“I tour internationally,” I reply. “I can handle garlic.”
“That’s not how that works,” she mutters.
Rosa’s been here three days already, and the apartment feels different with her in it. Warmer and louder. Like my life didn’t shrink to the size of stage lights and hotel rooms somewhere along the way.
She moves through my kitchen while watching me a little too closely, dark hair pulled into a bun, glasses sliding down her nose every time she leans over something. She pushes them back absently with her knuckle, exactly like our mamá does.
My sister. Accountant. Spreadsheet wizard. The most organized person I’ve ever met.
Instead of working herself into the ground the way our parents did, I paid for her college. Every tuition bill. Every book. Every stupid hidden fee. Honestly, it’s the best money I’ve ever spent.
Now she does my accounts, and I trust her more than any manager or financial advisor who’s ever shaken my hand.
“You’re distracted,” she says, finally glancing at me.
“I’m chopping garlic,” I argue.
“You’re murdering garlic,” she corrects. “And thinking too hard.”
She knows me too well.
I shrug and slide the chopped pieces into a bowl. “Just tired.”
She hums in a way that says she doesn’t believe that’s the whole story, but she lets it go. For now.
The kitchen smells like onions and cumin and the kind of food our mamá makes when she’s trying to feed ten people on a budget. Comfort food. Food that sticks to your ribs.
Mamá and Papá are still working, even though they don’t have to. They’re built that way. Work is survival and dignity, and proof you belong. Though a few years ago, they finally let me help.
I bought them a house. Not huge, not flashy, just new and in a safe neighborhood. No mold in the walls. No landlord who could decide overnight they had to leave.
Mamá cried when she saw the kitchen. Papá walked through every room like he was checking for problems that weren’t there.
They still clean houses. But now it’s their own company. I helped with the startup costs, paperwork, branding. Rosa did the books. They hired several women from church. Women who needed work and needed someone to give them a chance.
They support immigrants quietly. Always have. Extra shifts passed along. Food dropped off. Advice whispered.
We take care of our own.
I think about that as Rosa hands me a spoon. “Taste,” she orders.
I do. It’s perfect.
“Show-off,” I tell her.
She smiles, pleased.
We move around each other easily, setting the table, pulling plates from cupboards.
Domestic in a way that makes something in my chest ache.
This is what life is supposed to feel like.
Not tour buses and green rooms and pretending you don’t wake up at three in the morning with someone’s name stuck in your throat.
Rosa sets down her glass and leans against the counter. “I finished reviewing the Medina Trust paperwork,” she says casually.
My hand stills. “Okay,” I say, aiming for neutral.
She watches my face. Accountant eyes. Nothing gets past her. “You’re sure about the long-term commitment?”
“Yes.”
“It’s… a lot,” she says gently. “The ten million up front was already generous. Add in the five million annually for ten years, that’s not pocket change, even for you.”
“I know.”
She tilts her head. “You don’t usually move that fast on philanthropy without a board meeting and a week of overthinking.”
I snort. “I don’t have a board.”
“You know what I mean.”
I do. I think about Ollie’s voice, steady and careful as he talked about families being torn apart.
“I wanted to,” I say simply.
Rosa studies me a moment longer, then nods. “Okay.”
She trusts me, and I trust her. Though she doesn’t know the rest. Doesn’t know the name behind the impulse. Doesn’t know that the program is tied to the only person who’s ever made me feel like gravity worked differently.
She thinks it’s just… me being me while also helping out an old college buddy.
I’m not lying. Just not telling the whole truth.
We carry our plates to the living room and settle onto the couch, the TV already queued up. It’s the first League game of the season. I’ve watched the opener every year since I met Ollie.
It started as a joke. Then a habit. Then a tradition I never broke, even after everything else did.
Rosa curls her feet under her, fork poised. “You still do this every year?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
She glances at me sideways. “Because of your friend.”
Ollie. She knows that much. Knows we were close. Knows we stopped talking when I went into rehab.
Rehab. God.
The word still tastes like metal. I’d been spiraling long before anyone admitted it. Tour pressure. Fame. Access to anything that could make the noise in my head go quiet for five minutes.
Then Ollie left and the bottom fell out. I remember the morning it cracked open—the moment I couldn’t pretend anymore.
After he left, I’d stumbled into the bathroom and thrown up until my throat burned, thinking about what he’d told me about the woman’s hands on me while also freaking the fuck out, terrified and humiliated with the possibility that it hadn’t been the first time and I hadn’t known.
I’d stared at my face in the mirror and not recognized the guy looking back. That’s when I knew something had to give.
Rehab was hell.
I’d been stripped down to nothing. There’d been no stage, no persona, and no hiding. Just me and a broken heart and a brain that didn’t know how to exist without chaos.
I hated Ollie for leaving. I still do, some days. But I also know that if he hadn’t, if I hadn’t broken that hard, I might not be here. I might not have stopped in time.
Rosa reaches over and squeezes my knee. “You did the work,” she says, knowing exactly where my mind went.
I nod. It wasn’t pretty. It still isn’t. Some days sobriety feels like walking a tightrope over old habits and old pain.
But I’m here, and I’m alive. And a couple of months back, I gave ten million dollars to a program that might keep some kid from growing up with the kind of fear I learned to swallow.
Maybe that’s something.
The commentators shift gears, voices rising with excitement as the teams take the court.
Rosa glances at me. “You good?”
No.
“Yes,” I say anyway. Because the game is starting and so is the ache.
The arena comes alive in a wash of sound and color.
Crowd noise rolls through the speakers, that familiar rising hum that always makes my pulse spike like my body recognizes it before my brain does.
Lights sweep across the court. Jerseys flash.
The commentators lean into their voices like this moment matters.
It does. It always has.
Rosa nudges my knee with her foot. “You’re quiet.”
“I’m watching.”
She snorts. “You always watch like it’s church.”
I don’t correct her. This has always been a kind of ritual.
One I never told Ollie about because it felt too intimate to admit.
But even after everything, even after eight years of distance and silence and hurt, I still tune in.
Still sit on whatever couch I happen to have and watch him play like the world narrows down to hardwood and movement.
The broadcast cuts to player introductions, and there he is. Ollie Marshall. Captain.
His name booms through the arena, the crowd surging to its feet. The camera catches him mid-stride, jaw set, eyes focused, that familiar calm intensity settling over his face like armor.
My heart misfires. Not a flutter. Not a fond ache. A full-body jolt, like someone plugged me into an outlet.
I exhale slowly through my nose, grounding myself the way I learned in therapy. Name five things you can see. Four you can feel. Three you can hear.
I can see Ollie on the screen. I can feel the couch under my hands. I can hear Rosa’s fork scraping lightly against her plate.
Still—it doesn’t help.
“Wow,” Rosa says, impressed. “He looks good.”
I swallow. “He always does.”
She shoots me a look. “You’re biased.”
“Objectively,” I reply, “he’s ridiculous.”
She hums, watching the screen. “Captain again?”
“Yeah.”
There’s pride there. I don’t fight it. I don’t even try to bury it.
I was proud the first time they gave him the armband. Proud in a way that made my chest hurt because I wasn’t supposed to feel that way about someone who wasn’t mine anymore.
The game tips off.
Ollie moves like he always has—decisive, controlled, like the court is a map he memorized years ago.
He calls plays with subtle gestures, voice cutting through the noise when needed.
He drives, pivots, passes with precision that looks effortless until you understand how much work it takes to make it look that way.
“He’s on fire,” Rosa says midway through the first quarter.
“Mm,” I murmur.
I follow every movement without meaning to. The way he sets his feet. The way he scans the court before committing. The way he absorbs contact and keeps going like pain is just another variable to manage.
It makes my throat thicken, because I know how much that body has taken over the years. I also know how stubborn he is, and that’s because I know him, even after all this time.
The commentators gush about leadership, experience, longevity. About how Marshall has become the spine of the team, how the locker room revolves around him. I feel that old familiar mix of pride and grief twist together in my chest.