Chapter 16Rafe
Chapter 16
Rafe
“T hat’s harsh, man!”
I’d called Mateo on his bullshit, and he had the nerve to act all offended.
We’d been celebrating our win at the local pub, Hair of the Dog, and the server was clearing the table of empty glasses, pitchers and pizza pans.
Most of the guys had already left after a round of fist bumps and shoulder claps. I’d waited until it was just Mateo and Jean-Luc still sitting there to start my sham rant. I had my reasons, and I didn’t want the rest of the soccer team listening in.
Nice guys, but this was about Rose. So, discretion required.
“Yeah, Mateo, you pulled a con on me.” I scoffed. “You told me it was an over-forty rec team. You claimed you only needed me for a sub. You said there were a couple of matches left in the season. Shoulda known I was being bullshitted.”
Turned out it was an over-thirty team, which I should’ve copped to since Mateo was in his early thirties. Plus, there were two guys out for the rest of the season from various injuries, so they needed more than a sub to fill out the team. And I would be here in Portland just long enough for the remaining five—count ’em, five—matches before the rec league moved indoors for the winter.
Earlier this evening, over at Dogwood Park, I’d been on the pitch most of each forty-five-minute period—plus the stoppage time. Thank fuck I was in decent shape and had some fast footwork for midfield.
In the sandbox, we’d played pickup games with other units and the local kids. I’d always been a runner—needed to be in times past—and still ran four, five miles every morning. These days, I hefted coffee bean bags—one hundred and fifty pounds at a crack—for a living.
Still. I was going to take advantage of the fact that Mateo, aka “the bullshitter,” owed me.
“So, brother, I’m going to need a favor in return,” I informed him.
Mateo raised his eyebrows, and I could hear Jean-Luc huff out a laugh on the other side of me. Maybe he knew where this was going.
I wanted to give Rose a getaway. When we were picking up the pumpkins this morning, she’d let drop that she hadn’t taken a fun trip for ages, what with her mom sick, Finn busy with school and, of course, operating the café.
Not complaining, not her style. She was just remembering when she and her parents used to take Finn to pumpkin patches and petting zoos in the countryside outside Portland.
I figured Rose was due for a day off, or at least, part of one. And I had a selfish reason for taking her on an outing. We’d have more time together—more time alone together, if we didn’t count the dogs.
“Here’s the thing,” I continued. “One day soon, while the weather is still good at the beach, I want to take Rose for a day trip. The only way that’s gonna happen is if you take her early shift so we can get on the road first thing in the morning.
“I’ll get us back by early evening so we can relieve you and close up. But I have to present this to her as a done deal. Otherwise, she’ll never go for it.”
Mateo got a big shit-eating grin on his face and said, “No worries, man. Take Rose out for the whole day—I’ll cover it.”
At the same time, Jean-Luc smirked and said, “ Present it to her? You sound like you’re proposing a business deal, not asking her on a date.”
Fuck. Was that what I was doing?
Well, yeah, maybe. But the idea of “dating” when you were in your thirties or forties was bizarre—like the terms “boyfriend” and “girlfriend.” So “dating” didn’t begin to describe my irresistible desire to make Rose’s life better.
My longing didn’t stop there. I craved finding out more about her, craved getting closer to her.
Was that fair to Rose? Was I being selfish in wanting more with a woman for the first time in my life—given who I was and where I’d come from? Was that fair given that my plans hadn’t changed—get in, get the job done, get out and on to the next?
So, no, not fair to her. But, yeah, irresistible to me. And did that make me a bastard for wanting Rose, even in the short-term?
Too late. I already was.
I shook my head at Jean-Luc, nodded my thanks to Mateo and tossed some bills on the table. Their laughter followed me out the door.
The fuckers knew I was hurrying to go on my nightly walk with Rose.
Rose was laughing so hard she was in danger of choking on her dad’s Irish whiskey…or snorting it out her nose.
I sat my tumbler on the coffee table and was reaching for her to somehow help when I stopped. Maybe she’d forgiven me for overstepping earlier today.
I was okay with Rose laughing at me. In fact, that was my new fucking mission in life, since she seemed to be so serious or sad or just plain swamped most of the time.
I’d gotten an entirely different reaction this afternoon when I’d announced—her word, not mine—that I was taking her and the dogs to the beach next week. She’d been pissed. To make it worse, it’d been obvious that Mateo was in on the scheme—again, her word, not mine—to cover her entire day off.
I should’ve listened to Jean-Luc.
In the army, being direct was a good thing. Being a man of few words was good too. In the interests of time and lives, you often needed to give or receive orders without a lot of explanation. Apparently, being direct was not so good in civilian life. And especially not with the woman you wanted to make happy or, even better, laugh.
Could an old dog learn new tricks?
Luckily, I’d regrouped and turned my almost-order into an invitation.
Please join me on a trip to the beach. It’ll be good to go while the weather’s still warm and sunny. Pirate and Princess will get a chance to run and chase seagulls. We can take off our shoes and walk along the shoreline. Bet we can even find some seafood for lunch. Maybe even watch the sunset before heading back home. Please say you’ll come with me.
I was pretty sure I’d had her at “take off our shoes.” Plus, she’d looked a little glazed over at the fact that I could string so many words together. She’d smiled big-time and said, “Yes, I’d love to go to the beach with you. Thank you, Rafe.”
She’d thanked Mateo again and again for taking on her shift and promised to do the same for him another time. She’d even jumped forward and hugged me—a little PDA that I didn’t mind—it’d been just Mateo and us in the roastery, after all.
Now it was Saturday evening, and she’d invited me in for a nightcap as a reward for walking the dogs so late. The Chocolate Lab had hosted live music, and I’d stuck around after working in the roastery to do closing with her.
Tucked in our respective corners on the couch, we’d been talking about funny dog names. I’d shared some crazy nicknames from my army days, including my own. Which set her off.
Thankfully, Rose got it together enough to stop laughing and gasp out, “Angel? Angel! I thought Rafe was your nickname in the army, short for your full name. How did they come up with Angel? Oh!”
The penny dropped.
“Yeah, my mother named me after the archangel St. Raphael,” I shared. “She’d been raised Catholic, I think, and maybe it brought comfort to her, some connection to her faith. We never went to church.”
Rose stilled for a moment and asked, “When did you shorten it to Rafe?”
“Oh, Mamma did when I started first grade in public school. She figured out that Raphael wasn’t going to work in our inner-city Oakland neighborhood. Bullying was alive and well even back then. ‘Rafe’ served me well through high school.”
And during my teenage gang years, too, which I wasn’t going to share with Rose.
“Smart woman, your mom.” Rose smiled while looking into my eyes.
“Yeah, she was,” I said shortly and moved on. “I enlisted in the army when I was eighteen and had to use my full legal name. On the first day of basic training, the drill sergeant took one look at my tough mug and reckoned I was the ugliest angel he’d ever seen. The name stuck for twenty years until I got out.”
“Wish I could’ve seen you at that age. Do you have any photos from back then? Snapshots with your buddies or maybe your military ID?”
“Nope, thank fuck. You get a new ID each time you advance in rank. And I was issued a final ID card with a current photo when I got out.”
“Huh. Not sentimental, are you?”
“Nope, not about my history.” I almost said, not with my history.
Rose was like a terrier. Once she got ahold of something, she wouldn’t let it go.
“I bet you looked like your mom. Except for the stubble, of course.” She reached over Princess, who was curled up on the couch between us, to rub the back of her right hand lightly along my jawline. “Oh. And, I guess, the scar.”
She paused and frowned, like she was puzzled, and drew back. I didn’t volunteer anything, didn’t want to tell her anything about that part of my life.
Instead, she asked the unexpected. “Do you have any pictures of her?”
I stayed frozen in my corner. I hadn’t anticipated her sudden touch—she hadn’t said a thing about the old knife scar until now. But the scars inside? Did I want her to know about those, about what’d happened to my mamma and me?
It was only fair if I expected to learn more about what’d happened to her.
“Nope. No photos. Mamma didn’t wake up one morning—I couldn’t wake her up, no matter what I did. I hugged her and held on to her, thinking maybe she’d gotten too cold overnight.”
I’ll never forget rubbing her cheeks—they were like the ice cubes in our freezer.
“Nothing I tried worked. I piled on blankets from my bed. I turned up the heat as high as it would go. I was responsible for her, and I couldn’t get her to wake up.”
“Rafe, you were only a little boy!”
“No, Rose. I was responsible for my mamma, and I let her down.”
I sucked in an unsteady breath. Why was this so hard to tell?
“I finally got scared enough to run to the next apartment. The neighbor lady called 911, and they came. There was nothing they could do either—she was already gone. She’d been sick a lot, but we didn’t have the money for a doctor or medicine. Barely had enough for food.”
Rose let out a pained ohhh , but I shook my head and plowed on.
“When I couldn’t give them any family to contact, the medics took Mamma away in an ambulance. The neighbor stayed with me and called my school. I found out later the school counselor called Child Protective Services to say I was alone. Later that same day, one of their people showed up at the apartment. She put my clothes in a plastic garbage bag and took me to a temporary foster home. I guess the landlord sold or dumped the rest of our stuff.”
Rose’s eyes were glistening, and I knew what she was going to say.
“Why were you so on your own? I get that your father wasn’t around. But what about your grandparents? On either side?”
So, I gave her the full story. At least, the beginning of the story. I’d leave the darker details of my years in foster care, gang activities and war zones until later. Or never.
“When I was about six, I started asking Mamma where my dad was. Why I didn’t have a dad like the other kids at school. She played it cool—although it must’ve hurt. She said he’d loved me very much but had passed away when I was a baby. She also said all my grandparents lived far away and that we couldn’t afford to visit each other. She even mentioned a younger brother—I got the sense he was still in middle school—my uncle, that I might get to meet someday.
“This all made sense when I was little. But I figured things out later. My mother must have gotten pregnant when she was young—so innocent and na?ve. She probably thought she was in love, and then the guy took off on her. Her family was Catholic, so abortion was not in the cards. They probably wanted her to put me up for adoption. She must’ve refused, and they disowned her, cut off all ties. It’s as cold as it sounds.”
Rose got up on her knees, pushed Princess off the couch and scooted up to my side. She stroked my jaw again, gently, and laid her fingers on my lips to silence me. She looked into my eyes for a moment and leaned in to wrap her arms tightly around my shoulders and put her cheek on my chest.
We sat there, close like that, quiet like that, for some time.