CHAPTER FOURTEEN
After everything, Raina had been too nervous to look at Tom Branimir’s reaction to her dress.
So afraid of seeing indifference, she’d kept her eyes above everyone’s heads.
She’d got away with it; people were smiling and socializing.
That was the benefit of a busy party – people took responsibility for their own fun.
It wasn’t a dinner party, where the host had to make sure that everyone was being entertained and getting enough attention paid to them.
Raina could float and mingle, knowing that people were having a good time without her.
‘Rai?’
She turned to see Matt Fletcher hovering by the living-room door.
‘Hey, you,’ she said. ‘You all right?’
She was still dubious about his reasons for attending. He’d brought Nick with him, because of course he had. Nick was something of a keyboard warrior – very brave and feisty in text messages. In person, he was too timid to ask the waiter for more tap water.
Matt would always choose his friends over Raina.
At first, Raina had insisted that this was the healthy thing to do.
Friends outside of a relationship were essential, and Pepper certainly took her role as ‘the one friend your boyfriend cannot stand’ very seriously.
However, Matt enjoyed keeping Raina separate from his friends.
He would allow them to meet when Raina would graciously invite everyone to dinner.
They would eat the food she’d cooked while ignoring her completely, laughing at inside jokes with Matt and regressing back to their late teens together while Raina sat in silence, wondering how to join a conversation that was designed like a maze of thorns to keep newcomers out.
Nick was always the last to leave each dinner, and Matt would collapse into bed directly after.
Dishes would sit in the sink and Raina would try to coax a little quality time out of her boyfriend.
He would prod and grasp at her, but if she was in need of gentle words instead of rushed, sloppy sex, he would roll over and fall asleep with such efficiency, it made Raina slightly envious.
She would lie awake for hours, wondering if the numbness she felt after nights like that was a normal part of a relationship.
Now, in hindsight, Raina could see his selfishness and her own denial. Staying for potential instead of reality. As she looked at Matt’s dark circles and some unwashed sleep sand in the corner of his eye, she found it curious.
He obviously wasn’t sleeping so soundly these days.
‘I’m all right,’ he said. Then, after glancing around, ‘Not great, though. Missing you, Rai.’
Raina felt mild embarrassment at his inability to wait until after the candles had been blown out before making her feel guilty. She decided a swift and brutal change of subject would be the wisest choice, and if he ignored it, a change of conversation partner. ‘How’s work?’
They’d known each other long enough for him to recognize what she was doing. He allowed it. ‘It’s fine. A bit boring, but fine.’
‘Okay, great. Excuse me.’ She cast a cursory glance towards Nick as she dismissed them both.
She turned and made her way to the kitchen, smiling tightly at guests as she did.
Through the wall, she could almost feel the living room vibrating with singing and dancing, as most of the party had already migrated through there.
She sipped cold water from the fridge and looked at the kitchen island. A Liberty bag and the most beautiful bouquet of blue hydrangeas were sat right on the edge. She hadn’t asked for gifts and most people had obviously received that memo.
Except this person.
She bent her head to smell the flowers and closed her eyes at the sweet aroma. She opened a cupboard to retrieve the famous butt vase, placing it on the table and pouring the rest of her water inside. She was arranging the beautiful blue flowers when a figure walked into the room.
They looked at one another while she added a little more water into the vase.
‘They’re beautiful,’ Raina finally said to him. ‘Just stunning.’
Tom Branimir nodded. ‘Happy birthday for tomorrow.’
‘Thank you.’
Maybe it was the London heat. That early summer heat that always made the country fall to its knees in amazement and despair.
Maybe it was the cool marble beneath her fingers or the scent of the flowers.
Maybe it was the serene contentedness that comes when, upon seeing an ex, you realize that everything worked out for the better, that your career means more to you than what you used to have.
Your community and the role you play inside of it fills that empty space more completely than being able to tell people you’re not single.
Maybe it was just his rolled-up sleeves and his mess of black hair.
Whatever it was, Raina really wanted to kiss Tom Branimir. It felt like a physical ache.
She quickly turned her face away, scooping up the vase and moving it to a countertop.
She was so used to being alone. Especially during quiet moments at a party.
No one ever came looking for her. She’d always been at peace with that.
‘I need regular breaks from my own party,’ she heard herself say, her voice a mix of self-deprecation and apology.
He was watching her, his stare so unaffected by her attempts at levity. He moved closer, and for a moment Raina really thought he might close the space between them. Instead, he touched one hand to the large purple bag. ‘I brought you this as well.’
Raina slipped the present out of its packaging, gently ripping the tissue paper to reveal a large cushion.
‘Oh, my God!’
She laughed, a full-throated, diaphragm-pinching laugh at the sight of the red dinosaur on the tasselled blue velvet pillow. A T-rex that seemed to grin at her in a camp, knowing way.
‘This is amazing,’ she gasped, her eyes shooting up to meet his. ‘It’s so . . . brilliantly weird.’
He was smiling, his eyes bright with mischief, and it made Raina laugh even harder. His choice of flowers felt intimate and personal, but this cushion was worryingly close to perfect. A present choice that suggested Tom Branimir might truly see through her haze.
‘I thought a woman who liked vases shaped like an arse would also like dinosaur cushions,’ he said, his voice deep and assured, sending sparks through Raina.
‘I love it,’ she replied. She hugged it against her stomach. ‘Thank you.’
In her high heels, she was almost as tall as him. He was close enough for her nose to be level with his chin. He moved even nearer, the cushion between their two torsos acting like a stylish, Cretaceous chaperone.
A part of Raina had expected him to stay away. A part of her had anticipated the rejection, even prepared for it. Now he was in front of her, she wondered if it was just another day in his ever-moving, fluid office. She was his assignment and perhaps he wanted to catch her off-guard.
She remembered her vow to tell him the story was off. But no words came.
‘Why did you come?’
He answered without any hesitation. ‘Because you asked me to. Because you’re here.’ He took a breath and then added, ‘Because I want to matter to you.’
She dropped the cushion. It gently hit the tiles beneath their feet and neither of them took any notice. Raina reached up a hand to touch the sharp, spiked stubble on his well-defined face. All hard lines where hers were soft.
Matt had always refused to shave his beard, and Raina had secretly hated it. She would never tell another person how to live or what their body should look like, but inside she’d loathed it.
Tom Branimir was shaved to perfection.
‘Raina, people are asking for you.’
Raina leapt away at the sound of another voice in the room. Tom didn’t move an inch. She bent down to retrieve the cushion, returning it to its packaging. Solana stood in the doorway with an expectant smile, clearly oblivious to what she’d almost walked in on.
‘Coming,’ Raina said hoarsely.
She brushed by Tom but he caught her hand in his for a split second, gently rubbing her palm with his thumb before letting her go again.
She staggered out of the room, smiling at Solana as she passed by.
Once she was gone, Tom’s shoulders dropped. He exhaled bitterly.
‘Is that a cushion?’ Solana demanded, grabbing the large velvet object from the island.
‘Yes,’ Tom said, looking at the door and wondering whether he should leave into the night or march into that living room next door and insist he and Raina finish whatever they’d almost started. ‘I thought she’d like it.’
‘She loves Liberty.’
‘I know.’
They both had soft undercurrents of ownership in their voices. Tom knew she had more right than he did, but he couldn’t help it. The momentary dropping of Raina’s mask, that brief allowance, it had given him too much perilous hope.
‘If you need any background on Raina for your article, I’m your girl,’ Solana said buoyantly. ‘I know it all. She picks at her lips, she hates sunscreen, she won’t wear anything with buttons. I know her better than anyone.’
Tom carefully logged away those little breadcrumbs in his memory. ‘Interesting.’
‘Don’t worry if she seems a little distant today,’ Solana went on. ‘We had lunch with the parents, before driving back here. And I’m being generous with the word “lunch”.’
Tom leaned on the bar, watching her with interest. A neurological pen swept across an invisible page, noting down everything this younger sister was willingly choosing to divulge. A writer always took notes, even if no story was in sight. Pepper Cousins had been right about that. ‘Why?’
‘Our mum has policed our food since we could crawl. Raina especially. She went from strong to curvy, like, overnight, as a teenager, and Mum never got over it.’
Tom could see that Solana was still young for her age. She was pouring out all of this information as a way to impress him, and if he were being gentlemanly, he would ask her to stop. ‘Raina looks perfect.’
‘That’s what I always say, but Mum always needed us skinny. We left the house today before she could get too deep into her cups and start lecturing us about portion control.’
‘An alcoholic?’
Solana was still playing at being an adult as she considered the question. ‘High-functioning, maybe. But don’t put that in – Raina hates functioning labels.’
‘Why did Raina start the podcast?’
There was an edge of desperation to the question.
It was the one he kept returning to, and while Solana wasn’t the person he wanted answers from, he would take any clues he could get.
His need to know for a story, and his need to know for his own sanity, had started to blur and blend together.
It was harder than ever to keep things separate.
She considered it. ‘I don’t think Raina ever thought she would have a career.
I mean, that’s pretty much what all the teachers at our school told her.
This was back when people really peddled the whole “male brain” theory, in regards to neurodivergent people.
I think Raina always felt like this outsider.
She never talked about it, not even to me. ’
Tom made a noise to signal that he was listening intently, still mentally scribbling down her words.
‘She hid being neurodivergent for so long, and I think after breaking up with Matt, and getting fired from some crummy office job because she couldn’t keep up with the politics, she got tired of it.
Tired of pretending. So, she created a venting space.
That’s my theory, though. I’ve never asked her.
She doesn’t talk much about all of that to family. ’
Perhaps because you are happily relaying all of it to me, Tom thought.
‘My sister’s obsessed with covering up the cracks,’ Solana added, her voice becoming a little despondent.
‘I hope you’ve observed that. She’s too good.
Too patient. To be honest, she should have told you to fuck off with this shadowing thing a long time ago.
But she sees the sad little child in everyone.
It’s what’s always got her into trouble. ’
Tom frowned. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means, I like you. I like your writing. I like your work. But you can’t mess this up.
You can’t tell lies or misrepresent her.
Because she’ll believe you. If you make up some devilish version of Raina to sell papers, not only will your readers take your word for it, Raina will, too.
She’s been told she’s “less than” her whole life; it doesn’t take a lot to knock that house of cards down.
So, don’t do it. I really won’t like you any more, if you do. ’
‘I’m not writing about her any more.’
‘Good.’
She smiled sweetly, a little nervously, as though her speech had taken all of the courage out of her and now she was empty. She slipped out of the kitchen, returning to the main throb of the party and leaving Tom alone with his inner notes.