Epilogue
Fin Diesel lay sprawled on the rug, mortarboard askew beside Octavian, the orange octopus.
Bea had staged them on the armchair earlier to send Claire photographic proof that her oversized graduation shark plush was being “successfully integrated into family life,” and not neglected in favor of his flashier sibling.
Bea picked them up and returned them to their spot on the seat.
Rafael’s leather notebook rested on the coffee table beside an unfinished glass of sparkling water. She picked it up to stack it with the others.
Something slipped free. A small square of cardboard drifted to the floor. She crouched and picked it up. It was a valet stub from a Northgate restaurant.
She turned it over. Blue ink. Slashing, unmistakable. His handwriting.
Dated just over a year ago.
She isn’t scared of me anymore
Her breathing slowed. Who was she? Bea opened the notebook. Inside, flattened between the pages, were dozens of similar ticket stubs, each one marked in the same hand. She lowered herself to the couch.
The ones on top were the oldest, nearly four years ago. When she first arrived in Northgate.
Met a small girl who bites back. She called me a shark.
Her mouth curved. She reached for another.
She studies me like I’m dangerous. And only looks when she thinks I’m not watching.
Heat rose faintly beneath her skin. At the end of that year:
She still doesn’t know the gym is mine.
There was a pile from three years ago:
She trusted me today.
He wouldn’t dance with her. Idiot.
She didn’t like my date. She doesn’t know why it bothers her. I do.
She’s staying.
That last one, just two short words, hit deep.
Bea couldn’t stop herself—she read them all. It wasn’t a diary. It was documentation. Their journey, preserved in tiny scraps of cardboard.
She found the stack that had been scrawled in the last year:
She fits in my hands.
She thinks she wants to be friends.
She wants her parents to like me.
She picked up the final one. She recognized the date, even the valet. It was from the basketball game they’d taken the boys to, right before Nico left for the military.
I want it all with her. The things she’s imagined. And what she hasn’t dared to.
Bea stared at it. She lowered the journal slowly into her lap, her pulse heavy behind her ribs.
As if summoned, she heard a door close distantly. Rafael padded into the room, shirtless and carrying the faint scent of soap. He stopped when he saw what she held.
“I was just trying to tidy,” she explained, looking up.
He moved forward and sat beside her. “Did you read them?”
She nodded. “I’m sorry if I wasn’t meant to.”
“I’m not ashamed of them.”
She searched his eyes. Then lifted the last stub toward him. Rafael glanced at it, then back at her.
“The first time you asked me out, you promised you’d ‘behave.’” She tilted her head. “Was that because you thought I was soft?”
He reached for her waist and pulled her into his lap. “At the time, you were.”
Bea studied his face. “And now?”
His thumbs traced both sides of her ribcage. “Now you’re dangerous.”
Bea slid her fingers into his hair. “Which means,” she said softly, “you can stop holding back.”