16. RAFE
RAFE
I’ve barely left the room when footsteps follow me.
“Dad,” Lizzie stage-whispers. “Are you angry?”
I turn, jaw clenched, and find my daughter staring at me, her hands clasped before her, looking much younger than her eighteen years. “I’m disappointed that you forgot.”
“I’m sorry, I—”
“And you shouldn’t have put me in that position in front of your friend.”
Lizzie’s mouth downturns, and her upper body slumps. “Diana’s great. You’ll probably have more fun with her than you would with me.”
I scratch my eyebrow, glancing away from my daughter. Henry’s still pestering me to take Melanie Castow out to win her over. He’s convinced that my intervention would get us the agency. And now here’s Lizzie, begging me to take her friend to the opera.
I don’t want to take Melanie Castow out. And I don’t want to take Diana out either. I don’t.
Do I?
If I don’t, why is there a buzz of excitement low in my stomach at the idea of spending the evening alone with her? Why does it feel like I’m being granted a wish I didn’t dare to ask for?
I haul my thoughts back in line. Enough. If I have to spend the evening with any woman who isn’t my daughter, I want to choose. I want to be in control of this, and I am not in control of how I feel about Diana.
Unfortunately, the only woman I want—that I’m allowed to want—is the woman from Delirium, and she might as well not exist, given that she never called and I’ll probably never see her again.
“Dad?” Lizzie’s voice crashes through my thoughts.
“I don’t mind taking Diana,” I reply, keeping my voice curt and hoping it sounds like I do mind, and that this is an imposition rather than a gift I would never have dared to seek out.
Lizzie claps, either not registering or choosing to ignore my feigned frustration. “Oh, yay. She’s a total babe. I promise.”
A babe.
The image of her in that pink dress, clutching her breasts like she was presenting them to me, her eyes all wide with surprise, strikes me like an electric shock, tingling through every part of my body exactly as it happened in real time.
I shake out my hands to discharge the sensation and shut down the thoughts before they progress further.
Diana Marchetti is not a woman I can afford to think about at all.
“Have a good time at your dinner,” I tell my daughter, and then I walk to my room to change.
Lizzie was right. Diana is pleasant company. More than pleasant. During the interval, I get us both a glass of champagne, and we stand by the bar in the cavernous hall, surrounded by people. We stand close enough that we can hear each other over the loud, excited chatter around us.
She’s always beautiful—a fact I can’t deny—but tonight she seems to glow.
Maybe it’s the lights, the excitement of a night out, the champagne.
Whatever it is, I want to soak her in like the atmosphere at a party I don’t want to leave.
Her pink-painted lips caress the edge of her champagne flute each time she takes a sip, and in spite of my efforts, my attention is drawn that way every time, wishing she might press her lips to mine and drink me instead.
It’s driving me crazy.
“Thank you so much for the clothes,” she says, glancing down at her dress. “You didn’t have to. I wasn’t expecting it and I didn’t mean to seem like I was begging for anything.”
“I didn’t think you were.”
She twists the fingers of her free hand into the fabric of her dress. “I’ll pay you back. How much was it?”
“Please, think nothing of it.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “If I don’t pay you back, I’ll be indebted to you forever.”
Her voice is husky, the words low and suggestive, and my body fizzes.
I tighten my grip on the stem of my champagne flute and force a laugh, hoping to discharge the sudden tension. “Really, you owe me nothing.”
I look away, trying to tune her out; detach my energy from hers, but I can’t.
There are hundreds of other people in the room, but my awareness is attuned to her and only her.
I don’t want to examine why, at least no more than I already have; I can’t allow myself to go there.
She’s my daughter’s best friend, for Christ’s sake. Why does that fact refuse to sink in?
“Can I ask you a question?” she says.
“Go ahead.” I’m eager for a distraction from my thoughts.
“What happened to Lizzie’s mum?”
I frown, surprised by the personal nature of her question, and unsure if I want to explain. “Lizzie didn’t tell you?”
“I don’t ask about people’s families,” she says, her voice ringing with a levity that strikes me as false. “I hate talking about mine, so I let people tell me things when and as they want. I guess Lizzie didn’t want to tell me, so I’m asking you. If you don’t mind.”
I take a sip of my drink, contemplating whether I do mind. Diana is waiting with such an open expression on her face that I can’t object. “She left after Lizzie was born.”
“Left? Just walked out?”
“Yes. We were teenagers.” I haven’t discussed Evangeline for years. And now that Lizzie’s eighteen, no one asks about her mother anymore. All our acquaintances know she’s never been in the picture.
Diana’s eyebrows rise. “So by the time you were my age—twenty-one,” she specifies when I give her a questioning look. “You—”
“Had a three-year-old daughter. Yes.”
“And her mum never visits?”
I shake my head. “No. She didn’t want to stay, and she’s never come back, so I can only assume she still feels that way. I don’t know where she is now, and quite honestly, I’m not sure I care anymore.”
Diana gapes at me. “And there’s never been… a stepmother?”
“No.” I pause, and Diana continues to watch me closely. Is she invested in this answer? Does she care whether or not I’m seeing someone? “They’re always evil. Didn’t you know?”
She breaks into a smile that takes my breath away. “You’re right. In books and movies. But not in real life.”
“Maybe not,” I say quietly. “But I haven’t found a good one.”
A tense silence swallows us.
“I’m so sorry,” Diana says. “That sounds really hard. I can’t imagine being left alone to raise a child.” She glances at the great domed roof over our heads before returning her gaze to mine, holding it a moment too long, and adding, “But I can’t imagine anyone wanting to leave you, either.”
I blink, my chest pinching. The words sound like a confession, but she hardly even knows me. How could they be anything more than a platitude? They can’t, I’m sure of it. But nonetheless, her soft, whispered words have me longing for something I can’t quite pinpoint.
“My parents stepped in,” I clarify. “We moved here when I was twelve, and I think they would have gone back to the States if Lizzie hadn’t been born, but they stayed and helped me raise her. I was never entirely alone.”
I don’t know how much more to share. It was difficult after Evangeline walked out, even when my mother was there almost every day to help.
My father too, when his work allowed. I dread to think how I would have coped without them, or what the impact on Lizzie might have been if they hadn’t been there.
I rarely allow myself to think about those days. I prefer to focus on the present than wallow in the past, but for some reason, perhaps because Diana is listening so attentively, I let it spill out.
“I don’t regret any of it. Lizzie changed my life for the better in every way.
I didn’t know what it was like to love someone with my whole being until I had a child.
I would do anything for her, just as my parents would have done anything for me.
I always had their support. I’m not sure I could have done it without them. ”
I know instantly that I’ve taken it too far; shared too much and spoken too candidly on a topic Diana can’t relate to. She withdraws, staring at the bubbles popping in her drink, her voice ringing with a subtle melancholy when she says, “That’s wonderful. Truly.”
An impulse to put my arms around her, draw her close, kiss the top of her head, and tell her I’ll support her, flits through my mind.
I do none of those things.
During the entire third act of the opera, Diana’s proximity elicits a strange array of sensations in me.
My body is alert in ways it hasn’t been since I met the woman at Delirium.
Every nerve ending has been brushed raw, and no matter how much I try to keep my focus on the stage, Diana absorbs most of it without even trying.
It doesn’t help that we’re the only people in the box, alone in a shadowed space, which only accentuates my discomfort.
As Madame Butterfly approaches the end, and the great climactic rendition of Un bel bi, vedremo resounds through the opera hall, she shifts beside me. Tears are rolling down her cheeks, her shoulders shaking.
I offer her my handkerchief, which she takes with a whispered thanks, dabbing her eyes and leaving black mascara smudges on the white fabric.
Most operas are tragic, but this isn’t a woman who’s slightly moved; this is one who’s having an emotional breakdown, and, if my assumption is correct, whose tears aren’t solely about the performance.
Lizzie’s told me enough about her to know she didn’t grow up in a happy home, and I can’t help but imagine Diana finding all her clothes destroyed; her books torn apart.
Her father must be a monster. The low ebb of anger thrums in my gut.
Frustrated, I adjust my position, and my hand brushes against her dress.
Before I can move away, she slides her fingers between my much larger ones.
I hadn’t intended to offer her my hand, but now that she’s holding it, I let her. She gives my palm a gentle squeeze, like she’s thanking me for the touch. With her other hand, she presses my handkerchief to her streaming eyes.
A strange heat flows through me, expanding internally like the filling of a balloon. I can’t explain it. Her pulse beats against mine and, as seconds turn to minutes, some inexplicable magic flows between us and her tears come under control.