18. RAFE
RAFE
Afew nights after our Dance Kitchen extravaganza, which seems like a fever dream whenever I recall it, I find myself unable to sleep.
Images of Diana trespass through my restless mind. I see her dancing on that island, her skirt spinning out, her blonde hair flying every direction as she played air guitar. She’s an enthusiastic performer; magnetic to watch.
Dancing on that island with her might be the most fun I’ve had in far too long.
I sit up in bed and throw back the covers. I don’t normally have trouble sleeping, but for some reason I can’t quite pin down, I’m unsettled tonight.
Pulling on a t-shirt, I wander to the kitchen, intending to get myself a drink. But when I reach the doorway, I’m greeted by the sight of Diana sitting at the island, her face lit up by the blue screen of her laptop.
Her hair is tied up in her signature messy bun, and she’s wearing headphones and one of her oversized sweatshirts. I like her this way, without the artifice of fancy clothes or makeup. But she looks tired. Has she even been to bed? She doesn’t glance up, so I can only assume she can’t hear me.
I wait, watching her, giving her a moment to realise I’m here, but she’s too absorbed in whatever she’s doing. Her eyes are focused, her eyebrows tugged together, and she’s chewing on her bottom lip the way she does when she’s lacking certainty about something.
Finally sensing me, she quickly pulls her headphones down, letting them hang around the back of her neck.
“Oh. Hi. Am I—” She cuts herself off as she looks beyond me, searching for something, or someone, pushing her stool away from the island like she’s getting ready to leave if I have company.
The idea she thinks I might not be alone makes me uneasy.
Her cheeks take on a pinkish tinge, visible even in the moonlit kitchen. “Shall I go?”
“No,” I say, not wanting her to feel uncomfortable and definitely not wanting her to leave. “You’re fine. Stay as you are.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” she says.
“Me neither.” I grab a water glass from the cabinet and hold it up. “You want one?”
“Oh, yes, please.”
I fill two glasses with iced water from the fridge, and when I hand one to Diana, her fingertips overlap mine for a second. An electric charge runs up my arm, spinning through my body.
“Thanks,” she whispers, taking the glass and placing it beside her laptop.
“You’re working?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Can I help?”
“Now? You already helped me earlier today,” she says, referring to the session we did when I came home, going over her projections and brainstorming ways she can bring in income quickly.
“I can’t sleep, so I’ll either be putting on the TV next door and watching some mind-numbing crap, or I can help you in here.”
“Sounds like a no-brainer,” she says, tapping the stool next to her.
I sit and stare at her screen. “What on earth are you watching?”
She has a video open, paused on a couple embracing. The man is lifting the woman onto the kitchen surface, her legs hooked around his hips. They look like they’re about to go at it by the sink.
“Oh, it’s a trend. Look.” She rewinds the video and unplugs her headphones so I can hear the music. I don’t recognise the song, but the lyrics are suggestive to say the least.
“Here, in the first clip, she’s reading her book,” Diana explains, and the video shows a woman in her pyjamas, reading in the kitchen.
“And then she falls into the book, as such. We see what she’s thinking.
What she’s imagining.” At this point, the image shifts, and the man appears as if from nowhere, hiking the woman onto the kitchen counter.
She throws her head back in ecstasy. The book she was holding is nowhere to be seen.
The transition is seamless, and after a second or two of this passionate embrace, the video reverts to the woman in her pyjamas again, alone, holding her book, looking confused but delighted.
I don’t watch this type of thing, and I have no idea what to make of it.
“It’s depicting the fantasy of reading a romance book. We’re all slopping about in our pyjamas when we’re reading the book, but our mind is there.” She pauses on the embrace and points at it. “I love this trend. It’s romantic and sexy and…” She glances at me and stops talking to clear her throat.
“Anyway, I’d do it if I could,” she continues, “because if you make it slick, the views on these are huge at the moment. It would really expand my audience.” She sighs. “But I can’t because I don’t have a man to play the part for me.”
She minimises the screen, and I’m acutely aware that I’m a man, sitting right beside her. It would be rude to ignore that fact.
“I’ll do it for you,” I offer before I’ve thought it through.
She releases a gasp that sounds both shocked and amused. “That’s not why I showed it to you. If I wanted you to do it, I would have asked directly.”
“Would you?” I nod at the screen. “Really?”
She rolls her lips, that blush creeping into her cheeks again, not looking at me when she says, “Maybe.”
Her embarrassment is disarming, but I don’t want to fixate on it.
Can’t afford to read into it. “I’m awake.
You’re awake. We might as well do something useful with the time.
I’d hate your enthusiasm to be stymied because you’re short-staffed when I’m sitting right here, perfectly capable of helping you. ”
She turns to face me fully, leaning her elbow on the island and staring at me like she can’t believe what I’ve just said.
“You’re really offering to do this? You’d lift me up on the kitchen counter and pretend to make out with me?
” She laughs softly at the suggestion. “You must be truly sleep deprived.”
I will myself to stop talking, or at least admit that, yes, I’m tired and woozy, and that maybe I’m not making the best choices, but instead, I say, “I’d have to stipulate that you can’t see my face in the video, though.”
“What if Lizzie sees it? She’d know what we’d done straight away.”
I offer a lazy half-shrug. “We’ll tell her I was helping you with content creation. Which would be the truth. It’s not like I haven’t done it before.”
“You only watched before,” she corrects. “You’re more of a spreadsheets kinda guy.”
“Well, maybe I want in on the action.”
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I wonder if I am flirting.
She smiles, shaking her head as she snaps her laptop closed. “Okay. If you’re serious about this, then I need you to put on a shirt and trousers. You don’t look like the fantasy of the ideal man in your t-shirt and boxers.”
I frown, pretending to be offended. “I’ll be sure to wear a suit to bed in future.”
“You do that,” she agrees, seemingly amused. She glances at my bare feet. “And put your socks and shoes on, please.”
I wriggle my toes, which strikes me as a damn stupid thing to do. “I thought you liked my feet.”
Voicing that aloud was even more stupid. This woman turns me into an idiot. But she did keep staring at them when we danced on the island.
Maybe she was staring because she hates my feet. Maybe she thinks they’re monstrous.
I’m never removing my socks again, ever.
She throws her head back and laughs. The sound is so joyous that it soothes my awkwardness.
Until this moment, we’ve been talking in hushed voices, as if we’re sneaking around or in danger of waking Lizzie, but the walls are so thick in this place, and her room is all the way at the other end of the hall, that there’s no chance of that.
I can allow Diana to laugh without a reprimand, and I don’t want to stifle the sound.
“Your feet are fine,” she says when she’s collected herself, sounding more professional now. “But I don’t need them for this. Meet me back here in two minutes.”
Two minutes later, I’m wearing a shirt, suit pants, black dress socks, and leather shoes in the middle of the night, questioning my every decision, when I see Diana wearing a red silk dress with a slit up one side, allowing a glimpse of thigh that I’m struggling not to look at.
A pair of red stiletto heels completes her costume.
She’s completely transformed herself, and she’s strutting about the kitchen as if it’s no big deal that she looks like temptation wrapped in silk.
“Might as well get some use out of these clothes you bought,” she says, noticing me staring as she sets up a tripod and fixes her phone to it.
“I only need you for the middle section. The rest I can do by myself. So, if I lean back against the counter here.” She moves away from the camera until she’s in shot and tilts back against a strip of marble countertop.
The moonlight filtering through the windows casts shadows over her cheekbones and glints off her hair.
Her skin looks opalescent, as if she’s some kind of nighttime goddess. The effect is mesmerising.
“This is what the fantasy woman looks like, eh?” I ask, my mind hazy as my mouth forms words without my permission.
Diana pushes off the counter, frowning. “That’s the idea. Are you concentrating, or do you need to take a power nap?”
I straighten my shoulders. “I’m listening.”
“Good. So, you lift me, just like the video I showed you. It has to look…” She twists her hand in the air. “Passionate.”
“Passionate,” I repeat, sounding like a robot; like I don’t even know what passion is.
“Yes.”
“Do we need an intimacy co-ordinator for this?” I query, only half-joking.
“No. You have permission to grab me. I trust you.” I swell with pride at the comment, while simultaneously not sure if I deserve it. My thoughts about her are far from innocent. “And if you don’t want anyone to see your face, you’ll have to keep it angled away from the phone.”
“Sure. Do you need to turn the lights on?”
“Nah. The moonlight is perfect. I’ll turn the lights on for my solo scenes and splice this late night fantasy between the two.”