1. March 23rd
Angie
Tonight feels like an end and a beginning. That might be the tequila turning me sentimental during Rafael’s housewarming party, but I don’t think it is. Because once again, Rafael Juan Dominico Jimenez is living in the same city as me.
The way it should be.
For the last eight years Raf has lived one hundred and fifty miles away in Washington DC, working as a financial controller most recently. That was until our other best friend, Cora, hired him at her architecture firm as her new Chief Financial Officer. If you would have told me twelve years ago, when we were raving in college, that my two best friends would be running a whole-ass company together, I would have told you to pass me whatever you were smoking. But people can change a lot in a decade.
Some things don’t though. Like how fine Raf looks in that white Henley, showing off his rich terracotta skin and bright, a-ton-of-money-went-into-this-mouth smile. Oh, and let’s not forget about those devilish dimples punctuating either side.
It’s like, we get it, you’re hot. Can you cover it up sometimes? It’s incredibly distracting as someone who is only supposed to be a best friend. Unfortunately for me, I made him become my friend at an innocently young age when we were simply two pudgy kids with less-than-ideal family dynamics. Well, that part was mostly me.
And sure, throughout our twenty-two year friendship, there have been heated moments where I thought…maybe. Maybe he felt the same unspoken spark that I have tried relentlessly to deny. But time and time again Raf has proved me wrong. He has stuck to his guns, continued the patterns, and perpetuated his no-romantic-commitment approach to dating.
Simply put: Rafael Jimenez is a slut.
Don’t get mad at me for using that term; he self-identifies as such. It works out for him. I know he’s upfront with his sexual partners, man or woman.
But for two best friends who, in a way raised each other, we could not be more different. While he’s sowing his wild oats, I’ve been looking for the real deal. This doesn’t mean I’m some virgin by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m thirty-one years old and I want a fucking husband. I’m not ashamed to admit that either. Not just any husband—I’m not that desperate.
What I want is someone to be obsessed with me the way I am about them. I want an all-consuming love bracketed by commitment. I want to laugh with someone about the dumbest, most cringe-worthy moments until we could pee ourselves, and then we’d laugh even harder from the sheer disgust. I want to go to the grocery store together, and he’d know that I like the expensive dill pickles you buy in the refrigerated section, not the green-dyed shelf-stable ones. And that he prefers the store-brand sandwich cookies over Oreos—you know, like a psycho. And I’d know he likes it when I write dirty things on sticky notes and leave them around the house to find.
Or…something like that.
That’s what I want and that’s not what Rafael has in him. Not that he is even remotely aware of my unrequited, soul-crushing love for him. Oops. I mean, super tiny, insignificant, barely a whisper of— now that I really think about it…is it even really…
“That’s our 1song, Angel!” my best friend booms his nickname for me over the salsa music. “Drink this and dance with me!” He hands me another shot of tequila as I swell with excitement. Holding limes in one hand, he already has salt stuck to the top between his index finger and thumb.
“Wait, I want salt too!” I giggle and try to step out of his way to head into the kitchen. But he stops me in my tracks and holds his hand to my mouth.
“Do it,” he dares, the salt taunting me.
Hell, I’m well past buzzed at this point, so without any hesitation, we cheers the way his family taught me all those years ago. “Pa’riba, pa’bajo, pa’centro, pa’dentro.” Our tequila shots travel from above our heads, down low, to the center of our chests, but before we throw them back, I do it.
I lick his strong hand.
Telling myself not to linger, I quickly remove my wet tongue from his warm skin, but his eyes don’t remove from mine. Furrowing his brows almost imperceptibly, he then lets out the smallest huff of laughter—like he can’t believe I actually did it. In the grand scheme of our friendship, we have performed far more sexually-inciting acts, both on purpose and by accident—all in the name of comedy, of course.
He licks over the remaining salt on his hand and my insides go tight.
But this—with his eyes boring into me—there’s a charged energy. More than what his housewarming party alone is providing.
I shake myself out of it and knock back the tequila as he does the same. Quickly handing me the lime, we both suck until the bitterness calms the surge. He promptly discards the shot glasses and rinds before making his way back to grab my hand and spin me out. He must have miscalculated my trajectory because he flings me right into our friends Cora and Jay, who are attempting to salsa dance as well.
“Sorry,” I giggle as Raf pulls me back into his orbit.
Jay laughs over the music. “Do you think more alcohol will make this dance easier?”
“Come on, babe, you got this,” Cora says to her boyfriend. Well, one of her boyfriends. She’s in the most beautiful polyamorous relationship with two men. I’m not talking beautiful in the sense that all three of them are gorgeous—which they are. I’m talking beautiful in the sense that their relationship and the love and support they have for each other is goals.
“You’re one of us now, Jay,” Rafael says as our feet find their practiced placement in combination with our swaying hips. “You can expect dancing at any Jimenez hang-out. It’s practically the law.”
“Is that how you know how to dance so well?” Jay asks Cora, moving his hands from their place at her lower back to her ass and grabbing tight.
“She learned from the best,” Raf says. And it’s true. Raf and I met Cora our freshman year of college. Within that first week of meeting her, he was teaching her the same way he taught me as kids.
I was over at the Jimenez-Webber house so often as a girl that I not only had a key, but his moms had a permanent spot at the dinner table for me. I required no invitation. For a girl with no mother figure, Ana and Christina fucking showed up to be exactly that.
Rafael pushes me away and pulls me back in as the muscle-memory takes over. “This one is my favorite.”
“This song?” I ask. “You say that about every one of our songs. There’s like four hundred of them at this point, Raf.”
That’s also true. We spent a large part of our childhood immersed in all kinds of music. Really, our entire relationship now that I think about it.
As a girl, I wanted nothing more than to find where I fit in. I bounced from group to group, club to club, tried on all kinds of potential friends and clothing styles to match; but nothing and no one ever stuck in those days—no one except Raf of course. He was always along for the ride. And any interest he had, I gladly wanted to explore too. Maybe this is my thing, I’d always think to myself when trying something new. The thirst young me had was real.
To this day, I still don’t think I ever found my thing. There’s nothing that’s mine.
What I have collected over the decades, however, is a smorgasbord of interests and the most eclectic (aka random-as-fuck) musical arsenal. A huge part of this passion of music should be credited to Raf’s bonus mom, Christina. She works for a music event production company that plans everything from small, intimate venues for independent musicians to huge arena-selling bands. As a perk, she got free tickets often. Free tickets that she used to take us to see live music of all kinds. Rock bands, orchestras, EDM shows, folk singers, pop stars—we saw them all.
And we had the fucking outfits to match the vibes too. Oh my god, the outfits—the pictures.
Pulling me back into his chest and the external conversation I should be participating in, Raf smiles down at me. “Four hundred? Is that it? I thought there were more. But no, that’s not what I meant. I meant this dress you’re wearing. It’s my favorite one.”
“Oh,” I smile as my stomach drops. “Old faithful here?” I tease. It’s a simple sleeveless yellow chiffon dress with a high halter neckline. The hem stops just above my knees, and the skirt flows and swishes so beautifully, it makes me feel like a little girl. It’s a great dress for dancing, but it’s honestly out of style at this point. I don’t make much money as a children’s counselor, so I rewear my clothes until they’re threadbare, not out-of-fashion. Let’s also add to the mix that I teeter between a plus-size eighteen and a twenty on any given day; so finding clothes that are both beautiful, fit, and make me feel good is the trifecta. This is a gold-standard dress in my opinion, even if it is nearly ten years old and Raf has seen me wear it dozens of times 2now.
“I like old faithful. It’s always looked good on you,” he says seriously.
“I think you’re drunk.”
“I’m not as drunk as your brothers…yet,” he says nodding over to my three younger brothers who look like they’re trying to convince Marco, Cora’s other boyfriend, to join their club rugby team.
Oh god…they’re trying to lift Jonah in the air like a line out. But the ceiling isn’t that high in the kitchen, and as Isaiah and Dane lift him from the knees, Jonah makes impact with the ceiling fan and—Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!—the blades smack him in the head and arms.
“Ah shit! Put me down!” he bellows with laughter as my other two idiot brothers drop him.
All three of them, plus Marco, are dying in a fit of giggles.
“How fucking embarrassing for you, bro,” Dane musters through the tears pooling in his eyes, like he wasn’t the one who lifted him.
“This is what I can expect if I join?” Marco asks, falling back against the wall and clutching his chest to catch his breath.
“More or less,” Raf yells over. “You won’t hit the ceiling, but you will make impact often.”
Raf and my brothers have been playing rugby together since high school. Well, since Raf and Isaiah were in high school. Raf and I are two years older than Isaiah, followed by Dane, four years younger, and Jonah, seven years younger. My sister Ivy is nine years younger than me, but she’s living in Guatemala right now training to be a midwife.
The Johanssen and the Jimenez-Webber families have been interwoven forever it seems. Even when Raf was in DC, he still played for their DI club team and played against my brothers all the time. They’re all relatively smart and capable men on their own, but when they’re all together like tonight, I swear they have one collective brain cell they share. Don’t even get me started on the ridiculous tattoos and nicknames they all have.
Right before the song ends and rolls into the next one, Raf ends it with a flourish and dips me, something we’ve practiced and perfected over the years. Except, I think he was lying about his level of drunkenness, because he loses his grip and we tumble to the hardwood floor in a mess of chiffon and limbs.
“You big klutzy animal,” I cry through my belly laughter as he goes limp on top of me, adding his full weight like a lead blanket. I groan, “You’re doing this on purpose. I can’t breathe!”
His head pops up and he stares down at me with a huge grin and glassy eyes. “You can’t? She needs resuscitation,” he jokingly slurs to everyone. But when his eyes land back on mine and then lower to my lips, I stop breathing entirely.
Am I dying? Can I actually breathe? Because why else would my best friend have his mouth so close to mine? Why would he be looking so intensely at it?
All I can hear is my own heartbeat thumping wildly in my chest as both of our bodies lay motionless against one another. And as soon as he wets his lips, I tilt my chin up the tiniest amount.
“Guys…” Cora says cautiously. “Whatcha doin’?”
If at all humanly possible, both of us go even more still. I’m too stunned to fully register what just happened—what almost happened. But when Dane comes stumbling over, he lifts Rafael’s shoulders and promptly pummels him to the ground, knocking him into the couch playfully.
“I’m gonna pretend you didn’t just try to kiss my sister!”
And I’m going to pretend I didn’t feel Raf’s bulge.
Oh my god.
What the fuck just happened? Why did he have a bulge? I’m not his type. I know I’m not his type.
“Party foul man,” Jonah says. “Shoot the boot!”
“Yes!” Dane agrees as Isaiah is already taking his shoe off to fill with a bit of everyone”s drink.
Oh god, I’ve seen this happen countless times before and it never gets any less amusing or disgusting. As soon as Dane hauls Rafael up, the shoe filled with beer, tequila, and sangria is pushed into his chest as the chanting starts. Rafael chugs the horrendous concoction like he’s a twenty-one-year-old college rugby player, not a thirty-one-year-old CFO.
“Down in one, down in one, down in ooooone,” everyone sings. But before I can watch Raf finish, Cora takes me to the bathroom, bottle of tequila in hand, and locks the door behind us.
“What. Was. That,” she says—not a question.
“I have no idea!” I squeak.
“Has something been brewing behind the scenes you didn’t tell me about?”
“Cora, you’re my bestie—”
She cuts me off. “So is he!”
“He’s my bestie with testes. You’re my bestie with…breasties,” I wince, hoping that the rhyme lands and I didn’t just slur the whole thing.
Cora starts to untuck her shirt. “Swear on it?”
Like a reflex, I lift my shirt up and press my tiny breasts against Cora’s enormous ones. Except I realize I’m wearing a dress and the whole thing lifts.
Oops. Oh well.
It’s like our secret little BFF handshake, except a lot of people have seen us do it.
She tucks her top back into her skirt. “How do you feel? What was it like?”
Trying to work through the drunk fog that’s getting thicker by the minute, I ponder that. “I don’t know what to think.” In theory, I should be doing backflips, but in reality, “I’m confused. I think I need to drink more to forget this happened.”
Cora opens the half full bottle of 1800. “I’m right there with you. It’s jarring watching your friends almost kiss, not gonna lie.”
We pass the bottle back and forth, and the next thing I know, sunlight is blinding me as I wake up in Rafael’s bed.
1.Despacito – Remix by Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee, Justin Bieber
2.Shape of You – Stormzy Remix by Ed Sheeran and Stormzy