If I was a zombie, I’d eat you first
IF I WAS A ZOMBIE, I’D EAT YOU FIRST
Monday morning galloped in way too fast. Just as well; a director got in touch with Rafael to schedule a meeting for a new movie score.
He’d leave for LA in the afternoon and stay until Thursday.
I crowbarred myself out of his bed and slugged down the peninsula to the office, fueled by excellent coffee that I most certainly did not make.
My heart wasn’t in it. Coworkers repeated questions. I kept transposing numbers. All I could think about was Rafael Nazim chained and coming in his pants on my command. Fisting me on the floor. Saying he loved me and never wanted me to leave.
In a daze, I drifted around a corner, and a group of execs nearly trampled me. A tall, blonde, tanned beauty dressed in expensive, boring beige spearheaded the brigade—none other than Molly Lively. There’d been rumblings about a buyout from Extruda, and she supposedly played some role in it.
Molly’s perfectly made-up eyes scraped over and dismissed me as beneath her. Her perfume lingered as she passed: something floral and sweet. Lavender?
Toward the end of the day, Princess Dela Cruz, my direct manager, pulled me into her office. I used to think I wanted an office instead of a cubicle until I saw Princess’s windowless cave. If not for the glass wall and door, it would be downright claustrophobic.
“Elaine, are you ok? You seem really out of it.” With all the clusters of family photos on her desk and cabinets, it was like her entire lineage weighed in along with her.
I liked Princess. We’d always gotten along, even if our ideas didn’t always align.
“Ugh, sorry. I’m all twitterpated over a man.”
Her freshly microbladed brows hiked up on her round, light brown face. “Is that some new STI?”
I snorted. “You haven’t seen Bambi? Never mind. I’m seeing someone new and I’m just very distracted. I’m sorry. I’ll try to get my head out of the clouds.”
Princess’s grin lit up her dark eyes. “Ooh, no, now you have to tell me all the tsismis! Who is the new man? Is he hot? Rich? Is he tall?”
“All of the above, actually.”
She clapped with glee. “Tell me everything.”
I opened my mouth to spill and closed it again.
The gaming industry wasn’t that big. Rafael had even written scores for some of our biggest titles.
Princess would absolutely know who my new obsession was.
Should I tell her? Surely he wouldn’t keep me a secret, though.
She twirled a hand at me in a “go on” motion.
Fuck it. “Do you know anything about Rafael Nazim?”
Her eyes popped wide. “Wait…no way. The guy who wrote the music for the Wicked Souls games? Tell me you’re not sleeping with the Rafael Nazim.”
“Um. Well…”
Princess squealed so loud the people passing in the hall stopped to peek in. The other part of that office I hated was the lack of true privacy.
“Keep it down! I don’t want everyone to know. At least not yet. It’s very new, and he’s very private.”
“Girl, not that private. I’ve heard some weird things about him. Are you being careful?”
Unease crept in around the edges, and defensiveness. “What kinds of things?”
“You saw Molly Lively today, right? Real pretty white girl, daughter of Extruda’s CEO, kinda bitchy? She dated Nazim several years ago, and I heard he beat the shit out of her. Put her in the hospital.”
Molly fucking Lively was the one Rafael threw against the wall? I sat on my hands to hide the sudden tremor. I’d known I was batting way out of my league, but holy shit. Fuck, did she know about me?
I forced myself to breathe. “It’s not what you think it is. There were extenuating circumstances. You know I wouldn’t make excuses for an abuser.”
Princess’s mouth pursed. “People say he gets real mad real fast. Plus, I think he’s secretly gay. I heard he did some big thing at Folsom Street Fair a while back. Kinda hard to miss, you know?”
My first impulse was to defend Rafael’s bisexuality, but I didn’t know how much to say. Or not to say. “As long as he’s only with me, I don’t care about all that. How do you know this stuff?”
She did a little self-satisfied shimmy. “People tell me things. Listen, Nazim is dangerous.” Princess folded her hands on her desk like a wise sage.
“He used to come to some of the fancy exec suite parties back in the day. If somebody pissed him off or flirted with him the wrong way—and you know people are gonna flirt—he’d get real aggro, real fast. Had the police called a couple of times.
They say he’s into some really dark stuff.
“Elaine, I know you’re starstruck right now. I would be too. But we both know musicians are crazy. Leave that man alone. And get your head back in the game, girl. We got end of the quarter coming up, and we need those reports ready.”
As I returned to my cubicle, eyes crawled over me. I turned just in time to catch perfectly beach-waved blonde hair disappearing around the corner. Did Molly overhear us? Princess hadn’t exactly been discreet with her volume, and the office wasn’t soundproof by any means.
I texted Rafael on my break.
Me: you have an interesting reputation
Rafael: You have been asking about me?
What should I even say? Hey, I saw your rich, gorgeous ex. Please validate my insecure ass?
Me: my manager called me in to nicely yell at me in bc i cant stop daydreaming and she knows who you are! she talked about how you hurt Molly Lively and how you were at folsom.
Rafael: Yes, Molly is the ex I told you about. And Folsom was six years ago. The one fucking time I participate in a public kink event—which was to recover from the Molly ordeal, by the way—and people treat it like front page news. Ask me anything you want. I am not trying to hide.
Me: manager says you start fights at parties and meetings and stuff
Rafael: I used to. Now I avoid them. Something about being the tallest person in every room encourages insecure straight men to come at me to “prove their manhood,” and too many people are too comfortable with sexually harassing me.
Straight women are especially egregious, and they freak out the most if I get angry.
Me: ugh that sucks im sorry
Rafael: I understand if you have reservations. I can only tell you my experience of being myself, not what everyone has to live with.
Me: you and that big sexy brain
Rafael: Please do not ever say that again.
Me: if i was a zombie i would eat you first
Rafael: If you were a zombie, I would be a zombie too, because fuck surviving the apocalypse. We can eat people together.
Me: see i knew you were a murderer
Rafael: Brats get spankings. Wear a loose skirt on Friday.
Instantly wet, I shifted in my seat, glancing around to make sure nobody saw how hard I blushed. Damn him, as if I wasn’t already having trouble staying focused. I typed and deleted three different responses.
Me: dont threaten me with a good time
I couldn’t sleep1. Every time I tried, I fell into the same old recurring dream I’d had since high school—a shadow floated upward through an impossibly tall library, spiraling to a roof open to the stars.
I flew along behind it, desperate to keep up with the shadow so I wouldn’t get sucked into one of the scattered, secret doors along the way.
I woke, as always, with a strange longing for a place I’d never been. Almost a homesickness.
My bed was too small and too empty. My grey-walled room was too boring. None of my safe foods tasted right. My clothes were too stiff. I couldn’t focus on anything; not even my writing. Every time I tried to draft something new, the love interest magically looked and acted just like Rafael.
I had a full-blown addiction on my hands.
“Dickmatized.” Deandra tossed a can of pear cider to me.
“Huh?” Distracted, I narrowly missed catching it with my face.
“Music Man got you dickmatized. I’ve never seen you like this, Laney.” She plopped down on the sofa with me. “Look, I get it. He’s weird, but like hot weird, if that makes sense? Clearly very smart. But that man has violence in his eyes.”
I hid behind my pear cider. Part of me wanted to tell her everything. But Rafael deserved privacy, and Dee would yell at me until the end of time if she learned I was with a man who’d hit women.
We always watched the newest trashy reality TV shows together on Tuesdays.
I liked the creative competition ones. She liked the dating and marriage ones.
I liked ciders. She liked spiked seltzers.
The rare times Annie joined us—since she usually spent her Thursdays modeling at car shows—we all made margaritas.
But she’d spent more and more time with Frank lately.
Deandra prodded me with her foot. “You’re really down bad.”
I groaned. “Yeah. And you’re not wrong. Rafael has a temper and a rough past, but he’s been honest about some pretty unflattering stuff.”
“He still pushing for you to move in with him right away?”
I dragged my hands down my face. “Yep. And I can’t lie, I want to say yes. Is that stu—”
Dee slapped the sofa cushions, sloshing her seltzer.
“That is SO stupid! It’s too much like love bombing.
If he’s showing you all these red flags now, what happens when you have your first fight?
What if he puts his hands on you? That giant fucker could snap your neck like a toothpick.
What if we can’t get another housemate and let go of this lease, and then you have nowhere to go? Use your head.”
“God, I feel like Ariel in The Little Mermaid yelling, ‘but Daddy, I love him!’”
“You are ‘opeless, child.” Deandra mimicked Sebastian’s accent. She shook her head. “This ain’t a reality show, and you are not running off to marry a man you’ve barely known a week.”
“Whoa, I didn’t say anything about marriage.”
“Elaine. You are 38 years old. You fucking know better. You have a stable job and living situation. You don’t need a man; you just want one. I think he needs you though, and that’s what has you hooked so hard. You can’t resist taking in strays.”
Oh. I sat with her words. When the important women in your life told you something was off about a man, only a fool ignored them. But Rafael might as well have had my soul in his back pocket for all the power I had to resist him.
“He wrote a theme song for Dragonsoul,” I said in a small voice.
“Laney.” Her glare pinned me to the sofa cushion.
I wriggled, buglike, out from beneath it. “Would it help if you got to know Rafael a little better? Maybe just the three of us. Annie really put his back up.”
“Oh, Annie. That girl cannot get out of her own way.”
“Bless her heart.”
Dee swished her drink in the can. “Yeah, I’ll consider it.”
That reminded me. “Whatever happened with Dominique? Are you still seeing her?” All I’d heard for the last four months was how amazing Dominique was in bed, then suddenly nothing.
A groan worked its way out of Dee’s throat.
“They go by Bolt now, and no. Got with some married chick who was supposedly monogamous. Husband got jealous and tried to sleep with everyone Bolt was fucking, including me. I turned him down flat and told his wife to check her man. She flipped out. All three of them have been blowing up my phone for the last few days for no damn reason. How did three other people’s bad decisions turn into my fault? ”
I scooted over to hug her at the first sign of a tear.
We rested our heads together, and mascara streaked down her cheeks.
Dee had never been much of a crier compared to my frequent, tearful meltdowns.
I’d never been much of a hugger compared to her touchy-feely tendencies. Somehow, we balanced each other.
She dabbed at the corners of her eyes. “I thought we had something, you know? Even if it’s really not Bolt’s fault, it’s just too damn messy. I’m too old for that kind of drama; especially so early in a relationship.”
“Damn, sorry I missed all of this. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Deandra pushed me gently. “You’ve got that ‘New Relationship Energy’. It’s hard to talk about a breakup around someone who’s completely infatuated.”
“God, that’s so true. I’m sorry I pulled an Annie. I’ll never forget how she just physically could not shut up about Frank when I was crying my eyes out over David.”
“Fucking Frank.” Dee knocked back her drink.
“Fucking Frank,” I agreed. “I’m sorry, but that guy looks like he’s been preaching for forty years about how eating pussy is against his religion.”
Dee snorted seltzer out of her nose. “Welp, breakup sads are over for now. Thank you for that.”
1 “Hurt (feat. The Warning)” by Dead Poet Society & The Warning