Page 13 of Mating of Convenience
God, I needed to get myself to look somewhere else. I wasn’t going to touch Raph again. Not that way. We’d broken up and I wasoverhim.
If I only told myself that enough times I might even start believing it eventually.
“Thanks for the compliment,” Raph said with a smile that melted the defenses I was trying so desperately to build up. “Where did you get that coffee? The ice cream place? Let me buy you a new cup. I think I could use one too.”
“Okay,” I found myself saying, even though Iknewthat getting coffee with Raphael wasn’t a good idea. But I’d never been able to say no to him.
8
Raphael
I’ll admit that getting coffee with my ex might not have been the smartest idea I’d ever had, but Nathan wasn’t just my ex. He was… Well, he wasNathan. And I’d missed him. I hadn’t planned on dragging him to the ice cream parlor with me—honestly I was little surprised by my own actions—but I needed to apologize.
I’d hurt him. That much was clear. He’d been avoiding me ever since I came back and I needed to clear the air between us before he wrecked any more grocery stores.
“You still take your coffee so strong that it would kill regular mortals?” I asked Nathan as we entered the parlor. They had the air conditioning running on high but for some reason I was still sweating.
“It’s the only right way to drink coffee,” Nathan confirmed my suspicions that he hadn’t shaken his obsessive caffeine habit in the time I spent away from Oceanport.
“Whatever you say, turtle,” I responded, the pet name falling from my lips before I could think about it. Oops. For a second, Nathan froze, but then he let it slide off him, even though he’d always hated this particular pet name back when we’d been together. Or at least, he’d pretended to hate it, anyway.
Turning away from Nathan, I stepped up to the counter and ordered for the both of us. Regular coffee with a little milk for me and the strongest stuff they had for my friend. “If you got something that’ll give normal people a heart attack, that’ll be what he wants,” I said with a nod at Nathan.
“Joke about me all you want,” he said. “It’s not my fault you’re weak, angel.”
My eyebrows shot up before I could regain control of my facial muscles. So he’d worked up the courage to return fire after all. At one point I’d slipped up and told him that my mom used to call me angel because she named me for one. He was the only one still allowed to call me that. Or he had been, anyway.
It was weird to hear it from him now.
The name had so many memories attached to it that I knew if I closed my eyes now, I would feel myself transported back to the last night we’d spent together.
A memory too painful to get lost in on such a bright and sunny day.
Breaking up with Nathan was possibly the hardest thing I’d ever done.
There was no point lingering on that now, though.
I paid the bill for me and my friend and accepted our cups of coffee from the friendly waitress. “You want to sit outside or in here?” I asked Nathan.
“Too hot to sit outside,” he responded, and I couldn’t disagree with him there.
“Yeah, you’re right. Let’s just take this table here.” I flopped down in a chair in front of the parlor’s large window front, trying to appear more relaxed than I felt. “What were you doing out here anyway? You were kinda spaced out when I spotted you.”
“Nothing much,” Nathan said, taking the seat opposite me. “Just... I don’t know... daydreaming. There’s this empty store next to this one. I was thinking about what it might be in the future. It’s stupid. I don’t know why I’m even telling you this.”
“Because you always talk the most when you don’t know what to say,” I pointed out to him. It was like that time my mom died and everyone fell silent around me. Everyone but Nathan. He’d taken me out of the house and pointed up at the sky and told me all about the constellations. The stars hadn’t even been out yet.
Worked to distract me, though.
“Are you saying I ramble?” Nathan asked.
“Nah, I wouldn’t call it rambling. You just don’t like awkward silences and you’re thinking this meeting is kinda awkward.” I could tell by the look in his eyes and the tension in his posture. Nathan had never been very good at hiding what he thought, not that I wanted him to. I liked that I could read his emotions in his eyes. I liked his eyes, period, and I liked that they hadn’t changed at all. There was a little golden stubble on his chin that hadn’t been there before, but…
“I’m not thinking that.”
“What?” I’d kind of lost track of our conversation.
“I’m saying that I don’t think this meeting is awkward at all.”
