Page 17 of Mating of Convenience
“Cool. I’m sorry I’m a little late. I was tutoring my brother in math. He hates it.”
“I get that. I hated math too. Who needs it anyway?”
“You’re going to need it if you’re ever going to open up your own tattoo parlor the way you always wanted to,” I pointed out to him because it would be hard to run a business without using at least a little bit of math. “Seriously, you all are always underestimating how useful math and science are.”
“Either that or you’re just a geek. I think I know which it is,” Raph teased as he led me into the living room. “Besides, I don’t have the money to open up a tattoo place anyway. Why do you think I’m working with Conner now?”
“You’re working with Conner now?” How hadn’t I known that? Oh, because I’d been too busy avoiding him, right. My mistake.
“Temporarily,” Raph said, flopping down on the couch. “Just until... I don’t know. Until I find something better, I guess.”
“You don’t want to be a tattoo artist anymore?” I asked, taking a seat a respectable distance away from him. I could ignore his scent if I tried, but the closer we got the more difficult that was. My nose automatically picked up on the notes of apple blossom in the room. Most omegas had a sort of floral scent to them but Raph’s had always made me think of trees for some reason. It made me think of spring.
Among other things.
“I do still want to be a tattoo artist,” Raph said, oblivious to my thoughts, “but it’s not as easy as I thought it was gonna be when we were in college.”
“So you’re giving up?”
“I’m not giving up.” Raph didn’t roll his eyes at me, but I could see that he wanted to. “I’m taking a break and figuring out how I’m going to do it all.” He grabbed a remote from the coffee table and turned on the TV, which showed only a black screen until Raph also picked up one of the gaming controllers on the table and started the console hooked up to the TV.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
“Thank you.” Raph shot me a glance. “Take one of the controllers.”
I did. I hadn’t held one of these in a long time, but the game pad immediately felt comfortable in my hands. Familiar. Raph and I had spent so many nights slaying zombies or trashing each other that the device had felt like an extension of myself after a while. “You know I’m going to own your ass, right?”
Raph laughed. “You wish.”
It wasn’t until he said that that I realized the double meaning of my words and then Raph fell awkwardly silent too, for a second.
Oh, whatever. We’d always teased one another. That was what friends did, right? It didn’t mean anything.
On the screen, the game loaded and a nostalgic melody started playing as zombies shuffled toward us from a distance.
“Ready?” Raph asked. I nodded. He pressed the start button, and for the next half-hour or so, we lost ourselves in the game. It was easy. Especially because we didn’t have to talk much. While I was sitting on the couch--still a safe distance away from Raph--I could pretend like we were back to being kids, back to being friends... Before we’d become a couple, before Raph had left town to chase his dreams elsewhere.
Thinking about the day Raph told me it might be ‘better if we parted ways’, I forgot to dodge one of his attacks and lost the battle to him.
Victoriously, Raph punched the air. “I knew I could beat you!”
“Have you been practicing?”
“Only a little bit!”
I kept looking at him.
“Okay,” he finally caved. “I was playing all night yesterday.”
“You wanted to beat me that bad?”
Raph shrugged. “I felt I owed my younger self. You beat me often enough, man. Let me have this.”
“Sure. I don’t mind.” I glanced back at the screen where my character lay bruised and bloodied on the floor. Of course Raph was beating me now. He’d probably grown in all sorts of ways over the past year while I’d stagnated, teaching kids who didn’t want to be taught and walking dogs all over Oceanport. Not that walking dogs wasn’t awesome... “Hey, Raph,” I started, turning to my friend. “Can I ask you something?”
“What do you want to ask me?” Raph looked only the tiniest bit suspicious, still floating on his high from having beaten me.
“Why did you come back to Oceanport?”
