Page 18 of Mating of Convenience
“Oh.” Raph visibly deflated. “I... uh...just missed my family, you know?” There was something else he wasn’t saying. I knew him well enough to know that much.
“What happened?”
“Nothing. Just some minor set-backs. I’m not staying in Oceanport for long.”
“No?” I swallowed down the sense of dread I felt at hearing him say that. It was then that I realized some part of me had hoped he was staying, that, miraculously, things would go back to the way they were before he left.
“Can’t really be a tattoo artist in Oceanport, can I?” Raph glanced at me and there was something in his gaze that I couldn’t define but it almost looked like regret.
“It’s fine,” I made myself say. “You can live wherever you want to.”
“Because you’re over me, right?” My friend inched a little bit closer to me, tilting his head. Was he trying to tempt me with that alluring scent he gave off? Not a chance. I’d been into him since I was in high school and we never got together until my last year of college. I knew exactly how to control my urges around him and how not to act on the feelings he stirred in me.
But for some reason it was a lot harder now than it used to be.
Because now I knew what he tasted like when his lips were on mine and desire pooled in my gut just having him near.
I had tofocus.
“Totally over you,” I told Raph, catching his gaze. His green eyes looked brilliant, even in the artificial light from the living room lamp, and I couldn’t help but remember the way they darkened that first time he kissed me. I remembered how good it had been to hold him, to think that he was finally mine.
And I remembered the pain of realizing that he wasn’t.
“You broke my heart, Raph.”
He needed to understand this. I wasn’t going to chase him because I would never survive losing him a second time.
Raph averted his gaze and exhaled. “I know,” he said, finally, and got off the couch to stretch, though I got the feeling he moved only to get away from me. His eyes searched the room, as if looking for a different topic. Eventually, he found one. “You remember my grandma?”
“Your grandma?” I squinted. Where was that coming from? “Not really, no... wait. No, never mind. You have a grandma?”
For some reason, my response made Raph laugh again. “That’s what I thought. She took so little interest in my life that my best friend didn’t even know I had a grandma.”
“Why are you bringing her up? Is everything alright?”
“Everything is super. In fact, she’s offering me a ton of money.” Raph let himself sink back on the couch. “Bet you didn’t even know my grandma was rich.”
“I didn’t,” I confessed. My friend had never mentioned her and I’d never asked.
“She threw my mom out when she got pregnant and cut off contact. That’s how we never saw a dime of that money. But now she’s pretending like she’s having a change of heart. I guess she must be dying or something.”
“You don’t sound like that makes you sad.”
“She can bite it for all I care. You wanna know what she wants me to do to get the money?”
“What does she want you to do?”
Raph made the kind of face he made when he accidentally bit into something with cherries in it--hehatedcherries. “She wants me to get married. Can you imagine? The way she said it was like she doesn’t even carewhoI marry as long as I marry someone.” Raph picked the controller up again, probably in the mood to exact some more violence on innocent pixels on the TV screen.
“Are you gonna do it?” I asked.
Raph turned to stare at me. “Are you insane?”
Something about the disbelieving look he gave me made me jump on the defense. “People have gotten married for worse reasons. You wouldn’t have tomean it. You’re just not seeing it because you’re so allergic to the concept of marriage.”
“And you’re taking it too lightly because you were raised by a wedding planner,” Raph shot back.
I shook my head at him. How often had we had this argument now? “So you won’t consider my side of the argument even if you’re offered a ton of money?” I asked. “I knew you had a fear of commitment, but I didn’t know you werethisbad.”
