Ani nodded toward him. “What about you? Is that outfit some kind of uniform you read about on a pickup artist forum?”
He seemed to always be dressed nicely. Two for two now. She was curious about why, and her question, although slightly mean, made sense in her mind. Also, if he was a PUA,she wanted to know for sure right off the bat. Any heady feelings coming her way from his excellent taste in cologne and sport coats would be quashed immediately.
He tilted his head. “What’s a pickup artist forum? Is that like a mixed-media art thing? Finding trash on the streets or whatever?” He gazed skyward, considering. “But why would they wear suits?”
His confusion immediately made her feel guilty for asking.
“You don’t spend a lot of time online, do you?”
“Not really. Unless I have to do something for work.”
“Lucky.” She liked that; it was a healthy practice that she wished she could do more often. Unplug. Live in the moment.
“As for the suits—it’s the way I want to look. I enjoy their feel. The seriousness of them. The subtle ways you can dress them up or down. I think I’m—I don’t know—awkward and gangly in shorts and a tee. Doesn’t feel like me.”
Was that…a hint of insecurity? The idea of Raffi feeling awkward, gangly, and anything less than completely sure of himself didn’t square with the image she’d built in her head: the untouchable, perpetually smug son of a maybe mobster, who seemed to glide through life like he owned it.
“So what do you do at the beach?” Ani asked.
Raffi stared at her and said with all seriousness, “I wear a full suit and then rip it off with one hand, revealing a neon-orange Speedo.”
Despite herself, Ani laughed. There was something disarming about the way he leaned into the absurdity of his own image. “Why is that somehow so easy to visualize?”
Raffi caught her eye and smiled in complicity with her, sharing their joke.
“Well, you wear them well,” Ani said, feeling like giving him a sincere compliment.
The edges of his smile softened, and for a moment, he looked at her like he wasn’t sure if she was teasing him or being serious. His gaze dropped to the floor before flicking back up to hers. Eyes the color of sun-warmed cedar, dark and calm.
“Thank you.”
Then he fidgeted with a button on his cuff, not catching her eyes. “I know the whole suit getup is kind of formal—not as strange as an orange Speedo—but they also just—” He paused. Shrugged. “I guess they make me feel stronger. Almost…protected.”
Ani blinked, caught off guard. She didn’t know what to say. It felt like he’d handed her a piece of himself, fragile and unguarded, and she wasn’t sure where to put it. The air between them shifted, heavier now.
Was this an opening? The weight of the moment made her think that maybe he wanted to be asked. The question hovered on the tip of her tongue.
She took a breath and asked, her voice softer than she intended, “Protected from what?”
For a moment, Raffi just looked at her, his expression unreadable. Her heart sprinted, the audacity in asking that question catching up to her, but before he could answer, a loud knock on the window shattered the moment.
They both jerked toward the sound, their shared stillness broken.
“You guys okay in there?” Chris’s muffled voice asked from outside.
And that was it.
Raffi blinked, his mask of coolness sliding back into place as if it had never slipped. “We’re good,” he called back, his tone light and easy. “Definitely no screaming about a mouse, all very normal.”
Even as she heard the handle turning, Ani felt oddly unsteady, like she’d been yanked back from the precipice of something enticing.
When the door opened, Ani should have felt nothing but relief about being rescued from the mouse-ridden murder shed. But once they were outside and she approached the bench holding her belongings, Ani hesitated a moment longer than she should have when it was time to take off the coat and hand it back to Raffi.
The four ofthem spent another half hour or so finalizing plans, which went surprisingly smoothly. As Ani and Sanan walked back to their car across Ô’s parking lot, Ani received a text. It was from Kami. Ani gulped.
She, Sanan, Kami, and Grace had been emailing back and forth about to-dos, and Ani had sent out a very professional plan for them, trying her best to make everything as impersonal as possible. She also rejoiced when she got her first check for five thousand dollars, which was a nice reminder of why exactly she was doing this. But so far, their communications had been only emails, no texts.
“One sec, Sanan, got to read this,” Ani said, hoping not to be rude as she was sure she was about to disappear into her own world.
