“There we go, I was wondering what had you so anxious. I almost pulled the car over, but then you were talking about velvet crushes and everything seemed okay.”
“Yes, she meant she was second-guessing our color and texture choices for the tablecloths.”
“And she needed to call you for that?”
Raffi merged onto the freeway but kept a slower speed so the wind wasn’t unbearable. Ani rather liked it, whipping through her hair.
“She was panicking. Sometimes in a wedding, brides or other wedding party members will focus on one detail and freak out over it like it’s a make-or-break, because of all the stress. There are so many balls to juggle at once, it gets overwhelming. I don’t know the psychological term for it, but they seem to concentrate all that anxiety into, say, the choice between chicken piccata and chicken Milanese as a coping mechanism. Something they can control and perfect. I see it every time.”
“Hmm,” Raffi said. “Guess I could see that. Well, whatever you said worked. That magic touch again.”
Ani turned away slightly to hide her blush. “Uh, yeah, I’m lucky Kami somehow trusts my judgment. That’s not always the case.”
Ani expected a flicker of satisfaction in saying this. Instead, all she felt was a quiet, comforting truth: She didn’t need to be the person Kami turned to anymore. It wasn’t the burden it used to be. She was fine being there for Kami in a professional sense, but nothing more.
She let the wind take the rest of those old feelings and toss them behind her like something no longer worth carrying.
Raffi didn’t say anything. She could let him sit in silence, but his irritation at Kami was something she wanted to bring up, and now she had a chance.
“You’re not the biggest fan of Kami, are you?” Ani asked.
“Huh?” He seemed to be stunned out of his line of thought. “Why, are you?”
Ani answered somewhat defensively. “I mean, not really. I was. I used to be her number one fan, but it’s clear I was in love with some kind of fantasy.”
As she said it, Ani shocked herself with the truth of it. She had clung to the heartbreak for so long, convinced it was proof of something real. But maybe she hadn’t lost a great love. Maybe she had only lost an illusion.
The memories shifted in her mind, no longer golden and untouchable, but something more fragile, human. The fights they had sidestepped, the times she had ignored the gut feelings that whispered Kami wasn’t all in, the way Ani had always been the one to smooth things over, to give more, to believe harder. She had told herself they were meant to be, buthad Kami ever truly made her feel safe? Had she ever really been chosen?
And now, here she was, speaking the truth of it aloud—not in some dramatic breakdown, not in the heat of an argument, but in a car with Raffi, the road open and seemingly endless, a reminder that forward was the only way to go.
She’d just confessed like that, as if it was another ordinary thing to say. To Raffi, of all people.
But he wasn’t “of all people”; he was taking in her words. Eyes fixed in concentration.
Highway 29 slowed down into a comfortable road with wineries dotting the landscape, and Raffi took his time, seeming to enjoy the pace.
“I get that,” he said. “Maybe I felt the same way, too, once. I had a lot of hopes for us, and we ended things amicably. But then—”
Ani didn’t say one word. She could tell he had something big he wanted to share, and she was not going to interrupt.
Raffi continued, “A week after, my brother died, it—it shattered my whole world. And Kami, she was one of the people I was closest to. We had told each other—well, the usual things couples say. And yeah, we’d broken up at that point, but it still hurt. She sent me this one little text. ‘I’m so sorry about Sev. Sending you strength.’ And that was it. That was all she ever said. I didn’t expect her to get back with me or come over and nurse me back to health or whatever, but—we were so close at one point, just weeks before, and that was all I got. My brother died.My brother. A lot of people pulled away from me around then—maybe I was shitty to be around, I don’t know. But Ihaven’t—I just—everything between us, how I felt about her, changed after that.”
Oh. Shit. Ani had no idea, none, that Raffi’s brother had died. When he was twenty or so? How had no one told her? Poor Raffi. Poor young Raffi, newly adulted, newly dumped, newly made an only child. She really fucking felt for him. And suddenly all the hooking up, all his flashy clothes and bravado, seemed to make sense. He was hurt, badly.
Then she remembered his father’s words to him. “You’ll never become a man.” God. After all that, to not even have your father on your side? She hoped he was close with his mother.
And the Kami revelation, well, it made a whole lot of sense, how ice-cold he was with her. It hadn’t really been Kami’s fault, she was nineteen or twenty as well, and they were broken up. Maybe she felt her text was what was appropriate considering they weren’t together anymore. But Ani still didn’t blame Raffi for how he felt about Kami.
Processing all of this, she felt like she had been struck in the chest.
“Shit, Raffi. I didn’t know. Any of it. That must have been horrible, to feel so alone. You didn’t deserve it.”
Raffi’s jaw was tight. “Maybe I did. Why else would something like that happen?”
Ani sat up straighter and faced him, although his eyes were on the road. “No, that’s not how it works. Tragic things happen all the time, for no reason at all. Not as punishment.”
She was speaking like she had any idea, but still, she believed it. Tragedy hadn’t touched her in the same way. Ani hadn’t grown up with abundance like Kami and Raffi, but shehad two loving parents and her sister. This conversation also really made her want to spend some actual one-on-one time with Talar, who she’d grown apart from since her sister got married. That was a shame, and it was on her to right it.
