Sue put up a hand and said, “I’ll go up and—”
“No. I will,” I insisted.
Sue folded her arms across her chest and nodded.
Jill looked at me and stuttered, “Th-thank you, Rafael. Perhaps that will help. I think he’s disappointed that…well…”
“I know,” I replied. “Let me go talk to him.”
My hands were a mess, so I wiped them off with a paper towel and then made my way to his room.
I knocked on his door and heard his frustrated sigh. The stomping of his feet grew louder as he neared the door, which he flung open and yelled, “Look, I just n—”
It was apparent that I was the last person Cody expected to see on the other side of that door. His mouth fell open, but nothing came out. He just looked at me.
With my hands in my pockets, I scrunched my shoulders and said, “Let’s talk.”
Cody
I’d spent the previous four days imagining everything I wanted to say to him. Every monologue I’d crafted in my mind was an eloquent tirade that outlined, in great detail, all the ways in which he was a raging asshole and how fucked up it was that he was doing this.
But all those speeches vanished once I saw him standing at my door. I was a silent, quaking mess of nerves.
No matter how mad I was at him, I couldn’t help but feel my heart beat a little faster when he was near. He was talking to me, which was so much more than I’d gotten for the past few days. Did I avoid him, too? Yes. Because every night when I went to his door to find it locked, a piece of my heart dissolved. I’d wake the next day feeling the pain of its loss. Rage and hurt consumed me, and I couldn’t bring myself to even look at him. It was just too painful.
But here he was. He touched my hand. No. We held hands. He helped me. There was still something there. No matter how hard he tried to fight it, he couldn’t completely squash all he felt for me.
And neither could I. My yearning was an ache that throbbed like a wound; only he could stop it. I backed away from the door to make room for his entrance and closed it. I turned to see him looking at a picture of Mom and me when I was nine, sitting on my desk.
“That was my ninth birthday,” I said.
He turned to face me with the picture in his hand. “You were always cute.”
No. I couldn’t take it. He wasn’t allowed to be charming if it would be another knife to my chest. “Rafael. Why are you doing this? Why are you leaving? Was it too much, too fast? I can pull back. It doesn’t…we can go back—”
Rafael put a hand up to stop me and said, “Cody. Shh.” He made his way to my bed and took a seat. He patted the spot next to him, so I sat beside him. Our legs brushed against each other, and the shockwave of yearning that shot through me was so strong it almost weakened my resolve enough to make me rest my head on his shoulder.
He scooched his leg away, and the loss of touch sank me deeper into my emotional mire.
Rafael sighed and said, “Cody, this is better. You know it. I know it. This is better.”
That’s all he had to say? Like, hell, it was! Fuck you very much, Rafael! How? I wanted to ask, because it sure as fuck didn’t feel better. It felt like death. Every night, I wanted to die, so how could this be better?
“I don’t agree,” was all I could say.
He rubbed his hands over his thighs and shrugged. “I know you don’t, but this is better. I’m not what you need.”
“And when did you become the expert in what I need?” I asked.
Rafael rolled his eyes and replied, “Because I know me. I’m not good for anybody, but especially not for you.”
God dammit, that martyr complex was really getting on my last nerve. I rose from the bed and paced about the room, letting myself unload on him. “Why do you take on this role of the broken, toxic piece of shit who everyone should avoid? You know, this is completely self-imposed, right? You’ve constructed this identity, Rafael. It isn’t you—”
“It is,” he argued.
“It isn’t,” I screamed back. “You force it. You go out of your way to make people think that. You go out of your way to make yourself think that, but I have seen you in ways others haven’t. That’s not you. You have a heart. You care about people. You care about me—”
“Cody—”
